Rant 454 / I Feel Like Eating Curry After Typing This Rant But It's Now 10PM.

Even though I set my aircon to 26 degrees and the fan speed at 2 out of 5 bars, my thermometer is reading 23 degrees. I guess it really doesn't matter what temperature I set because it feels no different even when it's set to 17 degrees.

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Spoiler Alert!
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Rama II ended with the doctor, the engineer and the communications officer flying in Rama towards deep space. Garden of Rama picked up from here and got even more interesting. So far this third book is the best of the three that I've finished reading.

Again, half the book was quite different from the other half. The first half described their journey to the Node, a space station where they were told the purpose of their trip - that the aliens were collecting data of all creatures that were capable of space travel. Then they were instructed to return to Earth to bring back 2000 more humans for further observations and tests.

This half was all about new aliens and stuff. At one point the doctor was even allowed to communicate with an aquatic eel-like alien whose civilization had been spacefaring for thousands of years.

The next half of the book was more about how the humans behaved during the journey. Pretty ugly, not very interesting except for the part where it was found that the flying aliens from Rama II was actually in a symbiotic relationship with two other species. They were almost wiped out by a war started by the mob boss (he took control of the colony by killing the original leader) who needed to distract the people from their other problems, but a few eggs were saved and taken elsewhere.

All these time, another species of aliens they called the "octospiders" were watching the carnage. Regular reports were also sent from the ship back to "the collective intelligence" behind the Node.







It is in Rama Revealed that another moral issue is shown. In the octospider society, there are 2 sides - chaos and order. Octospiders who have agreed to take a certain drug to stop sexual maturity live in the peaceful part, where there are strict laws and his/her role in the society is carefully planned out. These octospiders are healthier, safer and have a very long life expectancy.

Those who prefer to have more freedom would have to choose to mature sexually at a certain age and they would live in a separate part of the society where their life expectancy will be very short, but have a more intense life.

In this, it seems they believe that sexuality is the root of all desire. It can appear so at times for us humans too, since many of our problems come from this inborn instinct to find the best possible mating partner.

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End of spoiler.

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But I don't see how sexuality is the cause of all our problems. If we are completely uninterested in sex, would we stop being greedy, selfish and etc? No, being greedy is necessary to promote competition among humans, thus forcing us to evolve into fitter people. "Survival of the fittest" always applies in life, whether "the fittest" is referring to one or many.

What I think is that the root of all problems is desire. Quite Buddhist, this view. But going further, I think that the mother of all desire is the desire for satisfaction. Or is it happiness? Aristotle claimed that desire for happiness is the mother of all desires, and he's a smart guy. But even Einstein made major mistakes, so he can be wrong about this.

Would you do something that makes you happy, yet unsatisfied?

Would you do something that satisfies you but not make you happy?

How can a person be happy and not satisfied, or vice versa?

An example can be this: if you were expecting to score an A+ but got an A- instead, you may be happy without being satisfied. Maybe this isn't such a good example, since you can also be satisfied without being happy.

I had at first thought of using revenge to illustrate the second case, but seeing someone I dislike fail in what they do can sometimes be one of the greater joys of life.

Hmm...











So it seems curry kills cancer cells. I can already see future cancer treatment including curry baths as part of the procedure. Imagine, soaking in a jacuzzi of therapeutic sterilized chicken curry, with an assortment of chicken wings, drumsticks and potatoes around your butt as you sit in the tub with a plate of Mutton Bryani resting on the side.

Joy.

Just don't fart. You don't want to eat curry that tastes even remotely like shit.

Double entendres are funny.