Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in James Kay's LiveJournal:

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005
12:38 am	Zaxylon Goes To Earth Here's something different, a story I wrote some time ago, but probably very few of you have read it yet... Zaxylon Goes To Earth a short story by James Kay Part 1: Slowly, Zaxylon opened his eyes. A tiny red LED was all that illuminated the inside of his ship. He heaved a sigh and shook his spindly green body from side to side like a dog drying itself. He was more than a little groggy, but this could be expected. After all, he had been cryogenically frozen for almost three million years. He reminded himself that it hadn’t actually been that long for him; that was how much time had passed on his home planet back in the Andromeda galaxy. He had been traveling at very near the speed of light for much of the journey, and so the effects of relativity had made the trip much shorter for him. Still, the little Daktaurian was feeling light headed and sore all over. After a time he raised his body up on his tentacles and pushed open the door of the stasis chamber. He paused momentarily to pray to his god that he had not been woken up early because of some malfunction. If this was the case, he would have to go back into stasis for the remainder of the journey. He wondered if his god could hear him from 2.2 million light years away. The first task was to power up all the ship’s electronic systems and so he started to stumble toward the forward control room. When he powered up all the main components of the ship, he was greatly relieved to find that he had indeed arrived at his destination. He was in orbit around a small, blue, terrestrial planet that was visible out a small window in the starboard side of the ship. He stared at the planet for some time, trying to get used to the idea of being here. This was the first planet that he had been sent to, and so they had chosen an easy target for him. His job was to wipe out all life on the planet and begin terraforming it so that when the colony ships arrived, they would have a planet to support them. The chemistry of the oceans and the atmosphere had to be drastically altered. The global temperature had to be changed slightly. Information on earth languages, technology and customs had been fed directly to his brain while he was in stasis; however, he found all the new knowledge he had acquired was not without a price: he had a throbbing headache. He made a quick run to grab the Daktaurian equivalent of a Tylenol, and a cup of ammonia to wash it down with. The alien scanned a few nearby satellites for an internet signal, and found one on the third try. From there it was pretty easy to patch into the network. Pulling up a web browser, he googled for information on earth. On the second page, he found a suitable facts sheet at nineplanets.org and read it thoroughly. Earth looked like a perfect planet for his race to live. Of course, the oceans would have to be turned into ammonia, and the atmosphere would have to be turned into mostly carbon dioxide, but his ship was carrying a store of plant seeds and spores that would help with that. Yes, this was a fine planet indeed. The Daktaurian rulers would be most pleased with him. All that remained now was for Zaxylon to wipe out all existing life on Earth. But of course, he had to do it without destroying the planet in the process. For this task, he chose to use a large beam weapon that had been built specifically for this purpose. It was actually a very simple device: it was designed to spray a lethal dose of radiation at whatever it was pointed at. All that was left to do was for Zaxylon to turn it on, and then move the beam back and forth over the earth like a paintbrush. Then, he would do it again several hours later when his ship had orbited around to the other side of the planet. Not wanting to waste any time, he moved over to the weapon's control panel, and powered it up. It is in the nature of Daktaurians to derive great satisfaction from the obliteration of other species, and so his breathing orifice did something similar to grinning as he anticipated fulfilling his task. After a minute or so, a loud hum was audible, and a red light lit up on the control panel. He pointed the weapon at Florida, which happened to be directly under him at the time, and pressed the big red button. But nothing seemed to happen. He pressed the button again, and again, nothing happened. Puzzled, he went to take a sip from his cup of ammonia. A buzzing noise was coming from inside the console, so he pulled the face plate off of it. Inside, a length of cable had melted through a hard drive. Zaxylon swore in Daktaurian and pulled the drive out. Sure enough, it was completely destroyed and useless. This was certainly going to make things difficult. He sat down at the kitchen table and mixed some flavour crystals into his ammonia. He was going to have to deal with these "human" creatures to obtain a new hard drive. Back to the internet. After a half hour of searching, he found an appropriate hard drive on ebay. It was a little larger than the one that had been damaged, but he figured an upgrade certainly couldn't hurt. Of course, Zaxylon had no human currency with which to buy the drive, and so he decided to steal it. Using the seller's e-mail address he was able to find his address in McChord, Washington. With this information, he printed a quick map off of mapquest.com, and hopped into his landing pod. Part 2: It was about quarter past twelve, and Aiten Marek of Mcchord, Washington had just gotten up. It was his day off work, and so he was relieved to be able to sleep in. He had his laptop set up at the breakfast table, and was managing some of his e-bay auctions as he munched a heaping bowl of captain crunch. The bidding on an 160 GB Maxtor Hard Drive he was selling had gone up to $46. He loosened the drawstring his pajama bottoms. Just then, the phone rang. "Good morning, sorry, good