this site is dedicated to the delusions of grandeur inside the warped psyche of a hollow shell of a human being
originally entitled Trimalchio in East Egg
Throughout
my life I have had an indifference to organized sports. My favorite
football team is the Green Bay Packers, I am a pack-man. I picked them
because they are publicly owned by over a hundred thousand
stockholders. They embody what organized sports should be, or at least
the form of it that I think should be allowed to exist. That is not
true, well it is, but not for those reasons until later. I initially
picked them because when I was growing up they were always beating the
Vikings. My and my cousin because interested in them, then they win the
super bowl. Not to mention the Vikings/Packers rivalry is rather strong
and the rest of my family is loyal to the Vikings. So it was a way to
aggravate my family and win at the same time, it was a win-win
situation. So I like the packers. I don't care about any football games
except the Vikings/Packers games, I watch the super bowl if there is
not something better to do, if for anything, the ads are sometimes good.Organized sports, organized religion, and organized crime are all great reasons for nihilism. I don't give a damn about sports. I don't see any justification for spending government money on stadiums. It is outrageous to think that we seriously consider building huge stadiums for private companies that make loads of money when our public education system is failing. Building stadiums for teams is subsidizing an already lucrative industry by giving public money to billionaires to pay millionaires. Guess what? We could have people play that are good at sports play and have people watch, for free. Just invest in local parks, then people can actually play a game instead of sitting on their ass and living failed fantasies of how they 'almost went pro', living vicariously through a millionaire who they idolize but in reality wouldn't give them the time of day. It gives joe-six-pack something to dream about, a lottery for the masses.
All of this juvenile angst comes to the subject of me doing well despite overwhelming odds and how I now know that I am better than at least half a million college students. I have 105 points on the facebook NCAA (not NAACP, the only anything to still use the word "colored"). That puts me at number 10 out of 350 at Rose and 16,328 out of 582,512 out of all facebook, which puts me well into the top three percent of all people who entered. I didn't even know what the abbr.iated names of all the teams were, I think I used the order in the alphabet of the third letter in the team names, I don't remember. All I know is that I am better than most people who entered this pitiful contest, and considering that I am way better at just about everything else, I have an increased smug sense of superiority. All of the years of watching basketball and all they have to show for it is the plume of dust left by me racing ahead of them. I could still do better if UCLA wins the final game. So I cared for the first time about the outcome of a basketball game.
I went to Southwest high school. I remember hearing that we had the fourth worst football team in the nation. I give them credit for playing despite not even getting half as many points as the other team for a few years, but the again, I had to use low-grade text books to buy new uniforms. I think perhaps new uniforms were not the thing prevent a winning season. But then they hired a former U (University of Minnesota: Minneapolis) football coach or something. I did play tee-ball once as child, I don't remember it, so I assume it sucked and I repressed it. Either that or at the age of five or six I figured out baseball is boring, and there is a reason they have to sell alcohol at the games, although the people who watch baseball really need all the brain cells they can get.
On a somewhat related noted I did care about outcome of the recent American football tournament. I wanted the Indianapolis colts to win, only because Rose is their summer training facility. That way I could say I use the same weigh room as super bowl champions. In other words I wanted a way about talking about how awesome I am. But hey, I use the same ____ machine as _____ _______ who was almost really good at what he does. My favorite Schubert song just came on, and I need to go listen to that, although after watching Manhattan I kind of feel like some Gershwin.
When
I try to comprehend if IB was worth it, I realize I must first be in
the historical Goldilocks zone. The historical Goldilocks zone theory
is that history can best be viewed when it is recent enough to be
applicable to modern day but far enough away to be objective about it.
The second part to this theory is that historians focus on this region
of time because of it's applicability. I came up with this theory in
TOK, which I guess is symbolic of my experience with IB. I learned
indirectly lessons that are not really concerning what I was studying.
I could be cool and say it was a waste of my time, that it tried to
take my soul, or that it succeeded in doing so. But I will not act in
such a manner, because in retrospect I thank g-d (Greg Dyer) that such
a program existed in Minneapolis. For all the BS I went through, at
least I learned how to deal with it. That is understating it. When I
look around at my classmates at Rose I realize that it gave me a year
head start on everybody. IB was its own little world at Southwest, and
Rose it a microcosm of I don't know what. It feels strange to think of
all the brilliant people that have surrounded me. I have to start a new
paragraph.There were two types of people at Rose when the year began: those who thought they were the smartest person in the world and those of us who had a grip on reality. The majority of Rose students were top of their class, never had to work hard at all, and had a joke of a senior year. Then there are the others (me) who think of Rose as almost a vacation. The workload is still increasing, but the rate at which it changes is no longer increasing: so it is harder, but not significantly harder. But it was fun seeing people hit the wall of understanding that they can no longer ignore class and coast through school. I realized I wasn't the smartest person in the world in 9th grade. I should not say that, I realized I wasn't the smartest person in the world when I met Jay, and then there was the PRIME program, which me, Jay, and Jason were in, which lead up to UMTYMP, which I didn't want to do because I didn't want to kill myself. Nevertheless I felt on top of the world in Middle school. But IB made me sure that it was just another brick on the wall. I look at my life and I have never been surrounded by even average people in a decade.
Six years, that is how many years of my life I gave to IB. But what I got out of it was a way to justify going to a engineering school. If I had not received a liberal arts education I think I would have regretted just going into such a technical field. One of the greatest misconceptions about me is that I am only interested science and math, I was just good at it. I now understand the importance of a well rounded education. I also have my own way of learning which is to teach in order and not simultaneously: math, physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, philosophy, and history, while teaching English skills and arts training. But I think that may be troublesome for second graders.
All of what I have said is BS, in truth a person is made better by all the education they receive, and living in a place were our learning is almost unlimited it would be foolish to squander it, but then again, IB, therefore IBS.
Today's
lesson is about the forth dimension, also know as time. Time today has
a very different meaning than it did years ago. Now we have uniformed
time that is based on cesium atoms at absolute zero, but in the past
there was trouble with the way time had been understood. Until the
development of sundials the basic unit of time was the day. Then came
sundials, Romans, and vomitoriums which lead to pendulums, peasants,
and plagues, which lead to gears, exploration, and subjugation which
lead to crystals, tanks, and angry Germans which lead to atoms, atom
bombs, and atom bomb-proof desks. So people used to have a very fluid
concept of time, of course they had to television to watch and no class
to get to on time. Of course there are always the natives of the
Americas, well they got here first, who for some reason have always
been seem as a very spiritual people, because only living with the lack
of agriculture can give piety. If you want a good story about time read
Longitude,
which is the
story of John Harrison, a man who's brilliance is denies for the most
part in history, but he was among other things a brilliant engineer,
businessman, scientist, and politician. He made clocks that could
survive months at sea on a rocking boat and only be off by a few
seconds. This is an incredibly important thing for navigating at sea.
But now his invention is obsolete, because now we use satellites with
very accurate clocks to determine our position on the earth. But on to
how stupid the state of Indiana is.Indianans are one of the few Americans (if you can call them that) that don't celebrate daylight savings time - the others are Arizona and Hawaii. Daylight savings time is now the inventions of farmers who for some reason couldn't think to wake up later in the winter months. Daylight savings time is a conspiracy to make people waste less power by forcing them to use it at off-peak hours from heating. It saves our economy hundreds of billions of dollars a year, and lowers everybody's heating bill. Indiana is only now going on daylight savings time starting this weekend. We have gotten a few campus-wide emails warning us about it. Indiana has four time zones(eastern and central, with and without DST), or at least did, we are on full Eastern time now. It is a strange idea to change time to trick people into going to bed earlier, and I am sure in retrospect can be seen as foolish, but it does what it needs to. Recently they (United States Congress) has decided to extend DST to save more on energy. Airlines and countless other groups are complaining that it will offset everything in a strange manner. The best thing about it is that people in Indiana are losing an hour that they never had in the first place, so the joke is on them.
We all have Albert Einstein to thank for time being a dimension. Before relativity time was a separate entity. But then Einstein found that objects in motion had not only more mass, but experience time in a different way. This came about from the discover that magnetism and electricity are the same thing, only with different frames of reference. Taylor series have a purpose, it has to do with relativity and his famous equation, I will not get into it here, just know that HL 2 has a practical application. But the important thing to understand is that scientists always believe that this is the last revision of their theories. It follows the same logic as: everyone before me has died, but I am sure that will not happen to me.
