AsenDURE @ Corner of 11th & 20th

Upon the stairway of despair,
Complete with broken love affairs
And promises that never came,
But faded with a touch of shame,
A pretty girl with golden hair
And innocence so sadly rare,
Strove to keep her head above
A way of life devoid of love.

Feeling pinned against Life’s wall,
She chanced upon a robot tall
And said, “Please come and share with me
Whatever Fate has deemed to be.
I’m through with love, done with chances
Spirit crushed by past romances,
Just be a friend in word and deed.
That’s all that I shall ever need.”

“There’s not too much from me to learn,”
Remarked the robot, in return.
“Emotions do not form a part
of my cold, solid-steel heart.
Whatever maker fashioned me
Did not permit my circuitry
Responsiveness to love or pain -
You’re thoughts for me would be in vain.”

“No matter”, spoke the maid. “No more
Do I wish passion to explore.
Be someone I can come home to
When my exhausting day is through.
Count yourself a well-worn shoe -
A friend that I can slip into . . .
Protection from a stone cold floor . . .
For this I ask and nothing more.”

Agreement made, he took her hand
And lived the life that she had planned,
Always willing, not demanding,
Aiding her with understanding
He made her smile with humorous wit
(As his restrictions would permit)
And, bit by bit, she came to feel
That he was more than iron and steel.

“I love you, robot”, she at last
Replied when several months had passed.
“You’re strength and quiet dignity
Have brought a wondrous change in me.
No more do I feel all alone,
And pray you must be flesh and bone.
Deep-set emotions you MUST feel
Within that outer coat of steel!”

“If I were able, I would say
I’m sorry I was made this way
But my design and programmation
Does not provide for that creation
Of feelings normal men may feel
That were not born of iron and steel.
I told you all this once before.
You have no right expecting more.”

“Go, then!” cried she. “I will not live
Beside a fiend who cannot give!
Though I be battered by misuse,
Misguided trust and strong abuse,
At least the men I chose were real
And had the power to love and feel.
Of all the lovers I recall,
You are the cruelest one of all!”

The robot, indestructible,
Continues freely and at will.
Emotionless, apparently,
But, bearing closer scrutiny,
One can see a small tear streak
Down that cold, metallic cheek
As I reflect upon my life . . .
That lovely lady was my wife.

The robot, of course, was me.

Comments from the author of the poem: There are so many people who cannot show emotions and feelings very easily. Many times they are misinterpreted as being cold or unfeeling and pay the consequences when, all the while, they just want to be open and expressive like everyone else.

They just can’t.

comments from me: I’d like to say that at time I am guilty of being a robot and it’s a failure of most men. I’m not talking about being sensitive emphaty, compassion and getting teary eyed when watching sappy movies but revealing and exposing one’s innermost feelings, fears and desires. Is this inablility the result of indoctrination and comforming to society’s expected image of a true man?

I’m damn freaking bloody pissed off at the moment so excuse me if I do use some swear words. Reader discretion is advised.

Suicide is a damning and final display of up most cowardiance. It is the solution of quitters. The final stroke of lameness. A spit second of pitiful ignorance, of the things that matter, and the ultimate epitome of stupidity. It takes even more fucking courage to live god dammit! Life’s a bitch, reality bites – go figure – deal with it you god damn foolish asswipe!. This world isn’t a freaking playground or a peaceful stroll in the park…It is a collection of possibilities and you build your own happiness out of it. There’s no such thing as an unsolvable problem or unmovable obstacles in life, especially if it concerns our puny pitiful sorry excuse of an existence, we’re not talking about Advanced Number Theory and Fermat’s Last Theorem here people!

Not as strong as you think? Screw you! We are ALWAYS stronger than what we think! It’s called the human will and it has displayed itself countless time over the millennia of human existence. If after 3 years of sharing my life with you, you still think I don’t know you, then maybe you’re right. But I know how strong you are. I’ve seen that strength and in adversity you have blossom into a beautiful flower indeed. I don’t know now where that firey gusto and freedom in living life has gone.

How can one justify it as a relief to pain? Tiuuu! That’s total bullshit, bullshit the magnitude of the cosmos. Such superbly display of logical justification that would make ancient philosopher roll over in their graves. Big news!, when you dead you don’t feel pain, you’re freaking dead for Christ’s sake! You don’t feel anything! But what’s the point of ending one life over a little bit of pain? You’ll lose out on what life has to offer, and confound it! Life has a lot to offer.