afternoon, this is Aiten." The voice on the other end of the line had the most unusual accent that Aiten had ever heard. "Hallo Aiten. I nyeed your har' dryive from eeba'." The voice informed him. "You need what? I'm sorry, I'm having difficulty with your accent." "Yer, ehm, yer hard driyve. Ehm..eeh, from eBay." "My hard drive? Great, then you can bid on it like everyone else. How did you get this number?" "I wanyt you to pyt it in yr back yard Aiten. I will, go and, um, come and get it." "I'm sorry mister, but the only way to get that hard drive is to be the highest bidder. Is this some kind of a joke? Is that you Mark?" "If you do nyat give my the hard dryive, I will destroy you and yer house." "Sure thing you will. Please don't call again." Aiten hung up the phone and went back to the table to finish his breakfast. He considered calling the police momentarily, but decided it wasn't necessary. But, who was that guy? It must have been someone playing a practical joke. But how did he know who he was, and about his auction? Aiten glanced out the window just in time to see the oak tree in his backyard suddenly burst into flames. A bit stunned, he stared out the window incredulously, and then bolted for the phone. He picked it up, dialed 9-1-1, and pressed the phone to his ear. "Now do yyu beleaf I am fer real? I am serious? Eh, serious?" "Who the hell are you?" Aiten shouted into the phone. "Why...how did you blow up my tree?!?" "You must give to me the hard dryive and then I wyil not destroy you now." "Uh...sure...yeah, okay. Um...you said to leave it in the back yard?" "That is yes. Correct. I will come get it." The line disconnected. Aiten was terrified. He took a moment to slow his breathing, and then went to his bedroom to fetch the hard drive. He put it in the middle of the grass in his back yard, and then went back inside. He noticed his tree had strangely stopped burning. Then he watched the box, and waited. A small metallic craft about the height of the mildly charred oak tree tree and shaped like a bottle with fins descended slowly and silently into his back yard. As it touched down, it tipped slightly, and a set of stabilizers shot out to hold it steady. Aiten watched incredulously as a door slid open on the side of the ship and a ramp extended toward the ground. Down the ramp rolled a small robotic vehicle, which drove up to the hard drive, picked it up with a pair of grabbers, and returned to the ship. He opened the sliding door and looked more closely at the ship as its stabilizers retracted and it lifted off. In a few seconds it had disappeared into the clouds. Aiten sat down, finished his cereal, and cancelled his auction. Part 3: Zaxylon sped back to his orbiting ship in his landing pod, docked, and returned inside brimming with pride. He had cleverly obtained the hard drive that was needed to repair his ship, and so he could finally get around to destroying these annoying humans, and all the other primitive creatures on this little planet. He pulled the face plate off the weapons control console, and pushed aside some cables. The box the hard drive was in gave him a little trouble, but he managed to open it using a cutting laser. He yanked out the drive and stuffed it into the console. Then, replacing the cover, he powered up the console again. The drive hummed along inside the panel, and a message popped up on the screen informing Zaxylon that a new drive had been installed, and would he like to copy the setup files onto it. He chose yes. A progress bar came up indicating that this would take some time, and so Zaxylon went to hunt around for something to eat. He returned twenty-five minutes later to find that the operation had been completed, but now the computer was saying that the drive could not be recognized, as it had a larger capacity than the computer was intended to handle. Zaxylon logged back onto the internet. A few minutes later, he had found a solution to his problem. On the web site for Maxtor, the company that manufactured the hard drive, they had a utility used to allow large hard drives to run on systems not designed to handle them. He downloaded the file, and installed it. Now his computer could see the large drive. But the fireing program still wasn't working properly. The problem was that the console terminal couldn't communicate with the weapon hardware with the internet firewall enabled. Hoping this would be the final barrier between him and the termination of life on earth, he logged onto his router, and disabled his firewall. Immediately, a virus warning flashed on screen, but only for a few seconds before the power cut out. The room went totally dark, and all the electronics stopped humming. Zaxylon cursed several times in Daktaurian, and tried to restart the power, but when he hit the power switch, the rear airlock blew out violently, and with a loud report. All the rooms automatically sealed themselves off, but the escaping gas propelled the ship away from the earth. Spiralling into deep space, and without main power, Zaxylon sent an emergency request for technical support back to Andromeda, and then climbed back into the stasis pod. He knew that it would be millions of years before anyone would be able to help him. The End (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 19th, 2004
