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
I am
asking for a moment of silence for my now broken headphones. They
survived many trips bicycling in the rain to school, they survived
years of abuse by me as I would haphazardly throw thew to and fro. They
brought me many hours of enjoyment. I won 8 dollars in poker tonight at
Max's new house. I also got to go night ridin' - bicycling at night -
an activity that relaxes me, to go coasting down 50th street, with not
a car in sight, and nothing but the wind to keep me company. I will
have to replace those headphones, perhaps with something better, as
there is a natural process of improvement to things, altough it is hard
to believe, adaptation is a profound process. I would like to talk
more, but I am suffering from exhaustion, I don't think anybody in my
family gets how much going to Rose takes out of me.
Well,
I now have a 7th cousin, named Eero Christensen. So now I have: Jason,
Tina, Jared, Skyler, Alec, Piper, and now Eero. He is named after the
first Finish olympic athlete to be caught using steroids, that or the
famous designer who did the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. I guess it is
some good news. My mother has recently had a anti-viral resistant
strain of staph in her eye after PRK eye surgery (like LASEK). She came
close to losing her eye sight, and is not out of the woods yet. She was
in the hospital from Friday to Monday afternoon, so I saw her - no pun
intended - for the first time today. I went on a bike ride today, a
tour of the lakes, I went around Harriet 5 times and Calhoun 3 times. I
drank a lot of water. It was nice getting out into the city. It is the
most relaxing thing for me to do: to bike around the lakes here. I am
exhausted, in more than one way.To start, I must go over a brief history of the American military. We started out a rebel force. We knew how to fight because the british trained us to in the various minor skirmishes we had with the natives, french, and other various groups. We invented modern warfare, we ended the formalization of warfare, no more lining up to be shot, a practice that although seemingly pointless has its own merits. Then in the war of 1812, or as I like to accurately refer to it as: the Invasion of Canada. We failed because we assumed that be Canadians would not mind, but they were better trained than us, and we had lost our veterans than remembered how to fight a rebel war. We lined up as the british had, and the canadians shot at us from the trees as we had done to the british. So we lost, and the white house was burned. Then we had the civil war, almost lost the lesser half of the union. Then we had the spanish-american war. We then had WWI, we went in, saved Europe from killing itself. Europe had become entrenched, literally, and we went in to overwhelm the situation. We went back to normal, demobilized. WWII brought us out of the great depression. It brought our industry in the modern world. Japan attacked us, we were acting in defense. We did horrible things, we targeted german civilians in our bombings to pressure Berlin. But we didn't stop. We kept the war machine going, and now we have a military that has been significantly reduced from the cold war, and yet we still spend more than the next 20 biggest spenders in the world. We act like we have to defend the fatherland from canadian and mexican barbarians. Defense contractors have good lobbiests, and no politician wants to oppose the military spending. There is enough money spent on the military that is unaccounted for that we could hire 25 million teachers, or pay for college tuition for every college student on the planet, this is just the money that we don't know where it went. This is again, after reducing the military. Where is the money going? We don't even have enough troops in Iraq, what is the deal. I have the feeling that we keep on invading places because we have too much power, and nothing to use it on. We could be fighting WWII all the time on what we spend. So I propose the following
1. military isolation, we need keep it to our selves. When we go somewhere to try to fix a problem we always seem to escalate the situation and just aggravate more people. Preemptive strikes are great in theory, but all it does is cause confusion, we are not a good judge and jury, we usually choose the lesser of two evils, and just give them enough power to become the great evil. We also seem to trample over the rights of the people in the region. We just stir the pots of crazy stew brewing around globe.
2. a smaller and more modern military. We don't need millions of troops, the age of large scale conflicts is over. If we need these kind of troops we can draft people. We should take after Sweden and just be ready to fight a large scale conflict if we need. What we need is two types of troops: special forces like shock troops and peace makers. The shock troops need to be ready to go and overwhelm the enemy, this is for wars like Kosovo. These troops are built to go in and destroy everything, this is the force that everybody else fears, we use this force to threaten rogue nations, they are overly supported, like 2.5:1. The other group is peace makers. Peace makers have the goal of going into a politically unstable region and making peace. They will do the job that the UN should be doing. The would be used in places like Rwanda and the Sudan the stop genocides. These troops work with the natives and know how to do so. They need to be able to be deployed quickly, not as fast as the other group, they go in after the shock troops to maintain civil order. Other nations know we can easily assemble an huge army, we did it in WWII, and we can just do things to be ready: train trainers.
3. take away 70% of the military budget. We don't need to be ready to fight the cold war. We are underestimating how easy it would be to raise a militia if we were ever legitimately threatened, there are millions of people who would love nothing better than to go to their arsenal and fight WWIII. We have the second amendment for a reason. We need to take than money and spend it on education and public works. Both of which expand our ability to fight future wars. Education helps us develop technology, historically one of our greatest assets. Public works allow for the ability to do things, like transport troops, power any emergency factory construction, and strengthen our society so that a few minor attacks don't cripple us. We need to spend the money smartly, money spent on wars that don't happen is wasted when it could be used to improve the society as a whole, think of it as investing.
4. make us faster. We need deployment capabilities like no other force the earth has seen. We need to be able get to any conflict before the other side is even ready to fully mobilize. We need international infrastructure that involves gaining allies (yes, we do need them). We need to be an instant threat.