Not to mention the selfish and childish taunting and mockery you make of those who care about your. Putting them in agony during the hours of unknown waiting and praying is the worst and most despicable act one can do in return for love. Shameless, selfish cowardly ingrate! You are never alone and all the endless pain you suffer is inflicted by your own wrapped, wallowing self-pitiful depressed self. You have literally shut yourself out of the love everyone around you are showering on you. You have unleashed in yourself a demon that have taken over you consciousness, that has clouded your perception, and has twisted and disfigured your inner sanctum that you are now unable to even recognize the countless gentle gestures, in whatever form, of love extended to you by those around you! - even if it hit you like 200tons freight train at 2 in on a monday morning.

If this accursed confounded common sense doesn’t still sink in I have a lot of other solutions to suicide. Hollow yourself out, you’re already hallow anyway, and devote yourself to the caring of the sick, the dying, orphans, those on death row, the hungry, the poor and see if you can understand and grasp the meaning of life. Join the Peace Corps or be a volunteer in any of the thousands charity organization. If you hate humans, care for animals! SPCA, WWF, Greenpeace. If you still feel like a cursed coward and still want to given up please make sure fucking sure that you have signed an organ donor card.

Thanks alot for fucking up my day, my week and probably my life!

Taking the cue from chewyx’s blog here’s my take on M-Theory’s visualization aspects.

What our universe looks like. Bubbles.

So, what’s all this crap about?
In the standard model of the universe, physicist proposed that matter was made up of lots of tiny invisible atomic particles and their interaction is explainable by the Theory of Relativity (The very big) and Quantum Theory (the very small). The theories were however inconsistent and thus physicist were convinced that there had to be a unifying theory that could resolve these inconsistencies and therefore explain everything about the universe hence the aptly named Theory Of Everything.

So have they found this Theory of Everything?
The strongest contender so far as of now seems to be String Theory, which came along in the 1980s, and it says that particles are made up of really tiny strings. The different ways in which the string wiggles represent the different kinds of elementary particles. It’s like a guitar string, and it can vibrate just like guitar strings can vibrate. Each note if, you will, describes a different particle. The strings vibrate and how they vibrate determine what kind of particles they form. If you were to vibrate them this way, you’ll get a proton and if you vibrate them another way, you’d get and electron and so forth. With the inclusion of supersymmetry String Theory became Superstring Theory. A fundamental idea to Superstring Theory is that reality is composed of ten dimensions.

So now our universe is an orchestra? Great, hope they’re playing something good though but ten dimension? Now you’re yanking my chain here
Well yes, the three (normal) spatial dimensions, plus one for time and another six tiny spatial dimensions. Hence whereas matter might consist of ten dimensional strings, the string would only appear to us in our four dimensions as a particle. The problem of Superstring/String theory so far is when physicists struggled to explain all the weird shit in the universe they somehow ended up with five different theories, which is rather problematic for a possible Theory of Everything.

Wait a doggone second! The TOE is actually 5 Theories?
Yeap, Enstine did say that the equation should be an inch or so in length, but if you think 10 dimensions is bad then you’re gonna love what’s coming up next. The next problem with String Theory is it’s failure to explain as the Big Bang (the birth of the universe) which is basically a singularity at some far distance past. This is because that’s when all the equations stopped working.

Before Superstring theory came along though, there was a theory called Supergravity which was then, where Superstring theory is now, a real good contender for TOE, but being ousted by Superstring theory, it became unfashionable got ignored. Supergravity had always been convinced there were exactly eleven dimensions but by now the boot was on the other foot and String Theory was in shitload of trouble. Its’ five different versions meant it couldn’t be the all-embracing theory physics was looking for. Everything, it seemed, had been tried to save String Theory. Well, almost everything. In a final desperate move the string theorists tried adding one last thing to their cherished idea. They added the very thing they had spent a decade rubbishing: the eleventh dimension. Now something almost magical happened to the five competing String Theories when the 11th dimension was added to the equations of the five String Theories. The answer turned out to be it turns out that they were all the same.

Hence was born M Theory (M for Madness, Magnificent, Magical, Membrane), with the central amazing postulate, that our entire universe is a membrane; one single vast structure to which all the matter in the universe is connected.

Wow, that’s pretty neat, now I that’s a killer topic for picking up chicks!
That’s just the tip of the iceberg, next comes the weird stuff from Star Trek. Some physicist were discussing M Theory and the origin of the universe and came up with this question: “What would happen if there was more than one membrane? What happens if they collide?” The result, one Big Bang - literally. No more singularity, no more broken equations. We have a possible explanation of how it all began otherwise known as the ekpyrotic universe.

What? More than one universe? Now you’re saying that the sci-fi parallel universe concept is a reality?
Yeap, welcome to the multiverse, where our universe co-exists with other membranes, other universes. In fact there could be an infinite number of membrane-universes, each with a utterly different law of physics. Big Bangs would be happening all the time.

