Danny ChaiI doubt anyone but Henry will use it (and even him, not sure), but made a little script to spit an RSS feed of your Flickr contacts’ photos, including non-public ones.
One thing about my company is that we get random people to speak / perform; kind of a random perk. Not as many as at G, but it’s still nice. I’m usually not that interested, but sometimes I stop by just to see what they’re like.
In the past few weeks, I’ve stopped by Taylor Hicks, Deepak Chopra and Yul Kw0n. Who do you think was the most interesting?
Taylor Hicks was boring. I’ve never seen American Idol so I don’t get the appeal, but I stopped by for 2 minutes just to check it out. I’m not sure what was wrong, but it was a lifeless performance. Zero stage presence, zero energy. Boring.
Deepak Chopra, also boring. I also don’t know that much about him, other than the fact that many people view him as some sort of guru. But I couldn’t sit past 10 minutes. My issue was, all of his arguments were based on conjecture, so his whole talk seemed to me to be about what could be true, not what is probably true. For example, the first part of his talk (the part I listened to) was all about consciousness. He makes the claim that scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to defend the thesis that consciousness resides in the brain. Wait a second. I personally disagree with the thesis myself, but from what I learned in college, the opposite is true – science and philosophy find it harder and harder to explain how consciousness could not reside in the brain, since there seems to be a one to one correspondence between affected consciousness and physical manifestations in the brain.
Continuing along those lines, he talks about how, if a computer is broken, and can’t, for example, load up msn.com, that doesn’t mean that msn.com resided in the computer and now ceases to exist. It just means the computer can’t access it. Consciousness, he says, is the same way. If the brain is damaged and a person becomes “unconscious”, it doesn’t mean consciousness resided in the brain; it just means that it no longer has access to it.
I’m actually being too kind in presenting his argument, and I had issues with it on many levels. But his thrust was more, the computer example proves that consciousness doesn’t reside in the brain. And I’m thinking, huh? It doesn’t prove anything. It just shows what could be true; and he’s making a significant jump to argue that because this can be true, it is actually true. That’s what I mean by his arguments being based on conjecture.
It actually made me wonder if other people have the same feelings as I did when listening to Christians; that they’re proving things based on conjecture. I personally believe it’s different, but the thought still depressed me.
Yul was by far the most interesting speaker. Funny, insightful, and, dare I say it, inspiring. His basic message: use whatever opportunities you have to further the causes you believe in, his primary ones being bone marrow type registration and Asian-American issues. It was weird, because I don’t actually think of him as anyone super special. He’s just the guy I saw in Wilbur dining hall frosh year and a friend of friends. But he actually gave a great talk. So if you have the choice between seeing Taylor Hicks, Deepak Chopra, or Yul, Yul will give you the most for your money.