I’m too busy to blog. I do have two annotated sources for my global warming argument ready to go, but I’m just too swamped with school.
As this is my first post of the new year I felt that I should examine my blogging and take stock of wether or not I wanted to continue. After 20 minutes of excruciating self debate I decided that the joy I get from blogging sunday mornings should remain in my life, however, The content of my blogs needs to change. For some reason almost my entire life I have been extremely interested in politics. The first political conversation I can remember havving occured when I was very young and predicted that Ronald Reagan would win his second term. He did and I became a devout Republican at the age of 5.
My mother became friends with Jackie and Jim Moses, when I was in grade school. I don’t remember how old I was specifically but I can pinpoint it slightly for readers by the fact that Nintendo had just come out and I mean JUST. Mario Bros., Shinobi, Zelda that early. I know this to be a good time indicator because Jackie and Jim had a son named Matt and Matt and I became incredibly fast best friends. It was the kind of best friendship that can only be achieved a few times in ones life, but a formula that I have kept for finding friends that revolves around and is held together by one single shared interest, that interest was video games. Video games playing allows you to figure out the character of the person your playing with. Not the character as in avatar, but the charater as in quality of spirit. Me and Matts friendship I would call brotherly. Which leads to the fatherly aspect of Jim. Jim Moses was my father figure during this period of my life and I don’t think I could have asked for a better one. He was the funniest man I have known. He was also the kindest and fairest man I’ve to this day met. Except to his Asian X-wife who he insisted had hairy nipples, always coupled with the advice of avoiding women with hairy nipples, advice I find to be quite useful at my age.
Jim loved laughing, and for that reason alone maybe, he loved Rush Limbaugh. Being exposed to Limbaugh at such an early age and in the golden age of Limbaugh (Have you ever heard a caller abortion), convinced me of only one fact, Limbaugh was a funny guy. It turns out that I earned my degree in conservatism from the Limbaugh school of conservative thinking by skipping school fully one-third of sixth and seventh grade just to listen to the radio program. In the last 5 years I have continued my conservative education by becoming a habitual talk radio listener. To all the folks who ignorantly label me as a whack at this point, I’m sorry for your close-mindedness, you should probably work on that. For the longest time in my life I totally forgot about talk radio, it wasn’t untill I started working at Shopoffs and my buddy Jon turned me back on to it, that I remembered what I had lost. I had lost many years of good conversation thats what I had lost. Talk radio to me is not a political device. It is simply a platform for good, sometimes in-depth, sometimes not to in-depth conversation about current events. Yes, most talk radio hosts are conservative this is true, but most are also fair minded and open to good debate. In fact I would say most pride themselves on being both fairer and more open to debate than mainstream media outlets such as MSNBS’s Keith Oberman, or the election time Obama mania that swept thru all the mainstream news medias. That being said I have also never blindly took the opinion of a talk show host or caller and turned it into my own. I have indeed been influenced by good logic though. The one skill that makes listening to talk radio extremely fun is the ability to critical think. To examine statements and stories. To see what was said and not said. To discern motives and angles. These things to me are a fun way to pass the time and that is why I love talk radio.
Conservatism is not a new american creation, according to Maciavelli there are always only two basic political parties. One that wants to change the way things are (Left) and one that wants to keep things the way they are (Right). There is, however, one big difference between American conservatism and the conservative parties of any other culture in recorded history, and that is freedom through unrestricted trade or as some people call it capitolis The United States Constitution is the foundation of what American conservatives are trying to preserve. There two biggest losses historically for American conservatives occured with a liberal court ruling on the ability of congress granted by the clause “For the General Wellfare”. The second defeat occured when Richard M. Nixon took us off the Gold Standard. Nixon was a republican. I cannot respect this man for the fact that he destroyed our childrens future currency. Nixon also started the E.P.A. WTF was up with Nixon. All I’m saying about Nixon is that he’s lucky he’s dead or I would try to get an interview with him because he was an extremely effective destroyer of the future of the United States and I think he has some questions to answer. I mean how does one decide to take the American monetary system and turn it in to monopoly money, mmm maybe I can find a couple of these answers from the most two recent presidents.
So from now on I am going to try and change my blog theme to politics, because thats what I love. In particular, but not exclusively, the politics of the environment. Since I am going to be a reknowned scientist one day on par with Galileo, and Newton. I’ve decided to make it a point to use scientific studies as most of my argument basis. This will allow me credibility while blogging while also giving me practice at critical reading. I will need this practice later in life believe me. I told my friend a while back that I felt like the character Charlie Gordon in the book Flowers for Algernon. In the book Charlie who is borderline retarded is given a drug that makes him into a genius. For the last 10 years of my life I have felt borderline retarded, and after witnessing what I’ve been capable of this last year I think borderline retarded is a fair assesment of what I spent my time doing these last 12 years. Being one of two A students in my huge chemistry class last semester really opened my eyes to what inteligence is. I used to think A students were smarter than B students. I find this too be absolutelty false, at first glance it does make sense and thru some lower levels of school it’s sorta true. At the higher levels, however, intelligence seems to more accuratley refer to raw determination and will power. Both of the A students in chemistry are admittedly slow learners. I personally have smoked away my short term memory, and the other student required as much extra help as she could get. The thing we had in common was that we both wanted A’s, and we both got them. We got them by doing what it took to get them plain and simple. If it required ridiculous amounts of time spent staring at nonsense untill it made sense, thats what we did. If it ment not having a life for 4 months because social time could not really be had if an A was going to be earned, then thats what it ment. It might have taken alot more. My point here is that at the end of the semester me and her retained more knowledge of the material than the other students as evidenced by our two final grades. If that isnt what a grade indicates, then what good are grades.
