Wiped!

I have said many times just how much I dislike Mac's:

http://mitchenermind.blogspot.com/2007/10/no-mac-for-me.html

Well, I think it's time for me to make a counterpoint. As someone who knows how to use a PC with above average skills, it is difficult for me to admit this, but there is a feature about Macs that just might be a little bit better than PC's. I recently wiped my PC completely clean. It was acting up, going a bit too slow for my liking, so I decided to get rid of a few programmes to speed things up. I didn't really want to spend a week hunting down problem-programmes, however, so I went out, bought a 250GB hard drive, backed up my essentials, and restored my PC to its factory settings. This was my "shortcut" to an otherwise agonizing week.

Woops.

Clearly, it has been some time since I had to reinstall everything. It's not as fun and easy as one would think. Since I have wiped my computer clean, I have spent approximately 7 collective hours reinstalling everything I need. I'm about 45%  done. 

It is for this reason that I am doing something that I don't often do. I'm admitting that I was wrong. Mac's aren't all bad. They do have one extremely redeeming feature: they keep trucking on at the same speed as the day you bought them, 3 years after you first turned it on. 

However, I still would never get a Mac. 

They're awful...

... just like those who use them.

Chinese Miracle

Today I was flipping through the multiple channels of the sky news website when i stumbled across this badboy of an article:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1317088,00.html?f=rss

For those of you who, like me, would just skip over the link without bothering to read it, allow me to explain: An 80 year old half-paralyzed man was discovered in China 11 (eleven!) days after being buried alive by rubble in the semi-recent earthquakes. Apparently, he survived because his wife kept passing him food through an opening which joined their two chambers of trapped isolation. 

This sparked a large number of questions for me.

First, how was this woman getting food? Was she just fortunate enough to be trapped next to a fridge? Chances are really good that if a building is going to collapse on you, you are going to use up all of your luck just living through the collapse. I don't think fate is as generous as to grant you easy access to a refrigerator as well as a nook with air and space to survive. No, I think things may be a bit worse than that. Look at these people. They are 80 years old. They need protein to survive, and lots of it. So, two 80 year old people trapped underground in need of food and protein... perhaps they ate another person? That would be more reasonable, don't you think? They are trapped underground and need food, perhaps a son/daughter-in-law got trapped with them. If the person wasn't loved, it wouldn't be hard for the oldies to consume them in order to survive.

Still, this is pretty crazy. 80 year old people aren't supposed to survive collapsing buildings! If an old lady sits down too hard she shatters her pelvis! This man as trapped underneath a beam for almost two weeks, and somehow, he come out the same way he went in: semi-paralyzed. Crazy. I think the key here is the fact that these people are Asian. If they were white, those old farts would've been dead before the quake had even brought down their house. White people don't deal with pressure well. Look at New Orleans. When those levies broke and that water came pouring in, how many black people migrated to Houston for relief? A lot. How many white people? None. Why? They all drowned! It's a shame, but it's true. We, as white people, are doomed to die whenever anything bad happens. 

It kinda makes me sad I'm not Asian... and 80...

My Previous Argument

This whole omnipotence argument has raised a lot of questions from a lot of people. Surprisingly, more people have come back to me and said "you're wrong" than "you're right". I thought by now you would know this people: I'm always right. This is my world, my creation, and my house. How dare you come into my house and tell me I'm wrong! On this blog, I am omnipotent. Deal with it.

That's not entirely true. I do like contradiction, and if you really can prove me wrong, I would love to hear it. If it's a compelling argument, I will even recant my previous argument regarding omnipotence, however, I think you're going to have some problems doing that. Let me explain why.

I think those of you who are shaking their heads negatively at me are not reading the bolded words on the previous post. Let me redefine omnipotence for you:

Omnipotent
Having unlimited or universal power, authority, or force; all-powerful.

