Sleepy ramblings...

Our time table sucks. And I mean big time.

Four days a week, 8AM to 4 or 5PM. Only 2 hours of college on the 5th day, but that's still too much. The only saving grace is that we have Monday off - that's supposed to be project day...The upshot of this is that my class is full of sleepy people - and I'm one of them...

Something seems to have put the fear of God into my college people - or at least the Computer Department - someone in high places seems to have made it clear that they aren't very happy for some reason. Consequently, things are rather different from the usual beginning-of-term experience - no cancelled lectures, no missed practicals - everything is running in high gear from day 1.

It's almost pathetic to see the way the teachers reacted - they seemed to understand what was behind the decision, but we weren't able to get much out of them - one of our teachers said, "The reason is that there is no reason!" And no, she doesn't practice Zen Buddhism, that was just a very badly formulated sentence - not surprising really...

It never ceases to amaze me how transparently servile some people are. One of the big shots is angry, so word goes around - "Tighten things up, we want a tight ship - chop chop!" It's so bloody obvious that they're trying to appease someone. I always find this sort of performance disgusting. I've said it before and I'll say it again - so much for subtlety...

Why do I find this so repellent? Probably because I don't have much humility - I find it utterly impossible to defer to my so-called 'superiors'. I can feel admiration or respect on the basis of skill, knowledge, character, and so forth, but I feel nothing at all for people who just happen to be above me for some random reason. It's a stupid world, after all - not many of them deserve to be where they are...

Because of this weird bent of mind, I don't know how to beg, grovel, blah blah...Can't figure out how people do it. This thought always brings to mind Howard Roark from the Fountainhead - in the passage where he's begging Guy Francon - the man just can't do it, and the begging turns into an insult to Francon - now that's cool...Of course, Howard Roark was incredible, but what's wrong with that?

Ok, so I'm bitching around because I'm rather drowsy, but there's usually a lot of truth in my perceptive complaints...And I'm modest too.

Been reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again. Might just be an illusion, but I seem more receptive to it now than I was earlier. And as I've said to at least a dozen people, the book doesn't say much about Zen Buddhism, nor is it much of an authority on the maintenance of motorcycles...

It's got me thinking about all sorts of things - the old 'being vs doing' thing that I mentioned in earlier posts, Paul Graham's views on art and hacking, and some recent thoughts on the nature of excellence, the fact that all men(and women) are not really equal(except before law, God and the usual yada yada...), the nature of excellence, and so on. Maybe I should consider becoming a professional philosopher...

Also got my hands on book 2 of Tamora Pierce's Daughter of the Lioness trilogy - Trickster's Queen. Pretty good stuff. Maybe I should read other stuff by her. One thing really interesting about her universe - the gods don't really care about humans suffering or dying - they just think of them as tools for the satisfaction of their desires. They're pretty alien in that way - you can't blame them for not being worried about humans - it's just not relevant to them. Of course, they aren't really omnipotent, or even omniscient - just enormously powerful. Plus they fight each other and stuff like that - but the implication seems to be they can't kill each other. All they can manage is to kick each other to the other side of the universe - and the only reason that is undesirable is because the millennia it'll take to come back will be very boring...Even the power to do that depends on the victories of their worshippers...weird, but at least it's believable. Presumably they weren't responsible for the creation of the universe either...

Really should be getting some sleep now or I'll end up hallucinating in class...