There is life out there, really, you just have to look

Its times like these that I wish I could just point and click, and magically download a high quality mp3 of any song that caught my fancy.

how to add social bookmarking sites to your blogger footer

1. Click on Customize->Template->Edit HTML
2. Click the Expand Widget Templates button
3. Search for "post-footer-line-3" and place your links within the <p> tag
4. Your links would look something like this:
<a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' title="del.icio.us">

note: the expr namespace is necessary for the engine to convert the data:post into dynamic content for each post.

change your ways young man

Some simple things to change your daily habits to improve the environment and your life

1. Go to bed early.
- Save the electricity cost (and the greenhouse gases they produce) of lighting necessary after dark, and TV, computers, etc. you use to keep yourself entertained.
- Sleep is an underrated factor in determining quality of life. Get yours, and live better.

2. Read a book.
- Save the electricity cost (and the greenhouse gases they produce) of TV, computers, etc. you use to keep yourself entertained.
- You might just learn something more valuable than what can be found on American Idol.

3. Eat more veggies.
- Save the carbon footprint of raising cattle.
- Enjoy the health benefits of eating more vegetables.

Take off your party hats an go outside

It would seem now that, not only is sunlight a underestimated regulator of moods, but also necessary for producing vitamin D, and underestimated agent for significantly reducing the risk of cancer.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070608.wvitaminD08/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/home

That means you need to wake up with the sun, and get outside to enjoy the mild morning sunshine!

The Social Animal

Required reading for anyone who spends any time around other people.

http://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-Elliot-Aronson/dp/071675715X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

And while we're at it, I't tired of constantly finding these when talking to people:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

More Monkey^wTemplate Magic

From Bjarn's paper here.

Same idea as before, but perhaps more clear.

template <bool b, class X, class Y>
struct if_ {typedef X type; };

template <class X, class Y>
struct if_ <false,x,y> { typedef Y type; };

void f() { if_<sizeof(foobar)<40,Foo,Bar>::type xy; }

Apparently, template programming is Turing complete.

What the world eats

A picture essay on the diets of people around the world.

On the Superiority of Questions over Answers

Answers can be wrong. Questions can only Be; they are a more pure, even if derivative, form of observation on reality. Moreover, answers require supposition and interpretation of reality, and thus the assertion of ego onto the objective world.

While both fall victim to the pitfalls of individual perception, it is the nature of questions to contain the ego within itself, and thus often serve to highlight it. Answers only server to disguise assumptions, or set up conflict with those who don't share them.

Consider:

Q: "Why are we here?"
A: "Because god put us here, made in his own image."

Which do you consider more profound, or likely to lead to an insight to existence?

Accumulating answers is the process of erecting walls, confining lines of reason into what one hopes is a gilded path to the Truth. Accumulating questions is the process of expanding new avenues of thought. Most importantly however, is the tendency, when one has gathered enough questions, for the correct path to fall naturally from observation, egolessly.

On the Nature of Suffering

Suffering is what gives meaning to happiness. In this way suffering is as necessary to happiness as black is to white.

Without suffering, we could be the most fortunate people in existence, and never know it.

A hard road traveled is what makes the destination worth arriving at.

Today we went to Minato-mirai to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the opening of Yokohama harbor (and therefore all of Japan) to foreign traffic. The theme was "thanks to the harbor".

There was a lot of people there, and while we enjoyed the day-light festivities and sampled all the foreign festival cuisine, as the evening came, and the prospect of a serious fireworks display at 8:30pm, so did the people.

In principle, I like people. In practice however, whenever they manage into crowds, its a statistical certainty that they will start doing things that make them become, as a unit, stupid.
So for this reason, we decided to skip fighting with the crowd, and just pack it in early.

(If you want a visual, imagine a dad, gleefully video-taping the strapping young pride of his loins attempting to rip a branch off one of the carefully landscaped trees in the public park. Now imagine what I said to him.)

Its a shame, as we left there were some pretty amazing fireworks going up, but there was not much room, and little will for a fight with the crowds.