We need to be able to stop one-sided civil wars (genocide) early and not spending money on the giant war that is not going to happen the way we think it will, a classical war would be easy to mobilize for, and we have a militia at the ready.
It is going to be strange going back to Minneapolis. It feels like a different life. I do tend to compartmentalize my life, each group nicely divided, and rarely interacting. Most of my groups of friends don't interact with eachother. It feels like switching gears in between groups. I guess that is normal, you don't use as much profanity around your family, although sometimes it is required. The key is talking to your audience and being able to target them. This website is strange because it is read so I have to edit it leave all details about my life in. I have to strike a balance between these competing factions. I don't want to go on about the daily life at Rose or go on about how much I wish I were in Minneapolis. Rose is a bit of an oasis. I need to get to bed, I have no idea when my grandmother is getting here. She is a bit of a morning person, and it is late. I didn't really get anything accomplished here tonight.
On an somewhat interesting side note, on wednesday night during the blackout I came up with a theory of life that represents the culmination of my knowledge, I made it up on the spot, but I blew Ramzi and Nick away. I have also realized that the most influential people in my lives have played in plot term very minor roles, this is not including "artists". By the way, these are my favorite artsist: Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, Charlie Kaufman, the Coen Brothers, Larry David, Mitchell Hurwitz (AD), Aaron Sorkin, Schubert, but not Jesus (author of the bible, and the bible II: all homosexuals must die). They do respectable films and television in an era when doing so is like pushing a large boulder up a mountain every day just to have it fall back down and having to push it back up agian for all eternity... I wish there was some mythology like that...if only I had been properly educated.
So basically the question is why we associate with the groups we do? Well now that that is solved... I believe that people are at their heart generally good, it is because they are greedy. You see people who 'mesh' with society usually don't just act in their own interests otherwise society would throw them out. So these people loose a bit but gain much more from the benefits of living in society. So people are good, but only because it is in their long-term interests to get along with and participate in society. Today I received an backpack from SGA, the Rose-Hulman Student Government Association, of which I am a senator. I don't remember ever going to a meeting, but hey, a free backpack. I have packed a good share of my stuff up, and brought 3 boxes over to 8th and Ferrington that they are storing for me over the summer. My internet was restricted a few minutes ago because I have spent my bandwidth and been placed on probation. This is due mainly to the amount of stuff I have been sending my little sister over the internet, setting up a FTP server with your little sister is a huge pain. But we needed to trade music and movies documents and spreadsheets, 3 gigabytes worth. Tomorrow my new mp3 player, the creative zen sleek photo, will arrive. I am sick of using this little one gigabyte flash thing, Imagine the time we live in where one gigabyte is not nearly enough storage.
I don't want god on my side, I want to be on his. I think this is a fundamental idea, even if you don't believe in god, to be reasonable and not to just think what you think is reasonable. One thing I have to say for Atheists, they still do good, most of the time. Even without the threat of hell they still do good in the world. It is amazing how something like that actually works. It is attrition that scare me, people who only do good out of fear of god's reprisal. I find it funny that the fundamentalist christians seemed like an unstoppable political force a few years ago and now not so much. They found out that republicans were not going to force prayer in school. The entire point of religion in America is to keep it to yourself, a very libertarian policy, and those who seem to not be liking that so much are perfectly welcome to leave. We have religious extremists nations, they are mostly in the middle east, god's country.
You can read the WIRED article here, LINK.
It is a very nice thing to know that big brother is watching out for us! ( - :
There was a wikipedia entry made about my father, Benjamin Frevert Sr.. There are people talking about it on the wikipedia article. That link might be another contributing factor, since they cite me talking about my father's wikipedia entry on this site. This reminds me of the time I turned in major research paper with a works sited section at the end.Wow was that funny. I feel that many of my many readers don't get my sarcasm, as most of what I write should have a sarcastic tone to it. I think backwards italics should denote sarcasm, yeah that would be a really good idea. I have a statics final at 8am tomorrow. Part of me wishes I could be a morning person. A moral person can sleep well at night, but an immoral person enjoys the waking hours much more.
To switch gears. If there is a god, then why isn't he glad that I live, or at least try to live, my life morally. If he feels that wouldn't make me worthy of his grace he is mistaken. Why does god have to care or even be nice? To get back to business. sic semper tyrannis. I have been reading a book about classical politics/philosophy and listening to the same Schubert CD over and over, which is depressing in its own right. That and my recent foray into doing a lot of work like back in my IB days has made the recent lack of overcast skies seem a minor benefit. But I have but a few days until Minneapolis (see above count down).
FACT: pennies and nickels cost more to produce than they are worth, proving my long held theory that the hundreds place in USD is useless. Throw them at your senators and congresspersons in protest. FDR and JFK were not that great, if they were so great, why are they referred to with an abbr.. Grammatically I don't remember being taught what to do with two consecutive periods.
FACT: dane cook is a hack, he still his material from other comedians, he is a good teller of other peoples' stories, he gets no respect from me. He is funny, but I don't respect him at all as a comedian or as a person, he is a major tool.
FACT: every year an oreo (the cookie) is produced for almost exactly every person alive, it is just a coincidence, so when you eat more than one in a year you are taking them away from some poor kid in Africa, way to go, lard-ass.
