Tweets from a Dangerous Mind - Dzhokar Tsarnaev

The following are excerpts from the Twitter account of the accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev: https://twitter.com/@j_tsar

While there is a presumption of innocence that attaches in the criminal proceedings that will follow, assuming he survives, the televised evidence of his guilt is virtually undeniable. 

Jahar ‏@J_tsar       10:43 p.m.  16 Apr

I'm a stress free kind of guy

Jahar ‏@J_tsar7:30 p.m. 16 Apr

Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got somethin to say but nothin comes out when they move their lips; just a bunch of gibberish

Jahar ‏@J_tsar10;22 a.m. 16 Apr

So then I says to him, I says, relax bro my beard is not loaded

Jahar ‏@J_tsar10:14 a.m. 16 Apr

@therealAbdul_ you need to get Claritin clear

Jahar ‏@J_tsar9:34 p.m. 15 Apr

There are people that know the truth but stay silent & there are people that speak the truth but we don't hear them cuz they're the minority

 Jahar ‏@J_tsar5:04 p.m. 15 Apr

Ain't no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people

Jahar ‏@J_tsar8:39 p.m. 14 Apr

@xXjungaXx good luck my brother, I'm sure you'll get in

Jahar ‏@J_tsar10 Apr

Most of you are conditioned by the media

Jahar ‏@J_tsar9 Apr

-you don't care that I smoke, right? -man, I wouldn't care if you shot yourself in the head ^friendship

Jahar ‏@J_tsar7 Apr

If you have the knowledge and the inspiration all that's left is to take action

Jahar ‏@J_tsar18 Mar

People come into your life to help you, hurt you, love you and leave you and that shapes your character and the person you were meant to be

Jahar ‏@J_tsar17 Mar

see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil until the morning alarm goes off and all hell unleashes

Jahar ‏@J_tsar14 Mar

"September 10th baby, you know what tomorrow is. Party at my house!" #thingsyoudontyellwhenenteringaroom

Jahar ‏@J_tsar10 Mar

Never underestimate the rebel with a cause

Jahar ‏@J_tsar6 Mar

Death is the destroyer of all pleasures

Jahar ‏@J_tsar27 Feb

"Studying" is just a combination of the words student and dying

Jahar ‏@J_tsar13 Feb

I killed Abe Lincoln during my two hour nap #intensedream

Jahar ‏@J_tsar19 Jan

To be honest, I don't care for those people that wanna commit suicide, your life b, do what you think will make you happy

Jahar ‏@J_tsar15 Jan

I don't argue with fools who say islam is terrorism it's not worth a thing, let an idiot remain an idiot

Jahar ‏@J_tsar




12 Jan

Met this marine yesterday who said he doesn't give his name out to "unclassified personnel" he then proceeded to tell me his name quietly

Jahar ‏@J_tsar4 Jan

I don't like when people ask unnecessary questions like how are you? Why so sad? Why do you need cyanide pills?

Jahar ‏@J_tsar3 Dec

My goal for the 2013 year is to get a girl pregnant and become a daddy #saidnooneever

Jahar ‏@J_tsar28 Nov

you guys know that the suicide rate for active duty american soldiers is at an all time high for 2012, a suicide a day, whats the #problem

Jahar ‏@J_tsar11 Nov

I'm from the murder capital, where they murder for capital

Jahar ‏@J_tsar17 Oct

wish for your brother what you wish for yourself

a=Jahar ‏@J_tsar24 May

my niece is the cutest in the world

Jahar ‏@J_tsar13 May

life here in the U.S is ill without a doubt but life elsewhere is surreal

Jahar ‏@J_tsar14 Mar 12

a decade in america already, i want out

Jahar ‏@J_tsar14 Mar 12

sometimes you gotta follow in order to lead

Jahar ‏@J_tsar17 Jan 12

some people are just misunderstood by the world thus the increase of suicide rates

Aaron Swartz RIP

From the blog of Aaron Swartz, Raw Thought:
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/archive

Legacy

Ambitious people want to leave legacies, but what sort of legacies do they want to leave? The traditional criterion is that your importance is measured by the effect of what you do. Thus the most important lawyers are the Supreme Court justices, since their decisions affect the entire nation. And the greatest mathematicians are those that make important discoveries, since their discoveries end up being used by many who follow.

This seems quite reasonable. One’s legacy depends on one’s impact and what better way to measure impact than by the effect of what you’ve done. But this is measuring against the wrong baseline. The real question is not what effect your work had, but what things would be like had you never done it.

The two are not at all the same. It is rather commonly accepted that there are “ideas whose time has come” and history tends to bear this out. When Newton invented the calculus, so did Leibniz. When Darwin discovered evolution through natural selection, so did Alfred Russel Wallace. When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, so did Elisha Gray (before him, arguably).

In these cases the facts are plain: had Newton, Darwin, and Bell never done their work, the result would have been largely the same — we’d still have calculus, evolution, and the telephone. And yet such people are hailed as major heroes, their legacies immortalized.

Perhaps, if one only cares about such things, this is enough. (Although this seems a rather dangerous game, since the future could wake up at any moment and realize its adulation is misplaced.) But if one genuinely cares about their impact, instead of simply how their impact is perceived, more careful thought is in order.

I once spent time with a well-known academic, who had published several works widely recognized as classics even outside his field, and he offered some career advice in the sciences. (Actually, come to think of it, there are two people of whom this is true, suggesting the phenomenon has broader significance.) Such-and-such a field is very hot right now, he said, you could really make a name for yourself by getting into it. The idea being that major discoveries were sure to follow soon and that if I picked that field I could be the one to make them.

By my test, such a thing would leave a poor legacy. (For what it’s worth, I don’t think either person’s works fall into this category; that is to say, their reputation is still deserved even by these standards.) Even worse, you’d know it. Presumably Darwin and Newton didn’t begin their investigations because they thought the field was “hot”. They thought through doing it they would have a significant impact, even though that turned out to be wrong. But someone who joined a field simply because they thought a major discovery would come from it soon could never enjoy such a delusion. Instead, they would know that their work would make little difference, and would have to labor under such impressions.

The same is true of other professions we misconceive of as being important. Take being a Supreme Court justice, for example. Traditionally, this is thought of as a majestic job in which one gets to make decisions of great import. In fact, it seems to me that one has little impact at all. Most of your impact was made by the politics of the President who appointed you. Had you not been around for the job, he would have found someone else who would take similar positions. The only way one could have a real impact as Supreme Court justice would be to change your politics once appointed to the bench and the only way you could prepare for such a thing would be to spend the majority of your career doing things you thought were wrong in the hopes that one day you might get picked for the Supreme Court. That seems a rather hard lot to swallow.

So what jobs do leave a real legacy? It’s hard to think of most of them, since by their very nature they require doing things that other people aren’t trying to do, and thus include the things that people haven’t thought of. But one good source of them is trying to do things that change the system instead of following it. For example, the university system encourages people to become professors who do research in certain areas (and thus many people do this); it discourages people from trying to change the nature of the university itself.

Naturally, doing things like changing the university are much harder than simply becoming yet another professor. But for those who genuinely care about their legacies, it doesn’t seem like there’s much choice.

June 1, 2006

 

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/legacy