Concepts of time change in the mind. Einstein wrote as an abstract to one of his papers: "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." Back to the topic of IB, a TOK class can seem like an eternity, while an IB test can seem like reading the bible. Of course the bible will not get you credit for calculus or history. I realize now that I am rather opinionated, and I will write about IB, tomorrow, because I am also tired. IB is masochism for the mind. By the way, I didn't have to look-up any facts on this page, this is all in my mind: it is my gift, it is my curse.
Baby
talk leads to speech disorders. It is also very annoying and
condescending to the baby, whom you presume is as idiotic as you.
Children learn to talk by listening to adults talk. By speaking in an
accent that makes you sound mentally handicapped it forces the child to
learn two dialects (two assuming that there is somebody around with
common sense). Not to mention the child will not think too highly of
you, seeing you at least on a subconscious level as different from
everybody else in the way you talk. Talk to children like they are
adults because they will be one someday. I understand that you may not
be one of these people, but it helps drive the point home. So do what
people who are uncomfortable around babies have been doing for years:
talking like you graduated sixth grade. As it turns out these people
were undoing the psychological damage you did to the children you came
in contact with: you are a burden to society, stop confusing children.
Children have enough trouble without you complicating their lives. This
lead to my other question about children, why do they have their own
television? This leads back to language so hold on.Why do children watch their own television? Another question is why there are different levels of it too. I think children need to start off watching Curb your Enthusiasm, Arrested Development, the West Wing, and Cheers. Each generation should be building off the previous generations, not starting from ground zero again. This may be a little overboard, but at least give them some decent plot and character development. Perhaps people will finally stop watching movies that suck. Perhaps children get addicted to low grade entertainment by watching one-dimensional stereotypical characters. Perhaps if children learned early about the depth of characters they would be less likely to stereotypes and maybe the race problems of this country could be lessened a bit. We could develop a population that can think for itself. Maybe it is all a just a pacification device, meant to be predictable. Social and economic stabilities feed off each other like electricity and magnetism, so maybe it is a big conspiracy, no, it is not. The only other important thing about language is the words that make it.
I am learning a very technical way of communicating and it is important not to lose sight of the importance of the being able to communicate ideas. I am really talking about profanity. Now there are many situations where profane language is called for. I find profanity offensive when it is used to be lazy about communicating. When fuck is used as a comma it loses its meaning and weakens the argument being made. Now when you are trying to communicate that you just slammed your finger in the car door, have at it. I find fuck to be ultimate in lazy words and can be used to replace almost any word. It became common after WWII, when millions of young adult males were cast in the mix together, uniting the country on a personal level that was not allowed for on the censored radio or in the newspapers of the time. I also feel that if what you says gets the message across I really don’t care what you say. Meaningless profanity becomes garbage that bogs down communication, like the majority of our DNA that is junk DNA that is there as a byproduct of evolution, but people can think, and DNA is the instructions for building protein.
One encouraging thought to finish with, when you consider the long history of life, we are the winners, of all the possible permutations, and we came out on top with every single ancestor being a winner in the biological sense. Also, statistically you are most likely an evolutionary dead end, and in a few millennia your genes will evaporate from the gene pool, go.
I
do not think I am a smart person. Some times I may put on a
front
of elitism and narcissism. But at heart I do not think that I am
smarter than the average person. Let me first say I have to be more
specific about the words I am using, because I think better than anyone
I have met, yet. I have just been thinking for a long time and I have
just become adept at it from repetition. I am trying to keep with my
recent manifesto and still maintain some fluidity to the content. So
instead of me rambling on about my housing for next year, which I will
probably wander to by the end, which is a good story, but first, here
is my take on wealth and happiness.Based on statistics of past years, the rate of inflation, and other interesting things, my class as Rose could be the first to have an average starting salary over 60,000.00 dollars a year. Right now we are at 52,200. I want to start out by making it clear that this is low on my scale of important factors. During school I remember being told - usually in history class for some reason - that studies had been done that showed that people with more money were less happy. I always thought it was something rich people commissioned to make poor people feel better. But nobody ever died thinking they spent more time at the office. But then again, most people probably die thinking “I hope this doesn’t explode”, “this tastes funny”, or “what is the worst that can happen watching the Carrot Top movie.” But in reality I have no desire to have a house on a hill, although being close to a lake would be nice. I think that the American dream failed me in a way. I also think that too many people are too busy trying to attain the American dream without ever bothering to ask if they should. People should question motives more like Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park. I think more on the lines that wealth is more of a tool than a goal. I would go with the Jamie Foxx philosophy of living how you grew up, but it seems too simple and too potentially correct. So I will just make a plan, and stick to it. Just do a few decades of engineering and then retire to being a teacher. I am also planning to go down the track of trying to be in management to some extent. If we live in an oppressed society why not be the oppressors. It is a horrible thing to say, but I would rather have me in charge of things, for I am the only one I can trust. So now that I have that down one more thing. I don’t like people who blindly hate the rich. Most people are striving for the American dream, so don’t be angry when someone makes it. I understand and agree with not liking people not having to do any work to become rich, but there are a few that have actually worked hard to earn what they have. Sour grapes are good, I like sour food, especially blue raspberries.
For those of you who know what I am going to tell you, sorry for the meaninglessness. So as you may know I came very close but never actually joined the Delta Sigma Phi fraternal organization, I don’t have any problem with them, and most of my friends are Delta Sigs. I also have the problem that I was in a way left holding the check when it came to housing next year. For a while I had assumed that I would live in the house, but then I did the whole not joining thing. So then I was stuck with the potential of living in Percopo Hall with all the super-tools of Rose. So I was trying everything, then I found out that one of the satilite houses of Delta Sig is short on people, a house that is the opposite end of the spectrum from me, I call them the old regulars of Delta Sig, but I may end up there, I guess I should have met a few people from Red Light, oh I know one, he was a Delta Sig, but he left over a thing, hmm. I don’t want to live on campus. I allowed myself to write this because of the irony most can’t appreciate. I walk around, half with a blank expression of defeat, and half with a smirk because I have found something funny: a notion that I sense the tragic irony that is life. By the way, I decided on my anthem, link to the thing I was just talking about.
Today
is a special occasion, for this is the meaning of
life.
I have decided like
a Swiss watch to rework my philosophy. I
have at least realized that I am doing this, and have been for a long
while
now. Since I don’t have a structured formal religious
training to tell me what
to think (because I disobey the Man’s rules, what a rebel who
forgot his cause)
I have to come up with my own guiding principles. I would spell them
all out
clearly but they not those kind of things, anyways, I
wouldn’t tell you anyways
(read on to find out why this isn’t a mean spirited thing to
say). You get your
morals by the time you are about twelve. After that unless you go
though hell
and back you are stuck being essentially the same basic person for the
rest of
your life. I thought that formative years were just some meaningless
term that
psychologist made up, but after talking with people I hadn’t
seen in years I
realized that at the core of them they were still the same person.
Another
thing is how things that interested me in youth have now come back to
interest
me. By this I mean that I have found yet another thing I could have
done with
by life by didn’t, well haven’t yet. Before I start
going off on what I just
wrote (I refuse to go back and correct non-grammatical errors) I will
talk
about writing, writing film scripts, not plays for I am more familiar
with the
former, I am going to need a new paragraph for this.
Swedish
botanist Carolus Linnaeus invented a way of
classifying all living things. Yes this will get to screenwriting, I
just want
to use the word nomenclature. His design was life a giant tree from
which all
things can be traced back to the common ancestor, whom I will name
Lenny,
because something good must come from that name, and all living things
had to
descend from Lenny because that is how things worked in
Linnaeus’s day for
animals of different species cannot interbred. But that only applies to
multicultural
organisms for we are great and complex and all-knowing. Bacteria can in
a way
steal RNA from each other. They don’t use DNA because despite
all that we build
it up, DNA is slow, pointlessly redundant, and evolutionarily weaker
than RNA
for it does not have to deal with translating. Not having to translate
DNA to
RNA is a key to the speed needed for the single-celled stuff to live,
so for
them ease of translating their RNA, something simple to us, is really
their key
to existence. But DNA lets our cavalcade of cells be in
synchronization. So
instead of a family tree we have an inbred tangle of roots, inbred not
only
within species but also between organisms that are very distant cousins
of
different species. For RNA can pick up genetic material it finds
floating
around, it is how insulin is produced, just give some bacteria some
human
insulin gene and it just gets filed away in their instructions.
