I am at war with randomness.

Rudolf Clausius originated the concept of entropy. Originating concepts is sexy.

I think you should be too. But I won't go getting all pushy about it.

From a thermodynamic standpoint, though, we are all at war with randomness. Our existence is made possible, on a molecular level, by the localized reversal of a universal law. Life just is order.

The things in the world that have the most meaning for me--science and philosophy--are at their root premised on finding order in ourselves and in the world around us. And yet, it would seem that much of the thoughtmatter that traverses my brain on any given day is indeed quite random.

I don't believe this is true: it is not random. I believe that my human brain is a fan-f*g-tabulous machine capable of integrating and cataloging information in a quick, efficient, orderly manner. This is the wellspring of emotion, gut feeling, precognition, deja-vu. This process often occurs without my express consent or awareness, so it doesn't necessarily appear to be orderly¹. That's the nature of the beast. But, man, it would be incredible to get a look under the hood. To see what my subconscious is up to. To understand how it works. To fine-tune that mofo, and make it the best perception-integrating abstraction-generating mechanism it can be.

I feel that it is my job, as a person, to reduce everything to ideas. Cruising the classified ads and searching monster.com yields the conclusion that this is in fact not an actual career, however. To that end, my future is anything but certain. I don't always know², in any great specificity or with an ironclad certainty, what it is that I want and what will become of me. But, I do have one ovearching goal: to fulfill my job as a person. To have a mind like one of those invincible infomercial knives³ that will saw through logs and cans and boots and cinderblocks and still be able to dice a tomato. If you know what I mean.

Realization of my ginsuknifebrain aspirations will undoubtedly require that I first understand me as well as I can. A firm foundation of introspection is called for. Certainly, at 25, this is not an area in which I am particularly lacking. But to recall that endless refrain⁴ of my childhood: "you can always do better."

That's what this space is, for the most part, going to be about.

This is me, sharpening my knife.

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1. Similarly, I expect that the overall nature of this uh, blog, will be that of non-apparent order; i.e. of ostensible randomness. This is likely to include doodles, open letters to various persons or entities, and actual instances of randomness and absurdity for the purposes of entertainment.
2.I do have a general idea. I'm a philosophy major who is planning on going to vet school. Getting into vet school is goddamn hard, though. If that doesn't happen, I'm not particularly interested in going to grad school for philosophy, since it'll be pretty hard to find an institution that won't be bent upon turning me into a mealy-mouthed Kantian-Kuhnian mess. Also, being named Dagny and going around advocating the sort of thing I'd be advocating is bound to look ridiculous from a certain angle. Specifically, the "oh look at that poor, crazy, brainwashed girl" angle.
3. I realize that ginsu knives are not invincible, and are actually pretty crappy. It's a metaphor. If you don't like metaphors, then you'd better run along. They'll be raining down around here like Old Testament fire and brimstone.
4. In the interest of glasnost, the most repeated phrase of my childhood was actually "mutual benefit for mutual exchange." But "you can always do better" runs a pretty tight second place.