“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
Issac Newton
March 9, 2009
March 8, 2009
Words of wisdom
“Time is gods way of keeping things from happening all at once”
Anonymous
March 1, 2009
$15,000,000 spent on staring. (By Ozzyfrog)
It was a clear, smooth Sunday morning and I was at a flying lesson, holding short of Runway 17R for takeoff. We got our clearance, lined up and applied full power. At takeoff speed, I lifted the nose gracefully (well, I like to think so anyway) into the air and the Cessna began climbing. All was perfect, until I banked at 500 feet. With a loud “wumph” my door spontaneously decided to unlock itself and open. Being in a car doing 60kph with a door open would be interesting, but being 700 feet in the air, and halfway through a turn with nothing keeping you in the plane but your harness is even more interesting. As I went to shut it, I caught a glimpse of the Melbourne Ferris wheel, and even in a situation like that, I marvelled at how silly it was.
I have written about it before, on Ozzyfrog’s Rants, but times have changed. When I wrote about it, the views and the prices were just as bad, but now it’s worse. For now, our beloved Ferris Wheel is broken. I see. And this is no ordinary breakdown, it will in fact be out of action for 6 months. Apparently, it cracked due to the 40C+ heat we experienced. Last time I checked, Ocean Liners do not fall to pieces when it gets a little sticky. Buildings do not collapse if it gets a bit nippy. And, dare I say, most other Ferris Wheels do not crack when it gets a bit hot. And where did the engineers think they were building it? In Norway? Of course it’s going to get hot, we’re in Australia. So, in the Global Economic Crisis, we have built an expensive Ferris Wheel in the yuckiest part of Melbourne, which is now broken. No wonder our economy is going a bit downhill.
But, I have an idea to save our money. Firstly, of course, don’t build stupid things that we don’t need and then break. That’s the obvious part. But for my second point, I will dive deep into a mystery that I have pondered over for many minutes. And it is this; why are roads and intersections so expensive? Whenever you drive past an intersection that will be repaired the council puts a sign up, telling you how much it will cost. And then you try not to choke on your chewing gum when you read the price. $15,000,000! How can a bit of asphalt with some white lines on it cost squillions of dollars? And I’m not talking about the Champs Elysees, this is an ordinary intersection. Quite how they spend so much on asphalt still mystifies me. And they still haven’t done anything on the South Eastern Freeway. It’s still at 80 kph, and I have seen no improvements or changes made at all (except the closure of a lane). I understand that they need to repair it, and that takes time. But how they expect to repair it by hiring a couple of men in hard hats to stare at it is beyond me. Every single time I go on it, the men are either not there or staring at the road, using there mind powers to get the road to fix itself.
Another example is a roundabout on Belmore road. It was perfectly functional, but then the men with their mind powers spent months painting white lines everywhere, and left it in exactly the same state that it was when they first arrived. What they did was turn up, do some staring, remove the old lines, paint new ones 3mm to the left of the previous ones, and made the surface all patchy. Every morning I go round it I try to spot something that has been changed, but I still haven’t seen anything. So here’s a hint to the government and the councils; next time you build a road, just put some inexpensive asphalt on it and don’t spend the equivalent of a Learjet on it. And make sure that it actually needs fixing. And last but not least, tell the workers that staring rarely gets the job done.
My belief in Believing (By Caiphas)
Belief in anything has been a constant battle for me. Since I started to ignore the idea of god, I’ve been looking for something to keep me sane in this life. It isn’t as ease as some would believe. But after much work, I have figured out what I believe in.
I follow the existentialist belief that there is no god and the only way that a human can find meaning in life is to make something of it for himself. But, I don’t believe that there is absolutely no order to the events of the world. Yes, there is no accurate way to predict the distant future, but why would we want that? Discovering the world of tomorrow is so much more exciting that being informed about it. There must be a pattern in the chaos that is life, however remote, that we follow. Maybe it is in the past, I don’t know. But what I do know is that the present cannot exist by itself. Only when a past has been sorted out to define a future for itself can the present truly exist.
The idea of heaven is insulting to me now. After much thought, I see that heaven is the equivalent of a cheat in a computer game. You may spend months, even years trying to get through on your own skill. Then, when you get the cheat, everything becomes so easy that all enjoyment is lost. Heaven is that cheat. You spend all you life striving and then, when you die, everything is given to you on a silver platter and it’s worth is lost. I believe that heaven isn’t a place, but a moment that every one should experience before they die. When people say that their life flashed before their eyes, that is my version of heaven. All you deeds, good and bad, Presented in an instant that will determine if your life was worth it. That is my view of heaven.
And even after that, where do we go. I believe that the soul is what makes animal life different to rocks or liquids. After all, that’s all life really is. A freak occurrence where oil mixed with rock to create life. I believe that the soul is part of the ether that makes animals “Alive”. When we die, our ether returns to the chaos that it came from and, when it is time, returns to create life in any way shape or form.
Many have tried to answer that ultimate question, I believe that I have answered it. Only you can really decide for yourself if what I say makes sense.