Linnaeus was a
cool guy is some respects and jokingly included himself in his
nomenclature
(YES, I used the word). Well, I have been writing the script for a
film, mostly
just working out the story, whenever I write a cleaver scene I end up
changing
the plot to not include it so I have been trying to work out the kinks
in the
story. Then I found that I had written myself into the story. It is
self-indulgent. It’s narcissistic. It’s
solipsistic. It’s pathetic. It’s also plagiarism
when I just stole a line of parallel structure from Adaptation, a film
that has
nothing at all to do with genetics.
After
you are done pausing trying to figure out if I planned
that last paragraph to be so brilliant or if by pure chance I pulled it
off
just remember that perhaps the idea of me as a writer is not completely
out of
the question. Just remember that most things are not purely driven by
one
thing, and maybe a middle-ground is the correct place to lie.
My
format for this journal is changing. This is not some
trivial change like the background color or way the date is written (I
will
keep writing it “wrong”). I am no longer going to
go over all the minutia of
what I did that day: no test scores, no personal wars, no obstacles to
climb,
and certainly no rhyme. Now that rhyme time is over, I want to reformat
what I
decide to tell the world. Well of course I will have to sensor what I
write.
But other than that I will only do the important stuff from now on and
we will
finally be able to get over all the b*** s*** that seems to get us
bogged down.
I am only going to write about important philosophical topics and
stories that
can be used as case examples. Of course case examples have been shown
historically to be flimsy at best. Freud used them, the inventor of the
frauding slip. But if we get enough of them together we can establish a
kind of
framework, like in math, as long as you have at least as many equations
as
variables you can solve the problem: assuming that there is a solution.
Mathematics
is a strange field and is important to philosophy because it is a field
where
thing can be right and wrong. Understanding math in a way is like
understanding
philosophy in a very abstract way, especially when it comes to algebra.
Math is
like a very primitive example of a philosophy and thus can be used to
give a
wider understanding of philosophy as a whole. Mathematics is also a
something
without a language is a sense, and that allows for a perfectly fluid
understanding of equating two things. If you don’t know
algebra by the time you
get to college there is not much hope for you. I was reading Maddox and
he
commented about a girl in his class not knowing algebra. I guess I
never had
much trouble with it. I have a very good conceptual knowledge of what
math is.
I understand L'Hôpital's rule on a very deep level. Of course
my courses in
Mathematics are rather difficult, but I have been doing well lately.
Looking
back what I have just written I understand something strange and ironic
about
what I have just written, I mean look at it. I talked about censorship
and then
in the next sentence I censored myself. I guess sometimes we are just
oblivious
to what we are really saying, and that our standards decay over time,
or at
least go through evolution. So a lot of philosophy can be learned by
studying
what others have said. As we stand on the shoulders of giants we are
allowed to
expand our understanding of the world. The key to understanding what
other have
said is to take their experiences, and simplify them down, then solve
for the
unknowns.
Since
in a way I want someone to understand what is being
said – said in more than one way – I have decided
to give the definition of one
of the words I used that had a great deal of verbosity (a real word in
itself).
The word solipsistic come from solipsism, solipsism is the idea that
the only
things that can be trust are those that come from the self and
one’s own direct
experiences. I don’t go overboard on this philosophy, for
example, this does
not allow for the idea of death, since it is never personally
experienced. But
I believe that philosophy needs to be attacked this way, through the
self. This
is at least true for doubters and those awesome rebels like me who
don’t
believe what we are told. I try not to comment on what I think is a
person’s
own personal philosophy is since it can poison the well. It is a very
pessimistic theory, or at least an unfriendly theory, and is really
only for
people looking for reasons to life’s questions and not
meanings. But I think that
any theories about the meaning of life should be pessimistic, after all
nobody
has figured it out yet, and what kind of world would make the meaning
of life
such a difficult thing to figure out, surely it is cold, dark, and
cruel world.
Language is a major barrier to communicating any significant thoughts
on this.
So I think I will just leave you to figure it out on your own, my
fingers are
tired, and I guess if I didn’t go off on so many tangents I
could help
more. But those
tangents were fun and
inspiring, even if they distracted from the main issue. Perhaps next
time we
will not get so bogged down. So thank you for reading this and learning
the
meaning of life.
I
will not go into all of my revelations, but just know that I had a few.
One of them is that I rock, and that I plan to steal the style of the
first of the three mentioned websites below, as well as ripping off the
third link's page style. Just watch out, for the snakes are on the
plane. One thing I learned is that conflict and paradoxes can arise out
of nowhere. I discovered this when I left my room to both use the
bathroom and fill up my cup with water, I found that these thing
although seemingly contradictory still has meaning. It seems like a
flimsy reason to find paradoxes reasonable, but I had also just
finished watching Primer
and Crimes and
Misdemeanors.I had two tests on Friday, I think I did well. I have gone through a few revelations over the past few days, not that anything will come of it, at least for a while. But I will start out by putting up three links:
The first link is to a site about a real smart ass: http://maddox.xmission.com/ ,just copy and paste you lazy person you. I have found his humor inspiring. I find it difficult to balance this between soap box to three and person log, I will try to go towards soap box. Then there is a movie trailer for a movie that is amazing, the film is called Snakes On A Plane (S. O. A. P.) http://www.tagworld.com/snakesonaplane , it is just about the best Samuel L. Jackson film ever, I can't believe it is real. Then there is my google page, which is at best a small fraction of the awesomeness of this site: http://vanbarnes.googlepages.com/home , it has nothing that this page doesn't, although I might steal the page style.
I am sorry I didn't have time to update this until now, but I had to study for tests of Thursday night. I did very well, and that is after the feeling of failure hung over me all day. I didn't do so well on my last statics test, I got a B, and that kind of took me down a notch. But my knowledge of math and physics on a conceptual level pulled me through.
Rose-Hulman
(in a rehearsed mumble) is the number one undergraduate school for
engineering... but that is not the best thing now. We have the person
with the 14th best NCAA basketball tournament bracket on Facebook, at
least at the current moment. I have about a third the point he has, but
I don't give a damn. I really think that it is one of the least
important things to follow. I go to a division II school, we barely
have refs., what do I care about how well schools I didn't go to are
doing.Wednesday is often a nothing day. I think my Thursday will be better. I did have one good thing to happen of Wednesday. I was doing several things at once: listening to Jack Johnson, remastering some Led Zeppelin, making a CD of classic songs with a dance beat for my roommate, doing statics in front of me, talking to someone on the side about a physics problem, and trying to figure out a recent personal engineering problem of mine. I will start with the personal engineering problem, which is not one of my personal problems. I have a friend in Grinnell who wants to have something that will play ten seconds of music when somebody rings the doorbell. I was going to do it with simple capacitors and resistors, strictly high school physics. Then I realized I didn't want something that could blow up and have to deal with AC/DC conversion. So I was lost. Then after telling Scott my problem he told me he had just made a similar circuit for class. I got the schematics, I somewhat understood them, then I realized he had designed it for a small current and a few volts, I need it to take an amp or two coming at 120V AC. So I could not use transistors, I had to use a relay. To just buy a relay like this could run twenty bucks. So as I sat in my chair, doing the work of ten men, or at least two small boys, I figured it out. I can use the relay from an old digital outlet timer that the display broke on. So I took it apart as the rest of my work went on. I have all I need but to go put together the control circuit. So that little project is under way. I will move on, hopefully.
I found that some music sounds good at 1.4 times speed, pitch adjusted of course. I also found that if you do that and kick up the bass it can turn songs like "all of my love" into songs with a great dance beat. I was bored while being more busy than I have been in a week. But it sounds nice sometimes to listen to coldplay with a rapid pulsating beat. Also, the band Rush is Led Zeppelin only speed up and not as good. I have a tentative list of the best films of all time, in other words, my favorites...
1) the Big Lebowski 2) the Royal Tenenbaums 3) Adaptation 4) Primer 5) Crimes and Misdemeanors
6) Broadway Danny Rose 7) American Beauty 8) Groundhog Day 9) The first Lord of the Rings 10) Meet Joe Black
...there are: two Woody Allen films, two Bill Murray roles, 6 Oscars, and 6 golden globes, most of the awards were from American Beauty. Other than that, the only real thing all these films have in common is their inability to be described in a sentence. When the briefest plot summary goes to a Lord of the Rings film something must be happening. I guess I just like the involved plot. Another thing is that most of these films end in tragedy, but that is just because they are more like real life. Most of them end with an unresolved plot line. Most of my favorite films are by either Woody Allen, the Coen brothers, Charlie Kaufman, and Wes Anderson.