FACT: the new film the DaVinci Code this last weekend had the second highest grossing opening of any film ever, comprised mainly of the 40 million people who read it going out to see it so they can say the book was better. Of course the book is better, it has 137,100 words, the average person reads 225 words per minutes, thus taking 609 and a third minutes to read for the average person with no distractions. The film is 149 minutes, so of course the book was better, you spent four times as much time appreciating the book than the film. Good call buddy. I am sick of people complaining how the book was better, it is a way to elevate yourself by showing people not only that you read books but also that you had a better experience than them, and in the process putting down them by saying what they experienced was better, this is assuming you see the film with the punk who walks out talking about how good the book was, which is anybody that read garbage like the DaVinci Code. I only read non-fiction, which for some reason has to be defined as being not fake instead of the fake world being not real, but I digress, there is enough stuff going on in the real word that I don't need a bunch of wizards with level 7 cloaks and deus ex machinas. So go read good books.
The house things seems to be coming along well. The landlord is a cool guy. He changed the lease on the spot when we told him one of us might not be coming back next year. Who is it? Not me, Rose credits don't transfer anywhere, my IB diploma still gets me further at the U than my time at Rose. The U is the University of Minnesota: Minneapolis (not Twin Cities, only a little bit of the university is in St. Paul). Sometimes I feel dirty going to a private college, but I escaped my fated feeling of going to the U. The U is a good school, it is just after PRIME, AHPCRC, and my entire family going there I felt a little bit fated, something I tried to escape. Rose has a lot of good profs, for all that I talk about them behind their backs, they are still the best groups of educators I have experienced, not that my teachers in Minneapolis weren't saints. I really haven't encountered any professors that aren't good at what they do. Although stumping some gives myself a smug sense of self satisfaction that only alliteration can truly convey the content of correctly.
I am in a bad mood because: I have the documentation to do for both my major spring projects, I have finals to study for, I would like to actually study this year, I have to finalize housing for next year, I have to figure out how to get my chair to 8th and Farrington, I have to put the room back to where it once was, and actually when I list everything out it does not seem that bad. I need to find a job this summer. I don't want to go overboard, but I need to find at least some part-time employment. That and I have to decide which major I am going to go with, optical or mechanical engineering. People are starting to get annoyed with each other so a break must be coming up. I would talk more but I need to catch up on sleep, although I am rather sure it doesn't work that way. I will have more tomorrow. One thing I can add...
I am eagerly awaiting viewing a independent film when I get back. I need to watch something obscure, that has subtitles, extended metaphors, pretentious cinematography, and is mostly about plight of life in Estonia during their revolution of a struggling artist.
"those who would sacrifice essential liberty for a little temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." -Ben Franklin
"the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Tom Jefferson
By calling them Ben and Tom it seems to take a bit of their greatness away. But I have been a little frustrated with the government lately. As I am sure they monitor what I write I feel I will belittle them. I am sure I am in some database somewhere because: I bought a copy of Al-Quran on amazon. I went to the army high performance computing research center, a division of army research labs, I did rather well there, and would not be surprised if I was flagged. I go to an engineering school that has a sizable military presence on campus, we even have a tank on display, god know if it works. I was the youngest elected person for the state of Minnesota in the last half century. I am sure that I am just one of thousands that are seen as potential academic dissidents. That and I spent a brief time trying to figure out to make a bomb on the internet, I wanted to do some stump removal at the family farm. I also don't think that this website is without a few key words. I am not saying I am on the top of any lists, just that I wouldn't be surprised if I was being monitored by some automatic computerized system. If my parents were from the mideast and not the midwest I think I would get a higher ranking. By the way, an easy way to make explosives is to just take fireworks and add an oxidizing agent, remember that a firecracker in the palm will burn while in a fist will blow the hand off. This is for stump removal purposes only. I just wanted to get a few more key words in.
The sad thing is that the NSA probably still illegally wiretapped bell south clients without warrants. Not all of the deaths in the war for freedom occur on the battlefield. Some will be civilians killed by terrorists because the NSA will miss something because it would trample civil liberties. I was very affected by September eleventh, but I still feel that freedom has a price, I wish we could have both, but with a institutionalized military and intelligence service I feel that big brother can not be trusted. I would not trust it anyways, but they still feel that extreme safety that luxury that American can not morally afford. Huey Long warned that ", if fascism comes to America it will be on a program of Americanism." That is why I have decided to change my view of myself. I consider myself now as a citizen of Minnesota, although I am over-river right now. I still believe in the United States. I never signed anything saying I was a citizen of the United States, it was just kind of assumed of me. So I am not renouncing my citizenship, I am just saying that I am a citizen of Minnesota. I hope this doesn't come back to bite me is the ass, I should never have sold animation rights. Well I guess that is going too far, I just wanted to show the point that immigrants become citizens, but when you are born here it is just assumed. Is it my birthright to be a citizen? Is it really fair for me to just be born into it? Poor baby, I was born in the richest and most power country on the...
Posse Comitatus Act states that the military will not be used for law enforcement, except the Coast Guard, but I don't think of them as a military operation. Well I don't know how the six thousand national guard troops that el presidente is sending to the boarder is going to get around that, probably just ignore it and hope that nobody notices, or cares enough to cause real trouble. Here is a joke that I might as well tell because I am sure this site will be shut down. What is the difference between Hitler and Bush, Hitler was elected. Oooh.
