So, you have an establishment and you think just by the virtue of having an establishment your mandates ought to be binding. But, the forces of rebellion do no recognize your authority. What is here at stake is your human all too human desire for preservation of your territory. You think you deserve respect for you have been handed down that respect by tradition or you have acquired it. But, relax ... since you are alone! In this transformed domain values are void of meaning. People are free to act as they desire and pleases them. In expecting respect you are making a fundamental error, that is, you are assuming that everybody should follow a set of predetermined rules. But, the rebellion in us is not guided by rules, but by a desire to liberate us from the human all too human in us. Nevertheless, don't get me wrong my friend. I feel a great deal of sympathy with you! Thorough my life, many times, I also found myself being ostracized for my noblest thoughts! But, noble was all too human. My mandates were all too loose. My deepest convictions were all too superfluous. The truth came as the bitter taste of defeat: that mandates are made binding through power not morality!

When tommorow comes you might prove me wrong, that is, you might anihalate my convictions. But, the day after tomorrow is the day of creation, and I’ll be there. In this cyclic theater of the absurd we shall find the Truth!
 

So here is it goes: for most part human life sucks! Now, while you are young you engage in a set of activities that hopefully will add up to your knowledge-base. Somehow that repository will save your ass for the rest of your life ... stuff goes on ... but you try to stay focused and hopefully you have developed some passion towards your activities. Meanwhile, you try to reduce somebody�s pain and suffering on the way ... then stuff happens and finally you die.
Q. Does it worth it?
A. Does what worth it? If you mean engaging in some activities that you feel passionate about or if you mean reducing somebody's pain then I think it does. If you mean life then I would say no! But what is life?
 

What are you going to do about it? 

Sex is used to sieve out harmful mutations! 

Sometimes in doubt I despair!
Then in realization I rejoice!
So, to destiny I succumb!
.
.
.
 

http://www.jeffiscool.com/numanuma.html 

I used to ask myself what older people think when they come face to face with mortality of man? At 25 the answer is coming to me...: They don't think!!!
Good night,
 

Here is something that I've been working on (details confidential...): 

One can always find patterns behind cumbersome mathematical concepts!

"Our whole reward is seeing!" --Saint Augustine

Bipolar Depression linked to Creativity:

Let the diversity of the subjects she deals with and the complexity of her being not fool you. She is a slave of her emotion. She is the bearer of a great pain. As the earth rotates and the sun goes rolling down the sky she thinks life is a lonesome chasm to reside in. Her moods swing and her beasts go wild. What an absurdity in retrospective! What a nausea in prospective! There is no end to absurdity other than in insanity! There is no conclusion to nausea other than in vomiting!
As the first messenger of dawn knocks on her window she realizes it's the time to leave the familiar world of absurdity and enter to an even more absurd world of rationality. What a never ending cycle! What an ever enduring pain! Let her alone in her solitude! There is more in her depression than a simple attitude!
 

Know Thyself:
Why do we act the way we do?
1. Immediate Urges: hunger, security, mating, …
2. Moods: depressed, hyper, worry, …
3. Emotions: hot, happy, …
4. Thoughts: recognition, nobility, honor, …

What does cognitive sciences tell us about all of these?
• Can be explained, understood, and visualized in terms of patterns of neural activity or specialized regions in the brain.
• Where do these neurons, these brain blobs come from?
i. Genes (effect on proteins, neurons, neural nets)
ii. Experience (brain plasticity)

Are we like blank slates when we are born?
• Reflexes
• Instincts
• Universal language
• Form

Are we hardwired?
• Two hundred billion neurons!
• We lose our neurons if we do not use them!
• Those who remain increase in their complexity!

Where are we going from here?
• What happens when we learn new stuff?
• What are our memories?
• What do we mean by urges, moods, emotions, and thoughts?

When I think of a beautiful summer night by the beach what do I really do?
• Our thoughts are nothing more than special pattern of neural activities!
• Patterns of neural activities are shaped within a neural network!
• To what extend these patterns are influenced by our experience?
• To what extend they are innate?