So this discovery that higher intelligence has nothing to do with IQ, which, I’m starting to not believe in at all as an accurate indicator of promise, and more to do with the ability to focus ones attention on a task and get an A at it lead me to think that anyone can be as smart as they want to be, there really isn’t an identifiable limit. In fact one of my first major theories falls along that line. In chemistry this year I learned that Isaac Newton invvented differential calculus. Oh thats impressive right. He must have sacrificed so much time to do that. Well technically he was quaruntened in a single building to avoid the bubonic plague. Now I’m not arguing wether or not Newton was a genius, but what I will say is that big break throughs in thought have typically come not as spur of the moment flashes of genius like I always assumed they did, but instead from days, months, or years of boringly staring at something that doesnt make sense untill it does make sense. Unfortunatley or fortunatley depending on how it turns out, the lifestyle as a quaruntened man and my own current living conditions are extremely similar. There are a couple of differences between me and Newton though. The first is that I have running water. The second includes the first and that is I don’t think Mr. Newton had the oppurtunity to smoke a bowl and then take an extremely hot bath and lay they for an hour trying to figure out why the increase energy of the hot water is so noticeable to the human body and how this relates to the emission spectrum of a hydrogen atom. (If anyone figures that out who reads this and doesnt give me credit for providing the seed I’ll kill you.) Nope Mr. Newton couldn’t do that, all he could do is play with window shades and crystals.
So Mr. Newton the gloves are off. I’m just as bored as you were, twice as high, and in a bathtub. Your gonnaget out logic’ed. As a topic for next week I will start by building a strong research library to support my thesis which is “Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is more beneficial to the planet (The sum total of creatures including plants) then negative. It is my theory that Evolution evolved mammals specifically to raise the carbon dioxide levels of the planet. This is witnessed in the fact that thru respiration we release carbon dioxide. Bare naked with nothing to do mammals release CO2. That is evolutionary!
I look forward to pissing off people in the future who cant reason.
This christmas break has been mighty relaxing. I’ve never been a big get together kinda guy and holidays are the worst. Last year I did quite a few holiday get togethers so this year I decided to skip the majority of them. This worked out well for me. The first day of finals last week my internet got shut off. This is hilarious because they only gave me service for 13 days. The provider was Comcast, and let me tell you they do not get my seal of approval. Long story short we both new about the old debt when I initially ordered service, they told me it would not effect this new account. It most certaintly did effect this account. I am going to pay them the money I owe them in January but I’m not sure if I’m going to ever use their service again, I’m sure they do not care.
Not having the internet makes my cozy studio a very boring cave. I can always walk the two blocks to Zacks, or drive over to Nicks if I feel the need to play games or use the internet, but still this doesnt help me pass the time at my own place. I realized without some kind of stimuli I was going to quickly sleep through the entire Christmas break (What a worst case scenario Ha!).
Atlas Shrugged was refered to me years ago by a manager of mine while I was working at Papa John’s years ago. Since this manager was likely snorting coke and listening to the band Rush when he told me about it, it’s easy to see how I didnt rush(pun) to find the book. Later in life I again heard about Atlas Shrugged but this time mainly just in relation to the author of the novel, Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand is a conservative, capitolist, political author, although, out of those “isms” the only one that hits the nail on the head is author. I went through a period of reading Hemingway about 2 years ago, He is my second favorite author. After exhausting all the Hemingway the local library had, I looked for another classic author to take up. It was at that time I saw the book The Fountainhead on the library shelf by the distinct author Ayn Rand. I picked it up and took it home. I read the first chapter, and fell in love with Ayn Rand. I finished all 900 pages or so of The Fountainhead in maybe 3 days, and immediately returned to the library to see what else they had Rand. When I got there one book of course jumped out at me, Atlas Shrugged is a monster of a book It’s easily bigger than The Fountainhead and I was to intimidated by it. A smaller book We the Free sat on the shelf next to Atlas and at about one-third the size I decided it would make the better next read. I might have been right I enjoyed We the Living nearly as much as The Fountainhead. Well I never did get around to reading Atlas Shrugged, I suspect thats because I started school and haven’t had the time to get around to it.
They turned off my internet the first day of finals. If I wasnt so gosh darn awesome this may have freaked me out. I mean who doesnt need the internet for 3 days before their two biggest finals, apparently I dont. At least studying for those finals made not having the internet bareable. Not having any studying to do was going to make it unbareable. I found the solution in a giant book I had been putting off reading for 9 years.
I am finished with the first Part of Atlas Shrugged, roughly one third. The only evaluating I will do at this point is to say I would suggest Atlas Shrugged to all females whom I think should read Ayn Rand, as opposed to males to whom I would suggest The Fountainhead.