I have said many unpatriotic things in this article. That is the beauty of America, well the United States of America, and one of the few things left that makes me round to be an American. I have the freedom to say this, at least for now. A pessimist would say that I am an unpatriotic bastard who is threatening a country that he is renouncing his citizenship to. An optimist would be amazed that an American teenage can even talk about these issues. And both would be in their rights to say so. No, I still am loyal to the crownunited states, I just wanted to prove a point, as I am a patriot. Dissent is the most patriot action, god bless Bell South, it tempts me to move to the south just to...no, I will never live in the south, industrialized midwest, desert southwest, plain states, or the prairie states: red states. The NSA is unpatriotic, as is the current administration, for the prevention of free speech and assembly is one of the few ways to do so. This is a self-inflicted wound. I have never been more ashamed to be a citizen.
The statistic that OEs make more than MEs is not a big part of my decision. I had heard that all OEs have to go onto further schooling, that is not true apparently, many go right into "industry" after four years. OE is not a certified major at Rose, but it doesn't have certification anywhere. Only the core majors are actually certified by whoever certifies people. That doesn't really matter, they seem to be one of the few schools that offer optical engineering. I know it sounds kind of shallow to even care about it. But there is no national ranking for optical engineering schools. Rose is the best engineering school in the nation, so I am not very worried about it.
Dorm life sucks. I am glad I won't have to deal with people blasting their horrible music.* These rooms are tiny and suck. Part of it is living in the most decayed residence halls, they don't refer to them as dorms. Speed is the only building without air-conditioning because we have bad wiring. Well, the basketball players' room at the end of my floor has AC. We have an erratic heating system. Our rooms are shaped like hallways. I hate having to sleep high up. I keep thinking that I am going to fall off. The building was built as a temporary dorm back in 1963, it was only supposed to last ten years. There are four dorms on campus that have older wiring but still have AC. We could have AC if we just limited people to only having three computer running at once. Unlike David Baty, who has in addition to his laptop several desktops under his futon, one just routes stuff to the others, not to mention the computer and monitor kept running 24/7 used only as a picture frame, not to mention his home-made video projector. It will suck not having the campus network next year, but I will have access that isn't monitored by IAIT, so I can do bit-torrents, whatever they are. It will be nice living off campus, but it will suck being reminded of the horrible town I an temporarily residing in while I go to school. I do not plan to live here ever, I might come back for a homecoming fire. We do a bigger bonfire than Texas M&M, but don't use extra supports, and they have killed people during collapses, guess we are better engineers, a case of natural selection. I would worry about Rose editing this, but they don't care about these personal pages. As long as I don't have copyrighten music hosted I am fine. I don't capitalize the names of some countries and do for others, it is a random process, guidelines only have power if you give it to them. I don't care about mla or chicago style. Guess what, I didn't capitalize chicago or whatever mla stands for. I can claim all those images I use under fair-use law.
The West Wing ended today. I don't like the way the show went after Sorkin left. The first few season were good, but then it became sensationalistic and people stopped watching, so they became more sensationalistic. They lost the wit. Subquestion -- is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter-day sins? Is it better to burn out than to fade away? Where is good are going? The only good shows left are dying off. People are becoming stupider, or at least seem to be treated like they are. Deal or no deal is the prefect example. People don't even want to watch people asnwer quesitons for money, they want to watch what amounts to the rolling of a giant die. Now everything is a soap opera or a idiotic sitcom. I like scurbs, curb your enthusiasm, family guy, and house seems to be good, but I haven't watched any of these shows lately.
The day the last episodes of arrested development aired was the day the music died for me. After that we have nothing to look forward to. the simpsons needs to be cancelled, I don't think anybody watches it now anyways, but it was picked up by fox to run through at least its 19th season, and it shall receive no capitalization from me, even when I started the sentance with it. From what I have seen, House seems to be a good show. The main character shares a bad-ass sarcastic manner as me, and in most cases I become aggitated by those people, who are like me, but in this case I like it. NBC has fallen after all their good shows died of old age. The giants of the late '90s seems to kill of any future shows, like great oaks that overshadow the sapplings below. I like the early episodes of Will and grace but the show went down hill very fast to me. At least I never will have to say that ARRESTED went on too long. But I can just go to a tropical island somewhere with all the money I make being an engineer. Newsradio season four is coming out on June 10th, at least amazon.com says so.
These past few weeks have lasted far too long. I finally got around to the annual tradition of ordering my own birthday present off of amazon, or in this case creative.com. My parents had me give to myself a creative zen sleek photo for $180. It is a clearance sale item that creative calls a Mother's day sale. But it is a decent player with twenty gigabytes of storage. My roommate ordered one and it should be arriving on Monday, he also had his mother have him order it for himself, an action that stretches the english grammar rules. I should have mine before I leave, and hopefully by my finals. It is nice going from no music players out during school hours to listening to them during tests. It helps me to listen to classical music while I find the deformation in a beam of a truss structure. A few days ago I made my first engineering joke, of any technical nature at least, it is more of a funny comment than anything, a notion really: having a factor of safety of 0.9. In engineering things are over-built to ensure safety. Aircraft are built to factor of safety of 1.5, meaning they should be able to withstand 50% more force than they are specified to have to withstand. So having a factor of safety less than 1 means that it will support less than it is designed to. It gets a chuckle out of people, especially when out intro to design project bows far more than the PVC pipe it is made out of should be able to withstand. But this is just an example of how excited I am to not have to deal with that for the summer. I still want to build a trebuchet and a sound system for my bike using those light generators, those two are separate ideas, at least for now.