Amazon's best selling stand-up now is Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill, and number three is his special Circle. I have always felt that I was one of the few people who knew about him, but I guess a few others are familiar. He is a good comedian, he is smart, and he does comedy in several languages - a talent that has eluded me (speaking other languages). Between me and my Roommate we have four of his specials. Neither of us have his latest one, it is supposed to be sub par. So, cake or death?
Which to you prefer, NEE-ther or NI-ther? By answering this question you answer that you do not prefer either of these pronunciations. I find it funny to myself to ask people this from time to time. It is subtly funny, like the Life Aquatic, which I very closely considered to replace Meet Joe Black on my top ten.
Most
people dream of a white Christmas, not for the first day of spring. I
opened my coat as I walked to class and took off my hood. I felt in a
way that winter had been robbed from me. Even though winter is a
usually seen as an annoyance, I find it to be rather enjoyable, at
least in small doses. I always have, and always will, prefer it to be
too cold to too hot. These are relative terms, but ever since the Taste
of Minnesota celebration a few years ago, the one where Jason lost his
Magic cards, I have felt that it was better to be too cold to too hot.
I have maintained this over the years, at least five when I think about
it. A person can always put on more layers, but there are only so many
layers that can be taken off. This does not mean I don't like the
summer, but I just feel that this is the way I lean.I realized that I haven't gone to the zoo in years. The last time I went was for Spanish class a few years ago, but I don't even remember if that is for middle school or high school. It is a place that not many people my age go. It is a thing to take little kids to, to teach them about the various animals of the world, and then we never go back for a few decades, only reading about them, never going back to investigate them. I think this is symbolic or metaphorical or ironical or something of the learning process, to use an IB phrase, we can't find the forest when there are all these trees around. At a certain point we no longer learn things conceptually, but just accept what we have learned and discover things we don't have a realistic interpretation of. At least in engineering this come up in all people at a certain point. I can rationalize a photon as the directional self-induction of electric and magnetic waves that feed off each other, but my day will come. I think it was Tuesday night. I was looking at some schematics for a circuit, and I realized that most of the components I just took for granted. Sure there are the relays, resistors, and capacitors that make sense, but what a function generator does, or how it does it escapes me. I guess it is at least good I am interested in that, or it could be a bad thing since that is more of a electrical engineering topic. But I should also stop getting into technical conversations with Scott, who has a few years of electrical circuit knowledge on me. But back to the original topic of going to the zoo, it is strange that people don't go back. People only after many years may go back with their own children. I don't know if people lose their interest by being exposed to too much too early. People don't go to the zoo enough. I have talked to several people lately about how scary those owls at the Minnesota Zoo are, I can't imagine how many children must have received an irrational fear of owls from that dark hallway. Another thing, children today have too many happy movies. I grew up with scary children's movies. Today all kids stuff is safety sealed and double-padded, I used to watch jagged shards of glass. Speaking of sharp breaks, I digress to my original topic that interrupted my main topic: electromagnetism. I had the best lecture I have had here so far of Friday, I don't know if I have already mentioned it, but I don't have time to read all of this. It was given by my physics prof whom I had lost some faith in in the last week, but he really did a good job explaining the connection between electricity and magnetism. It made me feel my tuition was half justified. I like my profs like term, they all seem to be technically skilled and motivated to teach, unlike several of my professors last quarter. So things are looking up. One last thing to mention, so that my positive thoughts get sandwiched between some nattering nabobs of negativism, a phase of Spiro Agnew. I overheard someone say something like this, and I tweaked it to make it sound a slight bit better, actually the dude said it better, I just can't remember the cleaver wording: I am not pessimistic, I am an optimist, it is just the world is such a horrible place that I think my views seem to be positive in comparison.
On
this first day of spring it is snowing in Terre Haute, Indiana. I can't
wait to see how it is mishandled. I am almost thankful to see my old
friend/enemy (frienemy) on this morning.I have a bit of time, so I want to talk about the season of spring and some other interesting things on the way. Spring and fall are well named seasons. In fall the leaves fall, things die, and hibernate. In spring seeds spring open and the great circle of life is started again. Spring is when all the energy gathered over the summer, hidden in the fall, and stored in the winter is finally allowed to spring forth and start anew. I want to start getting off topic by saying that I only have the image to the left because I have no external internet now, so all I had was some stock photos of people, I think I use it as my facebook photo to be pretentious. That and my crazy sister of mine took it over last break and it is the only recent photo of myself. But back to interesting things, the season of spring. I have found that with the absence of a real liberal arts curriculum I have been replacing it myself. I found myself reading Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, a thing most unlike me. For one thing, I like T.S. Elliot better of the two, having studied them together in high school. I find literary allusions interesting. I also am not overwhelmed by them, for when you think about it, people make hundreds of allusions a day, or at least I do. That lead me to think of my decision to go to Rose last year. Well at least I didn't end up at the U of M. I have felt fated since birth to go there. I also find it strange to think that I go to private school, and in a way in makes me feel dirty to think I have strayed away from public education. I have considered almost every possible career path in my life. I don't like using the term career path. But I have been interested in: engineering, teaching, mathematics, computer science, agriculture, the military, politics, writing, acting, and orthodontics. I think that some people may be surprised by the acting and writing, but I have tried both, neither one is very difficult, and I think if I would have applied myself more I could have made something about myself. But I just think back to sitting in 8th grade filling out a career aptituted test. I could see through the test so I filled it out perfectly balanced. I guess that it fitting in a way. I never wanted to go into athletics. It is not the physical labour, remember, agriculture is on there, and I have considered many aspects of that. I know I don't want to be a doctor, a medical one at least.
Most doctors are asses. I have had some experience with them in my life and I understand that being in contact with pediatricians gives me a bad sample. Even though I have watched ER since I can remember I know the Dr. Greens are few. I also have a few nurses in the family, like my grandmother, two aunts, and my mother. So I get the realistic view. I know there are good ones, but most are not. Prison doctor always seemed to me to be the bottom of the barrel for doctors. Especially now that they don't get to experiment on them. So I have ruled out medical doctor, and I don't think I want enough education to become a doctor of engineering. That and I can make plenty of money coming out of Rose after four years. I usually give doctors the benefit of the doubt, but statistics don't lie to me, and I don't let them out of my sight.
Back to spring. I watched Adaptation on Sunday night. I like that film. It has moved into my top ten. I realize that like Charlie Kaufman, I believe that when I film ends in tragedy it is more realistic. I guess that means I am a glass is half empty person. But that is all a stupid notion anyways. I am optimistic often enough considering how tragically horrible this world is. I am joking, but it is a good film.
This paragraph has little to nothing to do with spring. I want to talk about an interesting topic in biology, genetics and game theory specifically. Most of this stuff comes out of the Selfish Gene, but it has some insight in it. Whenever their is mutually beneficially behaviour, there should always evolve those who take advantage and cheat the system. The book talks about birds grooming each other, but I am thinking in a more evolutionary important matter, rape. Rape is the circumvention of the normal reproductive cycle. It is such a taboo because it is in the highest form of cheating. We all descend from rapists and their victims. Which is an interesting intermingling of genes to be passed down, those of the impulse to act and the predisposition to be acted upon. I am not saying all rape victims are targeted by some victim gene, but there must be some genetic influence, if only reflected by the impulses of the perpetrator. I started thinking about this after seeing a pamphlet on a table in the union on the way back from lunch. I just have to think about if rape is done for reproductive or psychological reasons. With the exception of Humans and Dolphins, no other creature has a psychological reason to rape, only instinctive reproductively based reasons. So how did it evolved. This is a dumb TOK like question that has no real reason. It is like which came first, the chicken or the egg.
It would be a great question to pose to a biology class about genetics, which came first, the chicken or the egg. If you know about genetics you know that you have the same DNA all your life. So going from egg to chicken the genetic material that defines the species is kept the same. From chicken to egg the material changes, so that is which came first, the egg. Actually chickens evolved from a similar species that slowly lost the ability to reproduce with the original species and thus split off, either that or it evolved away from another species that it share a common ancestor with. Either way, the egg almost had to come first unless some very unlikely things happened to make winning the lottery seem like a routine thing.