So to sum up all that reading. If you are a girl read We the Living, then read Atlas Shrugged. If you are male read The Fountainhead. This is based directly on a main character bias. Ayn Rand’s character creation process is similar to Stephen King or George Martin, meaning, it is often hard to tell which character would be considered the “main” character. We the Living has the most obvious main character which is a woman, it also has the most romance factor although Rand never goes near uncomfortable, she also isn’t puritanical. It is also a smaller read which highlights all of Rand’s strongest writing qualities. Atlas Shrugged I also suggest to women. I am one third of the way thru it and although I’ve heard a man is the main character, to be honest its impossible for me to tell which between the two is the main. I would also not be surprised if Dagny turned out to be the main and all the people who told me a man was the main character just never finished it. The Fountainhead has an obvvious main character who is male. Rand again runs a thin line on character defintion in this book though, and there is a female character who it could be argued was the main.
Plant Biology: A (Teacher was awesome, and I’m shadowing his research lab next semester)
Fundamentals of Economics: A (This online class was the most interesting class I took. The book Common Sense Economics was well written and straightforward)
Expository Writing: A (This beast turned me into a non-procrastinate)
General Chemistry: A (Sweet Jesus!)
This last week a tree fell down in my grandfathers back yard. This led to a small family gathering of men yesterday to help clear the massive thing out. My mom’s friends Bill and Cindy(ie?) heat their house solely with a wood burner and these two during the week had been over cutting things up, and digging things out in preperation for the wood moving day. These two also have the first operable windmill in Allen county, and Bill drives a truck that runs on peanut oil or somesuch tastier oil. Well it snowed it’s ass off friday night through saturday afternoon, and it was in this mild snowfall that 9 truckloads of wood got moved.
When I got there at 1030 one truck had been loaded and they were just starting the second. That was a productive hour in which three moreloads were packed, and off we were to Bill and Cindy’s. On the 25 minute ride to Bill’s I came to realize a couple of things. The first thing was that all the snow was just absolutley soaking the fairly durable pair of gloves that I had brought. The second thing was that being miserable to help people is often rewarding. It had been a while since I had been able to talk to my mom’s friend Cindy, and my cousin Jason, both of whom were in the truck with me for about an hour, which as any introvert will tell you is 57 minutes longer than I technically needed to catch up with anyone. We filled the whole hour car ride with good conversation and after getting to Bill’s, quickly and efficiently unloaded 4 loads of wood.
When we got back to my grandfathers to re-up on woood, signs of weakness started to appear in our workforce. I attribute this to my uncle Kenny needing to go to bed. He hadn’t slept since he got home from work and needed to go back to work in a few hours. My mother at the point that we got back, also left to go to Wendy’s to feed the workforce. Well I’m not sure if it was the anticipation of food, the knowledge that one of our valued workers had been able to stop, and of all things go to bed, or if it was the fact that it was still snowing and everyone was soaked to the bone and freezing, but movement of wood was extremely slow while loading the 4 next loads. MVW’s (Most Valuable Worker) awards will be handed out instead of calling out the lethargic.
The first MVW goes to Bill; Bill split wood for about 7 hours. I only saw him stop splitting wood when someone came up to ask him a question. He also ate some Wendy’s, took him about 3 minutes, then he was splitting wood again. As an observational note Bill was the only one with a vested interest in this wood as he wanted it to heat his house. Vested Interest=7 hours splitting wood in the snow.
The 2nd MVW goes to my cousin Jason; Jay showed up an hour before me and brought not only a truck but a trailer as well. Thank god for that trailer. He earned an MVW for being the guy who had to get up in the truck bed and crouch. Crouching for long periods of time is the easiest way to get an MVW. No one likes to crouch except maybe shady characters in alleys, and even then I doubt they enjoy it for long periods of time. Since Jason brought the trailer he was also responsible for the maintenance of trailer issues, such as, hooking up and unhooking from truck, and all safety/securing apparati (what are those tethers called?) I would have helped him with those as much as I could, but unfortunately I’m about as useful at those things as the perfume girl at JCPenny’s.
The last MVW goes to me; because it is my blog. I do not consider myself a hardworker, I do, however, consider myself prudent. The mere fact that the longer it took to move all this wood the longer I was going to be standing soaking wet in the cold (they call this directly proportional) or TS T=Time, S=sucks. So my work ethic is based of the constant of TS. The more time something is going to take or the more its going to suck the harder my work ethic becomes. In this particular case, (7.5 hours)(Soaked, freezing, lifting)=Let’s get this shit done. I want to thank the academy for my MVW award and all the people behind the scenes that helped make it possible.
Im a sucker for a stage sh0w. I’m not sure when it started, but I think it had something to do with listening to Jesus Christ Superstar as a child. Last night I went and saw the Fort Wayne Philharmonic’s Christmas Pops concert. The concert was held at the Embassy here in Fort Wayne. The last show I saw was Wicked, at the Ford Chinese theatre in Chicago. I saw that rather recently, so I still had a fairly good picture of the actual theatre interior in my head. Comparing the two interiors of the two seperate venues I’de have to say that the Embassy is equally beautiful considering its smaller size and city locale, and considering it’s not owned by Ford. All in all it was a fantastic show in a beautiful venue. The only two negatives I can think of were the weaker music selection and quickness of the second part (after intermission), and the second negative was this little gnome of a white haired man who shot around during the last song to silently scream at me for talking to my friend. Like he’s never heard that song before sheesh. That being said I want to formally apologize to him for talking alot during the show although I tried to keep it as low key as possible, which some people know is actually impossible for me to do, I have no library voice.