| Two roads diverged
in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both And be one traveller, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that, the passing there had worn them really about the same, |
And both that
morning equally lay in leaves no feet had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less travelled by, and that has made all the difference |
I have been in a good mood lately since I have gotten over my cold-flu. I am the chair of the events committee for the Rose-Hulman disc golf club, and am on the course development committee. It rained all day, it will rain all day tomorrow, and I don't think I ever want to live in Seattle, although anything is better than Terre Haute. WTHO, the station that ran the weather ad has been showing local commercials in the middle of television shows, they are not professionals, they are hacks.
So one strange thing is going house hunting in Terre Haute. My housing situation for next year got very complicated, but is stabilizing now. None of us feel panicky that we don't have a place to live next year. It is a renter's market here and it is more a matter of finding a place to live. We want to find a house because we all feel that we need to learn to be more independent. Rose has a housekeeping services that changes sheets, cleans the rooms, and emptys the trash. It creates a very sheltered environment that needs to be avoided. We found a nice house in a nice neighborhood that has a reasonable rent that we are looking at tomorrow. It seems strange to think that I will most likely be living all four years of college with my roommate, whom I was placed with seemingly randomly. I was actually placed in my room because the guy in charge of housing has a sense of humor. One of the people who lived in my room last year was from Minneapolis, was an ME, and had a somewhat similar name. Housing is not going to be a problem. But still, the chances are great because Rose has quite a few tools, jocks, bible-lovers, and overly academic people. I also find it strange that nobody I will be living with are from Indiana. Well, Luke is "from" Indianapolis, but grew up in Poland, a fact I, being part German, have to remind him of - I do the same to Jewish people...to far, (and too much punctuation). So that will be fun. In you Trend gogle, a typo of google, then Poland comes up as the primary searcher, don't jump the gun, their word for goggle is gogle. I think I understand the sense of pride that comes with being a home owner, I will just be one of five renters, but I still get the gist of it.
I want to talk about something that matters. Video games. I am not really into video games now. I have in the past ever since I fell in love with golden-eye, the greatest game of all time. Just like Citizen Kane is the best movie despite several better things coming along, nobody wants to change it. But for video games there seems to be waves that all the new systems seem to come out. I bought a game cube and was disappointed. The new systems are by Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony. Sony and Microsoft are both companies that wanted to get into the lucrative video gaming market, so being huge companies they bought their way in. Nintendo has been there from the start, and seems to be the only innovative one in the field. I have always felt that play stations were for tools. The new Microsoft xbox 360 is selling starting at $300 and is out now. The Sony playstation 3 is $500 dollars and comes out in a 4-5 months. The Nintendo wii will be come out before thanksgiving, and the price has not been given yet. The xbox and playstation are at a different war. They come from two parent companies that are in the new DVD2 format wars. Microsoft will be selling external HD-DVD players, while sony will be installing a Blu-Ray (stupid name) player as the main drive in all their things. I never gave any real thought to buying one until I watched a video on a tech website, gizmodo.com, a good collection of random new gadgets from the days, I will claim I read it so I can communicate with the uber-tools of rose, I only use the dreaded "uber" because they do. I call the sophomore residence hall "the tool shed", I think I finally have my living situation next year figured out.
I like the nintendo thing, despite its stupid name. It is going to be cheap, small, and innovative. I don't like using a word like innovative, but it has a strange controller interface. In addition to a nice tradition controller they are pushing a remote control looking thing that senses position and rotation. So you can kind of point to stuff on the screen. So shooting games will be awesome, like duckhunt. That and sports game, tennis and golf, I don't play Madden '96 or whatever sports game they have come out with now. I probably won't buy any of them. I don't do electronic games anymore. I do give Nintendo credit for staying alive, and not falling like sega. I have work to do, people to see, and tests to rock...wow I think I could have easily aced a statics test I took today. I forgot to do my math, then he just puts in off in class until Thursday. I still don't know about the mechanical/optical debate I am having, part of me feels I am too smart for mechanical, but is that really possible? Part of me feels completely unchallenged academically, despite my workload. I made a list during math class of all the stuff I learned in math this year and all the stuff I already knew. I could have done fast-track calc. I am glad I didn't. Just like I am glad I didn't do UMTYMP. I seem to be very proud of taking the less difficult path. I did do the IB thing, which only made me feel like I didn't need to do work since I had already done that. The heat is starting to come to Rose, the last two weeks are supposed to be bad like the start of the year. Next year I will have AC, ojala que. I would have written about something more profound, but I don't want to get myself all excited about something since I am trying to heal from my recent illness. So expect some articles about my favorite color, foods, and day. I don't really have a favorite color, teal is nice. I like Arby's, Rally's, LeeAnn Chin, Big Mikes, DQ, and Steak 'n' Shake, among the local restaurants, all of which are from Minneapolis/St. Paul: Arezzo Ristorante, Green Mill, Buca, and Davanni's, all are italian, strangely, only Arezzo is authentic in an actually authentic way, I think the people who own it are fresh off the boat, they have more of a cracker pizza, their bread is amazing, just stop in and get a side order, be sure to have olive oil. Paradise pizza has good bread, and they aren't open on mondays, if you are still readying I am sorry I have nothing to say today, but felt I needed the appearance.