I should
have mentioned this on Friday. I had the most wonderful lecture in
physics class on Friday. I don't full know why, but it was very
interesting and life affirming to hear about electromagnetic waves. It
reminds me of how amazing photons are. Photons are the physical quanta
of electromagnetism, the fundamental unit. If you shine a laser through
a slit the wave like nature of the photons will cause interference
patterns like those of water waves. But if you send photons through one
at a time they still interfere, but with what. What actually is
happening is the vague cloud like nature of photons actually lets
individual photons interact with themselves. So now that physics is
over for the day. I am liking my schooling now, I feel like I am not
only learning something but also enjoying it. I played disc golf twice
since setting my record. I don't know why, but I don't feel as much
pressure to get a better score. Part of that is me knowing what is
involved, part is that is Nathan's record for highland, and part of it
is Jimmy's best is two points more and I don't feel like I have to
worry about him doing much better than me. Also I was at my upper limit
of performance.In the more interesting world. Google won the war against fascism. A federal judge has ruled that google does not have to give over nearly as much information from its searches as the government thought it had the right to. I like it when freedom wins, albeit the freedom of child pornographers. Even though I find them to be the lowest forms of life, a mere ladder rung above rapists. I think that freedom is freedom for everyone, yeah it sucks some times, but I prefer it to security. I will not go back to freedom being free. I want to talk about one of my favorite topics, no, not myself, the city of Minneapolis. It has been warm here lately, too warm. Of course it is too cold in Minneapolis, the way it should be. They have encountered a bit of snow lately, and although I brag about getting up to 70 last weekend, I still envy my high school classmates in a way. But that is more an issue of spring break.
Spring break is coming up in a few weeks. I think I am going down with my Roommate to Florida. Every other college student in the country already had their's or is having their's now. But Rose must be different, so we get two equally sized breaks equally distant from what most people have as spring break. I don't know why Rose does this, but I find myself often just say that is such a Rose thing to do. I love the school to death, but it does some strange things. We finally do have a new president. I never went to any of the presentations and speeches for new presidents. I guess those things at least gave the students a use of Hatfield Hall, the theater of Rose, a nice new building, the statue out front cost two millions dollars alone, and is used a few days a year. I will be getting money for my mp3 player. I sold it to free up some cash, and I never used it much anyways. It was on ebay for a week, and not a bid was placed on it. Then one morning I wake up, check it, and it has been bought for the buy now price of 260 dollars. So that will come in handy. I like how the emergency credit card my parents gave to me is a University of Minnesota Alumni card. I guess I am technically enrolled there. I am not sure on that. I think something went wrong during application season, they just keep sending me letters that my matriculation is on hold until I complete my financial aid application. I am just allowing for resting dogs to remain resting. That is always a good idea. It is going to be difficult to find a job for the summer. I either have to lie about where I go to school or tell them I will only be able to work over the summer. I think my local government experience is good. I believe that can get some job. I just don't want any responsibility in my job, I don't even want to handle money. I would like to be a stock boy at a grocery store or a Target. I could do manual labour. I am in good shape now. I should start eating healthier. I eat salads and pastas at lunch, but dinner is usually meal-exchanged fast food. I guess that is only if I work out. I have not been to the ARA for dinner in a while. I need to figure out housing for next year. On top of all that the family farm is being sold, which seems like such a stereotypical problem. I should watch Adaptation again, it has a stream of conscious thing in it like this...
Just
because it is Patrick's day, does not mean that I wear green. I am not
five years old, I do not pinch people who don't wear green. I wore the
most red shirt I had. I do it as act of protest, for a worthy cause.
The following are two quotes from the Woody Allen film Crimes and
Misdemeanors. I now believe this is my favorite Woody Allen
film,
if only because I don't have a strong grasp about what it is about. "It
is a strange paradox. When we fall in love, we are seeking to refind
all or some of the people to whom we were attached as children. On the
other hand, we ask our beloved to correct all of the wrongs that these
early parents or siblings inflicted on us. It contains in it the
contradiction… and attempt to return to the past…
and the
attempt to undo the past. We need to remember that when we are born, we
need a good deal of love to persuade us to stay in life." "We
are
the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so
unfairly… human happiness does not seem to have been
included in
the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love that
gives meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings
seem to have the ability to keep trying, and even to find joy from
simple things like their family, their work and from the hope that
future generations might understand more."
Where
do I begin. Well, today I set a new course record of twelve under par.
I almost didn't keep track of score. I almost lost faith, until I
eagled the 6th hole by driving to within a foot of the basket. But that
is not what I will remember about today. On the 17th hole, as we made
our approach shots, a small yellow sedan drove by. They shouted
obscenities about our group and disc golf. Among other smart-ass
replies, I shouted out "you guys are adorable." After that, they
stopped their car. The guy in the passenger seat got out. He came over
to us, and four other guys poured out of the back seat, all about our
age. They stood by the car and he came up to Brandon. After a bit of
provocation the gentleman pushed Brandon. Brandon stood his ground.
That was what sent the adrenaline through my veins. My muscles became
taught and time seemed to slow down. I realized that I was within my
rights to defend myself and was in probably the best shape of my life
to do so, but retrained myself. I tried to intervene and broker some
sort of peace. We came to the brink of war, and calmer heads prevailed.
He finally backed of when the Woman who had been driving the car
repeatedly asked him to back off. During all of this we were giggling
at this hautian (resident of Terre Haute, not capitalized) trying to
act tough. We stood our ground. It was difficult to restrain from
outright laughing and hurling more smart-ass comments. Here are a few:
"way to be whipped", "of course the car is yellow", "you suck", etc...
These are rather low brow, but so were they. On the way back we talked
about our moral victory and realized how they must have felt they won a
moral victory. We also realized that they could not think abstractly
about how we too felt we had won a moral victory, or think abstractly
about us knowing or not knowing that we could think abstractly, ad
nauseum... So we found it rather funny, Brandon was the hero of the
day, we watched some Curb
and talked about how living well really was decent revenge in our
situation instead of lies to to restrain people, since our internships
are paid better. But that was fun. It was interesting that a situation
like that could escalate so quickly. It did make me feel superior to
them, taking the high road. Not to say that had he thrown a punch I
would have been right in there. I don't even know what they were doing
just driving around the park near the disc golf course in the first
place. But I think that they were on Meth or something. We are thinking
of getting machetes for the next time we play, just so the situation
can escalate faster. At least I got a -12! I have a lab tomorrow, and I
have to go to sleep to be ready to bounce lasers off mirrors to detect
the force created by magnetic fields. 
One
strange thought. There are only four forces in nature: gravity,
electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear. Anybody who says
differently is a liar, that is as good as it gets. To give you an idea
of the strength of these fields looks at these examples. When you pick
up a paper clip with a magnet, the force created by that little magnet
is overpowering the gravitation force of every atom on earth. The weak
nuclear force is responsible for the reaction of atomic bombs, not
imagine what the strong nuclear forces does. All interactions you have
with objects comes from the electrons orbiting the atoms in you
repelling the electrons of the object. Gravity is pulling you toward
the earth and the repulsive force between a few electrons keeps you
from falling to the center of the Earth. So just think about that next
time you want to be inspired/confused. e raised to the
power of Pi
times i
equaling negative one shows there is some logic to the world, it
equaling negative one shows me there is no god.
