Stole from a friend on Facebook. Supposedly this list comes from the BBC, and they expect the average person not to have read more than six of these.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien Yarr
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte Yarr
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling Yarr?
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible (a good deal)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte Yarr
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell Yarr
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens Yarr
Running Total: 6

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott Yarr
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller Yarr (almost done, at least)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien Yarr
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger Yarr
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Running total: 10

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald Yarr
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams Yarr
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck Yarr
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Running total: 13

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis Yarr
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis Yarr
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Running total: 15

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding Yarr
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Running total: 16

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert Yarr
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Running total: 17

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck Yarr
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Running total: 18

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath Yarr
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Running total: 19

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert Yarr
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Running total: 20

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Yarr
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare Yarr
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Grand total: 22

So, continuing an examination of God as a transcendental being from my previous diary entries. God exists separate from time, and as thus I am going to assume He cannot change. Perhaps He appears differently from our in-time perspective, like we can only glimpse a portion of Him at any given time, so it looks like He is changing but really isn't. Perhaps. I'm not really interested in that at the moment. Instead, I am interested in the fact that, when God made the universe, if we assume that space and time are in fact tied together as is commonly believed by scientists, then God created time simultaneously with existence. If so, it seems to me that God still existed apart from time, and so all of time and space were created simultaneously. I'm not being clear here, so let me try to explain what I am getting at. It seems to me that ALL of time was created, start to finish, with the act of Creation. I'm not talking about predeterminism, where by creating the first cause, He has necessitated a specific outcome, but that by creating time, He has created all moments at once, or so it must seem to a being outside of time. God would view all moments as one thing.

Which gives rise to a problem, for me: he old conundrum of why God would make something imperfect. One cannot say that it was with the intent of the final product being perfect, because this present moment comes packaged with the final product. Creation has already been flawed, and thus it will always retain this flaw. How can we be sure it is flawed, you ask? What if the world is a sort of purifying stage for us, and is functioning as intended? I would point out the need for Jesus, then, to come down and suffer as he did. HIS soul was not in need of purification. If the world were perfect for its task of purification, then Jesus wouldn't have been needed. Another counterexample I would offer is that mankind has rebelled against God. Isn't that flaw enough? In an ideal universe, wouldn't that sort of thing that is by nature and definition absolutely 'wrong' be kept out?

Anyways. I also figured today that in order to make a series of moments last an eternity implies complicated math :P We can define a moment by an infinitely small unit of time. Essentially, in any given period of time, be it five minutes, an hour, or half a nano second, there are an infinite number of moments. To stretch any specific length of time into eternity would require that these infinitely small and infinitely numerous time units would gain some sort of length, such as a millisecond. Then, no matter how short of a length you give them, the infinite number of moments expands into an infinitely-long period of time. I'm not sure what this means, other than that the end product of a series of moments stretched into eternity is altogether very similar to our current experience of time, and this underscores the relativity of time. Perhaps our universe is really like, two minutes stretched into billions of years, a brief flicker in some other universe's eyes :P (Do not ask me where I was headed with this. All I know is that it's really boring to stand on a bus.)

For those of you interested in text art, or writing, or word clouds, http://www.wordle.net/ is an interesting site. Paste text into it, and it creates a word cloud based on frequency of words, with choices to select how it organizes them. This caught my eye because I pasted a bit of writing into it that I did, and the results immediately struck me as a valuable way to look for variety in word choice and see if you are overusing some words, or names. Large words mean you use it a lot, so make sure you have a good reason :P

To contradict my earlier diary, I have remembered that simply because a line can be described as Y at time X doesn't mean that it has a single identity and therefore has no change. Such a graph's derivative represents the change of the graph. The function y=x as a whole does have a change, and therefore similarly, a being existing across all time has a derivative, and therefore changes.

I do think, however, that perhaps I have misconstrued the meaning of 'transcending time and space', simply treating it as 'existing through all time and space' rather than rising above and beyond. A transcendent being doesn't simply exist across all time, but beyond all time. Which boggles my mind, so I'll end this here, and contemplate its meaning a bit more :P

Another odd thought occurred to me. I was wondering what it would mean for someone to be transcendental through space and time. I figured they would thus occupy all space and time in existence. For them, time wouldn't be something traveled through linearly, of course, but set out more like a picture, all events at all times happening in different locations in the picture. For example, take a simple timeline, and each event in the timeline happens in a different physical location, rather than in a different time, so I think transcending time would be something similar to that. Similarly, a being that could walk in four dimensions would find traveling forward in time similar to walking in front of them, a physical location to be journeyed to.