I will try to capture the daily show clip and host it here.
I'vebeen listening to Schubert again. Indiana is a cultural wasteland. There is not an independent movie theater for at least fifty miles. The art musems are a joke. The public art here is a joke. Indianapolis, the center of Indiana, where all road lead, is supposed to be such a great city. Indianapolis is a horrible city. It has no cohesive center, for if it did there would be nothing of any value to put there. So they spread it out to hide the city's weak nature. It doesn't have bad traffic, that is about the best thing that can be said about it. I am just getting ready to get out of here. I need to walk around uptown and bike around the lakes. I have yet to be to the new Walker. I need to be surrounded by the parkway, the lush verdant forrests that go back and forth. I wish I had a better way to put it. I need the clean air and water. I miss bicycling, target, and the food. There is no LeeAnn Chin or big mike's subs. A combination of repetitive and low-grade cafeteria food has taken the fight out of me.
If you are looking for a cheap and nice mp3 player check out LINK the creative zen sleek. It is not as nice as the creative vision:M, which is probably the best player on the market. Nick, my roommate, just ordered the sleek.
Yesterday I say a baby goose fall over, it was just about the most adorable thing ever, it collided a bit with the other goslings. The geese have become less protective lately and allow us the get much closer.
I know that I don't matter at all when it comes to national politics. I do feel that I stopped caring, or at least following it, and all of the sudden half of republicans disapprove of Bush and three fourths of America disapproves of congress. Just as it seemed like all was lost, the republicans dropped the ball even after saying they were not going to do it this time. The democrats have a chance to take back congress and seem to be in good position for '08. The democrats don't have any focus, they have all just sat around until the republicans screwed up. The liberal viewpoint will always win out. Look back in history and you will notice that what is liberal fifty years ago becomes moderate in the present moment. The liberal, or progressive, platform becomes the standard over time. I can just see that in a few decades we will talk of the days when homosexuals didn't have the right to marry, and how quaint it was. I have always like the argument that the best way to reduce the amount of sodomy is to allow for gay marriage, or whatever the politically correct term is for sodomy. I don't care. I don't see marriage as an institution made sacred as the bond between and man and a women. Our society is about pluralism, which is a fancy word for saying that you tolerate each other. People don't have to embrace each others' beliefs, they simply need to allow them to go about their business. I feel that if two people want to do that, who am I to stop them. It is better than forcing them into lives they don't want to lead or denigrate them to second class status, that is not what America is about. What ever happened to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Segregation is a bad thing, separate but equal doesn't work, I have a few supreme court justices on my side. I went to school from K to 6 that was about 40% Asian immigrant, and I got a great education. It was a great learning experience. Today school districts are being segregated by redistricting. Redistricting has in recent times has become a disaster of corruption. Tom DeLay did some redistricting in Texas so that all the democrats were concentrated. The presidency can be won with half the electoral votes. To win a state's electoral votes they must have about half the votes. In most states only half the people vote. This means that one eighth of the country could elect the president if placed properly. This varies a lot from state to state. Some states have more or less representatives than they should since their can only be a whole number from each state. Some states have more voters than others.
Minnesotahas had the highest voter turnout of any state for quite a while. We are also the only state to not vote for the re-election of Regan, and by that the longest running democratic state in the union. MN is a bit of a rogue, we don't have the democratic party, we have the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. We have given the nation two democratic presidential candidates, both were former vice-presidents, Hubert H. Humphrey in '68 and Walter Mondale in '84. HHH lost because the racist democrat Wallace ran and split the democratic vote. Mondale was a sacrificial lamb, he ran against Regan when he was the incumbent president. Al Franken will hopefully take over Norm Coleman's seat in '08. Of anything I hope the DFL can take back Minnesota. We have a republican governor, a republican senator, and our one democratic senator is leaving. A few years ago we were the crazy state, our governor was a wrestler, we had Wellstone, and things were right with the world. I just want to get out of Terre Haute, there is this scary weather commercial that has been airing that just shocked me. I guess people are stating to get nostalgic with the late '90. Now people understand that a sex scandal is better than a war for...I don't even know....
I usually don't bore the reader (you) with the minutia of my day to day life. But I have the feeling that between the lack of sleep, the drugs, and the illness itself I am not in my best mental capabilities, or at least in much on a mood to talk about the french revolution's impact on the scientific community or my belief that i^n having four possible values and us living in four dimensions is not a coincidence. But today I can only muster the strength to talk about myself. I almost fell asleep in the examination room. The baby geese that walk around campus are adorable, I usually stop to watch them if I am not in a hurry.
Hope is the illusion of the desperate. I spent the day coughing and listening to schubert, it gives me a bleak outlook.
