agentquantum - // an infinite mastery, is the Force.
the chosen one
alwyn!
raffles junior college
08 08 '89
leo
star wars fan
Judoka

The Jedi Fanlisting
Duel of the Fates Fanlisting
KotOR Fanlisting

wishlist :

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume
The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose
The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch
Matter and Consciousness by Paul Churchland
Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett
Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn
The Life of the Cosmos by Lee Smolin
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Betrayal
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines
Star Wars Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice

Games:
Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne by Triumph Studios
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic by Triumph Studios
Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood by Spellbound
Myth III: The Wolf Age by MumboJumbo
The Bard's Tale by InXile Entertainment
Dragon Age by Bioware
Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir by Obsidian Entertainment
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II

Places I'd Like to Visit:
Sweden
Switzerland
Italy
France
Thailand
Brazil
South Korea
Japan (again!)
Norway
Costa Rica

click for more =)


"When I became convinced that the Universe is natural that all the ghosts and gods are myths, there entered into my brain, into my soul, into every drop of my blood, the sense, the feeling, the joy of freedom. The walls of my prison crumbled and fell, the dungeon was flooded with light and all the bolts, and bars, and manacles became dust. I was no longer a servant, a serf, or a slave. There was for me no master in all the wide world, not even in infinite space. I was free.
free to think, to express my thoughts
free to live to my own ideal
free to live for myself and those I loved
free to use all my faculties, all my senses
free to spread imagination's wings
free to investigate, to guess and dream and hope
free to judge and determine for myself
free to reject all ignorant and cruel creeds, all the "inspired" books that savages have produced, and all the barbarous legends of the past
free from popes and priests
free from all the "called" and "set apart"
free from sanctified mistakes and holy lies
free from the fear of eternal pain
free from the winged monsters of night
free from devils, ghosts, and gods
For the first time I was free. There were no prohibited places in all the realms of my thought, no air, no space, where fancy could not spread her painted wings
no chains for my limbs
no lashes for my back
no fires for my flesh
no master's frown or threat
no following another's steps
no need to bow, or cringe, or crawl, or utter lying words.
I was free. I stood erect and fearlessly, joyously, faced all worlds. And then my heart was filled with gratitude, with thankfulness, and went out in love to all the heroes, the thinkers who gave their lives for the liberty of hand and brain for the freedom of labor and thought
to those who fell on the fierce fields of war
to those who died in dungeons bound with chains
to those who proudly mounted scaffold's stairs
to those whose bones were crushed, whose flesh was scarred and torn
to those by fire consumed
to all the wise, the good, the brave of every land, whose thoughts and deeds have given freedom to the sons of men.
And I vowed to grasp the torch that they had held, and hold it high, that light might conquer darkness still."
-Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), "Why Am I An Agnostic?", 1896
Click here to join Atheisthaven
Click to join Atheisthaven


We are part of the universe. Our earth was created from the universe and will one day be reabsorbed into the universe. We are made of the same matter as the universe. We are not in exile here: we are at home. It is here and nowhere else that we can see the divine face to face. If we erect barriers in our imagination - if we believe our real home is not here but in a land that lies beyond death - if we believe that the divine is found only in old books, or old buildings, or inside our head - then we will see this real, vibrant, luminous world as if through a glass darkly. The universe creates us, preserves us, destroys us. We are part of nature. Nature made us and at our death we will be reabsorbed into nature. We are at home in nature and in our bodies. This is where we belong; this is where we must find and make our paradise, not in some spirit world on the other side of the grave. If nature is the only paradise, then separation from nature is the only hell. When we destroy nature, we create hell on earth for other species and for ourselves. Nature is our mother, our home, our security, our peace, our past and our future. Science is inherently materialist. It always seek material explanations. It never accepts as an explanation that some spiritual force was at work - if it did, then science and technology would come to an end. Disease was once thought to be caused by witchcraft. Science gave it a material explanation which allowed us to control it. Magnetism at one time seemed like a spiritual force - Thales of Miletus thought that magnets were full of spirits. But then science provided a material explanation. In the same way scientific pantheism believes that everything that exists is matter or energy in one form or another. Nothing can exist, be perceived, or act on other things if it is not matter or energy. That does not mean that spiritual phenomena or forces cannot exist. It means that, if they do, they must in fact be material. In scientific pantheism, science becomes a part of the religious quest: the pursuit of deeper understanding of the Reality of which we are all part, deeper knowledge about the awe-inspiring cosmos in which we live, deeper knowledge of nature and the environment, so that we can better preserve the earth's wealth of natural diversity. In scientific pantheism, cognitive openness - listening to reality, to new evidence, to all the evidence, to other people's needs and feelings - becomes a sacred duty in all aspects of life from science to politics to domestic life. Of course, we cannot say that science endorses pantheism. Many religions today state their beliefs in ways that no-one can disprove, so they can and do co-exist with science. But scientific pantheism positively thrives on science. scientific discoveries continually underline the wonder and the mystery of Being, the immensity of the universe, and the complexity of nature. World Pantheist Movement