Highlights of the show include the conductor. He had a presence about him which bespoke of either angry alcoholism, or obsessive compulsiveness, either way he gave me and cougar both the impression that this was his show. One very interesting note about this was that during one of his presong dialouges he mentioned that before 5 years ago he was a Christmas purists, meaning that he didn’t think a viable christmas song had been written after 1950. He admitted to have being wrong about that, and then they went into a suite of more current christmas songs (by more current I mean 1980’s.) These songs were good and yes it was true that they did seem to have a place among the older classics, but later in the second half they continued to do more current selections. This was a negative for me, but that may have been my fault. I mean it is billed as a “pops” concert and these songs were definetly popish. But including so many, especially during the last half made me ready to leave earlier than I would have wanted, if they had been doing the ancient but beautiful christmas scores that I like best. The important thing to realize about any show like this before criticizing music selection, is that, like global warming scientists this guy needs to play what the people who pay his bills want to hear. For instance, during the first half they brought out a bunch of children, turns out Fort Wayne has an excellent childrens choir. He made sure to let the audience know it was probably the best childrens choir in the region. At this point I realized that Zombies had not taken over the philharmonic, and that these aged and sagging beasts around me were in all actuality probably the grandparents of these children in the choir. These same ancients were most likely the folks who email blasted him into adding all the current music anyway (current as in Elvis). Once I got my mind wrapped around that it became easier to not dote on what I was missing, but rather enjoy what these old people apparently wanted. The childrens choir was fantastic, the funniest bit about the childrens choir section came just after old tannabaum(spell check). The second song started out with 95% of the children sitting while 5% stayed standing, I thought hey these must be the real good kids and wondered if any of them was about to blow my mind. Well, at this point one of the adult singers came out and the song actually turned out to be a solo by this guy. The song was bad and having a pretty boy with a pedophile beard singing to these children was fairly uncomfortable. The real kicker is after me and cougar got all our pedophile jokes out of the way we realized that 5% of the children were still standing, which since none of the children were singing at this point just seemed odd. I developed two theories as to why these children continued to stand. The first was that these children had the richest grandparents and therefore, recieved some special in your face donate money time. I’m ok with that. The second reason these chiuldren may have been standing was that they were the kids on Xanax and they didnt realize that A. The other children had sat down, or B. they themselves were unaware they had not sat down. Pick your favorite reason thats what I did.
This week was the last of week of classes before finals, which start tomorrow. This concert was an excellent diversion from both my chemistry and biology books. I think I will be going to more philharmonic shows this year, but I will only go to ones that are all instrumental. Last nights concert had a group of singers seperate from the childrens choir, and although their talents were solid, I definetly was not expecting them, and honestly would have prefered they had not been a part of the show. It is really rare that I get to hear orchestral type music live, If I wanted to hear covers of more recent christmas songs I could easily just turn on the radio couldn’t I. But the concert broke up the monotony of studying which was its only objective. Objective “Completed.”
Finals week HA thats not stressful. Monday I have my w233 writing final, which consist of writing an essay on the class. I will get an A in the class, It’s the only one I can garuntee at this point. So this final is basically just a reason to be at school at 8 am monday morning. My next two finals are on wednesday. Both my chemistry and biology finals are on the same day, good one universe. These finals are the two stressful ones. I have low A’s in both of them well biology is prolly a medium A, however the mass of points alone on either of these finals could certaintly spell a B if I’m not prepared. I’m trying to prepare, and in biology I’m 90% confident in my ability to Ace this test also. CHEMISTRY IS THE DEVIL. Mostly my teacher is the devil. Because of my teachers inability to maintain any sembelance of organization, my current grade in that class is between an 87%(B) and a 93%(A). This discrepency results from her telling us she was going to curve the first and maybe second tests. Well those are some pretty big maybes lady, any idea how much the curve will affect grades? No. mmmm. So I have decided that if I was to get a B or better on the final I will be at an A or close enough point-wise to make the argument that I should get an A. there are four aspects to that class; homework, quizzes, lab, and tests. In my opinion I did everything I could do to ensure an A. I got full points on the homework, and my quiz average is a 98%. These quizzes were no joke, and they single handedly destroyed most peoples chances at ever getting an A. It isnt because the material is overly hard, although it is, it’s mostly due to her incredibly vague and unorganized manner of writing questions. She is also, on top of having a weak grasp of english, a ”trickster” meaning she loves to try and get you to overlook obvious things that will affect your answer. This aspect has destroyed more chemistry grades than any other. What I do is eat M and M’s. I heard on the radio that chocolate has a chemical which makes you smarter. Never being one to shy away from chemical induced benefits I tested it first on a real time video game with positive results. Then during the summer before every chemistry test I would eat a bag. I have to admit anecdotally eating chocolate does make my mind clearer and more focused. Placebo or not my quiz grade is 98% while the non chocolate eaters are no where near that. Mint is also supposed to help ( I was told this by a girl this summer) so after the M&M’s I chew on some gum. Overall benefit of this behavior is an extra 5% easy on tests, and apparently over 15% better on quizzes. It’s funny that I atrribute these points to chocolate and mint, and not to studying, but its true. The studying gives me a base leveel of points. For instance, before a test, in my head I have a pretty good idea of what % of the information I know. This % translates almost directly to test grades, however, the wild card of tricky questions can not really be studied for in a traditiional manner. The only way to avoid the tricks is to be focused and aware, both qualities that chocolate (or Rittalyn for that matter) help with. This trick questions can mean large points. My friend Tessa whom I consider smarter than myself and probably just as eager a studier, got a 22.5/50 on the last quiz, while I got a 42/50 reason; trick question.
