mmm……

I got into an excellent conversation last night with my prettier half about the afterlife and wether or not there was one.  I decided that I think there is a 95% chance that when we die our thoughts stop and we as we know ourselves cease to exist.  This leaves the other 5% which I termed the unknown. 

The unknown is just that an unknown.  It seems throughout history institutions have tried to make humans believe that they somehow have the inside scoop and can tell us what the unknown is.  I really do not think they can.  In fact anyone who tells you that they know anything about the unknown is sadly ignorant.  The fact that no human being can seriously inform me about the unknown leads me to the word spirituality.  I think that the unknown and the word spirituality are interchangeable in my minds vocabulary. 

A long time ago I gave up the notion of the catholic heaven and hell scenario I learned while growing up.  Even the ambiguous “Absence of God”  hell scenario they currently use.  I do, however like to think that there is still a reward/punishment system that is in place.  Its the measuring stick of reward vs. punishment that I can’t seem to put my finger on.  What I’m hoping is that its all based off of hippocrisy.  The way I see it good and evil and pretty subjective terms especially when consequences of actions are taken into account.  So its hard for me to judge people who do common “evil” things such as stealing or playing their bass after 11 pm.  What I do use to judge people is best illustrated by the behavior of the congressman from my district here in Indiana.  His name was Mark Souder and he was a staunch conservative christian republican.  I never did like him much, he always had a racy tendancy to put dead baby talk into his radio adds.  He also one time when visiting my highschool said that prohibition was  not a bad idea.  It’s not that I dont agree with him.  Its that, in my opinion, it’s not anyone’s place to push their values on other people.  It was twice as bad with Souder because he wasn’t just a person pushing his views he was a law making congressman, and it is especially not the governments job to push any value system on its people.  Democrats believe this in regards to abortion, and Republicans with regards to gun control.    So Mr. Souder, the staunch, pious, conservative congressman from Indiana apparently had an affair with an employee of his.  First off the man looks like a portly melting pad of margarine, It seems to me the universe designed him to be extremely resistant to sexual sins.  This leads me to believe that he had to struggle to meet the requirements of such a moral failing.  Its scenarios like this that lead me to believe theres a 5% chance that Mr. Souder is spiritually slothy and will likely have a less good time in anything that resembles an afterlife.  Reicarnation as a female alley cat would be hilarious.

What do people do during the summer?

Well I’m on summer break now.  I’m not sure what I’m suppossed to be doing.  I thought I was going to have to work real hard to make money, but my girlfriend got a job and now we’re going to be rich….in spirit.  To help solidify our chances of becoming financialy solvent, we are both trying to quit smoking.  This would be a tall order for anyone I think, but our chances are retarded by the fact that now both of us work in a cigarette discount store.  I think Carol could likely quit cold turkey.  I am not capable of cold turkey at this point.  That is why I am currently an hour and forty-five minutes without a cigarette, but about to light one.  I have tried cold turkey and I have never gotten past 6 hours using that method.    I tried as hard as I could to quit smoking the week my final grades posted.  Which eventually turned into both of us trying to space out our cigarettes as long as we could per day.   I had two nice 4 hours in betweens, which I might point out is almost as long as I ever went cold turkey.  Soon after those 4 hours spaces I started to go back to pretty normal >.<  smoking, which is a about 2 packs a day.  Well half of my motivation to quit was because its so expensive, but with Carol getting her job at lowbobs money is less important than it has been these last 5 months.  I’m really afraid that if I let the false and misleading mindset that smoking is no longer financially irresposible to set in I’m going to still be smoking and poor when I’m 40.  The other reason is health.  I’ve gotten pretty frickin healthy from almost every possible standpoint in terms of diet and exercise.  I probably eat about 2300 calories a day which 90% of the time comes from the healthy categories of foods (vegetables, whole grains, fruits, good fats), and on average I get about an hour and a half of good exercise a day.  Now to me that all seems fairly uptown, but I can’t shake the feeling that I might as well be playing WoW 13 hours a day and washing down that new KFC chicken death patty with mountain dew and some kinda of fried potato, if I’m going to continue smoking.  Luckily this works out differently.  The more money I have the more my brain says its ok to smoke.  The more healthy I get the less my brain wants to smoke.  I bought a bike last weekend at a police auction.  I also bought two 10lbs weights last week because I think I have a little bird chest.  The bike is not yet operational, but I have incorparated the wieghts into my mid-day yoga routine.  I’m doing a routine I designed to give me less of a bird chest three days a week.  This is the first time I will have put a space in between a series of targetted muscles.  I am excited to see if they get bigger faster, since I’m giving them time to rest, unlike the daily yoga.  To help with the muscle building I’m being less stingy with my eating habits.  Meaning I’m trying to get a minimum of 2300 calories, and I love those parent bought resteraunt meals, I just go to town. 

As a side note Im now officially at a 2 hour space between smokes.  Two hours in the worst because you never stop looking at the clock.  Anyhting over two hours and you get this awesome period where you dont worry about the time because you have so long to wait anyway.  This is an excellent observation on my part and I will hopefully use this aspect of withdrawal to ratchet myself away from the smoking habit.

I’m not dead

Although at this point in the semester I rather wish I was. Six weeks left, and the stress is fantastic.  The classes are exceptionally harder this go round.  Having a math class in lou (haha) of a writing class is making the whole semester harder.  Luckily I enojoy my math teacher, and the math I’m learning is almost correlating directly with the math I’m finding useful in chemistry.  This is not an accident however, and most of the other students are having a much easier time with chemistry because they are more familiar with that math.  I’m beating most of them gradewise cause I’m stubborn.

TIME OUT!

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.

A New Leaf

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.

Atlas was probably addicted to pain killers.

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.

And the A’s Have It!

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!)

Why Socialism Doesn’t Work: An Excercise in Helping

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.

Pop Rocks!

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.

Is That Your Final Answer?

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