hyperspace

RafflesJudo

Prom Night pictures
Ipoh trip pictures

ALWYN
baoli
cherie
chuntsen
felicia
guangyan
gerard
grace
huanglu
jenny
joel
jingwen
leon khee
libing
lincoln
lois
miki
mitchell
ronald
ruth
ruth
sabrina
sarah
sheralyn
timothy
weixiang
xavier
xinyang
yongsheng
zhangfan
zhuoyi
zilin

Atheism - A Non-Prophet Organisation
Beast
Daniel
Lefire
suspiciousbastard
vivienwon
Wang
Xianghong

thank the maker!
blogger
violation**

the image was not made by violation**.



holonet



jedi archives

01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005
10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006
08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006
10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007
11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008
01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008
02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008
03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008
04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008
06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008
07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008
08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008
09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008
10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008
11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008
12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009
02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009
04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009
05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009
06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009
07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009
08/01/2009 - 09/01/2009
09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009
10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009
12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010
02/01/2010 - 03/01/2010
08/01/2011 - 09/01/2011
09/01/2011 - 10/01/2011
11/01/2011 - 12/01/2011
12/01/2011 - 01/01/2012

datapad
Friday, January 27, 2006

finally some time to myself, so maybe i shall blog.

so anyways. hi! i'm alwyn. \ \ / /

i am now in rjc! and so far it's been pretty fun... ok i won't be blogging about orientation anymore cos it's so long ago alrd. i STILL WANT the pictures though! jianliang!

and in case anyone's interested to know, my subject combi is pbmk with h1chem... which, imo, could be quite demanding. and that's why i am taking no more than ONE cca in rj and that shall be judo! ^^

randomness...

let me talk about how lessons have been going so far.

physics- has been pretty ok, fairly evenly-paced. mr raufie is quite a nice guy and he responds when you sit in the third row and call his name out. but so far we haven't yet progressed into the deeper stuff like EM and thermal physics, just reworking the more basic topics like dimensional consistency, scalars and vectors, kinematics. tutorials are pretty ok as well and physics pracs are fun! got ppl with infinite reaction time one.. ^^

biology- is the subject where i have been learning the most so far. the pace of lectures is fast, but still manageable, and also quite satisfying because i feel that i am actually learning something useful and interesting! let's see.. we've done carbo, lipids and finishing proteins soon. so genomics will probably be up next! yay. ohoh and the bio lectureres are quite funny too. especially adrian loo! too bad he's not our bio tutor... and then there's the other two, the guy who taught us lipids can't rmb his name, and mr ngan who taught proteins and interestingly pronounces each syllable with equal emphasis. nonetheless i still think our bio tutorials have been quite unproductive, cos our tutor's a part-time teacher and she probably doesn't really noe what we have been learning during the lectures themselves, and she spends half the time going through stuff that's in the notes. ohwells, at least we get to revise. hope we're not progressing slower than the other bio classes, though.

i suddenly realise that what i'm typing isn't very interesting at all, and i don't really understand why i'm writing all this anyway. maybe it just seems interesting for me to recap all that has happened in my new jc life so far.

h1 chemistry- ok, don't really noe what to say about h1 chem. i like the classmates, i like the teachers, and i especially love the classroom, but the timings for our chem lessons are really quite weird, like right at the end of the day when i usually seriously feel like knocking off, and one of them is right after pe as well. not that i'm putting the blame on these factors for my inability to stay on track, cos the truth is that i haven't really been putting in much effort for chem this year too... or last year, for that matter. now it's not so bad, cos we're still on mole concept, but once we move on to new topics i really will have to stay focused.