My last final then is on Friday and is Econ. This class is retarded. It’s a class I’m supposed to be watching on tv. I have watched it twice. It has 3 sections each with a 20 point quiz and then a 100 point test. I took the first sections work without watching the show or reading the book and got a 85% average. Not bad for no studying, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to Ace chemistry and biology and then let an Econ course give me a B. So for the next section I took extensive notes out of the book and got a 95% average on that part. For this last section I also took extensive notes and got a 90% on the quiz. The test I can’t take untill friday. I’m a lil worried about this test. for one thing as it stands right now my grade in there is 90%, therefore, the score I get on this last test will pretty much be the score I get in the class. There is a chance although minimal that I will score under 90% in which case I have been defeated by an online course. By next sunday (blog day) I will either know my grades for sure, or be freaking out at how long it takes professors to put grades up.
After finals starts Christmas break. Christmas break= 2 wonderful weeks of being broke as a bum, and 1 week of Student loan money arrived euphoria. The only plan I have for break this year is to paint a periodic table over my study center in the kitchen. This may seem extremely nerdy, admittedly it is, but its also going to be one hell of a conversation piece as well as helping me to memorize this huge bullshit table of knowledge. It’s also going to be a litmus test for any future love interest. I have developed a wierd liking of chemistry. One that before this summer I was unaware I could have ever developed. I have met two girls in higher level chemistries that seem to have the same zeal for A’s that I have and I decided I like that quality in girls. So my cinderella slipper is wether or not a girl is turned on by a periodic table (she will have to have nice feet also.)
Shane and Sara Congratulations! givin the state of the economy I am glad that you diversified your assets, the addition of a son to your already brilliant daughter was a good manuever. People might think you didnt have any control over this, but what is it Sara does for a living? Something about genetics? Me, and everyone I tell about you, are really excited . Although, obviously these people have no idea who you are.
Finals week is upon me. But I’m a wee-bit tired of typing about school. I do have two things that I want to blow my own horn over. The first is that I recieved an A on my final expository writing project. This by itself is not so wonderful, however, The A was given after just two drafts. To quote my professor “Your paragraphs are Faulknerian, however, Faulkner had a non-fiction plot driving reader interest, scientific discourse not so much.” He compared me to Faulkner and called my paper boring at the same time. Perfect! I mean I am taking this class to learn how to write peer-reviewed journal articles, so that was kinda the best compliment I could have possibly recieved. That being said I’ve never read anything by Faulkner and for all I know he may have been a horrible writer. The second mentionable thing is that out of 60 students in my chemistry class I am one of three who can still get an A, Booyakah!
Can we have a serious discussion about climate change please. The catalyst for this was the recent email hacking of the U.N.’s official Climate research center at University of East Anglia. The best way to start the discussion is to state my views I suppose.
I am a environmental conservative. What does this mean? It means that as with the case of any resource I think that benefits and negatives must be weighed and studied before I expect the government to take any action regarding the issue. In regards to the environment I believe that human beings have an obligation to wisely use our natural resources. I also believe that human beings have an obligation to each other. This second obligation is the one often ignored by environmentalist when they discuss the effects of their agenda. Al Gore for example never mentions the benefits of industry on the poorest folks in the world. If you think for one minute that retarding our own economic progress, by regulating our industries output of carbon dioxide, does not have negative consequences for the poorest people on the planet, then I do not think you understand economics. These poor people and their children will feel the benefit of decreased productivity by the industrialized nations due to global warming concerns for generations to come. It’s these destitute humans that I am concerned about when arguing environmental issues, as I feel someone should look out for their quality of life since they have no effective voice in D.C. unlike the global warming fanatics whose lobby groups have secured more research money to study the environment then money being put into AIDS research.
My second belief is that the free market is a better watchdog for the environment than the EPA. Take for example the smog problems of the early 80s. Environmentalist often point to the smog of this time and pretend like without them the world would pretty much be covered with the stuff. Lets examine this logically. If you lived in a smog filled city and then recieved a job offer from a city that was notoriously free of smog would you take the new job? I would. This competition among cities for our tax revenue (or as economists call it legalized plunder) would have solved the smog problem in its own way without causing the loss of thousands (some will argue millions) of jobs that I feel the EPA is accountable for i.e.the american automobile industry through C.A.F.E. standards. WTF WAS NIXON DOING? He was supposed to be a very conservative guy yet he started the EPA and took us off the gold standard what a twerp. These jobs were unimportant during the technology bubbles of the 70-present but with the economy struggeling as it is now. The loss of basic industrial jobs that is often attributed to NAFTA or other such free trade programs, is actually directly related to how expensive the EPA has made it for industrial businesses to operate here. Well that and the ever present unions which in the last 30 years have gone from looking out for the worker to looking out for their political lobby power.