That is all well and good, but how would you define a being that transcends all of that? More specifically, how could they change? I myself can change by being one type of person one day, then being another type the next. I am said to change in personality. But a being like that couldn't really change, could it, since it always exists at all times? (The word 'always' there seems kind of meaningless so-) It might not be all that different from me changing, since I exist over a set time frame, and change along that time frame still counts as change, but I don't consciously exist in, or am not aware of other times. As an identity, I exist only now, and the fact that I am different from the past identity means I change. An entity that exists always throughout a timeframe is always the same identity, and there's no 'past identity' to compare to. It exists as a whole series of things all at once. For example, identity X could be A at time a', B at time b', and etc, but that is like describing parts of its body rather than different states, if you consider for it that time is similar to geographic location. Just like 'just above its head you find short hair', 'just after the Industrial Revolution it was unhappy'. Both describe features at a given time/location, rather than changes from A to B.

Now, I worked so hard to rationalize (however unclearly or unreasonable- it is nearly midnight for me, so my apologies :P) that a time-transcending being does not change even though it is different at different times because it solves, after a fashion, a dilemma I've had with God. God is a time/space transcending being, who is also not supposed to change. However, there's a clear change between Old Testament God and New Testament God. For starters, one thinks it's okay to destroy the whole world, or maybe just a town or two if they don't behave, and the other decides He'll put up with it in hopes of them repenting without His threats. Change, where it isn't supposed to happen. Always bugged me, and it still does since the above logic is hanging together so loosely that it wouldn't serve as a fishnet even if you were trying to catch a whale. Or other large amphibious creature. But it is interesting to think about.

Also, someone let me know if they do not agree with my mental concept of time being similar to a geographic plane, because I'm not absolutely certain of how it works and having a questionable mental concept never leads to anywhere good :P

So I read somewhere about a language that was unequivocable and without double meanings. I don't know if such a language exists or ever existed. I also thought it would be pretty handy and straightforward to have such a thing. I also thought it would be a shame to lose all the creativity, wit, and elegance of using unclear words. It makes communication a lot more effective, but a lot less interesting. Good thing to have, or bad?

Well, for some reason today I also thought, what if human reactions were of a ratio of 1:1? To be far more clear on what I mean, what if any given action always entailed a specific reaction, and that specific reaction only occurred in response to that specific action? Impractical, but for example, say I was caught stealing an apple, and the prescribed response was to cut off my ring finger (for food. other fingers for other stuff :P). Then, anyone who understood the set of action and response (Which theoretically would be everyone, since I'm thinking like something of this nature evolved in a species) could see a specific result and know that I was a thief. Similarly, any particular action instantly conveyed to anyone who saw a specific situation that caused the action, because only one thing could have caused any given action. By this logic, there are several consequences. First off, the first action causes a reaction, which causes other reactions, which ultimately reinforces determinism :P Accordingly, this seems to detract from free will, but I would argue that one could choose not to react accordingly. They would merely be confusing others, who would not understand such a person's reasoning. They might be declared insane. Secondly, this seems to me to be a form of language through action, the action equivalent of the earlier-mentioned language. So someone not reacting accordingly would be basically shouting out non-sequiters and gibberish. Finally, this would effectively remove all misunderstanding from society if everyone followed the appropriate reactions. I can't help but wonder if such a thing would elevate conflict or reduce it. It seems to me that conflict would still exist, but over more definite things, with understood ground. People wouldn't, obviously, fight over misunderstandings and it seems to me they wouldn't squabble over frivolous things, either.

Well, random musings for today. I'm surprised to note that my last diary entry wasn't for almost two months ago o.O

http://www.qwantz.com/archive/001361.html (December 08, 2008)

Pascal just wasn't thinking big enough?
I have considered sending this to my philosophy teacher just for that line :P

Stolen from Viking, who I heard stole it from many others. I will not trace back its lineage, so that'll have to suffice.

I just installed the latest version of AIM. One of the options it wanted me to install too (which I declined) was their program of 'QQ Games'. I don't even know what the QQ is supposed to stand for, but really. I think their marketers could have been a little more studious :P
(For those confused, 'qq' is often used to depict someone crying, often in mockery or sarcasm. Can be said phonetically 'cue-cue'. In the case of 'QQ Games' it sounds like everyone's a sore loser :P)

Also. Sinfest srsly needs to stop doing parody-on-American-Politics and get back to the usual Sinfest. We get the point, Obama = change and US's recent behavior is opposite what we're supposed to stand for. Good job depicting it, but by now it's getting redundant and overstated and old :(

So, I had a Word document open, and I wanted to start a new document and start working on my essay. I very nearly hit ctl-t to open up a new tab. I can only wonder how long until the standard ctl-n gets replaced in most applications with ctl-t, which will surely confound the future :P

"Ctl-t to open a New document?"

