real life soundtrack

walking home from university via idyllic country lane with large fields and stately homes either side, i hear something that i think sounds like a clarinet. wheres it coming from? i turn down a muddy skinny path and the noise gets louder, full of the character and expression unique to someone who isnt an expert but hits all the right notes. i stumble upon a nerdy looking fellow with a pockmarked face who has set himself up in the treeline, using leafless branches as a stand for his sheet music and the vast pink and purple sky beyond as his audience. he sees me and bluntly states, "the music room closes at 4pm". i wish him well and turn back towards home, content that such a fantastical happening in my day was firmly grounded in reality.

why uni can be exciting...

...walking along a footpath at university today with a mate, i overheard the following, which bears only mentioning and no further analysis.

"... I mean, I lost my virginity twice on Monday!"

ambulance

today i saw an ambulance race past the bus stop, only to stop abrubtly, sirens wailing and lights flashing, stuck at a level train crossing. i stopped for a moment and wondered if whoever was inside or whoever it was on its way to attend to could afford to wait for rush hour passengers to arrive at the platform on time. i seemed to be the only person who noticed the kerfuffle. a part of me wanted to halt the madness of modern life for ten seconds to let it through, but i was late for work.

Timothy Gowers forecasts the future

* 18 November 2006
* NewScientist.com news service
* Timothy Gowers

There are about half a dozen problems that almost all mathematicians agree are supremely important. One that I particularly like is the "P = NP" problem.

This concerns a situation that occurs not just in mathematics but also in everyday life: often it is easy to recognise a solution to a problem, but not at all easy to find one. For example, if you are asked to factorise 10541, you will have to spend a long time searching for factors amongst the primes. But if you are told that 10541 is 83 × 127, it is routine to check that it is true. A non-mathematical example is finding anagrams of words.

So far, so uncontroversial. However, one of the great gaps in our knowledge is that nobody knows how to show that searching for solutions really is harder than checking that the solutions are correct. This is the P = NP problem.

This problem gets to the heart of mathematics, because mathematical research itself has the property I have described: it seems to be easier to check that a proof is correct than to discover it in the first place. Therefore, if we found a solution to the P = NP problem it would profoundly affect our understanding of mathematics, and would rank alongside the famous undecidability results of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing.

Summer Malaise

The End of Europe

intoxicated wasp

last night, with the sadistic encouragement of several mates, i helped capture a wasp that had entered our humble abode seeking shelter from adverse weather conditions outside. we marveled at its large size and pondered what the devil to do with it. the seemingly obvious conclusion was to get it stoned. this calmed it down a bit. we then thought it would most likely be hungry, so we poured some granulated sugar into its plastic enclosure, which it devoured with great relish, and mostly upside down. while an episode of a popular adult cartoon series waited on a screen nearby, the wasp garnered even more of our attention as we experimented further with a thick viscous tropical liquer. it licked the tiny drops off the side of its new home and eventually we were drawn to the screen once more.

half an hour later, the bee was writhing upside down in a pool of of the boozey nectar, and we scooped it out with a spoon, realising what had to be done. i couldn't end its misery, still feeling bad for taunting the poor thing. i was assuaged by those around me that we had given it a better life than most wasps. i wasn't so sure. a man with a bottle extinguished its soul, albeit with much hesitance. it lies, dead and mangled, in our recycling bin.

How to Disappear in Gatwick

bitch

The sparkle in her eye was not a sign of her cheery demeanour, but rather a shard of glass from the decanter I threw at her.

he's a threat

"...he's a threat, a danger... I don't trust a man who can't leave an heir behind. It means his ambition knows no bounds. He's promised nothing but hell and probably doesn't believe in it anyway... or God, for that matter. Such a man must be feared, not because he carries Satan with him, but a palpable realisation that this is his one shot."

sans nome

sometimes i dont feel like tryin
them be the days i feel like dyin
i wanna thumb thru you like a damn good read
but man, i wish youd
take the lead
all these stolen glances
from backward stances
we go round and round
but we never come full circle.

for you know who (no longer)

when we gonna lose this ruse
when we gonna drop this facade
reject the labels my love
is in the stables
groomed and preened til atrophe
pull open the doors and i'll get on all fours
i'll prance and i'll dance
to get your romance
but more like an ape with a cymbal
the eager don't kindle

from radiohead.com a long time ago:

"This self (ego) spends much of its time trying to establish personal territory, a nest, or cocoon, to defend. It generally imagines itself as vulnerable, rather than robust. It files damage done to its vanity, and periodically audits the files. It re-heats the past, making a mile out of an inch: a small perceived wound becomes cause for war. It is subject to incessant hope and fear. It goes on interesting forays into the future. It builds itself up and its main activity is daydreaming.

Ego constantly fears boredom and so cooks up entertainments and 'obscurations' (kleshas) - passion, aggression, ignorance, which can also be seen as deformations of space, means by which we either foreshorten the distance between ourselves and others (passion) or extend it.

Neurosis, unreality and confusion are not special subjects,

but the ordinary human condition.

- going buddhist peter j conradi

margaret atwood's "oryx and crake"

..."Jimmy, look at it realistically. You can't couple a minimum access to food with an expanding population indefinitely. Homo sapiens doesn't seem able to cut himself off at the supply end. He's one of the few species that doesn't limit reproduction in the face of dwindling resources. In other words - and up to a point, of course - the less we eat, the more we fuck."
"How do you account for that?" said Jimmy.

"Imagination," said Crake. "Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or rabbit doesn't behave like that. Take birds - in a lean season they cut down on the eggs, or they won't mate at all. They put their energy into staying alive themselves until times get better. But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever."

"As a species, we're doomed by hope then?"

"You could call it hope. That, or desperation."

"But we're doomed without hope, as well," said Jimmy.

"Only as individuals," said Crake cheerfully.

"Well, it sucks."

"Jimmy, grow up."

Crake wasn't the first person who'd ever said that to Jimmy.

tragick mistake

carried out the attack
missed by a whisker
and another injured
failed to detonate
holy warriors
high alert
americans remain very much a target
unexpected pandemic
tragic mistake
clamour from campaigners
was a coverup
racist ideology
the ringleader
bank accounts in hamburg
launch an appeal
locked in talks
there sunny counterparts
taking home for burial
packed up and accused of links to rising sectarian tensions
some say its already begun
receeding glacier
invited politicians
nature will bite back
visiting politicians
early warning system
major economic impact
on the pitch
off the pitch
dense thick black cloud
i assure you its entirely legal
i'm not your slavewhore!

(eavesdropped from the telly-vision)

repubber ducky

"what's that mr. president?"

*quack, quack*