kent lee's blog & ramble

Rene Descartes proclaimed "cogito ergo sum" - meaning that in his epistemology, the starting point - to validating truth, the existence of the self, and the existence of the external world and external truth - is oneself, one's own thoughts. One's self-awareness serves as the basis for deducing other truths, and in his philosophy, even for deducing the existence of God. A few problems quickly become apparent to the modern social scientist here. First, his method of deducing God's existence is forced and unnatural; it is probably not the path than anyone else would naturally and intuitively take to apprehending the existence of God. Second, his subjective approach, starting with one's own thoughts as a foundation for other truths, is tenuous, given what we know in modern psychology about cognitive biases, false intuitions, and decision making that is subject to all kinds of subconscious influences. So do we reactively take a totally opposite approach, as an em...

If you said the word 'multiverse' 10 years ago, people would think you're talking about a new form of poetry. Now it's part of our vocabulary, thanks to string theory. Unless something new happens in string theory, apparently the number of theoretically possible universes that might come into existence is huge. I don't know if most of them would last very long - I'll leave that question to the physicists, as I'm no physicist, just a language educator and linguist and lay theologian. So according to the theory, the number of possible universes would be 10 500 (10^500, if the superscripts don't display properly). The name of that number would be 100 quinquasexagintacentillion (ten to the 165th power, times 100) (or 100 tresoctogintillion in the traditional European system). Unless new discoveries or adjustments are made to the theory, then the theory, according to physicists, may imply an eternal inflation. Universes keep popping in and out of existe...

Green eggs and ham, as a recolorized staple breakfast food, captures the reader's attention by turning this diurnal sustenance into an unexpected and apparently unappetizing foodstuff. It thus symbolizes the existential angst of modern life, wherein we are unfulfilled by modern life, and are repelled by something that might impart nourishment. The "protagonist" to be convinced of its desirability remains anonymous, while the other actor refers to himself with an emphatic identifier "Sam I am", formed with a pronominal subject and copular verb of existence. This character thus seeks to emphasize his existence and existential wholeness, and even establish a sense of self-existence, with an apparent Old Testament allusion to Elohim speaking to Moses as the "I Am". This emphatic personal identifier thus introduces a prominent theme of religious existentialism to the narrative, probably more in line with original Kierkegaardian religious existentialism, rat...