Preface

Jan 15, 2013

The following links to articles and notes on subjects that don't fit into the design, music, and technology categories, as relate to my work, are included in the posts below with great hesitation. Primarily because disparate matter breaks the flow and cohesion of the forum, but also because the subjects are often unpleasant. I do not relish the idea of frightening the innocent nor rubbing the faces of the guilty against a mirror, but sometimes there are reasons beyond ones total comprehension for doing so.

In the early '90s I was listening to a radio program on public key cryptography with trusted key-holders, and it inspired me to look into making a cipher myself. At the same time I was beginning this project, I had an idea about an electricity generator using a buoyant magnet that sprang from my study of physics 101. These two projects, at the time I knew, were 'hot', but how hot I wasn't quite sure. So my dillydallying and being a professional student for the better part of 10 years had just about run its course in '97 and I committed for two reasons to get a degree in international relations. First because it was the quickest to get based on my earned credits, and two because, and I'll roughly quote myself, "because I want to know who I'm building bombs for". This was not too long after I finished a biography on Robert Oppenheimer, and I was thinking about Leo Szilard and Einstien, etc, and their preference of demonstration, over the use, of the A bomb. Anyhow, I wanted to be sure that a cipher and a generator were the correct pursuit, in the correct country, and international relations was helpful to that end.

Most students pursue higher education for a diploma and career advancement, but some however still learn for the pursuit of truth and enlightenment. Although expediency was a prime motivation in my case, as an 8 year B.A. degree looks rather unconventional, I fell mainly into the latter category. Thus my attention was squarely focused on the subject, rather than the object of the grade or certificate, and I came to feel the matter. Added to this was the fact that Yugoslavia was being bombed during my commencement, and I had just lost my father and half brother. They were both in New York, so it was only a bad coincidence, but I did feel the matter as my grand father emigrated from Yugoslavia in the early 1900s.

Anyhow, what began as an academic pursuit for a hopefully positive and helpful contribution to science and technology on my part, was now not so clear. I do remember how I was given great inspiration by Dimitri Mendeleev, the periodic table of the elements' 'father', because I had always felt like an odd ball, based on my name alone, among all the anglo-latino-judeo names, so it is understandable how I fell easily into the self flattery of thinking I could be a great mind of science. In addition, my 'great' contribution may also end up being unhelpful. Needless to say there were doubts, and I shelved the cipher, the buoyant magnet, and international relations altogether and decided to pursue graphic and textile art.

It was when I was failing calculus for the second time that I started using a computer to learn about functions and that inevitably led me to computer design which I had kept as a hobby throughout the 8 years at university. My last semesters before earning a B.A. were a pleasure academically speaking, filling electives with French, pottery, and film history. After going through the trauma of the core degree matter, plus the personal losses mentioned, it was more than a good time for a change. So I was trying to finance a degree in textile design at FIT by short selling National Oilwell on margin. I broke even and wasn't able to get there, and had a nervous breakdown, ended up in a Jefferson County Texas jail for driving on the grass, and flew to Amsterdam for a vacation. Then I filed bankruptcy, and roughly a year later there was 911.

It came as a surprise to many, but to me, we had been talking in class about loose suitcase nukes three years prior, so 911 wasn't that big of a shock. Nonetheless, it was a great tragedy, relatively speaking, and it did change international relations. Within the space of 2 years the U.S. violated the sovereignty and territorial integrity of two states, after having done the same in Yugoslavia 2 years prior. That the entire balance of power had supposedly changed since 1990 and the US was now proclaiming to have 'won' the cold war and was violating the sacrosanct principle of sovereignty in 3 distinct cases was a shock to me. This was what changed my mind about the shelving of my contributions.

Now with the recent events in Libya, I find that as a person of conscience, I cannot exclude such matters from my pursuits here, however disagreeable they may be. For the sake of honesty and truthfulness, and with a heavy heart I include references to articles and subjects that I would never want children to have to read. But then again, wants are not needs, and thus I post.

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