Edit: Also, apparently Microsoft Word can't decide if it likes 'well-being' or 'well being', because it puts the green squiggly underneath it either way, and when I right click, it suggests the other. When I change it to the 'suggested correction', it tells me I've done it wrong again and tells me to change it back. What the heck :P

I have to wonder what the United States is right now. We started out being called "The Great Democratic Experiment" (or so I've heard from my US history class) and were seen with great skepticism. If I recall, lots of people thought we were doomed to destroy ourselves or become a failed country and be taken over by some better nation.

After World War II, the Americans considered themselves an established world power, and it seems like our status as an 'experiment' was put aside. Apparently we were considered (by ourselves, I mean) to be a success. Democracy apparently works

And yet, of all of our traits as a nation, America has become known as a bully, as largely ignorant, grossly overweight, and who knows what else. It seems like the only reason we ever became a world power (self-proclaimed) was because we're pretty freaking big and have lots of resources.

On the other hand, at this upcoming election, Obama is almost certainly going to win, bringing in a huge wave of liberalism that I find to be somewhat frightening. Or, McCain may win, and we'll have an ignorant Vice President, and ultra-conservative views that are also somewhat frightening.

In either situation, we've seen this ridiculously expensive campaigning for votes that only arises from democracy, and politics have become answerable to whoever shouts the loudest (i.e. pays the most) rather than what is considered 'right' or 'wrong'. Mob mentality meets politics, and it seems like lots of people aren't sure of what to do. I'm currently not so hasty to say that democracy was such a success.

(These views were likely encouraged by the long string of comics from http://www.sinfest.net/ regarding democracy and liberty and the United States :P)

Today in the campus newspaper I read a headline story about a small group of people who resented gender roles and predefined sets of male and female, and fight this trend by crossdressing.
Excuse me? It was so absurd I didn't get it the first five times. So they are trying to counteract social stereotypes by dressing up as women if they're guys? And is women's clothing not 'stereotypical' clothing? It just doesn't make sense to me. They are propagating certain clothes as 'feminine' by dressing up in a certain way and claiming it's feminine. I thought the whole point was that gender did not matter? Surely dressing in a gender-neutral way would be far more effective.
But one of the more absurd comments I read was "I think I'm two-fifths male". Well pardon my disbelief, but unless you're a partial hermaphrodite, I'm not inclined to believe you in the least. Sure you can have a 'male' personality, but for you to attribute certain traits to male or female, you are the one who is segregating male and female gender traits and roles. None of us freaking care if you act 'like a guy' when you're a girl, but you feel the need to point out that you're acting like a guy when gender doesn't matter?
It was just idiotic to read about. But now I've made you guys hear it, so I guess I'm only making things worse? :P

http://www.qwantz.com/
Today's (10/17/08) Dinosaur comic was epic awesomeness. And if it felt like XKCD, well it's because Randall did it :P But it's still win. The only regret I have for it is that I don't think the comic frames in Dino Comics represent the Golden Section, which would really have had to make it the most beautiful comic on Earth, for its geometric elegance. But nonetheless, if you do not read Dino comics, at least read today's (Friday, October 17th). Naow.

I have a diary link at the top of my ET page now to my own diary. Thanks, but it pushes the buttons onto a third line on my screen. Make it go away now. Yes, I apparently am requesting this of you, whoever is reading this entry.

Random thought while taking a break from writing essays.

I just saw a picture of Balthier (the sky pirate from FF XII) and underneath it said "who wouldn't love Balthier, no?" I just want to know. Why do people love pirates? As far as I can tell, their defining characteristics are a ruthless savagery and a constant need for a personal motivation to do anything, in that they need assurance that they'll get something out of it. Neither being desirable qualities, I can only guess it's the accent? Is it because Johnny Depp had an accent? I does not understand!!

You can set your language on Facebook to pirate. Z.o.m.g.

Hehe, today's XKCD has created a lot of fun flash links in the forums. Here's one that's similar to Portal, with several references. I have not played either of it's sequels, just because I didn't want to ruin the concept. http://www.koreus.com/jeu/shift.html