That's the dictionary definition of omnipotent. Universal power. All-powerful. Therefor, it doesn't matter what you say about the situation, what you try to do, this being could change it. It has the power to do absolutely anything, be it conceivable or not. You don't have to be able to understand how or why, you just have to understand the definition. There is no end to what an omnipotent being could do, because it can do anything. Therefor, no matter what you throw at me, no matter how much you try to convince me that it could never be, the simple definition of omnipotence slaps you in the face. In some sense, you're right. You can very well convince me, or stop me or even God from changing math. But when it comes to an omnipotent being, then sadly, there is absolutely nothing he can't do.

Nothing.

Throw all the proofs, theorems, equations, and arguments at me that you want. Defeat me if you can. But never will you be able to say that an omnipotent being can't do something, because it can do anything.

Which leads me to my next question: could two omnipotent beings exist simultaneously? If the being is all-knowing and all-powerful, then it would exist everywhere at once and be capable of thinking absolutely everything at the same time. If two beings existed everywhere at once thinking everything at the same time, would they not be just one being? If they think the same, act the same, exist in the same place, are we sure there's even two, or is it still just one?

I stand by my statement with which I opened up the previous post: Omnipotence is very, very, very interesting

Omnipotence

Omnipotence is a very interesting concept.

Many religions believe that an omnipotent god exists, but equally as many believe that one doesn't. I had a discussion the other day in my philosophy class that I would like to share with all of you. First, I will pose the question to you, and then you can answer it before I declare my beliefs in the matter. If you don't like that idea, you can just read on from the following paragraph straight into my response. It's really up to you.

The question was as follows:

Could an Omnipotent make it so that rules that could never be broken could be broken? For example: 2+3=5. Could an Omnipotent being make it so that 2+3=6 without changing the way you perceived the world?

What do you, my readers, have to say about this? Before you answer the question, take a look at this guys name: is that not one of coolest names you've ever seen? Alistair. Don't you feel like he should be wearing royal robes and a crown? Anyhow, back to the main question. What do you think?

My class said "No, because math is math, and it follows the same basic rules regardless of how you treat it. Because of this, the end result would always be five if you took two and three and added them up. Not even an omnipotent being could change that."

If you were thinking something along the lines of my class, allow me to share with you just how wrong you really are. It's rather simple really, if you think about it. It's all in the definition of the key word being used here: Omnipotent. Omnipotence means all knowing and all powerful. I don't much like using bold to make a point, but I can't help it I'm afraid. If I were to try and emphasize the importance of that definition through my words, it would take me hours. So, instead, it's bolded to let you know that every time you start questioning this response, an omnipotent being is ALL knowing and ALL powerful.

If a being were omnipotent, it would have the ability to do whatever it wanted whenever it wanted. If it wanted to, it certainly could make 2+3=6. It could, using it's unlimited power, make it so that every time you took two of an item and put them with three of another item, a sixth item poofed out of thin air and you had six. It would simply be the way things were, and you would not have changed your understanding of math, but instead have learned that if you have two, and add three, you always get six.

The biggest problem with this argument is, however, that it is self defeating. Why would an omnipotent being ever want to do this? It's omnipotent, and therefor knows the end result of every conceivable event already. What motivation would it have to do anything? The only reason an omnipotent being would act would be if it couldn't possibly know what happened next, because if it already knew, it would have essentially already have done it in its mind and therefor would not be concerned with trying again.

Omnipotence is a very, very interesting concept.

Need to Clean

Bathrooms are interesting. I realize that without them we would still be dropping a load in a freshly dug hole, or bathing in icy rivers. I suppose you could say that the bathroom is a clever invention, that without it, we would all be germ ridden cesspools of disaster. But before we stick to this, I want you to go step into your bathroom and look around. Just go look, and tell me if this is what you see:

A toilet next to a sink and a bathtub. A toilet, in which you drop every excrement from your body, besides the two locations you use to clean yourself. On that sink, a toothbrush that sits out day in and out where it can collect germs during all 23 hours and 50 minutes it isn't being used. Perhaps a sponge or brush in the shower, just sitting there becoming the wonderful breeding ground for mildew or mold during the minutes of intense humidity following a nice warm shower. 

