On The Shoulders Of Giants

Randy Pausch passed away last Friday. If you haven’t watched his last lecture video, set aside some time for it.

This is Frank Rich of the NY Times at his sharpest. Enjoy.

After reading my friend Khalid’s review of the Joker character in the Dark Knight movie and thinking about it, I started to think of Karl Rove. Most of us know what happened: Karl Rove indoctrinated W, made him the president and with the help of Dick Cheney ran the show for eight years. And all of us who are old enough, know what they did. Was Karl Rove the Joker who wanted to create as much havoc as possible? Was he a nihilist? And if he was, did a nihilist actually run the most powerful country in history for eight years? And if the answer to all of the above is yes, my next question is to Republicans: how did you let this happen to you?

In a sense, the past seven and a half years were Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s shot at running this country through W. And what we saw of that show was not pretty. It was classless, crude, careless and arrogant. How could half this country let this happen?

My way of making sense out of all of this is to focus on powers of deception. How the “economy of mind” leads to intellectual laziness and becoming prone to deception. Why Americans are so intense on “economy of mind”? It’s just an observation that I have found out that it is easier to find someone help me move than to find someone to spend the same amount of time to help me go through a problem. Call me crazy, but I think this has to do with the Grand Jihad which is to work on the inside as opposed to the Minor Jihad which is to defend yourself on the outside.

Recently, I had a technical problem with NPR’s website. I emailed them and today - after three days - the product manager of that department personally got back to me and said he is working on fixing it. I have not had a remotely similar experience with Apple, Google and a few other companies, and I am not even paying them (directly) for their services.

“We know all the so-called aid workers,” they read. “We promise to kill them, wherever they are.”

I don’t know how to say this but please read this.

Rest in peace dear Khosro Shakibai.

If I meet a guy from Atlantis at a party, I’d be like “Dude, what happened?”

Is there such a thing as fate? Or do we need to believe in god to believe in fate? Let’s define fate such that we don’t. I’ll call something fate when some scenario comes out of the blue where you did not expect it and something just blows up in your face and you just have to suck it up and take it in stride. One of those things recently happened in my life and I have been asking myself “what does it mean and why does it happen?” Tonight, I think I found the answer and I want to share it with you. I think the answer is a lesson in humility. I feel much more humble since then and it has made me a better person.
There’s a poem that translates to “The times are constantly at odds with the free.” This is from the Raze No album. This had baffled me for three months. Until tonight, when I found out that it means that life will teach a lot of lessons of humility to the free ones.

LAWS OF BACKGAMMON
1931
PREPARED BY THE BACKGAMMON and
CARDS COMMITTEE of the
RACQUET AND TENNIS CLUB
NEW YORK CITY

APPROVED BY THE FOLLOWING CLUBS:

The Brook
Calumet
Cavendish
Hope (Prov.)
Knickerbocker
Knickerbocker Whist
The Leash
The Links Pacific Union (San Fran.)
Philadelphia (Phila.)
Piping Rock
Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh)
Racquet (Chicago)
Racquet (Phila.)
Racquet (St. Louis)
Racquet and Tennis Rittenhouse (Phila.)
St. Nicholas
Tennis and Racquet (Boston)
Tuxedo
Union
University
Whist

I used to believe that my biggest asset was my sanity, that is my ability to reason, my ability to apply logics to problems. I have recently started to think that sanity only takes me so far, but what could take me even further is perhaps insanity, the ability to transcend reason, to make a leap of faith, to go where the logic would not take you. Perhaps Occam’s razor need not be true in all cases. Perhaps there is more than meets the eye.