If there is an infinite number of universes, then there will be an infinite number of occasions in which two membranes have collided to create a Big Bang exactly like the one that created our universe, with exactly the same physical laws, with exactly the same sequence of events since the moment of creation. Except that, in one of them Germany won WW2, in another you actually got the guts to ask that hot chick at the bar for her number and in yet another you were never born. Every possible outcome that you can imagine will and has occurred and will happen again. And again. Infinity is a very big number.

Multiple universes also provide a possible explanation of why gravity is such a weak force in our universe. Yes I know, gravity seemed strong enough that time you fell off your chair after leaning back too much – but if it were so strong how come a magnet can pick up a set of keys or you being able to lift up a pair of dumbbells? Thus it is considered weak compared to other forces. The simple answer is that there is no gravity in our universe as such, what we have is gravity leaking in from an adjacent membrane-universe. Similarly there may be no need dark matter after all, to explain all anything

Of course all this is theory. It’s a difficult thing proving the existence of eleven dimensional structures when your perceptions are limited to only four. If the concepts produce pretty equations with nice elegant solutions everybody’s happy, as most physicists tend to think that there ought to be a nice elegant solution to the ultimate question. Therefore , God doesn’t play dice with the universe, he plays pool.

Oh yeah! One more thing one. Physicist Alan Guth believes it may well be possible to create a membrane-universe in the labaratory and therefore effectively creating a universe. This could mean that Alan Guth thinks he can become God. Wonder if the beings in this new universe will think he’s omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenovelent?

And you really understand all this stuff?
Well, not exactly. I still have several episodes of Star Trek to watch.

p.s - images used without proper consent or permission with total disregard for IP rights.

Undoubtly the best Korean love movie I’ve ever seen. Glossy, yet well-told and engaging. Get your handkerchiefs, or industrial strength paper towels, ready. It was so touching I even willing to admit I almost cried at 2 scenes. *blush*

Korea seems to be a region plagued with romantic couples suffering from debilitating health problems. It seems leukemia, brain cancer, and other assorted maladies have wreaked havoc on the region with so many tragic-romance movies themed around this, but A Moment to Remember trumps them all. In this melodrama, Kim Soo-Jin (Son Ye-Jin) contracts;- get ready for it - Alzheimer’s Disease! Yeap, the disease usually reserved for the ailing elderly is now going to be bequeath upon a twenty-seven year-old girl-next-door through her family genes. Her new husband, Choi Chol-Soo (Jung Woo-Sung) is an impossibly macho man must deal with this tragedy befallen his young wife.

The story starts with Soo-Jin, waiting at the train station and being PPK by her married boyfriend as they plan to elope. She then bumps into a Chol-Soo and a coke snatching incident take place. Sparks are struck, but a flame doesn’t build till they cross path again when she sees him at her fathers construction site, a meeting at her collegue’s gallery (and another coke snatching incident). But what really stole her heart is when Chol-Soo decks a snatch thief with the door of his jeep. This incident totals Chol-Soo’s windshield, but he valiantly drives Soo-Jin home while wearing safety goggles to keep the dust from his eyes and giving Soo-Jin’s a welding mask which she daintily wears to protect her delicate features from wind burn. The stars make their characters exceptionally engaging. Son Ye-Jin gives felt emotion to her character’s varying emotional states and her portrayal of the super sweet and beautifully dream girlfriend would keep anyone with a Y chromosome glue to his seat. Jung Woo-Sung on the other hand is indeed a hunk but effortlessly makes this hunk (Chol-Soo) a likable hunk, and I find myself personally rooting for him (Chol-Soo) even though I fell in love with Soo-Jin. The two encounter all the regulatory obstacles faced by any on screen couple during courtship and their love are strengthen every step by them overcoming each together and finally ending up tying the knot.

Alas though, sooner or later, a 400-ton tearjerker freight train will smack this perfect couple with all the brutal screenwriting strength it can muster. Small hints are dropped from minute one. Dad says to Soo-Jin, “Being able to forget easily is a gift,” and Soo-Jin keeps forgetting little things with oh-so-cute facial expressions. Too bad it’s not just her character’s fussy cuteness that causes her to forget all kinds of stuff but the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease. Indeed from the 2nd half onwards we get to sit back and brace ourself watching the horrible suffering the couple goes through with the full knowledge that impending doom threatens their perfect lives. We cry with them and cheer for them as they go through the cycles, as if on cue. Essentially the ending is left to the viewer to complete and being a realist (or some say pessimist), in true fashion, I felt it most contrived and bittersweet. It’s simply mean that the director tried to create hope where there essentially was none. What is the actual moral or point that the director wich to convey? Nothing much but a very touching tragic-romance, but it does essentially, raises an interesting point to ponder, whereby love in itself is a collection of memories and past experienced perception…and should we take this away…will love still be there?