Larry
David seems to make a lot of sense. I watched some of the fourth season
of Curb Your Enthusiasm
on Wednesday. I agree with Larry David's urinating siting down, I have
tried it before, and I have to say it was nice. Of course urinals are
great, and fast, but I have to say it is nice, I usually don't out of
convenience. Larry David was also tricked by a simple magic trick. That
reminds me of one of the few failures of logic in my life, I was at Max
Hoiland's house. His cousin was showing me a trick with cards, I
thought for a while it was actually magic, it took us far too long to
figure it out, we did finally get it right. Speaking of my failures,
today I played disc golf, horribly. I was trying different way to
drive, and it did not work. I did get to work out tonight, we are
getting back into it, and some speed two-ers are joining in nowadays. I
heard on NPR - so it has to be true and boring ; ) - that if a person
does something for sixty days it becomes habitually stuck in them. So I
guess we should keep on doing it, since we have been working out since
Jan. 5. Another funny thing happened today. I got a call from Gavin while watching Crash or the Royal Tenenbaums - I have a lot of free time on Wednesdays - and he asked in I was in Minneapolis. My spring break is a month away, but he asked for Nathan's number. I told him I would call him back with the number. So I disconnected and started to look it up on the phone's phonebook. Just before I got to him I realized that I had sold my old pre-paid cell phone to Nathan: I was looking up my own old number. So I exited out, called him. I told him Nathan's number - my old number - was 612-2...I had to call him back. I only had the number for a month. So I looked it up and talked to him for a third time. This brings up the brief period where I had two cell phones. I have been petitioning my family for years to buy cell phones, but they thought of it as a frivolous expense. So I bought a pre-paid cell phone on the 26th of June after being frustrated by not having a phone a few days before. I then went on to use it. Then one day, after biking around, making a good sandwich from a day old bread from Big Mikes (I refuse to call it Milio's, I will be like people who still refer to Marshall Field's as Dayton's) and some toppings form sunnyside. I dropped in on Andre - a thing I rarely do - and received a call from home, my Mother had bough cell phones for the family, out of nowhere. So then we went over to my house. I of course biked. When I got there I had a key debate with my Mother. She had bought cell phones for me, my sister, and herself. I was mad to get a cell phone, having just wasted over a hundred bucks on a now redundant cell phone. I didn't like that only because of the catch-22. If I had not bought my cell phone, my Mother would have never bought family ones later. So then I had to tell people a different number. I sold the phone to Nathan, with a bit of profit, and now live on a plan. That is a good story, that was a nice day, weatherwise.
Today
while in statics my mind started to wander. For some reason relearning
what Bergseid taught me in 11th grade was not as fun the second time
around. My mind wandered onto the topic of the geometric meaning of the
dot product, if you are not an engineer, then don't judge me. Then I
realized the multidimensionality of the electromagnetic force, then
that lead me to understanding the general theory of relativity, which
lead to me understanding the special theory of relativity. I
can
best describe it by using Newton's first law of motion (things in
motion tend to stay in motion...). I just think of it as space just
being another dimension that we are falling through at a constant rate.
Gravity is a force, and thus acts on the "falling" through time, thus
relativity, yada, yada, yada. To think of it in another way, just think
in terms like flatland. If the universe all existed in a plane and was
moving perpendicular to the plane, all forces would be confined to
motion parallel to the plane. Thus as this moves, time, in a way, moves
in only three dimensions. There is some stuff I don't have figured out
in my mind. But I also much about other stuff, but I guess I still have
a few decades to figure it out, hopefully. So that is my story of
enlightenment. I was angry in the class because there was a problem we
had to solve before we could leave, and I wanted to deal with my recent
revelation.At the same time I was sitting in statics class unlocking the secrets of the universe, a storm was brewing. I went to use the bathroom after statics and I had my underwear on backwards, I tried to play it off as if nothing was wrong, so I made a quick run to the adjacent stall, fixed both problems I was dealing with at that moment, waited for everyone who was in the bathroom to leave who was in there when I first entered the stall, and then moved on to Differential Equations I. I then learned about other interesting things. After that I was done with my day, I went to Walmart with some people from Speed 2, the floor above me. Then I came back, watched paint dry, then worked out, ate a late dinner, got back around nine, watched some Dave Chappelle stand-up, Daily Show, and then put on some NewsRadio. I don't have class tomorrow, so I get to sleep in.
Morning people are strange to me. They seem to get a few converts as people age, but there are some true die hards, die hards like me. I can see some good in the morning, but the night time, is the right time. I will admit that some of my best memories are of the sunrise, but that is from staying up until the sun rises, not waking up early. Waking up early reminds me of P.R.I.M.E. and Middle School. That may be why I hated middle school, not hated, but I liked it less than elementary and high school, for hate is a relative term in this sense. I don't like using the word hate, but it is convenient in many situations. Morning people to me are defined by the type of person, morning people are usually uptight, where as people like me - ladies and gentlemen of the evening - are usually more relaxed. At Rose there seems to be a difference between the people that wake up early and late relative to the start of their first class. I get up ten minutes before the start of my first class, and it takes five minutes to get to class.
Rocket scientist is a strange term. There is no major in rocket science. Rocket science is really not a very complicated issue, it takes a lot of time and expense, but the concepts never get too complicated. I just know that rocket science is really a subset of mechanical engineering. This is not just me being an ME, this is what we do, what, like a civil is going to do it? Civil Engineers are Mechanical light, their classes are almost identical to mine except they do less work and learn less. I just think that rocket scientists are not all that special, I don't know what I have against them. I don't like organized professional sports, I find the entire idea absurd. I find that government paying for stadiums is idiotic, and a breach of the separation between private and public interests. If we pay for the stadiums we should then own the teams, the leagues, and the rights therein. Subsidizing billionaires to pay millionaires who charge us to watch is in the words of the pope: "a most unkosher happenstance." We "pay" to watch in not only cable bills, but also in viewing the advertising, and the burden in places on society. I don't the random rules of baseball, think about it, I can understand where football and soccer evolved from, but baseball is a crazy sport. So now that I have offended avid sports fans everywhere, one last thing. Nascar is the stupidest "sport" of all, if you can even call it a sport. It is taking left turns, I understand why it is so popular in the South. This is because most people east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixon line are idiots, I would argue otherwise but I really have no evidence supporting the discover of intelligent life in the remnant what was almost our nations biggest mistake: opposing the south secession. But then they would have still had slavery, but the cotton gin would have replaced slaves, but then we would have a genocide on our hands the like of which would have made the Holocaust look like a relatively minor tragedy, and then there would not be peanut butter. If you have not had a peanut butter spoon, then you have not lived, it is a symbolic effort if anything. I think of it as one of the many common life experience we all should share.
Today, I finally went out and got my copy of the third season of NewsRadio. It came out on February 28th, I found out about the release on the 8th, doing my regular amazon check, and it took a week for me to get the season. The quality is much better than the dozen or so tapes I made off of WFTC 29, back when it was a fox affiliate. I think that me doing this may have classified me as a crazy, I am sure some other people have done it too, Mathew types mostly, but I knew it would not last forever in syndication. I almost psychically predicted the majestic show's demise from the landscape of local television, and I could set the VCR to record the broadcast and A&E feed. I tried to cut out the commercials, but often would fail, and just ended up losing the entire episode. Now that that brief piece of history is over, I need to watch my favorite episode of NewsRadio, the heat wave episode, "daydream", season 3, episode 7, the staff all has daydreams from the heat and reveals their true desires.
Engineering
is a very misinterpreted field. Most people, including myself, think of
it as something to go into if you are good at math and science.
Engineering is really more of a design field that is backed up with a
strong technical knowledge. I have found that a lot of people think it
is something else, drawing schematics or something. Right now all I
know how to do is some basic schematicizing and some advanced free-body
diagrams. Statics is my technical engineering class. I learn how if
nothing moves and I know enough I can solve for other stuff, I assume
that eventually we will figure out how to deal with stuff that moves,
but also when you think about it, not much moves. Just think that everything you come into contact with during your life other than the ground and air has been engineered by someone. We eat genetically modified food, if by genetics or simply natural selection. We drink water with fluoride in it, it helps strengthen teeth, almost everywhere fluoride is added to the water. Fluoride is not added to the water of Rochester, MN, they felt it was part of a massive conspiracy, but I think even they eventually came around. The clothes we wear, the cars we drive (well not me, but people in general), and the televisions we watch all have been designed with you in mind. You the consumer, not you the person, get over yourself.
I still don't understand why McDonald's is stuck at 99 billion served. I guess they are too cheap to afford another column. They can't go to trillion, because I am sure they correctly are thinking that most people don't know what a trillion means. But then again, who really has a grasp of what a trillion is? It is also probably difficult to determine how many people have actually been served, and that is going by their method. There are not 99 billion people on the earth, there are at most seven billion. Maybe they stopped doing it so smart-asses like me can write about how stupid it is to say 99 billion served. But I guess it really doesn't matter. But still, it is more a matter of locations not wanting to have to change the signs. Having a total number of financial exchanges would be difficult, but not overwhelming: matters like that are well recorded.
