Parts of a Whole

Published at April 11, 2008 in Life and Self. 0 Comments

Fire!Before preceding with this article, I would like to acknowledge that there is a possibility that the contents below may or may not have been articulated before now. If so, this was unknown to me and would like you to inform me about this philosophy. It is not my intention to infringe on anybody’s works. Credit will be cited if necessary, but until then all words below are claimed as my own.

There is no right or wrong, good or evil, proper or improper. These are perspectives based largely upon the positionality of an individual or the collective of the group. Perspectives are often confused with correctness, and to be right, good, or proper is not necessarily to be correct. An individual or group becomes correct when defining the properties of the universe. An individual can achieve correctness by following these definitions when applied to a problem or situation. These definitions may change with respect to time as more information becomes available, but the individual only had correctness within the time period that the definition was valid.

To assist in helping people understand these concepts, the following is described in a similar manner as my thought processes proceeding my understanding.

Imagine a utopia as Sir Thomas More depicted. A place of perfection. Heaven is often used interchangeably with utopia and is considered to be a synonym. Most would define a utopia as a place containing only peace, joy, longevity, health, enjoyment, and love; otherwise the lack of pain, death, misery, boredom, and sadness. This definition is incorrect, for an ideal place is created out of a conflict or struggle. This is nothing new to a modern person, for the markets of literature and film making profit off of their depiction and creation of ideal worlds. The worlds centered around conflict and climax. Therefore, humans as a group do not lack correctness of achieving an utopia, but rather the definition does not correctly define the world as we know it.

A utopia defined by me would consist of the following: corruption, sex, dictators, war, love, recession, money, drugs, passion, death, dust, depression, poverty, education, pollution, capitalism, rape, promises, hope, socialism, and prosperity. This is the world we live in. Others may have a differing understanding of a ideal place, which is where the conflict begins and the utopia defined by us is created. The utopia as an ideal develops the utopia as a reality. Thus, each perspective is based upon self or group definition(s), not upon the properties of the universe. Good and evil or right and wrong are subjective. All actions* are herein correct and each in every entity plays as a part to the utopia as a whole.
My part is the struggle against pollution, corruption in politics and capitalism, government reform, the lack of education, and self understanding. Those who are against me are not evil or wrong, but merely my adversary.
* In reference to positions, sides, or objectives. With the exception of incorrectness when action applies incorrect definitions.

Driving Format suggestions for Safety

Published at March 25, 2008 in Life. 0 Comments

Western Ring RoadIt is more often than not we find ourselves criticizing the driving of others. And whether you know it or not, the other person will blame you and you will blame them. Unfortunately that does not seem to solve the problem, if there really was any problem in the first place. The real problem is that there are driving rules and regulations, but no driving format. And to tell you the truth, most of the rules suck.

1. The speed limit is not always safe. This may be a big shocker, but if your going forty-five in a fifty zoned area than you might be doing the right thing. But, if your going forty-five and everybody else is going sixty than you’re just as dangerous as the jerk zooming around you. Stick to the flow of traffic. I have been ticket free for years using this methodology.

2. Four-way intersections are not terribly difficult. Be it four way stop sign or a flashing light, it is not hard to make this a speedy process. Depending on your location the law may have different systems to maintain order, but the fastest and most reliable system has opposite ends going simultaneously. As in, if the vehicle opposite is proceeding than you also proceed. You may ask, “what if I want to turn?” Simple. Turn on your blinker, then turn after them.

3. You deserve what you get when tailgating. Maybe you want to drive fast, but this gives you no reason to put everybody in danger. If the driver in front of you is not getting over and being an ass, then deal with it. If you get behind me and want to rub bumpers than be prepared to go thirty in the carpool lane because I will let off the gas until you back off. This process will continue until you leave me alone. But that is just me.

4. Pair up with drivers of the same speed. This really depends on a handful of variables, such as road quality, weather, and traffic, but in general if you are driving side by side with somebody of the same speed than you need to get over into the same lane as them. It doesn’t really matter which lane, just leave one open for others to pass. I understand the left lane is considered the slow lane, but for the sake of humanity save everybody else the hassle and get over.

5. Pay attention. This applies to everything, but I am referring to the traffic ahead. For instance, some loser in from of you keeps braking every ten seconds, that does not mean that you do the same thing. If you can safely get around them then go around them because they are causing traffic and probably going to kill you. If not, then just watch the car in from of them while keeping an eye out for the loser.

6. Pay attention, behind you. If you can manage to proceed safely and prevent your front end from damaging something, then try to watch out for people wanting to pass. Earlier I said to merge into the lane with drivers of the same speed, but what if you are going faster the flow of their lane and somebody is catching up on you from behind? Simple. Get over into the slower lane, allow them to pass, then get back over.

If the majority of the population follows this format then we would all be better off. And if you are an officer of the law and reading this article and pull somebody over when safely abiding by the flow of traffic, just know your are being an asshole.