Arguably one of the best comics I’ve read is Calvin & Hobbes. While not only entertaining, this comic is filled with wise adage and philosophical ideas, which had been expected of the creator, Bill Watterson. Reading through it not only livens up my days with it’s dry humor but sometimes makes me ponder on the various ideas that the Watterson is trying to put forward.

Calvin is a six-year old kid that talks like he’s thirty. I’ve identified that Calvin’s behavior is due to his dad’s parenting skills. Calvin’s parents have no names. Calvin’s mom stays home and has to put up with him all day. His dad is a patent attourney and loves to bike. Both are very sarcastic. Now here is a mould of my kid and what kind of father I would want to be if I ever start a family and have children :P.

Calvin is named for 16th-century theologian John Calvin, Hobbes is named after 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes. According to Watterson, the two names are intended as a joke for people studying political science. Thomas Hobbes’s most famous phrase, from Leviathan, is that human life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”—a description that can be applied to Calvin in the comic strip.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from Calvin & Hobbes.

I’m learning real skills that I can apply throughout the rest of my life…Procrastinating and rationalizing.

Existence is not only temporary, it’s pointless!

You know you have been reading too much on philosophy when a family stands beside you on the LRT and looking at the baby in the pram, instead of marveling at it’s cuteness, you’re thinking …”hmmm. wonder what is the level of his cognitive senses, language skills and intellectual capacity? Does he grasp the concept of self-awareness? How does he perceive reality? How primal is his instincts right now? If only he could only talk, we could determine whether knowledge is a priori or a posteriori. How blank a canvas is his mind right now? How rudimentary and undeveloped is his epistemologies?”

Man, I need to start reading less, musing less and appreciating more…now where was that cute chick I saw coming on board a few stations back?

“when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can’t rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, a crow can bring that soul back to put the wrong things right.”

Okay, the 4th installment in The Crow Movie – Wicked Prayer, is rumored to be out this June, but then again they also said that in 2004 and in 2003, so I take it with a pinch of salt. While anticipating the movie, lets talk a little about The Crow. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, The Crow was born out of a man’s pain. The extreme pain and despair felt by James O’Barr, who loss his young wife in to a drunk driver. The Crow is not a single character but several. The Crow manifest itself in it’s Avatar, which answers only to his or her call to seek revenge. The only similarity is the way they were brought back or the force that brought them back, the reason they were brought back and….Oh, yeah, the fiend in the form of a crow.

James O’Barr’s Bio

As with all thing that has a groupie of fans, The Crow is no exceptions and regular fans have seen the effect it has on some of those new age ‘hippies’ ,that for some reason, are drawn to The Crow and seem to make it their system of worship, their religion. I guess it may be the same as the Jedi Cult from Star Wars. A quick search on google would bring up numerous websites dedicated to The Crow and it’s church. Christians fans seem few in the world of The Crow. But is it not only The Crow’s world Christians seem to shun, there is also Spawn and numerous others, and yet this is not true in the world of Batman, which is similarly dark, depressing and gothic. I suppose what really keeps them away is that The Crow is in direct contrast to our belief, in particular resurrection. In contrast, Christians that seem to be drawn to The Crow have a twofold reason. The theme of The Crow is a direct contradiction to what we have been taught to believe. A person cannot be resurrected for the purpose of revenge. Thus, for some of us, the premise of The Crow is very intriguing which is simply the immensely powerful idea of “what if”. We are fascinated by the idea that God might allow such an act to take place. Many Christians don’t see the many principles awarded to The Crow are also Christian values. The act of love so powerful that it overcomes death draws parallel to the purpose of Christ. Righting wrong and injustice is a similar attribute as well. The Crow is a mortal man’s way of expressing his belief in the power of death and love, and when you combine these two elements and you are going to spark the interest of a very diverse mix of people. For me personally, I think The Crow is the ultimate and purest expression of one’s love for another person that it transcended death itself, albeit driven by the motive of revenge.

Greek philosophy’s influence on Christianity and why we are where we are now

Well a prelude on my apologetic thoughts, I’d first like to write-up on some of the critique for Christianity and why It’s getting more and more difficult for an apologist to clean up the amount of garbage we have collected over the course of 2000 years.