math- lectures are very lame and corny thanks to ms chen who is our math lecturer. yay ms chen! =D didn't really talk to her much when she was i/c of rj judo and i was still an ri boi, but at least she remembers my name ^^ we're doing functions now which has quite alot of stuff to remember, and my memory is bad so i hope i don't do too badly for it. and YES i know the proper way to learning math is through understanding of the concepts themselves... but when all the concepts are presented in the forms of numbers and letters and there is just so much to understand at once, it becomes alot harder to visualise as compared to say, bio concepts, and sometimes it's just more convenient to commit everything to memory. which, then again, is something that i don't really like to do. and guys are supposed to be good at math! so i am sad =( ok i hope i'm not turning people away by sounding too pathetic. and i forgot to mention math tutorials.. but math tutorials is mostly spent on just going through the questions... so nothing much to be said, i guess. except that the atmosphere is quite fun and lively and the entire class save one is together so we get to make a lot of noise and talk rubbish =D

ki- lessons are still a tad disorganised, but that's ok cos at any rate, they're still way better than ri philo lessons. anyways i think that as the lessons continue to progress, we should be more able to discuss about the topics in greater depth and hopefully draw some meaningful conclusions, instead of just spamming alot of questions and leaving it up to us whether we want to go home and think about them or not. which reminds me, that my original intention when i sat down to blog was to talk about the stuff that we've been discussing in ki lectures lately. but now i just don't feel like doing that, because, well, i don't really see the NEED to (as opposed to the time of the xiaxue cockroach incident where i really needed to get my message across to theists so that they'd be better able to understand our position), and also because... my mind has drifted away from the topic. and i really hope that it stops doing that, because it seriously messes me up. ohwells. maybe some other time then.

and now i think i shall talk about judo training. been pretty normal, save for the fact that my fitness is nowhere near the state at which it was during the national season last year. i am well aware of the fact that individuals are in march, and that i should really be putting in more effort to get back in shape if i actually want to win something, cos even though i am pretty confident of my technique and playing style, my strength and stamina are still quite noobish and that i shouldn't be taking such chances with my success cos the individuals is the only competition where i have been able to win medals so far. (quite sad right? i noe i noe... but win indivs already = south zone colours, and for that i am happy =D must zhi zu chang le what...) but then again, if i channel more energy into training, means i have less energy for work! and already i do not think that i have enough energy for work. or maybe my current energy level just plain sucks. hmm.. meditate on this, i must.

oh.. my class my class! my class is not one of those classes where everyone takes pcme or bcme and so we can all pass messages down during econs lecture and decide on the spot to go out as a class for lunch.. which is both good and bad, bad because it'll be much harder to arrange outings and such with all our very different combis, and good because our differences will be what makes us unique and special and diverse and fun and... different! yayy. so... s03s, i love you! but i still think we should be bonding more. covalent bonds mind you, h-bonds will not make a difference. =D

well, at least i have 3 other ppl who take the same combi as me.. so much <3 to zl, wangrui and zhengrong! zhengrong's face is very funny i don't know why, and he runs fast. blehh. :)

kay actually i think blogging like this feels very weird (for me). not used to it anymore.. and dunno if i can continue to do this after the cny break. already i get the naggy feeling that i might be wasting my time :D and i'm also quite disinclined to penning down my ideas or opinions on certain topics on my blog, unlike ppl like xinyang, because more often than not i will find myself repeating those same ideas to whatever people who might not have read my blog but still want to know more about what i think. recall: debates with dear atheists at Naskes' and D'Sweeper's which were really frustrating because some of the people there never seemed to be listening to what i was actually saying, but still expected me to be convinced anyway. i guess renson was right in saying that people generally pay more attention to counter-arguments than arguments themselves. but if one does not take a proactive approach in those issues that really matter to you, then how much of a difference can one actually make? sigh, so maybe it was from there that i grew to dislike reiterating arguments, sometimes re-arguing the arguments themselves- arguments which i had already invested so much time and energy in thinking about them. and since few ppl read my blog anyway, i therefore find it quite pointless to pen down my own opinions on MY blog for ME to read, when i already know what they are anyway! lol.

now you all get a vague picture of the random stuff that's constantly running through my head. haha! anw, i intend to mug alot and finish all my tutorials during the cny break. (A) kthnxbai.


spacetime rip! by agent quantum , quite possibly at 1/27/2006 07:04:00 pm :)



[ + + + ]

Get awesome blog templates like this one from BlogSkins.com Get awesome blog templates like this one from BlogSkins.com <body> <body> <body>