Social security is going to be fine. Why? It is not senator Paid-off-by-medical-lobby's plan to raise taxes on the middle class. Bush, the decider, is not going to do anything other than privatize it, which would put a lot of money into the economy as well as being a literal death knell for the elderly. There is going to be a flu pandemic in the next few years. It is not necessarily going to be avian flu. Avian flu is a foreign flu to the human immune system but it has become stable in its lethality. The dangerous flu will come out of nowhere and will rage out of control, only stopping when it has burned through everyone in its path. We still don't know where the aptly named spanish flu that hit in 1918. Nobody has immunity to that anymore, smallpox either, it is a demon haunted world, I will now explain how these things work.
Back in the day researchers working on AIDS wanted to see if any other species had AIDS in order to find the source of the AIDS virus. Well they tested cats and found that most of the cats they tested had AIDS. This shocked them, could cats be the original carrier of AIDS? Where cats dying of it and nobody noticing? No, and no. Most felines have AIDS, and they are doing fine. In people it is a fatal disease, but in cats it has grown to be just an inhabitant. This discovery makes sense and this is why.
Digestive pathogens adapt to their environment. Civilizations that can afford to separate human byproducts away from physical contact have a less severe form. This is because in the third world if you have severe diarrhea then it can still contaminate other people. But when we live in civilization it usually removes you from physical interaction. Civilized people have a greater separation between themselves and their waste. Natural selection allows only diseases that have a chance of spreading easily to survive.
So in cats the AIDS virus evolved (the weaker died and the stronger reproduced) to be passive and only hitch a ride with the cat, thus guaranteeing easy reproduction. The only reason that we get sick is that either the virus "wants" to spread or the body makes itself sick. The virus does not think, it does not actually "want" to do anything, but those that do live through natural selection. Medications for combating symptoms are common because they are internal processes that don't change based on the offending pathogen.
AIDS in cats is not nearly the only thing to do this. The human body is a transport for bacteria and viruses. We are covered with foreigners and our DNA is made mostly out of sequences that only want self preservation and do nothing for the body of than take up space. The Y chromosome is small because the X chromosome is trying to kill it, both compete for the same space, and there are three Xs for every Y. It is not a simple fact that humans are about half male and half female. There are many genes that try to push the scale each way, they just happen to balance out. Think about it, it is in the best interests of the Y chromosome to have more male offspring and the opposite is true for the X. Genes don't have interests. The genes that happen to be better at perpetuating themselves just become more present in future populations and it just snowballs from there. I know you may already know this, but most people I have found don't really understand how genetics works. Genetics is how stuff randomly is better than other stuff and thus produces more offspring.
Eugenics is a bad thing, it is not beneficial to society, I feel like with what I am about to say I need a caveat. The gene pool is getting weaker. People who need glasses, diabetics, and anybody else with a genetic defects are living despite natural selection. It is because now people can "pay" for having diseases. People just died. Cesarean sections were not something that were done a few thousand years ago. This is a new development. The people with these diseases are still hampered by these disease. In a modern world it doesn't matter as long as the symptoms are not too severe.
Ebola is a failure. Nobody gets Ebola, the average strain of flu has many more victims. Ebola hides in the rain forest. Ebola kills too fast and does not allow for time to spread. When the disease goes from infection to death it will be encumbered by people going to sleep. The winners in the disease world are the tag-alongs that cover every inch of our bodies. They sit there, happy only in the fact that they, or at least their genetic material, is there, of course they don't really "feel" happy...
Cavemen did not wake up and eat breakfast. Breakfast is not the most important meal of the day because evolutionarily we have no precedent. Cavemen, and Cavewomen, had to go out and earn their food. When we were wandering nomads we did not prepare meals to eat the next day. I don't eat breakfast because it is not good for you biologically. The human body has a seemingly endless amount of intertwined systems with feedback loops that are carefully balance. Eating after sleeping is not something the body is acclimated to, it was just not done until that last few hundred years, and evolution can not occur in multicellular organisms that quickly. With a few billion years of evolution all without breakfast we are supposed to suddenly start? Why not just stick to what was given to us: a world barren of breakfast. Breakfast is formed by two words: danger and opportunity, no that is crisis, but break and fast, it is the end to the fast of sleeping. Fasts are a very important process for the body, and it is rude to interrupt them with a sudden breaking of the fast. Fasts should last more than eight hours, they need to go until about two in the afternoon. The term "breakfast of champions" is a oxymoron, like jumbo-shrimp, military-intelligence, or swiss-cheese. Breakfast is the creation of grain companies that wanted a larger consumer base. By getting us hooked on a meal of carbohydrates in the morning they conditioned us to continue buying their product. So don't cave-in like a caveman. They aren't called cave men because they died in cave-ins. Well some of them had to die that way, hence, cavemen. You're welcome newsradio fans.
Diets are all idiot. I know the best way to lose weight. It is called eating health and exercising. That is all you have to do and weight will come off. You body keeps fat on because it is bad shape and might need to live out a long winter. Females have higher body fat content because they have to maintain a more constant body temperature since they have to do that baby thing. It is important for a developing fetus to be given constant ideal conditions. Disruptions during birth in things like temperature don't usually cause defects like diabetes or Heinsbergen syndrome. It causes imperfections like asymmetry. This may seem minor but much a person's aesthetic tastes are linked to a desire to have symmetry. It is sort of a preconceived notion that we all have the makes us tend toward symmetrical things. It helps not only in reproduction (since those who can maintain stable development are better prepared) but also in food gathering. Fruit is best when it is grown in ideal conditions, and thus imperfections are a sign that the fruit may have developed poorly, and this be of lesser quality. So there is a reason for beauty, it signifies a stable development which is often tied to genetic strength. This has nothing to do with diets, but you should know that most diets fail, what people need to do is stop looking for the quick-fix and change their lives. Would you rather have a weight that was in constant fluctuation or eat salad and do a little exercise? One of the best choices I have made is to stop drinking pop. I only drink it now if it is given to me or if I am at a restaurant.