7:31 pm	The Purpose of Life "The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth..." - Albert Einstein Okay, since I haven't posted in a long time, I thought I'd better tackle a big topic to make up for it, so here goes...the meaning of life. Actually, I firmly believe that we life forms create our own meaning. I mean, meaning is in the eye of the beholder, so how can anything have intrinsic meaning. Even something as apparantly meaningful as the letter "A" only has meaning to a person who knows what that symbol means. So life has no intrinsic meaning unless we assign it meaning. I feel a much more meaningful question would be "What is the purpose of life?" So, what is the purpose of life? By definition, life's purpose is to stay alive, and to spread, and evolve...and to create inteligent life. Because inteligent life can create meaning. So perhaps meaning is the purpose of life. After all, if the rest of the universe was here but life wasn't, then the whole thing would be pointless. A universe devoid of life may as well not exist at all. And inteligent life has a special purpose. We will be called upon ultimately to save all life on our planet. We must find ways to protect our planet and the life on it from anything that threatens it. In fact, since one day our sun will explode and will destroy our planet, we must eventually take any life we want to keep, and travel into space. This is one purpose of intelligent life. But I think there is also a higher calling. Staying alive is certainly a lofty purpose for us, but what is accomplished by continuing to exist? If there anything intrinsically good that we bring into the universe by existing? Well, since all meaning proceeds from our interpretation of things, anything "good" or fundumentally worthwhile that we do can be seen as a purpose for life, and especailly intelligent life. So another purpose to our lives should be to be happy, and take joy and pleasure in everything we do, and to ensure that other people do the same. And here's something that worries me. If human beings create more misery than joy by being here and continuing to exist, then this universe may be worse off than if there was no life in it at all. I think this obligates every human being alive, and any other inteligent life that may exist out there in the cosmos, to live as happy and fulfilling a life as they possible can, and to ensure that everyone else does the same. Any time we opress someone, mistreat someone, alienate someone, we are contributing to the ruination of the universe at large. So, while this interperatation of meaning may partially justify the privileged upper classes in enjoying their wealth - and thus contributing to the total "goodness" of the universe - the fact that they don't help others less fortunate to be able to enjoy basic necessities of a fulfilling life more than counters that contribution. So yeah, there's a complete logical justification for full-blown socialism. Maybe more on that next time... "Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility." -Thomas Szasz (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 9th, 2004
11:24 pm	Disagreement and Consensus Every time I listen to or am involved in an arguement or debate, it reinforces this idea in my mind that all human disagreement is the product of misunderstanding. I think that disagreement is almost always the result of two people who misunderstand each other's point of view. This sort of dovetails nicely with my last entry, about science and religion. It seems people often interpret other people's views as being incompatible with their own, when the difference is really junt in their prespective and not in the actual subject. If two people in disagreement were to thoroughly discuss the reasons they have for believing a certain thing, they should be able to come to a consensus. If they have no good reasons for believing what they do then the opinion should be discarded. If the opinion is legitimately wildly subjective, then it can hardly be argued since rational arguements require the following of reason, and subjective claims are never the fruit of reason. Next time you hear an arguement going on though, listen carefully. It is amazing though how often you'll discover that the people involved are actually arguing the same points, or two points that are not mutually incompatible. I guess the central idea of this notion is that given the same information, any two people should be able to use that information to arrive at the same conclusions, provided they are both willing to follow reason. Seeing as human beings are all built in essentially the same way, I think this is not too wild a claim. "One's condition on marijuana is always existential. One can feel the importance of each moment and how it is changing one. One feels one's being, one becomes aware of the enormous apparatus of nothingness -- the hum of a hi-fi set, the emptiness of a pointless interruption, one becomes aware of the war between each of us, how the nothingness in each of us seeks to attack the being of others, how our being in turn is attacked by the nothingness in others." -Norman Mailer "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." -P. J. O'Rourke (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 2nd, 2004
8:15 pm	Science and Religion One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. ...[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to the great damage of common sense and common decency. That they should have this immunity is an outrage. There is nothing in religious ideas, as a class, to lift them above other ideas. On the contrary, they are always dubious and often quite silly. Nor is there any visible intellectual dignity in theologians. Few of them know anything that is worth knowing, and not many of them are even honest. — Mencken I feel that a huge number of people are torn by the views of science versus the views of religion. I feel that these two views, which are largely viewed as irreconsileable, are actually not so dissimilar. Now, I do absolutely disagree with people who take the word of the bible literally; people who believe the universe was created in six days only a few thousand years ago, and that adam and eve were two real actual people. But there are many theological views that I feel are merely slightly different ways of looking at reality, and not actually all that removed from scientific ideas of the same thing. Take the idea of god. God is such a poorly defined term that it means different things to every different person. The notion of god is a person like us, or as a human like being I see as hopelessly anthropomorphic. But