Tenants of Los Angeles

Published at March 9, 2008 in Environment and Political. 0 Comments

they are comming!There is a new program created sometime during the summer of 2007. It is a free program provided by the city of Los Angeles which gives all multi-family residential properties bins for recycling. This includes apartments, condos, town homes, and trailer parks. If the property contains more than five (5) units they will provide: the recycling bins, weekly pick-ups of materials, and educational materials for every unit. With more than 3.8 million inhabitants, it is certainly an area which needs to push towards a lifestyle of protecting the environment.

As a tenant myself, I have pushed to enrolling my apartment complex and neighboring building into the program. It is actually quite easy. You have two options. You can talk to your manager or property owning into calling the Bureau of Public Works (1-800-773-2489). Or you can call them and give them your manager or property owner’s name and number and they will attempt to convince them for you. The main reason I pushed for the program at my building is because I recycle regardless of the hassle, but I wanted to reduce the stresses associated with having to commit to it. It takes only about five minutes to call, but I would suggest visiting their website first for more information. If you want to increase public awareness you can download and post these fliers made by me (Recycling Flier).

Bureau of Public Works
Monday thru Saturday
7:30am-4:45pm
www.larecycles.org

All Talk, No Action

Published at December 28, 2007 in Environment and Political. 0 Comments

MouthEvery day now, without fail, information seeps into my head about how much worse everything is in comparison to the past. Sex. Drugs. Violence. Global Warming. It is everywhere. But, is anybody doing anything about it? If I had to take a guess, it would be no. Not even a chance.

As an example, let us take into consideration of the waste we produce. Landfills, I have heard about this growing problem since being in the third or fourth grade (over a decade ago). There is a lot of talk on this subject every year and I am sure each person has seen the iconic recycle symbol everyday of their lives, but a majority of us still do not recycle. Personally, I would of started several years ago, if I would of known that it takes about five minutes to call ‘Waste Management’ and order a free recycling bin. Here are four of fifteen facts about waste from The Daily Green:

  1. Forests store 50% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are awfully important “carbon sinks” that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)
  2. Half the world’s forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what’s left has been seriously degraded.
  3. 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
  4. The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions among United States manufacturing industries, and contributes 9% of the manufacturing sector’s carbon emissions.
  5. Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste).

However, on the good side the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports that “in 2006, the national recycling rate of 32.5 percent (82 million tons recycled) prevented the release of approximately 49.7 million metric tons of carbon into the air–roughly the amount emitted annually by 39 million cars, or 1,300 trillion BTUs, saving energy equivalent to 10 billion gallons of gasoline.” This is an increase of the eight percent we had in 1990, but it just illuminates that only a small percentage of the population are making a serious effort towards fixing an issue that they are reminded about every day. There is a video created by Jorge Furtado called “Ilhas das Flores”. It can be found translated on YouTube.

If you would like to take action, find a problem and fix it. And there most certainly will always be problems, but that is no justification for no action. The best thing you can do for your environment is care. Care by recycling, reusing, and using your purchasing power to push the market towards a healthier future. More specific actions can be found at Zero Waste America.

Think Regime

Published at September 17, 2007 in Computer and Political. 0 Comments

Think Different Apple took a bite in the right direction with this statement. Unfortunately it was dropped in 2002 by the company when they began to realize their recently released iPod (October 2001) was going to be success. Why “Think” and why “different,” when the only possible choice for a mp3 product is from Apple’s iPod lineup. However, the corporation has always been a strong competitor, which explains their more recent success. My problem with the company is that they falsely advertise to their consumers.

To begin, they insisted with their “Think Different” campaign (with images of Gandhi, Lennon, and Cesar Chavez) to free ourselves from the norm. Basically, all the great minds did not join the bandwagon, but did something different and so should you. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, stop using Windows. And I would agree to a certain extent, Windows is not the best. But my problem with Apple does not manifest from a preference in operating systems. It is that with all this talk of freeing ourselves of social norms and pressures, that they had and still continue to have the most restrictive system of products.

For instance, lets say that I want to listen to the song “1234″ by Feist which played as the background music for their 3rd generation iPod nanos. I could hop on Limewire and download it in less than a minute for free. But today I am going to be a good samaritan and buy it legally. So I go to Apple’s website and realize in order to buy a song from them I have to download iTunes. So, I go and download the hefty 45 MB program and ten minutes later I got the song at a lousy 128 kilobits per second. Assuming the software works. One would assume since I paid money for this song that I would have all rights to do what I want with it, nope. FairPlay kicks in. More restrictions. Now, lets say theoretically I owned an iPod. It runs off of a USB cable so I should just be able to slap some songs on with no fuss. Yeah right, iTunes is required. The same is with all products related with Apple. If you want a OS X, then you need OS X hardware. Where do you buy Mac hardware? From Apple’s website of course, unless you can manage to find a local storefront. Another restriction. Basically, if you go Apple, then you are gung-ho about “simplicity” and personalizing your iLife. Or in case your mentally incapacitated, “Think Regime.”

As for their user base, Maddox articulates it perfectly in this article.

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