Preliminaries

From Dakota

This started as "Things You Don't Know About Me" which was my response to the "25 things" meme on facebook.

Contents 1 I am a math person. 2 Religion 3 Funerals 4 References 5 Apocalypsis 6 Clean Bill of Health 7 Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself. 8 Deception 9 Human is Contradiction. 10 True Strength 11 My Greatest Weakness 12 My Greatest Strength 13 My Imagination 14 Arithmetic 15 My Fallibility 16 Seek first to understand, and second to be understood. 17 Stress 18 Opportunity 19 Chance Favors The Prepared Mind. 20 I am Dakota. 21 Who am I? 22 Speak To Me. 23 Narcissism 24 Politics 25 The Semantic Web

I am a math person.

I first accept axioms and then deduce their logical consequences. If my axioms result in a logical consequence then I must either accept that consequence or revisit my axiom. This happens on a fairly regular basis.

Religion

I consider myself a fanatical fundamentalist evangelical Christian. That is, I'm an Almighty God fearing, inerrant Bible believing, saved, dunked, young earth creationist and pre-tribulation millennialist. For me it's not up for debate as it is a matter of belief (see preface). I certainly encourage you to discuss with me why I believe these things.

Funerals

I hate funerals. I've been to too many and they're all the same exercise in narcissism. Why don't people have funerals like Data's for Geordi in "The Next Phase"? On that subject, "Spybreak!" by the Propellerheads will play at my funeral if my last wishes are kept.

References

Almost everything I say is a reference to something else. If I say something and it doesn't make sense, it's probably from a movie, song, letter, person or nonperson that I thought related to whatever we were talking about.

Apocalypsis

I always thought I'd have a hand in the apocalypse. (See above)

Clean Bill of Health

I've never been diagnosed with any chronic condition mental or otherwise and as far as I know I am not allergic to anything (Not even pepper, that was just a hilarious misunderstanding). I've also never broken a bone.

Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.

This is my second most important axiom. This means to me to examine every situation to make sure that at every step I take I am not adding to worldsuck. So for instance, if I had something I desperately wanted to tell you but doing so would hurt someone that I might not know, I wouldn't tell you.

Deception

I'm extremely deceptive. I do it often and I'm good at it. To me, there is a very clear distinction between deception and lying. Deception is allowing people to believe what they want to believe even when they believe something false. You might be surprised how many confrontations this saves and its contribution to the previous item.

Human is Contradiction.

Therefore hypocrisy doesn't bother me since I am a hypocrite myself. No one can escape their own hypocrisy, so I think it's OK that you, the president, the preacher, the governor are all hypocrites. It's something we have in common.

True Strength

True strength isn't hiding your weaknesses hoping people will not find them. True strength is announcing your weaknesses and succeeding, without compromising your beliefs, despite them. This is why I believe open source is a wonderful idea.

My Greatest Weakness

My greatest weakness is belief. I believe what you tell me about yourself. If you choose to lie to me about the way you feel or anything else that, by definition, only you can know then you have hurt me with 100% effectiveness. Seriously, even more than going down a slide of razor blades pointed the wrong way into a pool of alcohol.

My Greatest Strength

My greatest strength is mathematics. I'm good at spotting contradictions. Therefore if you do choose to lie to me and don't want me to find out, you had better be better at deception than me. Otherwise I will discover the contradiction created from your lie. Good luck =)

My Imagination

I've got a demented, almost psychopathic imagination. That's where the slide two bullets ago came from. Someone said "I don't think there's a worse way to die than burning alive." There are many things people mistakenly believe have limits (not just bad things like pain and suffering either). Most of the time it's easy to come up with a counterexample. I'm good at coming up with counterexamples, didn't I mention I'm pretty good at mathematics?

Arithmetic

I'm pretty horrible at arithmetic and just about any kind of paper based calculation, 'nuff said.

My Fallibility

I consider this my second greatest weakness. I'm guilty of pretty much every sin in the book. There are those who are really great at pushing my buttons, using my own hubris to get me to evoke an uncharacteristic reaction or just one that compromises one of my beliefs.

Seek first to understand, and second to be understood.

This is an exercise in the latter.

Stress

I would like to learn how to deal with stress better, but I would prefer to be stressed less. It's something I'm working on.

Opportunity

I don't always take advantage of my opportunities. It suffices to say I'm a work in progress.

Chance Favors The Prepared Mind.

If you know me, you know this is my motto, sometimes my mantra, a quote of Louis Pasteur. What you probably don't know is that this makes me plan for a ton of (mostly) practical contingencies. What would I do if I lost an arm? What if someone gave me $10,000 to be a professional poker player? What if the world of tomorrow is the world of 1984? What would be in my room 101? Should I start a conversation with "what" or a crutch like "hey"? What am I doing that is preventing me from achieving my goals?

I am Dakota.

You don't know me. I'm sorry, it's just part of this human condition. Some have come close, but I feel like no one has ever understood more than 75% of my thoughts, actions, dreams and aspirations. Sure, perfect understanding is impossible, but as coach Napier would say, "If you aren't getting better you're getting worse." Therefore at any one point in time most of the people I know in my life are beginning to understand me less as time goes on. This wiki will go a long way to fix this.

Who am I?

I don't know me. I would say I understand about 94% of my thoughts, actions, dreams and aspirations. I regularly do things and have to think a while before I realize why I did it. Sometimes even then I can't figure it out. In that sense I'm a tough guy to know.

Speak To Me.

I'm easy to talk to. People are often intimidated or repulsed by my persona for whatever reason and it leads them to believe that I wouldn't accept what they have to say. I want to listen. I want to converse. I would love to hear what you have to say about life, the universe and everything. I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. If you want me just to listen that's cool too, but be sure to mention that or else I'll start in with the analysis.

Narcissism

Occasionally, I want to talk about me. Most of the time I don't have anyone to listen so I write it down elsewhere. What? You don't care what I think about Picard's torture in "Chain of Command"?! ;___; I was tagged by this three times in two days so I am glad to share.

Politics

I love the United States, the Declaration of Independence is the only thing other than a Texas flag on my wall in my room, but! I think that there are fundamental flaws in capitalism and our current form of democracy. The framers were smart enough to know we should be able to change the fundamentals of government as we see fit through the process of Constitutional amendment and yet the last way we "improved" our government was to approve an idea from 1789. That was in 1992, nearly seventeen years ago. Where are the macropolitical computer simulations that can tell us which amendments will make the lives of all better? We the People of the United States in order to make a more perfect Union must experiment! Let's not just support science in Washington, let's support science for Washington! Someone call Nate Silver!

The Semantic Web

I think people don't take advantage of semantic markup often enough. I'm spend a lot of time thinking about ways to make it easier.