Sometimes it seems that engineering is a boring topic, surely, a new fact. I will stop calling you Shirley. But also I must think of how a decade ago I played SimCity. How was it that people were able to make something that would make an 8-year old interested in urban planning and the intricacies of tax code. Truly great ideas allow for more great ideas. Think of this in terms of the space race, and how mobilized a generation of engineers, and it makes me wonder what the next challenge. It puzzles me, but if I knew the answer it would kind of defeat the purpose. I just think of how is seems like some causes are dying. I compare it to the progressive movement in America during the mid 20th century, full of energy, and occurring at the exact same time. But now what do liberals want? All I can think of is general social/class injustice and gay marriage. When it was large minority groups (oxymoron, like military intelligence, jumbo shrimp, and swiss cheese) people really cared, but not only is that generation taking centrum silver, they are not longer in mainstream society, it is their lazy kids, all psychologically screwed up from LSD and hopped up on goofballs that are left to rule. The weak will inherit the earth, what, did you think they were going to take it by force?
Well,
the first week is over. There are 50 days in a quarter, three quarters
in a year, and I will go to Rose for four years. So I will have 600
days of class, well then there are four days for finals, so that mean I
have 648 days of school, well college, and it is 600-648 days. So, that
is really less than two years, so really I am going to school only
every other day for four years, not to bad. I have yet to include
class-less days, I have no Wednesdays this quarter. So that is ten less
days, so it is 590-638 days. Then there was the day I didn't have math
on a Wednesday last quarter, and that was my only class that day...It feels like I have been back at Rose for weeks. I caught myself think I needed to do laundry and I have only been back a few days. I think it was a cumulative mental effort of everybody being use to coming back and going back to work. People here just seem to be used to it. I have yet to figure out SGA, they tell me if I want to be a senator, they tell me I am a senator, they ask me if I want to be a senator, they never tell me when the meeting is, they never tell me where to meeting is, and I feel rather foolish standing in the middle being pushed around. I do want to get on SGA, I have a few clubs that should be proposed or aided in some way.
It was a good thing that WWII happened, it was the path that ended up with a better world. Imagine if Germany had kept it cool for a few years, developed the atomic bomb, then they could have destroyed London, sacked Russia, and kept the Americas out of the picture. Good thing the Germans got anxious like Nathan did while trying to chase down Gavin. But I am just saying that things could have turned out a lot worse, or maybe Germany would be all of Europe but formed a liberal democracy, and didn't do the Holocaust.
Ooh, I shot a ten under par at Deming Park on Sunday. I was playing doubles alone against Nick and Ramzi. It was close the entire time, but I pulled some amazing stuff on in the end. I only eagled hole six. I played a conservative game and just locked it up. They actually got a -9. I tied Jimmy's record for the course. I didn't even realize I was playing that well until hole 16, and I realized that even if I screwed up I would beat my old record of -7. It was amazing. That is with high humidity. It got up into the 70's today, and with a %100 humidity. It has been raining for a few days, and will in the future. I wore shorts, it was nice, too hot. Inclement, or even ordinary, weather is a key to civilization, for without it most people would never start conversations.
I
had
to wake up early, at 8am. I am not a morning person. I did not get
enough sleep. But first, something that bothered me. On Thursday
morning I was sitting in my intro to design class as it began, staring
at the paper in front of me, trying to wake up. The professor asked if
anyone didn't have a copy of the day's worksheet. The person across
from me raised their hand. It seemed as soon the issue came about the
person sitting behind him - who faced me due to the lab setup - pointed
to me. He said that I had two. The two sheets were perfectly held
together, I had not noticed after looking at them for five minutes that
there were two of them. This lead me to wonder how and why he knew that
I had two.The thing that bothered me on Friday was that in both my physics lab and my physics class, which I take back to back, told me how a Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) monitor works. I already knew how they worked, but I was told in intricate detail both the history of the machine itself and the history my professors had with them. I had two and a half hours taken from my life, time that I will not get back. These professors are both temps, filling in for a professor that should have had her leave anticipated nine months ago. I just don't like the stupid redundancy of it. It also bothers me that we learn what a vector is and how to use them in every class. We really should just take it our first week here and then not deal with it. I deal with vectors on a more common basis than scalars, which if you know the difference between... I think vectors should be taught early. Teach it to children with a board game, just think of possible moves in chess as vectors, and base a game off of that. slope is nothing compared to the gradient.
I put off a lot of homework until the day it was due, and still managed to calmly do it all. I let my diff. eq., physics, and statics homework build up, but I got it all done, a testament to IB. The thing that showed me what IB taught me came when I learned that I received a 6 on my HL history test, I don't know history very well, and I know two historic dates, December 7th, 1941, and April 30th, 1987.
I have found that I have a lot of free time. I played SimCity 4 today. I found a CD with my old region in it. I have found that I still know all my old tricks, although I did forget how to open the cheat menu. I don't play computer games, or video games, very often, or really at all. SimCity was the first game I installed on my laptop. Which in a way is a shame, because these are really nice laptops. I am trying to save money on text books. I broke down and bought my statics book, I am co-using a diff. eq. book with Jimmy, and other than that I can use old books. But the statics book was still 120 dollars, and I might end up having to buy the diff. eq. book, since I will need it next year, and I don't know if I will have a source for one. I came up with a complicated way that I could save 40 dollars by buying the text book I already have online and returning the new online book, and thus gaining both the availability of the bookstore purchase and the low price of the Internet purchase, but it requires a bit of work, and I could be stuck with buying two copies of my statics book. I don't think the cost-benefit works out to buy another book.
I
did my duty as a patriotic American male. I signed up for the selective
service system. I did not burn my draft card. I just want to start out
by saying that I am morally opposed to war and assisting in the waging
of it. I want to get in early on me being classified 1-O. I should at
least get a 1-A-O for not wanting to take part in actual combat,
something I definitely couldn't do. I can always get the 3-A
status. These jokes are a little old. But my number is 87. I will not
get called early at all, at least as far as what I know about the
draft. In the case of the draft being reinstated, my plan is to: have a
relative buy survival supplies, file for 1-O status, appear before a
local draft board, I will flee to the furthest reaches of Minnesota
that still receives cell phone reception, I think it is Two Harbors,
then if my number is called I walk off into the woods, and see people
in a few years. Then I will pledge faith to my new homeland. I think
Canadians would be cool with it. There are only 32.9 million Canadians.
That is nothing compared to the United States population, a population
that is approaching being ten times larger in population than Canada.
Canada took a beach on D-day, they took Juno, all by themselves, only
Omaha was tougher. I just find their population surprisingly small. I
like Canada, they seem to be a little less under our sphere of
influence now then they were before. I think on the surface it looks
like a good idea to merge the US and Canada, but really the US in not
ready for Canada. Canada is more liberal, we don't share all of the
same fundamental law, and Canadians are too nice, they would rob us of
our national identity.
Bee
landed on my head in mathematics class. It is strange to call it
mathematics, not math, but now that I have already lost the point of
the story... The bee was huge, Jimmy will back me up, and it was
freaking out everybody, as it was quite the surprise in early March. I
remained a...I realized that what I wrote after this was not published,
so here goes... force of strength in a sea of fear. I did not move, my
fear of bees trumped by my fear of being
stung by one. So that was fun. Wednesday will be my first weekend
Wednesday: I have no class on Wednesdays. To do this I sacrificed my
Friday mornings, but it should be worth it. Tuesday I always find is a
good day, nothing much to worry about the next day and usually nothing
to do on those Tuesday nights. I watched the Big Lebowski
with my Roommate at night, the audio was off at the end, it was over
the campus network. But there are worse thing that can happen.I have found that I have had a happier disposition after the near-death incident. Not that I was all that close to death, but I have over-exaggerated it over the course of the past few days. Once I realized what I was doing I became depressed that something like that could so easily sway my mood. It then made me happy to think that I had a few days of happiness, despite it being artificial. Then I became depressed that it would soon end. Then I realized that I was still under my temporary happiness. But the artificiality of it then made me depressed. But then I forgot the whole thing, and was happy again, for a while.
