The book needed two attempts at it. The first time i stopped at the end of the first chapter, thinking it to be a lot of intellectual rubbish. Some time time later I tried it again, still found it written to complicated but conveying quite a lot of good points.

Sadly I spilled some food on the book which in turn led to it stinking to high heavens. I still feel guilty for throwing the book away, but after some days of quarantine that was the only way out.. A shame that it wasn’t fascinating enough to be bought again.

The only remainder of the book is a small note in my notebook:

“The loss of faith in objectivism often brings a temporary decay of subjective concern”. Apart from the missing proof for this claim it leads me to a disturbing problem: do so many of us need an external moral authority to lead their life?

Even more, or rather especially, if that authority will never come around to test you. To think and judge for oneself is hard, it demands of staying at least partially interesting and informed. While that should be the task of every citizen, it’s far easier to delegate it to the given authorities. Through playing sheep and following blindly we can only expect to watch the world burn. At least we’ve got front row seats for that.

And it’s Samhain again, time to think about the ones passed on.

It’s been a while.. had quite a lot of work to do, throw in a couple of concerts and you know what I’ve been up to lately. The last week I’ve been cruisin’ the Mediterrean (okay, just the Crotian sea) in a sail boat, perfect way to recharge one’s battery.

Just now I’ve broke one of my guitar’s strings. Worlds fall apart.

So, it’s that time of year again. I went home early, lightened up some candles, opened a bottle of wine (thanks dad, even if you don’t know it yet), sat on my ledge my guitar in my arms and doing the thing that I’d like to call practicing.

Then the clock turned midnight: my birthday. Again. Stupid thing. And then the bell at my home mountain (well hill actually) starts to ring. My first thought: “if I stop playing the guitar before the bell stops to ring something bad will happen the next year” (actually I think, my thoughts were more in the line of “I will die that year”). Being superstitious is a bad habit indeed.

Perfect time for the bell control mechanism to fail. As the bell rang on I had enough time to tune the guitar, try some new tabs, drink some more wine.

Half an hour later someone finally had the grace to turn the bleeding thing off. I still stand. This might be a reminder that I should start playing for real.

we die and rot slowly in our graves

Forgot the band’s name, maybe that one’s mine

Being a computer scientist instilled a given distrust in computers in me, most of my ramblings are born in hand-written journals. This implies an everlasting search for the perfect paper notebook..

Visit modofly. Buy some etched notebooks. Endow those to me.

They ARE beautiful.

Seems like Mr. Ashcroft didn’t stand up well at all against some students in a public form, please read the full transcript for more (and it wouldn’t hurt too much either if the original site gets more hits).

STUDENT: Actually, Mr. Ashcroft, my question was about this other document. (laughter and applause) This other document is a section from the judgment of the Tokyo War Tribunal.  After WWII, the Tokyo Tribunal was basically the Nuremberg Trials for Japan.  Many Japanese leaders were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture.  And among the tortures listed was the “water treatment,” which we nowadays call waterboarding…
ASHCROFT: (interrupting) This is a speech, not a question.  I don’t mind, but it’s not a question.

From here

Doesn’t sound too negative.

Faulheit: der Hang zur Ruhe ohne vorhergehende Arbeit.

Immanuel Kant,
Great philosopher of the Enlightenment

 If you don’t know his novels start reading.

Clarke’s three laws:

1. “When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
2. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
3. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

So I’m currently sitting in a Philosophy class and am already getting bored.

On the upside it seems that I’m going to visit the United States of A. at the end of November, so stay tuned.

And have fun today.