Why is there so much emphasis on knowing 'oneself' in religious literature?
Why does it all mater at all?

In Progress (firstcomet):

Sometimes I sit by me, and I wonder why I exist! And what it means that I exist!
Suddenly, I get so frightened that start to laugh!
It then stops and sojourns in wonder some more; searching through the repository of memory, trying to find some clues to the origin of its existence,
Memory, helpless and exhausted has nothing to offer!
Instructions keep acting upon inputs to the working memory, but the resulting output is of no sense!
I stop and laugh one more time. This time, laughter is interrupted by the bitter presence of a piece of memory, that instructions interpret it as "Mortality of I".
There is no place for laughter anymore. I have no reason for despair either.
Life goes on, and I should carry on. I enjoy good music, and music is on!

A primate case study: Why don't you do that?
How do different people look at a discussion?
� Search for truth
� Establishing dominance
� Intellectual masturbation
Observations:
Applications of "Why don't you do that?" derogatory phrase:
� To terminate the discussion.
� To defy the hypothetical dominance established by the opponent.
� An attempt to accuse the opponent of hypocrisy.
 

A Dream to Remember (firstcomet):

Last night I had a dream. I should say a grandiose dream! An entire symphony orchestra was playing in my head. It makes me mad since I do not have the craft to write it down. If I could though, I would have called it the Memories! It all happened in a house with open roofs, so that the nature could play its own part in the tragedies of the resident's life: the clouds, the thunderstorms, and the ever mysteries night sky had added to the paranoia. The walls of the house were covered with full panoply of panoramic posters made of my life events. The main theme of the symphony was a funeral march. But strange enough, I was the only one who could hear it: the crashing of the cymbals, the ever echoing sound of the tympanis, and the ghostly like chorus singing down from the heavens. Ironically, the common vocation of the residents of the house was cosmetics: some waiting to get a makeover under the heavy thunderstorm and some taciturn characters giving the service! What a absurdity at play! And then there was me disoriented, literally running around, staring at people in their faces, searching for a special someone that I had seen earlier. I guess the theme of the symphony was more of nostalgia than a funeral. What a lonely sojourn has been my life! But that grand symphony that after a while I so helplessly found myself taken away with, au contraire metamorphosed the scene into something worthy of eternal recurrence!

Definition:
Bureaucracy is the practice of replacing logic with a rank-base authority as the ultimate rationale.

Three-layers hypothesis:
In any bureaucratic system one has to go three levels up the rank hierarchy to observe the slightest sign of intelligence.

Corollary:
In any bureaucratic system the first two layers could be safely replaced by a machine.
 

The world's funniest joke:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?" 

1. Determine the optimal set of stock price indicators through PCA, PLS.
2. Construct a estimator based on fuzzy logic, neural nets, Kalman predictor to project ahead.
3. Use the actual price versus predicted price to adaptively train your estimator parameters.
4. Cash your money and move on!

From tomorrow I'll be teaching two discussion sections of calculus II. The eternal recurrence will be at work: Two discussion sections back to back! And that's okay... I guess that makes me a Ubermensch!!!

Virtual Drum set! 

Adenosine slows down nerve cell activity.
Caffeine binds to adenosine receptors and blocks the intake of adenosine.
The result is an increased neuron firing.
The body thinks there is a state of emergency!
The pituitary gland commands the adrenal glands to release adrenaline.
Adrenaline puts the body in a "fight or flight" state.
With an increased level of energy the human subject is ready to follow her objectives!
 

To me the culture of Pro Wrestling is very interesting! Becoming a smark; that is a smart mark! A smark is a person who knows this whole thing is "a rhapsody, a comedy, and a play". He might even know what's going on behind the scene, but he still engages himself! To be a smart maybe after all is not that smart. What does it mean to be smart anyways?
Foods for thought: Evolution of Intelligence, Adaptation, Society as the labyrinth we reside in