Happenings

First my roomate said he wanted to print something.  So, on my recommendation, he bought a refill kit for his empty printer cartridges (he already had a printer). The refilling did not work.

So he decided to buy a new printer.

He bought a printer that could also scan AND fax because, he said, he needed to send faxes.

In the process of hooking up the phone line to the fax machine, something in the phone-line-splitter box short circuited.  We discovered that by connecting an old ISDN modem (not even plugged into the PC anymore… just a card dangling there) it somehow fixed the problem of nothing working.

My roomate decided that he wanted a way for people to be able to reach the fax line independently of his normal voice line.  He went out and bought some digital doo-hickey to route calls.

Which… upon subsequent purchase and further inspection, needed a regular anologue phone to function properly. Which, of course, he didn’t have.  He went out and borrowed a phone from a  neighbour and hooked it up.

Now, everything is sort of set up (dangling ISDN modems and all).  When the phone rings it’s quite a racket.

And somewhere along the way, an answering machine was purchased and duct tape has appeaered everywhere (I swear that stuff grows organically wherever you put it down).

 

I thought it was amusing.

On why it’s not about the destination

First, consider the age-old (and perhaps slightly over used) philosopher’s problem:  The man shooting an arrow.

We suppose that the arrow will travel from point A (where the man is standing) to point B (the target).

The problem comes in when we realize that for the arrow to get from A to B, it must first travel to the half-way point between A and B (let’s call it C).  BUT, in order to do that, it must travel to the half way point between A and C (call that point D) and so on.  If we keep going eventually we see that the arrow never actually leaves it’s starting point because it must always travel to the half way point between two subsequent points first.

How then, do we reconcile what we know for a fact (the arrow does indeed travel and – depending on the skill of the marksman – will hit its target) with what must logically be true?

The answer is that this philosophical conundrum is in fact just a problem of language. The language here fails to accurately describe what’s really going on.  The only way for us to reconcile what really happens, and what *should* logically occur is to recognize the fact that the arrow does not travel from A to B… or C… or D.  In fact, I would state that /nothing/ truly travels from A to B. The only state of moving things is that they are TRAVELLING.  The arrow only moves. It does not move from A to B.

To see how nothing can have an exact destination, think about trying to place the point of a pen exactly in the center of a sheet of paper. I guarantee that no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to place it exactly in the center of the page. Even if you use a machine. If you zoom in close enough you will see that the tip of the pen (or pin, or carbon nanotube, or.. whatever you like) will never be at the exact center of the page.  You will always get closer to the true center of the page, but (I suspect) never actually on target. Essentially, you always get asymptotically close to your destination but you never actually arrive.

ANYWAY, what has this got to do with the price of tea in china? Well… probably not much. Except to say that you can liken this to your life, if you like.  People are geared to never be truly satisfied with what they have. I’ve found that this is especially true for me. I will always want more.  So, if this also applies to you, you can take solace in the fact that you’re not weird and the universe isn’t against you. It’s just the natural way of things.

You don’t have a destination, only a journey.

Might as well enjoy the ride if that’s all you’ve got, eh?

OH and if you totally didn’t understand my shitty explanation of the Paradox of Movement, here is a nice youtube clip that does a pretty good job (SEE BELOW):

 

And, you’ll see in the comments people say things like “oh but 0.9999999 = 1 or close enough, that’s why it all works out.”  The explanation in the post attempts to reconcile things without creating new rules for the universe (so the universe ’rounds off’ when it comes to movement, but not with other things? When does it decide to do this ’rounding off’? Why only for movement? etc etc).  YMMV

 

EDIT: You can find the youtube clip below, and a nice wikipedia page about what Zeno’s paradox (the arrow stuff I’m talking about in this post)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u42Y3RbP7JE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno’s_paradoxes#The_arrow_paradox

I thought this was interesting

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document-preview.aspx?doc_id=394576

Give it a chance (at least, read it through to the end).  At least it gives one of the more reasonable interpretations of what the big g might be…

Or at least, I thought so when I looked at it the first time

I’ve added a twitter feed

It should be on the right side-bar.  You can view it directly at http://twitter.com/Unleaded12

Sometimes I don’t have much to say, except a sentence or two.  So this might be…easier? Who knows.

Going for a drive

So one of the top things of To Do list for Germany was to rent a car and take it for a spin.  I love driving, and since coming to MIT I really missed it.  So, what else but to rent a car?

My friend hadi came down from regensburg to join me for the trip.  We decided that we’d head south and check out the towns.  He reckoned that it would be a great place to see.  I think it was a good call.