The Global warming phenomenom of the last 30 years has become Americas new religion. With a stunning decline in attendance of organized religions it makes sense to me that a lot of anti-religion folks are still looking for a cause that makes them feel like they are living a decent lifestyle. What is a better way of life than devoted earth loving. Well you could always look for a practice that doesnt involve hurting people through unemployement, but maybe thats just me. The religion analogy extends even farther into the current scientific community with the peer-reviewed journal practice. Was it Galileo that tried to argue that the sun and not the earth was the actual center of our galaxy. What happened to him didnt the Vatican have him locked in a tower? The current peer-reviewed journal system used by scientist to report scientific findings unfortunatley acts much the same way as that tower. The hacked emails from Anglia highlight this; one notable email suggested continueing to boycott one journal which the writer of the email thought was to “neutral” to global warming facts. This is fantastic coming from a “neutral” scientific research center. The bottom line on why we cannot expect these climate scientist to be neutral is because they are not using their own money to fund the research. They are being paid by lobby groups to do the research. BOTH sides of the debate are. This makes finding any facts about what is really happening to the climate hard to come by. Which is incredibly sad because we end up spending a lot of money as a country to finds climate data and yet we can’t trust any of it from either side. MMM thats a good system we got going there.
Recycling wasn’t invented untill 1980. LAWL ask your grandparents what they did with their refuse and I can garuntee you they used everybit of everything.
I would like to close with a quote from Al Gore that I wrote down while watching an Inconvenient Truth. “In between denial and despair is doing something.” This is my favorite quote ever maybe from a human. Because apparently After I’m done denying something I should try to do something, but no matter what I do it ends in despair. Thanks Al, your such a ray of sunshine. I could understand the faux pas if this quote was taken out of context from a random speech, but it wasn’t. It’s from his movie for pete’s sake. Which leads me to believe that he is so full of himself that he doesnt even understand the words coming out of his mouth when hes talking, or when he’s listening to himself. All he knows is that he sounds good.
In closing, I love the planet. I think the planet is awesome. All I want out of climate research is the truth and I don’t believe that either side is giving it to me at the moment. So instead of jumping on a bandwagon I examine the facts as I know them and make choices accordingly. The facts as I understand them is that regulations on CO2 emissions cost jobs, thats the free market can act as an environmental watchdog, and that no matter what I do to try and help out things will still end in despair -Al Gore
Happy Birthday to me! So this last Wednesday was my 30th birthday, and man are my legs tired.
For the record I have been dreading this birthday for well over 5 years. The fear started with my 25th birthday. The fact that 25 years is a quarter century, for some reason, really brought home to my mind how old I was getting. At 25 I really started to look at my life and began to realize I had been managing it all wrong. When I looked at my life, and all I had gained in my first 25 years, I was a little (LOT) dissapointed with my progress. 30, However, is a whole different can of worms. I don’t know how long most of you plan on living, but I think averaging on 60 is what my mind would consider a decent span of time. This means that 30 is technically half of my life gone. At 25 I realized one of two scenarios was going to play out at 30. The first was that I would be happy. The second was that I would be in jail. Well the whole week came and went and I’m not in jail. The Happy part is a little more subjective.
Happy. I think for a big chunk of my life I tried to define it in one of two ways. I was happy when I was high or having sex. Spending money also made me happy, but because I was always broke from buying drugs, I rarely got to spend any money (to this day I’m not sure if I like drugs, or I like blowing money, the two are so intertwined it’s difficult to pinpoint.) So as humans are want to do; I strove to get things that made me happy. At 25 I took a good look to see “how that was working out for me.” I was not impressed with the results. At some point I came to the horrible conclusion that the things I know wanted to add to my life as substitutes for my old “happiness” triggers were the same things I tried to avoid my entire life notably: responsibility and patience.
After 5 years, in which, I occasionally made decisions geared toward responsibility and patience; not sex or drugs. Now when someone asks “Hows that working out for you?” I can generally reply “It’s working good, I’m happy.” Selfishness is definetly my secret. Huh? Selfishness you say how can that be? Isnt buying drugs and disregarding peoples feelings just to have sex selfish? Nope I contend that in a way those are the opposite of selfish. True selfishness, in my opinion, shouldn’t have negative consequences. How is it selfish to destroy oneself? I really dont think selfless would be the right word to describe drug use either. The best word I can think of is; stupid. So now instead of stupid, I act selfish. The selfish things I do are all about me time. They are things that I need to do throughout the day so that I’m happy. Things like Yoga and studying to much. These selfish acts have definetly helped me be able to say I’m happy more often. I think that the main way they achieve this is to help me eliminate worry from my life. Doing yoga everyday and feeling great physically all the time helps keep me from sweating just from breathing. ( I do about 30 minutes in the morning, again before lunch and at night before bed, which may sound extreme, but don’t knock it till you try it, I feel like a lion rawr). Taking the time to make sure I’ve overstudied for everything takes away a shit tonne of school stress. I see people on test day just cramming their asses off, while I don’t even crack a book on test days. This almost always makes me happy, if that doesnt, the highschool like grade comparing after tests sure does.
