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Today's soundtrack is Ringo Deathstarr: God's Dream. This morning, I'm reading the second half of the second chapter of Maslow's The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Maslow says that it is important to consider the physical base of discussions about human growth. Use of the right language - the fusion-words - can help us to consider the whole picture. For a person to move toward being fully human, he must "become aware of what [he] is, biologically, temperamentally, constitut

Today's soundtrack is Elvis Costello and the Attractions: Goodbye Cruel World. This afternoon, I'm reading the next chapter of This Book Will Make You Think, "Bentham." Jeremy Bentham belonged to the philosophical school of utilarianism, which examines the morality of man's actions. Bentham believed that actions which served as "promoting happiness and relieving suffering and pain" (p. 20). He believed that the more people an action benefited, the better of a choice it was

Today's soundtrack is LSD and the Search for God's self-titled album. This morning, I’m reading the first half of chapter 2 of Abraham Maslow’s The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, “Neurosis as a Failure of Personal Growth.” Maslow begins the chapter by saying that the aspects of this topic that he will address are those that are often overlooked by others. Maslow says that neurosis is not merely a mental disease: it is a fear-based method of attempted human growth. From birt

Today's soundtrack is Roy Wood: Boulders. This morning, I'm reading chapter 6 of book one of Aristotle's Ethics, in which he criticizes Plato's idea of a universal good. Aristotle says that he is reluctant to make this criticism of the beliefs that his friends hold to, but feels obligated to, as "it would be wrong to put friendship before truth" (p. 32). Aristotle says that there are three ways that a thing can be good: it can be intrinsically good, some quality of it may be

Today's soundtrack is Summoning: With Doom We Come. Today while sorting through some bins, I came across my lonely ukulele. I spent my time today catching up with some chill chords and dreaming about sandy beaches.

Today's soundtrack is Ensiferum: Two Paths. I'm reading chapter 5 of book 1 of Aristotle's Ethics today. We can tell by the way a man lives what he considers to be the good. The majority of people - those who of are low standards and have poor taste - only look for pleasure, partying, a "good time" (p. 30). Men whose life is a pursuit of pleasure are no different from the cattle who seek only grass and water; they have no higher aim than their own immediate satisfaction.

Today's soundtrack is Burn the Priest: "Legion: XX". This evening, I'm working on animating a red bouncing ball for a game idea I came up with many years ago. I'm using Pyxel Edit to animate it, and I'm using the sphere on Artists Network as a reference for the shading. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! I made two separate animations: one for when the ball hits the ground, and one for when the ball bounces into the air:

Today's soundtrack is Mournful Congregation: The Incubus of Karma. Before I started this blog, I'd been reading through The Cartoon Guide to Physics. I'll be continuing the book this afternoon, reading chapter 13, "Electric Fields." Electricity and gravity are similar; both have an influence on things separated by space. Things of mass fill their surrounding space with a gravitational field; "similarly, a charge fills space with an electric field" (p. 118). The area further f

Today's soundtrack is Eric Nagler: Improvise With Eric Nagler. This afternoon's agenda doesn't give me much time for this post, so I'm going to continue Aristotle's Ethics. I'm going to read chapter four of the first book. So, since I learned while reading the first chapter of Ethics that "'the good' is 'that at which all things aim'" (p. 25), what is the ultimate good? If we aim at the good, what do we achieve? Most say that it is happiness, by which they mean "living well o

Today's soundtrack is Alessia Cara: Know-It-All. This morning, I'm reading chapter three of Ayn Rand's Philosophy: Who Needs It, "The Metaphysical Versus the Man-Made." Rand observes that modern theories see emotional deficits as the reason why humans suffer; Rand asserts that it is in fact intellectual needs that cause human suffering. She says that "Most men spend their lives in futile rebellion against things they cannot change, in passive resignation to the things they ca

Today's soundtrack is Fiona Apple: Tidal. This morning, I'm reading chapter 3 of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, "The Expanding Universe." Stars that are nearer to us appear to move in the sky; stars that are further away appear static. William Herschel catalogued the "positions and distances of vast numbers of stars" (p. 46) and confirmed that the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. Edwin Hubble proved that there are many galaxies in the universe by measuring their lumi

Today's soundtrack is Chelsea Wolfe: Hiss Spun. This afternoon, I'm reading chapter four of Philosophy Questions and Answers, "Criteria of Truth." According to the book, "[c]riteria of truth are standards, rules, or tests by which to judge the truth or validity of facts and values" (p. 14). There are several major criteria of truth, some of which are umbrellas of smaller ones: subjective criteria include "feeling, intuition, revelation, and instinct" (p. 14); unanimous opini

Today's soundtrack is David Crosby: Lighthouse. I spent this afternoon's songwriting section working on my mix after getting some feedback from my buddy, the renowned Marcus Zuhr: re-EQing the guitar and bass, and adding more punch to my kick.

Today's soundtrack is Sigur Ros: Kveikur, which I'm really digging. I'm feeling much better today, and am now going to tackle part two of Chapter 21 of Basic Math & Pre-Algebra For Dummies. I fell asleep while working on it during the writing of yesterday's post, so I'm back to finish this one off. Algebraic terms and the Big Four To add like terms, add the coefficients and keep the variable the same. 2x + 4x = 6x. Unlike terms cannot be added. To subtract like terms, subtrac

Today's soundtrack is Foo Fighters: Foo Fighters. I've finally made it to the fifth section of Basic Math & Pre-Algebra For Dummies, "The X-Files: Introduction to Algebra"; I'm starting the first part of the first chapter of this section, chapter 21 of the book: "Enter Mr. X: Algebra and Algebraic Expressions." Introduction What is algebra for? "Algebra is used for solving problems that are just too difficult for ordinary arightmetic" (p. 281) and it can be found in many plac