Now ask yourself this: How often do you clean that bathroom? Once a week like me? Twice a month? Once a month? If you are nodding your head to that final question, or I didn't list your recurring cleaning sessions, then you should probably sit down and rethink your hygiene. You piss into a collection device that sits right next to your sink. You bathe in a tub that, if not cleaned regularly, grows mold, mildew, and other collections of wonderful bacteria.

What am I saying here? Well, really, I just wanted to make a point: we may have evolved from shitting in holes and bathing in rivers, but we still haven't really mastered the art of hygiene if we piss and bathe in the same room.

An (Un)fortunate U-Turn

Today was one of those days that would have vanished into lost memories were it not for a single event that happened to fall right before my head hit the pillow to end the day. You see, today, I happened to do something that most readers of this blog will have a hard time believing. It's not because what happened is improbable, or that you wouldn't have done the same thing. No, it's the fact that I, James R. Mitchener, did what I did. Today, I saved a man's life.

It was 02:00 in the morning, and I was driving my friend back to his apartment so that he could crash for the night. It's not a long drive, no more than three minutes from point A to B. Well, after I made the only turn in the entire journey, something happened that you don't usually expect in the wee hours of the morning: A guy stumbled out into the road and into my peripheral vision. Thankfully, he was on the other side of the road, but as I glanced into my mirror, I saw him try to regain his footing, and then stumble right back into the usually busy street. Sighing deeply, I was overcome with this awkward sensation that I can only describe as "wanting to do the right thing."

Now, for those of you familiar with this feeling, I have a question. How do you deal with it? It's this awkward sensation, almost like a child screaming "I don't wanna!" while he does exactly what he was told to do. It's terrible. Regardless, I was overwhelmed. I pulled a quick U-Turn, drove up next to this guy, and rolled down my window. And there he was, acting like that very child, clutching hard to the guardrail on the side of the road and balling his eyes out wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. That's right. Nothing else. No shirt, no shoes, no socks. He was standing outside in 52F weather crying and shaking. 

My friend, who I hadn't yet dropped off, called the crying stranger over to the car and asked where he was headed. Ironically, it was the very apartment complex we had just come from. With a direct order to be seated, the guy got into the car and immediately stopped crying. He told me what apartment he lived in, and I drove back and dropped him off. He stumbled out the car, muttering quietly "I have my keys... thanks for the ride..." and disappeared up into his room.

Then, I drove my friend home.

Clearly, this guy was tripping on something. I mean, I'm not stupid. If you're outside in just your shorts in 53 degree heat and stumbling into a busy road, you're definitely far beyond being just drunk. No, he was tripping hard, and I'm very confident that if it weren't for me, he'd be under the tire of some car right now instead of crying uncontrollably into the pillow of his bed.

The thing that really eats away at me? Did I really do a good thing here? I mean, I just saved the life of the very type of person that I've been bitching about for years. I just saved the epitome of stupid, the type of guy who wants to waste away his life on drugs while having other people spend all their money to educate him. 

I just saved what I hate, and honestly, I think my soul has died a little more because of it.

Returning With Change

I have had several people nagging at me recently to pick this thing up again and start writing about how I hate just about everyone for just about every reason. So, out of the kindness of my heart, I have finally given in and decided to do it. I'm going to continue writing the Mitchener Mind. However, I do not go into this as if I were picking up a book I've already read a hundred times. No. Things are going to be different. How different you ask? Well, stop being so damn nosey and give me a few seconds to explain!

First of all, my same dickish nature will remain. After all, it's in my name. James Richard Mitchener. It just calls for me to be a Dick. I also plan to continue to hate on everyone and everything, regardless of what I really believe about the situation. Of course, when it comes to talking about Bush, the Army, and anything die-hard republican, I never lie...

No, the big change comes not from me, but rather from my brother. You see, I couldn't quite figure out what it was that The Mitchener Mind was lacking. Then, it hit me. It needs another Mitchener. Well, my brother, being the creative little genius that he is, decided he was going to start making a video blog about how much he hates certain things. So, naturally, I thought "what better place to share this with the world than on the Mitchener Mind?"

So there you have it. I'm back, but I'm not alone. We look forward to hating you together, here, at the Mitchener Minds.