if you look at it as an abstraction, god could be the sum total of the laws of physics. If you think of god this way, then certainly I believe in god as I believe in the laws of physics. Ancient people worshiped specific objects as gods, for example, the sun. In modern times, science has revealed to us what the sun really is. Well, how far apart are these two beliefs? After all, the sun actually fits many definitions of god. Omnipowerful? The sun is certainly unimaginably powerful. Giver of life? Well, life wouldn't be possible without the sun. So what exactly is the difference between these two beliefs? By calling the sun a god, it doesn't make one belief categorically different than the widely accepted views of what science says the sun is. So perhaps the big bang is god. Perhaps the laws of physics are god. Perhaps the totality of all human minds coexisting, is in a deeper sense, god. But it seems foolish for scientists and religious people to divide themselves because of their beliefs, when thier beliefs may be the same thing. In many cases, it's just a question of a different word being used for the same thing. The other side of this is that some religious people seem to be constantly attempting to defeat science. They say things like, god endowned humans with souls, or creation was miraculous and therefore cannot be explained. Well, if that is the case, then science wants to know how souls work. If it's true that creation can not be explained, then science wants to know why. Science is not an institution that can be defeated anyway, it is the rational logical spirit that is an innate part of humkan nature. "Science is an effort to understand the creation. Biblical religion involves our relation to the Creator. Since we can learn about the Creator from his creation, religion can learn from science." -Paul H. Carr (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 28th, 2004
9:42 pm	Acting ethically and Einstein Quotes "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." -Albert Einstein I've been a little disappointed with myself lately. You see, I am strongly opposed to the way we treat animals (factory farming etc.), and I also believe that if you ar4e opposed to something you have an obligation not to participate in it. But you see, I continue to meat. The reason this worries me is that this seeme to indicate that I am not capable of turning my opinions into my actions. It's kind of funny actually, the ability to act on your beliefs is one thing that you can't change about yourself. If it turns out that I do stop eating meat, then I guess I have that ability. If I never stop eating meat, then I don't have that ability. But either way, I either have it or I don't. It's not something I can change. I guess the main reason that I haven't switched over yet is that I love meat. I have barbeques with my friends quite often, and it's something that I derive quite a lot of enjoyment from. It's a pretty big privalege to give up simply in the name of altruism. Part of it is also that most people are so dogmatic about vegetarianism: you either eat meat or you don't. I can think of situations where eating meat wouldn't be supporting the meat production industry. What if my friends had some meat that they were just going to throw out if I didn't eat it? The principal of utility would dictate that it would be acceptable to eat this meat in this situation; however, most people would say that would make me a bad vegetarian. There's also this new category of people called "flexitarians" who are basically vegetarians who eat meat sometimes. It seems like a bit of a cop out though, and I'd rather not be associated with these people, but my idea of vegetarianism within acceptable ethical limits seems to group me with them. Maybe the best solution for me is to switch to eating only free-range meat? That wouldn't be supporting the mistreatment of animals, and it wouldn't cause much undue inconvenience to me, and then I probably wouldn't feel so bad if I broke my rules on rare occasions. But again, But my biggest worry is still that whatever I decide, I won't actually follow through with it. So far I've done a lot of talking and not much actual changing. I guess all I can do is hope that I am able to do the right thing. Perhaps the very notion that not following through has pretty bleak implications for the state of my soul will help me do the right thing. And that sounds like another paradox. You seel, life is full of them. "To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." -Albert Einstein -James (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 27th, 2004
11:17 pm	How to make the world a better place "It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no person can sincerely try to help another without helping themselves." - Ralph Waldo Emerson I love this quote simply because it's so true. In fact, I would go farther than the claim made here and suggest that the very best way to help yourself is to help someone else. It's true with learning too; the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. I often marvel at how the human world is so full of feedback loops and paradoxes like these. It's true though, if you want to never smoke, help a bunch of people quit smoking. That experience will likely ensure you never take up the habit yourself. And while we're on the subject of smoking, here's an interesting comparison of the addictiveness of different substances originally published in Health magazine. Two factors are taken into account here: how easily people become addicted and how difficult it is for most people to quit. A score of 100 represented a high potential for addiction, 1 a low potential. Because each individual reacts differently, based on physiology, psychology, and social pressure, the rankings reflect addictive potential only. 1. Nicotine: 100.00% 2. Ice, Glass (smoked methamphetamine): 98.53% 3. Crack (smoked cocaine): 97.66% 4. Crystal meth (methamphetamine