Computers and random wise brainy people

This computer I'm currently on stuffed up withing the past two days; lately the screen has been having problems where it would flicker with distorted colours where the only way to fix it was to turn the screen on and off. Evenutally it became that we couldn't just fix the screen by turning it of, no no, now we have to actually get up and disconnect the powerplug for the screen, and it's still like that now. Not only that, but whenever we try to turn the computer off, the computer automatically turns itself back on again, so now we have to turn the computer off using a special switch located at the back of the computer. But with the screen, recently it appeared that the computer screen had finally cocked it: there was no picture on the screen. We checked all the power connections, turned the computer on and off only about a dozen times, and generally messed around with the computer for about 3 hours worth until I found that it was actually the computer that was having the problem and my dad found that the computer would finally work again by pressing the reset switch on the power adapter which was all tangled up in wires stuffed randomly behind the computer. Yes... I'd bet money that pretty much all of us have a little tangled mess of wires behind our computers.

I found that while the computer wasn't working, I did more normal things like do more reading, do more practical things and get to bed at a reasonable hour of 12am rather than 3:30am. Buuut, look at me now: now that the computer's working again, here I am writing this blog at 12:15am in the morning cos I'm bored and don't want to go to bed. In saying this, it has made me utterly CONVINCED that going on the computer is like taking drugs: they're both addictive. Observing habits of some of my other friends have also led me to this conclusion (wow, how sciency sounding, I said "conclusion"). And why do we all go on MSN when we can just use the phone? I'd say it's just so that we can talk to people while we furfill the appetite of our drug-crazed addictions of being on the computer!! Going on the computer must stimulate some sort of chemical inside us that we become addicted to. But I can't be bothered doing research. Often the feeling of mystery feels better than actually knowing the answer.

But also, sometimes we think we know the answer to something, only to find out that what we thought was the correct answer was actually the totally wrong answer . There's a story that shows this that relates back to ancient China: in some random Chinese dynasty, Chinese wisemen were debating to eachother about if you had a fish-tank filled up to the top with water, and then put large stones into the fish-tank, why the fish-tank wouldn't overflow. The wisemen debated for years and years over this until the Chinese emperor had the brilliant idea of actually trying putting stones into a fish-tank filled to the top with water. To everyone's surprise, the fish-tank DID overflow with water, and all the pointless debate about why the fishtank wouldn't overflow went down the drain. (excuse that very poor attempt at a pun if you can see the "attempted pun").

At the moment, but not literally right now, I'm reading a book called "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" written by Bill Bryson. I was laughing rather hard within the first two pages of the introduction. (The introduction talked about how we are very special since we are made up of a big sum of atoms arranged in an order that will never exist again after we die... And yes, i thought this would be a good moment to do a book review, haha, NOT). Currently I'm up to a chapter named "Elemental Matters" that largely talks about Einstein. And may I just say that, Man!, that Einstein guy was brainy. He was able to come up with the ideas of space and time and spacetime and gravity and write a big paper on it called "The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" which was originally published in Annalen der Physik in 1916. Yet funnily he remained stuck working in a patent office. He tried to apply for a job as a lecturer at a university and was rejected. Then he applied for a job as a high-school teacher and was also rejected. And this is the guy who only had possibly the best thinking mind in history!!! But perhaps that was his problem: Einstein thought too much. Perhaps he couldn't shut up the thoughts in his brain. This actually sounds a bit like me but the day that I can sucessfully relate my mind to Einstein will be the day pigs fly; and cows; and sheep. However Einstein did have funny-looking electrified hair that made a normal person's bad hair day look like a joke.