And So I Live (For the Time Being)
This is, more or less, a completely pointless post about what has been going on with me. I’m feeling particularly bad right now as I haven’t posted anything of significance in quite some time (I don’t really consider the movie reviews to be of significance, though important in some way). So, what’s happening with me?I moved. It happened quite suddenly actually. Preceding this I had contracted a horrible cold, or the flu, or some other equally terrible illness responsible for a terrible fever, cough, sneezing, runny nose, clogged nose, delirium, and other such issues. Maybe it was bird flu. Regardless, I was ill and when I moved it was sudden and I don’t really remember it. Trust me, if you have a bad fever, a horrible cough, and about two gallons of cold medicine floating around in your belly and someone tells you “okay, we’re moving you, so pack up”, it’s really hard to have any idea what the hell is going on. Needless to say, stuff got packed up in boxes and I had no idea how to find things. This becomes an issue when you have sold a lot of things on Ebay and have to ship it off, because if you can’t find such things (partly because you’re horribly ill and because there are about 50 boxes to go through) it’s really difficult to ship in the first place.In any case, I’ve moved deeper into the Santa Cruz area. The good news is that I don’t have to worry about driving. I’m within two miles of downtown, there’s a Safeway just up the road, and I can ride the bus to class and get there by 8 AM for my Lit. 101 course (the bus stop is right up the street actually). Basically, I’m in a decent spot as far as getting around. The great thing about Santa Cruz and the outlying areas is that you can get to just about everywhere during the day. SC isn’t really big enough for there to be late night buses to everywhere, but that’s fine because I’m close enough to the things I need to be close to.The result of being sick and moving is that I am somewhat behind on homework, or was. I’m mostly caught up now, thankfully. Now to other stuff: writing and reviews.I am ill for other reasons right now. One of those reasons is my complete lack of writing. Last quarter was really easy. That’s the truth. It was too easy, actually. I didn’t have to work hard on anything and while that is bad in some ways (not being challenged) it is good in other ways (not being overly challenged means doing lots of other stuff).This quarter, however, is exceedingly challenging. I think was rather stupid in how I picked my courses, but in some ways it’s probably for the best. I absolutely love my Philip K. Dick course, mostly because I’m getting to read things that are really great. PKD is amazing. The Lit. 101 course, however, is killing me. I’m writing a paper every week, and it’s really difficult to try to put the proper amount of thought into a paper that is only two pages long. Needless to say I’m doing decent in the course, but probably not as well as I would like. I’ve got a high B thus far. The PKD course won’t be an issue. That’s an easy A, actually, and the professor sponsoring me is really amazing. She offered to sponsor me to do an undergraduate research project, which means I can apply for funding to do such a thing!The result of doing so much work is that my writing has dropped off the face of the Earth. I’ve tried to fit a little in here or there, but the biggest problem is getting my head into the game. It wasn’t a problem before when homework took me a couple hours a week, but I’m doing ten times the work this quarter. My brain is exhausted after reading a lot of this stuff, primarily because a lot of it is really boring and uninteresting (the PKD stuff excluded).Why does this make me ill? I hate not writing. Yes, hate is a strong word, but I absolutely hate it. I’ve never been so serious about my craft before this last year and a half. The honorable mention from WOTF really pushed me to get my writing under control as well, but now my head is so exhausted from all this reading it’s hard for me to do much other than, well, read. It’s hard to force yourself to write when you’re mentally exhausted. I know that sounds like a cop out, but it’s the same as working 10 hours in a day doing hard work and getting home and not feeling like doing much other than getting some water and sitting down.I am writing a little. I did some writing yesterday and a little today. It felt amazing to write. I don’t know if that’s a good thing. Maybe it is. Should you feel fantastic when you write something? Should you feel like a huge load has been removed from your shoulders? That’s what it feels like. It’s a relief. I am going to write more as I get more used to this quarter, I think. It’s about half over, actually, and if I don’t get to writing during this quarter you can expect a huge load of writing. And I mean huge! I have ideas, short stories to finish writing, stories to edit, etc.Okay, enough of that. I’ve also fallen behind on the reviewing. I have about 20 books in my list to read. I am going to get that done because I have a lot of downtime while riding the bus back and forth. I don’t get car sick so I can at least read while the bus is bouncing around (writing is a whole different experience because for whatever reason buses are so bumpy
My Trip: Part Two (The First Half)
For all your sakes, I’m going to leave out the exceedingly mushy stuff. You probably don’t want to read about it, so I’m not going to bother you with it.Having arrived at Sheffield by train, I proceeded to collect my things while Lindsey, my girlfriend, stood outside wrapped in her warm jacket looking around for me in the windows. It was somewhat funny because as I lugged my heavy junk off the train she still didn’t see me. So I snuck my way over and waved at her until she saw me. Then I got a hug for my efforts and all was well.A moment later and we were heading for her mother’s car where her mother was waiting. I half expected there to be a confrontation of sorts, but there wasn’t. This was good news of course (except the part where she was just putting on a happy face and instead was saying lots of horrible things about me behind my back, but so be it).So we left Sheffield, with Lindsey and I in the backseat holding hands and generally making other people sick (get over it, this is us and we’re cute and cuddly, so ha!). Then irony struck. We were talking about the car, which was a Ford (why they have Fords in England is beyond me, but they have them…I thought English folks had better taste in cars…), and how Fords are crappy cars in America. Her mother remarked that her car never had any serious problems and then–duh duh DUH!