On a personal note. I have finally received a statement saying that I don't actually owe money to the delta sigma phi fraternity. I guess I was placed on the nationals list even after depledging in January. It is typical delta sig, disorganized as can be. I am glad that I didn't join if only for the financial savings. They are constantly getting surprised by more fees. They have to pay huge insurance rates. Fraternities are one of the most expensive things to insure. It makes no sense to me why people join frats. They basically set aside a group of people to be friends with and pay a ton of money to pay off lawsuits when problems inevitably arise. The actually fraternity stuff to me is BS. Most members don't really care about the preamble or the moral foundation of their frat. I heard this one guy from nationals say his friend was fighting cancer and that the preamble got him though it. I read the thing, I almost have it memorized still, it was five run-on sentences that were garbled statements about duty and honor. If it were that good it would have more commas. I just have to vent a little, and the ineptitude of delta sig is an easy target, like fish in some kind of fish vise. On a last note, I need to choose between mechanical and optical engineering, I will be taking three systems class next year if I don't. I could just major in ME and minor in OE, but I think it would be best to stop equivocating, dante didn't even let them into hell. OE is a high paying and expanding field, ME is lower paying but is a more diverse field. It would not be very difficult to switch at this point, I would still graduate in four years. Of the incoming freshmen class at Rose, 80% will graduate at Rose within four years.
Data can be skewed by any number of factors. Stupid people who don’t understand statistics is one factor. The other is misinterpretations of the meaning of the data. Perhaps I found that standardized tests were starting to mean less and less. If I didn’t care about the test I would perform worse. I can justify it all the way I want to, but I was in the 99th percentile in 6th grade, and not later on. But I have at least partially redeemed myself.
I have proved a theorem that I wrote my April 30th blog entry about. I did so on my birthday, and I feel like it is the only real work I have accomplished in a long time. I don’t want to just put up math here, so follow this link to the page: LINK 97
Interestingly, I feel I should tell one good story, so two years ago, on my birthday…It was a usual day, well other than being my birthday. I was walking to my bus stop as Nick was out of town. I had just emerged from my alley way and crossed the quite side street just off of Bloomington. A heard a loud engine, a minivan speed up to me. Out the corner of my eye, in my periphs, I noticed a Southwest letter jacket. I instantly reacted, I knew that there were few Southwest students in my neighborhood, none of them jocks, and none would go this way. So in a split second I turned around. Click. I was gone. It was the door unlatching, but I knew who it was. I fled down the alleyway between 15th and Bloomington as I carried myself and my textbooks up the incline of the alley. A glance back just before I darted into my neighbor’s bushes revealed an entire crew of Southwest runners. I darted, I weaved, I went fast. I got to the black door, key in hand, I threw it at the door and it stuck, the tumblers went over, and I found safe harbor in my kitchen as they surrounded the compound. Assassins was in full swing and the team outside (to be known as the not-winners) was trying to take my team (to be known as the winners) out of competition. But I had an adrenaline rush for the rest of the day, I don’t think I blinked until nightfall.
Today is also the have fun with illegals doing the grunt-work. I remember a CNN story, after the economy went like the south's, it was about a man who was fired from an executive position and became a dish washer, and loved it. Well I hope everything turns out right. I am against illegal immigrants. I want them all out of our country. My ancestors did not pack onto a boat back a great many decades ago to see me live in a land where illegal immigrants were allowed to exist freely. I want immigration to be easier. We need immigrants, we are an immigrant nation, and at one point everybody was one, even the aborigines. What we need is a better immigration process, well we needed it a many years ago. We need them to be in the system. There are many many millions of them. We made ourselves look too good during the cold war, the soviet union fell, and so we are the city on the hill left. Of course it is just a billboard, and I would have to opposition to living abroad. We need a solution to this problem, we needed one. Now I can just see this backfiring. It will go down not because of legitimate trouble, but troubles from those opposed to immigration, perhaps even impersonating the illegals themselves. We need to give scientists an automatic green like on immigration. If it says doctor on the application just walk them by homeland security and bring them in. Engineers are being allowed in to learn, they then want to stay, industry wants them to stay too, and they are forced to go back, taking valuable technical training out of this country. We need to keep them here, it is them and business friendly practices that keeps America afloat, that and a dream caused by a major case of the grass-always-being-greener-on-the-other-side-of-the-hill-itis. So I am for immigration.
Yesterday was my birthday. No big deal. I don't like pomp and circumstance. It is an arbitrary date. Just signifying that I have gone around the sun and am in generally the same spot I was last year. I have noticed over the years that I have grown to think of it as less and less of a thing. So I am 19 years old: a year of being able to rent a carpet shampooer. I am thinking of doing a podcast, first I just have to figure out what they are, and if they would be capable of emanating my brilliance/if I can find a microphone, so perhaps those years of radio theatre (arrogant spelling used by most "theater types") will pay off.
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