injected): 94.09% 5. Valium (diazepam): 85.68% 6. Quaalude (methaqualone): 83.38% 7. Seconal (secobarbital): 82.11% 8. Alcohol: 81.85% 9. Heroin: 81.80% 10. Crank (amphetamine taken orally): 81.09% 11. Cocaine: 73.13% 12. Caffeine: 72.01% 13. PCP (phencyclidine): 55.69% 14. Marijuana: 21.16% 15. Ecstacy (MDMA): 20.14% 16. Psilocybine mushrooms: 17.13% 17. LSD: 16.72% 18. Mescaline: 16.72% Interesting, nicotine is actually more addictive than crystal meth, crack cocaine, and heroin. Not only that, but soft drugs like mushrooms and marijuana rank well below alcohol. It makes you wonder why alcohol is a substance that our society embraces, while marijuana is illegal. Not to mention that alcohol has more health risks associated with it than marijuana. It's a bit frightening to think of exactly what this means. If our society's values proceeded from rational thought and careful consideration of facts and data, then pot would probably be legal and cigarettes (as we currently know them) would be illegal. I guess a large part of our values come from tradition. It's like the ancient stoner saying goes, "If jesus had turned straw into pot instead of water into wine, we'd all be smokin' up at communion." But that's just the problem. Tradition is not a good place at all to draw our values from. Slavery was a tradition for a long long time in North America, but that certainly doesn't make it right. So, what can you do help to make the world a better place? Well, I believe that it is the obligation of each and every one of us to carefully consider everything we do, and question weather it is right. The most important part of this is thinking about how your actions will affect the world: your actions are what affects the world, not your thoughts. People must understand that by participating in an activity, they are both condoning and supporting that activity. In other words, if you hate the service at a cartain store, then don't shop there. If you continue to shop there, then you are, through your actions, saying that you like that store. By buying and consuming meat, your are supporting the practices of factory farming and the horrible mistreatment of animals associated with the food industry. This means that if you are truly opposed to factory farming and the mistreatment of animals, then you must stop eating meat that is grow in such a way. If you do not, then you are guilty of mistreating those animals just as much as the person who run's the meat processing plant. Your actions must reflect your thoughts. "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi And that's how we can all make the world a better place. -James (Comment on this)
12:37 am	A prototypical journal entry "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." - Galileo Galilei Well it seems that I've started an electronic journal. I guess my main objective in doing this is to trick myself into writing more than I would otherwise. So what do you write in a journal? Well, I guess what you write always depends on the audience you're writing for. This audience for this journal is potentially anyone at all. In that light I will attempt to write about things applicable to and understandable by potentially anyone; however, I doubt that I will maintain this objective throughout this journal. The other day I realised why meeting people over the internet isn't the best idea. Now, it is true that you can't ever know if a person on the internet is really who they claim to be, but that isn't why is't a bad idea. It isn't because it's dangerous. It isn't because chances are that the person you're talking to is a predator of some sort. The reason is this: You can't possibly know someone well enough through the internet to know if you'd get along with them of not. This is further worsened by the fact that most people are wierd. Yes, most people out there in the world are very strange and stupid and are not at all the kind of person that you'd get along with. Ask any person who works in retail, 99% percent of the population are neurotic in one way or another. But you can't identify these people through the internet. On the internet, everyone seems the same. You don't know that the person you're talking to likes to collect rocks. You don't know that he has a laugh that would irritate you. You don't even know what their voice sounds like, let alone what sort of unusual mannerisms they have. The internet acts like a mask, making everyone appear normal. My friend Amy said in her journal today "We are all just searching for something to make us remember today." It's true, when thinking back on your life, you really only remember a few days very clearly. They're usually days when something happened that was a really big deal. For example, I remember clearly what I did on the morning of Spentember 11th 2001. But I haven't the faintest idea what I did last tuesday. At first glance, this would seem to mean that we should make every attempt to landmark each day with some sort of event or achievement on anchor in in our minds, but on second consideration this seems to be putting a bit too much importance on memory. There is a here and there is a now, and that is the moment we should drink in and savour. Eventually we're all going to die, and our memories will die with us; all those landmark days in our minds will as of that moment be no more important than any other moment that we ever experienced. We are the only animals capable of thinking substantially outside of the presant moment, but this may be a burden for us as much as it is a gift. I try to make every moment be special now, and I don't worry too much about making them last forever. Think of the experience of carefully listening to music, or making love. Those are experiences that let us forget about worrying about our lives and simply live in the moment for a while. I imagine animals live every moment of their lives this way - who do you think gets the short straw there? Until next time, -James (Comment on this)