Which brings us to how I’m doing in school this semester. This was my first full semester full of classes I felt I had fair to middling experience with. It was a 14 credit hour semester with 4 classes and 2 labs. We have about one month left of classes, and although I could still lose a lot of points in classes if I chose to, I have at least one garunteed A. That A is inevitable in my 233 expository writing class. With three papers finished and the 4th deep in the grading process I no longer need to worry about that class. This feels great because this MF class took a LOT of my time early in the semester. My two sciences; plant biology and chemistry are technically A’s also currently, however, both of those classes have giant comprehensive finals that are garunteed to freak me out through all of early december because doing poorly on either of them could smash my preciously cultivated A’s in B’s. I do have a plan B in case of mediocre final grades; My plant biology profressor is going to let me work in his research lab next semester. I don’t think you get this kinda perk without some serious ass kissing, which I admit I have been party to. It isn’t pure ass kissing though, because this professor is from India and after working with so many brown men at Papa John’s, I’m a sucker for a eastern accent. I think working in his lab is going to be great. My professor in Chemistry is a plump little Puerto Rican. Ide say shes about 35. Now I’m not gonna say that I could possibly try to seduce this professor into giving me an A. What I will say is when I go to her office to ask questions, I’m constantly dropping pens and really squeezing my gluts whilst I retrieve them, or other times I just kick my leg up and stand in the universal explorer pose made famous by the Captain on that rum. My last class is Economics. Luckily I dont need to study for this class, why you ask? Because I’m a conservative. My grade in there is a 95% and I would prophesize an A in that class, but I dont like to take chances.
I got more to say but I’m tired of typing.
Yes, yes she was. That being said lets move on to interesting things.
Once upon a time I lived with my buddy Jeremy, and his girlfriend Christy moved in right after I did. For a year the three of us lived together in a ranch out southwest Fort Wayne. Before living with Christy and Jeremy I lived in a trailer. This trailer eventually had to be literally removed and destroyed. I was the messiest single person I knew from the ages of three to 25. the trailer did have one redeeming quality however, and that was I got sober for the first time while living in it. That bit of sobriety lasted a good long time, two years I believe.
It was during that time that I lived with Jeremy and Christy. Jeremy being a prudent friend had attached a no drinking clause into our living arrangement. I was thankful for that, I like crutches. Christy was a huge part of my life during this time. Quitting drinking was the first time in my life I can remember starting to analyze my actual daily decisions and the repercussions they bring. Christy was the first person I had met that put her long term goals ahead of her temporary happiness. I did have friends in highschool who also shared this quality, my buddy Shane comes to mind, but at the highschool age I don’t think my mind was capable of understanding what his apparently already did, that a little discomfort today can mean great gains in happiness tomorrow. In the last 5 years I have tried to start living in a manner which will lead to future long term happiness. It turns out that this thought process in completely foriegn to my brain, and therefore it has been a struggle of a learning experience.
In AA there is a saying that tells you to look for qualities in people that you admire and then figure out how they got them, this allows you to also have them, if you work for it. Christy had many qualities I admired, I think she was 20 when I met her, and she was working and thinking about getting into school. This was her first living arrangment outside of her parents. The day she moved in I was pretty blown away by how nice her stuff was. She not only had bought a brand new bed (the biggest craziest bed I’ve seen to this day), but she also brought a Bow-Flex with her. This was humbling to me, here I was at 25 with quite possibly the least amount of personal possesions I’de had in years, not alot to show for my living, and here this tiny blonde chick from New Haven already had amassed a much higher net value. She had a nicer car also. When she picked up a second or maybe a third job and started school I began to realize how she managed to accumulate things. Shes like an ant. Lesson here is if ants werent so colonial/communial, each individual ant could probably start a business and raise quite a nice family on its own.
The first lesson that I remember learning from Christy illustrates my basic lack of knowledge of living skills. Apparently if you don’t clean a litter box for three days your roomate will get livid. Cleaning the litter box daily, generally upon waking became my first good habit. In the last 5 years I have built on this habit. My current habits include, but are not limited to; cleanliness, healthy eating, daily yoga, and getting A’s in school, these habits are all built on the foundational habit of cleaning the litter box. fantastic isn’t it.
I realized when I was putting clothes into bags that taking steps forward in the next couple of days was going to be essential to not having a major life breakdown. Looking at my availible living options horrified the living shit out of me. I had a couple of friends with places and my parents. One of the friends has a tiny studio so long term there was no good at all. Another friend had a big enough place in fact it was the aformentioned Jeremy whom I had originally met Christy through. It was his house that I stayed at for two nights untill life started to fix itself. Those were two bad nights emotionally, wierdly however, I managed to fall alseep both nights without the normal laying awake break up thinking. I give credit to the cable tv shows I managed to find both nights.
Jeremy had a dog, this was unacceptable for me, he would also come to move out of that house two weeeks later. Christy came over that second night to see Jeremies dog which she hadnt seen in a while, During that visit I basically begged her to let me move in. We had talked the previous night about it, and I asked her to just think about it and let me know in a week or so. That night however I had to push her more because I was not coping well at Jeremies. Hallelujah! She agreed. She promised to not kick me out untill the end of the semester of schoool. I was horribly hoping for this because I was afraid all this uncertainty was going to blast my carefully cultivated grades to smitherines. At the end of the semester were gonna reexamine the situation and see how we feel.
