Natural Guts

Jasper came for dinner last night, and we had spaghetti. We went for a walk after that, and talked philosophy. Jasper was saying how we shouldn't restrict people, say if a 10 year old wants to drive a car. So I asked if someone should be allowed to buy a knife given that there is always a chance, however small, that the knife could be used to hurt or kill someone. So though he thought people should be free to do what they want as long as they don't hurt others, he tended towards stopping people from doing things just as long as there was a chance of others getting hurt.

But then maybe can let children drive, because they'll be unhappy if you don't allow them, and accidents happen lor, just have to accept. If they got not enough money then different story, basically as long as buyer and seller can settle it among themselves, third parties (like government) have no place in the equation. The general idea is that others should not intervene; what is between A and B should be resolved by A and B.

So what if A and B are married, then A has an affair, and B wants to be compensated with a million dollars, while A refuses to give a cent to B? A kills B, gets custody of the kids, which becomes end of story. Conflict is resolved, A shouldn't be put in jail or anything because it's not as if A is going to kill other people. Well, B's brother might kill A, and if so, nothing should happen to B's brother either.

If everyone in this universe played nice, things would be fine and there would be no problems. It's precisely because not everyone plays nice that legal, justice systems developed, nations arm themselves... anyway, to summarize, Jasper's philosophy is classic utilitarian, to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, but of course, as I pointed out, the measure for that is quite important. Do you sum over all experiences in the universe then average out over the number of consciousnesses? Or would it make more sense to integrate over the life of a conscious being, since happiness and suffering are felt only by that being.

Played St. Petersburg with Aaron after Jasper went home. It was a very close game. I flipped through the instructions after the game and found out that for the "observatory", you're actually not supposed to "observe" the last card in a stack. Reading further, I discovered that we have been playing the game "wrongly" for the past few months, ever since we started playing it! The rules are supposed to be that at the end of each phase, the card don't go "down", but go "right", and only at the end of each round do the cards go "down". You're supposed to have 8 cards open at any time except for the first phase of the first round, where you have 2n cards open (where n is the number of players, 1<n<5). Cards go off the board only after someone takes them or after they spend an entire round in the "down" state.

Playing tennis with the guys from the branch again this Saturday morning. After some tedious coordination through SMS, I tried to book courts at Kallang, but they have a tournament this Saturday morning. Then tried SAFRA Tampines, but they only have courts available after 10 am. Then tried to book 8 to 10 am at Yio Chu Kang courts, but they didn't have courts from 9 to 10. Now the booking is for 7 to 9 am, which is super early. But that's ok for me because it's so near. Eugene says he can make it that early, so most likely it'll be two of us first. Unless I wake up late again...

French Open (tennis) has been showing on TV, needless to say they're damn good. But I've been watching (and mimicking) their strokes, especially on the slow motion replays, so watch out! =)

At Royal Sporting House in Centerpoint, they sold natural gut, which is tennis string made out of cow's guts. Selling for about $80, compared to high-end synthetic gut for about $50. I wonder how much it'll cost for me to restring my racquet.

Didn't have too much to do at work, but did quite a bit of vertical running. Went up 6 floors about 3 times. Agassi is good, man! He's 35 and 6th seeded in the world. But I guess 35 isn't really that old, though he's supposedly the oldest in the tournament. The men serve so blazingly fast... at least when the women serve you can see there's time to react, but with the men, it's like, WTF?