Thing: "assembly" → "court" → "case" → "business" → "purpose" → "object" This is how the word "thing" evolved from the old Norse word thing. Thing is one of those words that are overly general and leads to sentences that have no real meaning to them, much like this sentence. I just find this interesting, how words evolve and come to take on new meaning. Today too many new words are technical, but there are always words like blog, that to the unknowing observer seems to be completely without direct meaning. I don't like the United States of America. I don't like the name. I rather enjoy at least some aspects of this country. We joined the league or ordinary nations, or at least the UAE. If you don't know what country that is when I am referencing the name of the United States, then go back and demand that your geography teacher give you an adequet education about the Mid-East, a rather important area these days. The Mid-East is nothing like the Mid-West, they are very different, it is like the difference between black and people who seem to enjoy blowing eachother up while being a daily feature on the evening news. But that is just me. But I don't like the name of the USA, we should have just stolen a word from natives, or just named it Columbia. I just don't like all the seemingly pointless aspects of it. Just imagine the United Provinces of America (Canada), does not that sound stupid.
Newsradio and I are
both doing our third season. I am entering spring quarter and Newsradio's third
season is coming out on DVD, now. I know I have abandoned Newsradio
in the past few weeks, but I remain an great supporter. This came out
of nowhere, I just searched google for Newsradio to get a quote right,
and there she was, in the street.The picture of the left is one from the Walker that I remember very well from my childhood. I needed a black and white image for my website. Actually it is gray-scale, but I want this page to load faster, because I have realized that not everybody has broadband. I did install a little AIM image in the top left corner, if it is not opaque then I am on AIM at the current moment, just trying to make this a little more interactive. I should get back to some issue I said I was going to talk about, but I will at least start off by going in a different direction.
Today was the first day of classes for the spring term. I have a relatively light class load, well, less than last term. I refuse to call them quarters when I, and many others, will only take three a years, and when semesters should be called trimesters if what I am on are called quarters. Nobody goes to the summer quarter, it is summer school, and thus should not count. But I digress. No teacher showed up to teach my Physics III class. The first person left at the ten minute rule. I was listening to some good Creedence Clearwater Revival, so I went with the 13 minute rule. That was also when Jesus walked into the class after being gone for a relatively long while and rallied us to go. So about four of us left. No teacher ever did show up, but I am sure that some students stayed the entire hour. I call them students because they are not classmates: no classmate of mine would wait more than 15 minutes. But I just find it interesting, the psychology of the incident, who waits, and for how long. But otherwise today was a good day. I am learning things that are in the general field of what I plan on doing. I am also remotely excited about engineering, well, as excited as a person can be about engineering.
I talked with Jay briefly today. He is always interesting to talk to, he know enough to back up his theories, unlike me half the time. That goes to my next theory: I think that being smart and intelligent are two different things. Smart to me means that you know the state flower, bird, and motto of Hawaii. Hibiscus, Nana Goose, and "the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness." Then there is intelligence, which is the ability to abstractly understand and deal with world. Intelligence to me is somewhere between street-smarts and the ability to understand abstract logic. Intelligence is more of a practical knowledge of the world. Smart is more of a textbook definition of having book-smarts.
I have had a history of theories. There was the MJB theory, which was made my me, Jay, and Max in 11th grade. MJB is a way to divide two numbers by using very complicated means, but I don't like doing long-division. I had my theory that people talk in numbers, I decided in fifth grade that in order to count to infinity all possible words would have to be used to represent all the numbers. Then in sixth grade I came up with the idea that we could all be inside the conscious of the sun. Then in 7th grade I had the theory of pantalonial progression, where pants defy gravity by moving up as people age. Then I guess I skipped 8th grade. Then there is the time in 1st grade when I realized while in the back seat of my Mom's car turning from Bloomington Ave. onto 51st St. that the force was affecting me, and not Tom Boik. A theory that I later expanded to apply to all people. I didn't call it a force, but simply understood the motion when taking a turn only occurred in the car. Other than that most of my theories have been stolen from other people. According to standardized testing I peaking in 6th grade, so what I am to do, just read Flowers for Algernon I guess. My tests scores did clearly peak and gently decline after 6th grade. But then again, what are the tests testing me on? Is it intelligence or smartness. The best way for me to define intelligence is that I associate it with the word brilliant.
Yes, I do know how egotistical it is to intertwine discussions on intelligence and my own achievements. I know enough to be able to see that. Introspection does necessarily lead to improvement. But while I am on the topic of intelligence I would like to show what I have done with what I have. I try to be humble, but I end up bragging about how good at it I am. Well if that last sentence is any indication I will not be bragging about being funny. But really this haphazard flow of ideas is how my mind functions. think of this as a...wait a sec...I will remember the term from Sexton's class...stream of consciousness! That is it, this is a stream of conscious thought, although not always comprehendable.
I have been working on a two act play. It is based on an idea for a plot I came up with a few days ago after seeing Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors and thinking I could make a good plot. I don't want to go over the plot here since I have already written enough for today, and also because I am constantly changing it. I think I started on the project due to the vacuum of literature I get at Rose. I do watch "good" television (Arrested Development) but I found myself putting Leaves of Grass in my duffle bag. I guess absence makes the heart grow fonder or something like that, I think that is from the computer game King's Quest, oh, to be back in the days of black and white computers. It still aggrivates me, well now that I am thinking about it, remembering when I was just about to beat King's Quest 5 when the computer crashed, it took a long time to play that game. Oh well, in my defense I don't play video or computer games at all at Rose. It seems strange going to such a technical school and not doing that, but that is Rose, and I can say that because over half the people who read this don't go to Rose, but it nevertheless is. Well I still have to write my private entry, which is honestly better written, but this is public. Just know that I am approaching 40,000 words written in this blog so far. Which is about a third the length of Crime and Punishment. I played disc golf today, I shot a five under par. The duffle bag is named after a Belgian town, name Duffle, in case that last logical step evaded you.
Me
and Jimmy had quite the trip back to the Haute. We tried to go through
Wasconsin,
but we would have been driving through a blizzard the entire
time. That and our car spun out just over the boarder. We were going
less than the speed limit, but the tires lost traction. We spent a few
seconds swerving and almost hitting the car in front of us. Then we
began to spin. we did a 360 going 65 on 94. Me and Jimmy locked it up.
We did not come into contact with any of the other cars. We finished
our spin, after we face oncoming headlights we straightened out, and
pulled over into the dip down in the middle of the interstate. We were
a bit shaken. But we were pros, and it didn't shake us up too much. We
turned around, and went through Iowa, down 35. We got in rather late.
But all is well that ends well, and at the time it was very fun. This
quarter will be a breeze, I am a pro, despite whatever Mr. O'Connor
says. I would again like to go into one of the several stories I have
built up, but all in good time, for it is late, and for the first time
in weeks in need wake up before 10am.
No,
the last entry was not supposed to have any text, it was the original
title of "Annie Hall". I can't write much because I need to wake up at
a decent time to leave with Jimi. I finally got my bike back, I took it
for a spin, I tried to take it around lake Harriet, but I found that I
needed to get back for a thing I had to do, so I tried to match my old
pace and go down 49th and the parkway, but I failed, with Greek
tragedy, and got dirt all over my nice pants. But I did get a hair cut,
very short, at least for my standards. I just feel I look like I am six
years old when I have short hair, and since I already look like I am
twelve I need all the help I can get. I did get a chance to see Stephen
and Nick thankfully. Strangely, with the exception of my coastal
friends it is hardest for me to see my friends in Minneapolis. But at
the eleventh hour we went to see "Ultra Violet", we ended up seeing
"Dave Chappelle's Block Party". I watched him on inside the actor's
studio, I have more respect for him as a person and a comedian. I see
his move to go to South Africa for a while as a very moral decision.
The movie was great. There was a story about a problem with me getting
home from the
mall, one about me and Woody Allen, one about the two act play I
recently wrote, and one about getting a haircut, but I have had it for
the
day. Damn it, I forgot to get a Big Mike's sub, I will get one, come
hell or some problem, as one always seems to cause trouble with me.ARCHIVE . . .(december 2005)
ARCHIVE . . .(January through Feb 12 2006)
ARCHIVE . . .(Feb 11 through Mar 6 2006)
| 612.418.3424
cell 812.872.6510 dorm vanbarnes@gmail.com Ben Frevert CM 1058; Rose-Human; 5500 Wabash Avenue; Terre Haute, IN 47803 |
|
| DAVE CAVE | MY FISH | PRANKS | COMEDIA | STALKER GUIDEBOOK | PHOTO ALBUM |
|
old blog archive | I explain some stuff | I explain some other stuff | written work | History | Schedule | Archive | Archive2 |
| Urban Dictionary | Rate My Professor | Wikipedia | Census name data | SSA name data |
|
CDS (old blog) | AHPCRC |
|
 |