Christies house in ridiculous. Apparently at some point in the last year the government designed a program to put little blonde chicks in nice houses. So with some sort of government help she built a house. Yeah! built. Its a brand new house! its a 3 bed 2 bath in a really nice newly developing part of town. It is definetly farther away from both school and work then my old place but closer to other non essential things like all my old friends in the southwest part of town. Its hard to illustrate how nice this house is, I guess, the best I can describe it is NEW! meaning everything in it is perfectly clean and beautiful. It’s crazy! She put me in bedroom number two (pre-Chris known as her office because her computer is in there) The room comes with a futon and a dresser already in a giant closet. The third bedroom was already taken by her Bow-Flex. All im saying is 5 years later I’m still jealous of Christies ability to know what she wants and get it. Other crazy things were my own garage door opener with spot for my car (in November, December)! And a burglar alarm!
Quality of life in the last 2 weeks has changed dramatically. Although it was not so much an up or down issue more like a side shift. I miss Rachael I miss Luna. Things are certaintly different without them in my life. All the different things seem to be materiallistic, all my good habits have stuck, and none of my bad ones have made it back. I did start chairing a saturday AA meeting, and am now doing yoga more with my old instructor Valerie (her studio is much closer to the new place). School is still going great and I got a 80 on a the chemistry test I took in the middle of last weeks mind fucking. an 80 doesnt seem that great but when you consider the class avaerage on it was a 62% I’m ok with an 80.
Oh I got a check+. It was not, however, on the paper I posted. It was on the previous journal. That journal was basically a analytical writing on a article he gave us. It not only required analysis but also arguement and citation practice. It was a very technical journal. I am glad I earned a check+ on that one. Now on to the check I earned on the journal #4 which is the one I posted. For the record I cant think of a single ounce of information I might have left out of it. The writing is acceptable, still only earning me a check is a little mmmmm. I really am proud of the check though. The journal I posted is basically our thesis for what our final paper will be. Since the posting I have polished it a little and I’m now much more focused on an audience and what kind of information they will require.
So wednesday we officially picked out our topics via that journal and the following friday our first rough draft was due. I freaked at this because I also had a chemistry quiz for that friday. Luckily, I had been doing a little research and already had a good book source for my paper. Well I complained alot, but I finished it thursday afternoon. This left all of thursday night to study for chemistry. When friday rolled around I handed in the paper, after breaking two copier machines. About half the students in the class were absent. The other half though had their papers written also. The two in my study group had pretty good papers. They were both only about 3 pages (minimum required length is 4). One girl didnt realize she had to write it in a specific comparative analysis style, so I showed her in the book where the two examples were. Hers was well written despite not being the correct format. The other fellow had a good paper also. It was about the effects of illegal immigration in some manner.
Thinking about that guys topic just made me want to switch mine to racism. Yesterday I opened the mailbox to find a copy of Newsweek magazine. Rachael’s mother orders this and it still gets sent to our house. Maybe I should start a subscription to the Limbaugh letter and have it mailed to Ron’s. Anyway I just went and got said magazine and I think I’m about to do a practice analysis on this rascism article. So if you are not prepared to read my point of view on the newsweek racism article. You might want to X.
It caught my attention out of the mailbox because It has a giant baby face on it. At first I noticed the baby is white and thought sheesh you evil little white baby. Then I realized they had to use a white baby because the letters used in the title “IS YOUR BABY RACIST?: Exploring the roots of discrimination. are black. Flipping through this magazine is hilarious. Hmm article on Ted kenneday No thanks. Next article is by Jon Meacham who is often on the MSNBC show Morning Joe. It’s about Afghanistan. The international page consisted of Muslims blowing things up in the Caucasus of Russia. (Caucasi?) Finishing with a story on just “Why Leaders in Israel are so Corrupt.”
This brings me to my favorite page in the entire magazine. When I saw it yesterday I almost tore it out. Its on page 17, which starts a section of the magazine called The Take. The first essay of the take is one written by Jonathan Alter, and titled “Cheney’s misguided morality’” I bet you’ll have trouble figuring out Mr. Alter’s point of view. The picture that so anamored me looks like this. Dick Cheney in a suit that undoubtedly costs as much as my car, meaning it looks very nice on him and I’m proud of him for being able to afford it. I am no good at judging the costs of watches. His arm is raised a little in this picture which clearly shows off the mans phat bling watch. Why is his arm raised? His arms is a little raised because he is using that arm to cut a piece of obviously rare steak thats lying on a cutting bord in front of him. The cutting board is just covered in blood. There is so much blood that if you didnt look hard you would think he is operating on a pig. The look on Cheney’s face as he is cutting into this bloody piece of meat is priceless, you can almost see his jowls quiver in anticipation, and his focus reminds me of my dog when she gets a squirrel tree’de, Unwavering. The caption to the pictures reads. “I am” which was cheneys response to the question on Fox News Sunday “So even in theses cases where the CIA investigators went beyond the specific legal authorization your OK with it? I just wish they could have been preparing steak on Fox News Sunday. Then Cheney could have said “I am” and popped a real bloody piece of beef right in his mouth and just held it there with a little pink juice running down his chin.
Ok I am going to abandon this racist thing because my fingers are tired. I got a 100% on my first chemistry quiz.