Alright so here’s the place where I rented the car… (Sixt car rental)

My car for the day (A Golf Volkswagen GTI)

This is supposed to be the castle that the Disney Logo is based on…

and here’s a gallery of the rest of the pics we took:

Update update update!

Fiiine!

It’s friday! Finally.  I’ve reserved to rent a car tomorrow, which I’m really pretty excited about.  Getting the chance to drive again is pretty damn sweet.  Even if it’s going to cost an arm and a leg (hey, I’d be tempted to sell a kidney for the privelage…maybe…if it was a sweet ass car and I didn’t have to abide by any laws…and if I had unlimited fuel and lifetime free service… okay that’s probably a lot more expensive than a kidney.).My friend Hadi also coming down tonight to visit, so that he can come along for the driving tomorrow. Apparently we’re heading south (I don’t care as long as we’re going there by car :P).

I’ve also finally managed to purchase a pillow and comforter (of the, 100% Synthetic ohmygodI’msotiredofhavinganallergicreactiontofeatherpillows variety)  I took the cheapest I could find in the store, but it still worked out to ~EUR 35.  I think my problem is that I hate shopping so I get impatient and eventually just want it to be over with so I end up settling for paying more than I should for things.  Meh.  At least it means I’m poorer so I shop less :P  A sort of self correcting system.

My tasks for the rest of my time here are:  Learn some goddam german (bleech).  Try not to hate the job.  Start studying for intro biology (to make life easier next semester), look into how this whole grad school thing works and plan out what I want to do after college (because let’s face it, my chances of getting into grad school are pretty bleak, and I’m not sure I’d be able to hack it just right now).

An interesting thing I found out about work today.  There is a ‘car pool’, where you get to take their vehicles out for a spin to run  errands, I think (lost in translation).  I *might* be able to get signed up for it, will find out on monday.  Hey, I’ve had a errand boy/delivery guy job before. Maybe if I could convince them to do this a lot.  Hey, at least now I’ll be rolling in style:P

Alright, that’s all I got.

I’m marooned

Just checked it out.  To fly home to South Africa from here costs as much as I make in a MONTH. Literally…it leaves me with 100 Eur. I can live like a king on that.

gaaah.

Shopping on a Saturday, in Hauptbanhof and Mereinplatz

Eh, I think this will mostly be a cop-out photo essay…

You know the city might have problems with being full-of-it when the taxis are Mercs and BMWs…

The view from the Hauptbanhof station

another view from the station

heh

View from inside the station. Those trains go all over the country I think.

Another view from inside the station

Inside the station some more

Merien Platz fountains (well, okay it’s more like Stachus (sp) but they’re virtually the same place)

See? I’m cheerful.

The crowds outside the Mereinplatz station

View of the station

Oh and…

This weekend, pictures!

Yay.

Why Germany can be…

Irritating and stupid:

• Banks are only open select hours. They also take a two hour lunch breaks. Officially. The whole store shuts down every day, during midday (probably one of the only times normal people have a chance to go to the stupid bank), for two hours.
• Almost no one bank wants people to open a bank account if they’re not going to be around for a unspecified, greater than a few months, period of time. Regardless. No, they don’t care why I need a bank account, they’re not interested.
• Opening a bank account involved a lot of bureaucratic bull shit. The scheduling of appointments, copying of documents, probably signing away my soul with my own blood, etc.

• Everything is closed on Sundays, except coffee shops.
• Strangely, fewer places accept credit/debit cards than one would expect.
• GERMANS ARE FUCKING GRUMPY AND SERIOUS FACED IN PUBLIC.  Most of the time in private too. It’s weird.
• 35 hour work weeks.  Everyone’s so non-stressed and unrushed to do anything, it sometimes feels like no one really wants to try all that hard to get anything done. An almost lazyness.  Hard to describe.

Great:

• Subway/public transportation ticketing costs operate on a good faith system. Seriously. They expect you to be honest and buy a ticket for the subway before you get on it, but there’s no gate stopping you from not doing that. There’s the mythical threat of being caught by a spot check, but as I’ve yet to see one I think it’s clear that the public transport people just depend on you not being a dick. This is really refreshing. It gets tiring to always be treated like you’re a convict and can’t be trusted under any circumstances, like in most other places.
• 35 hour work weeks.  I don’t think I’ve seen this many researchers/workers in one place at one time looking so not-stressed and not-sleep-deprived. It’s…healthy. *gasp*.
• Everyone recycles, not out of the goodness of their hearts but because it’s been made economically viable to do that.  You actually gain a significant portion of whatever you spent (on say, a soft-drink) back when you recycle.  Think 25 cents back for the bottle for a drink that cost you less than 1 euro. Cools.

Well that’s all I got for now.