Greek Philosophy and Christianity
In the early years of the Church, there is a complex interaction between Hellenic philosophy and Christianity. Christianity originated in Judah and Aramaic culture had it’s own distinct traditional philosophies and modes of thought, different from the dominant Classical Greek thought in the region brought by the Roman Empire through conquest. Judah itself was already Hellenized in the first century, and the “Hebrew Bible” most commonly used was a Greek translation.

The early conflict between the two is recorded in Paul’s encounters with Epicurian and Stoic philosophers in Acts [1], his diatribe against Greek philosophy in 1st Corinthians[2], and his warning against philosophy in Colossians 2:8[3]. Over time, as Christianity began to spread throughout the Hellenic world, an increasing number of church leaders and thinker such as Augustine of Hippo (who ultimately systematized Christian philosophy) were educated in Greek Philosophy, and thereby leading to a fusion of the two.

Hebrew Versus Greek Thought in regards to God - OmniEverything
Hebrews and early Christians had no systematic theology. They understood God to be: “The Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exodus 34:6–7) Actually it’s quite similar to the Gods of the Greeks, Norse and many Polytheistic religions, whereby most of the Gods take on human attributes.

It was not until the fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian theology with Christianity that the concepts of strict omnipotence, omniscience, or omnibenevolence became commonplace. The Platonic concept of Forms was influential on Hellenic Christian views of God. Platonic Philosophers often theorize about forms, taking objects in the physical world, then theorizing what their perfect form would be like. The Aristotelian view grew from Platonic roots attributed this perfections to God and adding that they are Infinite. Hellenic Christians then applied this form-based philosophy to the Christian God taking all things considered good or great and posited that God was infinite in all these respects. They then concluded that God was omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. Further, since God was perfect, any change would make him less than perfect, so they asserted that God was unchanging, or immutable. With the establishment of the formal church, the development of creeds and formal theology, this view of God as Omni-Everything became nearly universal in the Christian World.

Geocentrism - The Flat Earth Fiasco
This belief held that the Earth was the center of the universe. Everything else in orbit revolves around it. What ego eh? It was devised by Ptolemy. Neither Hebrew nor Christian scriptures systematically describe a geocentric model of the universe, although many passages speak in passing of these planetary bodies movements across the sky as would be apparent to any observer at the time, as well as metaphorical descriptions of such planetary bodies. However, with the fusion of Greek with Hebrew thought and the rise of the Catholic Church, the geocentric model was incorporated into Church dogma along with a great deal of Greek scientific thought. It was not until the 16th and 17th century that Copernicus and Gallileo challenged the Ptolomaic system, over vehement Church resistance.

Contemporary Christian Thoughts and Theology
Movements such as Open Theism and Process Theology have argued that the God of the Jews and non-Hellenized Christians was not a God of Infinities, but rather, was the greatest in all those respects. In retrospect we are going back to the God of human attributes. The problem of evil, the problem of prayer, and the problem of sin, are often the problems, which favors their position in which they believe make the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent God logically untenable. There are also many scripture passages in which God appears to change his mind, have emotions, be delayed in carrying out his plan, become furious, and be surprised.

However most Christians, regardless of denomination, as well as adherents to the majority of world religions still holds on to the old thought about God’s omniwhatever and see Open Theism and Process Theology as attempts to belittle the attributes of God.

Soulmates. A notion that’s always brought up on sappy soap operas, romantic movies and some love novels (I’m guessing?). Now I’ve never discussed this notion with guys before so I’m biased to believe that this notion is held exclusively by the female gender only (I’ve a very strong feeling in my gut that I may be wrong though). Now for myself, I have never ever believed in such thing as soul mates. I believed in hard work instead. Soul mates, in my point of view, are for girls with Cinderella complexes.

This is the scapegoat for failed relationships and betrayal. Those who believe in it lacked the gritty determination to hammer their relationships into shape. I believe that if any two persons who are willing to work hard at a relationship and are equally self-sacrificing, then that relationship work regardless of all the obstacles placed in their path. Meeting someone who is compatible in both interest, values, attitudes and the willingness to endure in the long haul is a quest in itself - but there are many people like that in the world and not just a single individual.

A soul mate, is a person with whom you can communicate on the deepest level — beyond words, beyond our idiosyncrasies and imperfect bodies, regardless of time and age. When you meet someone who honestly wants to know what’s buried beneath your surface, who sees and celebrates the essence of who you are, and that person is willing to take the walk of life down the same path you’re taking together hand in hand, then that my friend is a soulmate.

Gonna post this on LYN Cupid’s Corner and get a poll going…

Just want to say that Lowyatdotnet Cupid’s Corner has to be the repository of some of most stupid people on the planet. Now back to recovering from my hangover…

Will most probably rant more about it later.