–the car starts smoking. The good news of all this? Lindsey and I got to walk for a bit in Sheffield while her mother called for assistance. The other good news? Nothing was actually wrong with the car (nothing serious anyway, just some run off from the radiator), but it was still incredibly humorous that just as we were talking about how crappy Fords are in the states and how her car is good, the car decided to break.Anyway, so we’re going to skip ahead of getting to Lindsey’s house and getting me checked into the hotel (the Brecon Hotel, which I would recommend if you stay in Rotherham simply because it’s like a real house and sort of cozy even though it’s sort of a cheap place. I really liked it, but that’s me).Okay, so day one went well enough. There was lots of nice things between Lindsey and I (cuddling and what not that is necessary for the salvation of mankind). Jet lag hit me that day, but not in ways that you’d expect. Yes, I got a little tired towards the end. I slept a bit on the plane over the ocean, so I was well prepped for England time. What killed me was the change over for my natural bodily cycles. What I mean is going to sound nasty, but tough: bowel things (going potty in any form). The problem is that I’m used to a certain time schedule for things, so when I’m suddenly thrust into a new environment where the light is different, my body started weirding out and gave me a good talking to, which sounds gross, but it wasn’t that sort of talking. Think of it more like “hey, I don’t feel good, just so you know” sort of talking.I won’t go into any other details, but after I slept I was fine, for the most part. The next day Lindsey and I decided to go to Conisborough Castle, since the one thing I really wanted to see (other than Lindsey of course) was a castle. This is probably my favorite castle of the three I saw because it just looked like a real castle. What I mean by that is that it just looks like it would have been used for defense since the walls and the keep are separate and it clearly has the build of a castle that could sustain a real medieval battle.So we went there and it was awesome as you can see from these pictures:After that things do get a bit fuzzy. I think we watched some Simpsons that night, but I’m not entirely certain. I know there was lots of mushy stuff, but since I said I wasn’t going to really talk about that I’ll leave it out. So, what I will talk about is some of the other stuff I got to try, in no particular order, as I’m not sure the order they happened in (though I imagine that my pictures have dates and could tell me, but I’m too lazy to really look).One thing we did was go to the Blue John Cavern, which is in Castleton (Derbyshire). If you don’t know what Blue John is, don’t worry. Most people have never even heard of it. Blue John is a sort of precious gem/rock/crystal thing. I’m not sure how to describe it, so here is a picture of two forms it comes in:Basically, it’s rare because it is only found in this one string of mountains. Apparently it was discovered by a coal miner who, as it turns out, was possibly the worst coal miner in history since he never actually found coal…ever. What he did find was Blue John. The interesting thing is that it is quite valuable, but not nearly as valuable as gold for the following reason: nobody really knows about it. Yup. Apparently the folks who have been mining it really haven’t taken the time to create an effective ad campaign to boost sales. They only mine so much of it each year, on purpose, and it seems to me that if people started to desire it the value would go up exponentially. Maybe that’s what they are trying to avoid.In any case, the mining resulted in actually opening up some natural caverns that had been created from underground rivers. You can see in the following pictures the kind of neat things we found (including some sort of plant that was growing in
My Trip: Part One (Over the Pond)
As many of you are aware, or at least some of you are aware, I took a trip to England over spring break. This is a cross between an academic trip and a trip to visit my girlfriend, who happens to be a native (a term I find rather humorous). I said I would talk a bit about my trip, and so I shall, because that’s what bloggers do I suppose (well, maybe only some bloggers).There are going to be quite a few gaps in the pictures, since I didn’t catch everything. There’s a logical reason for this: I was a little preoccupied with my lovely girlfriend. You’ll simply have to forgive me for those gaps.The trip started from SFO (San Francisco International Airport). If you can’t tell, that’s in San Francisco, in California. Yeah. Hopefully that’s blatantly obvious (here I’m sticking my tongue out of course). Now, one thing I have to say about airline travel is that there has never been a single case where I showed up early and barely made it to my flight. Nor has there been a case when I showed up semi-early (within that 1.5 to 2 hour time frame) and barely made it. In fact, I have to either be one of the luckiest individuals when it comes to airline travel or all that hubbub about long lines, delays, etc. is all a load of cods wallop. I’m leaning towards the former, since that makes me feel special.So I showed up at SFO an hour and forty-five minutes early, stood in the extremely short little US Airways line to have my bag checked and make sure I knew that the bag was going to follow me to my final destination and proceeded to security. Security has changed in America, but it didn’t surprise me because I had flown to Oregon last year and had seen the changes. I knew to take off my shoes, take my laptop out of the bag, take all the metal off, etc. Well, one thing I forgot was to take my wallet out, thinking that there couldn’t possibly be any metal in there. Except…there was something metal in there and I have no freaking clue what it is.So, after the machine beeped once, twice, and a third time, the security people corralled me into a clear glass box with a locked door at the end, in much the same way that cattle on corralled to the slaughtering run. The feeling at that moment was a pinch of surprise–because, after all, I had done nothing wrong–and nervous anticipation at what evil act was to follow. Okay, so anticipation is the wrong word. I think fear would be more appropriate, since the thought of having my innards examined via some large man with a surgical glove had crossed my mind.I waited for a few minutes before a man came, unlocked the door, and led me to a little waiting area. There I emptied my pockets and found myself violated, to a certain degree, by a man with surgical cloves. There’s nothing comfortable about a grown man feeling searching every inch of you but your most delicate bits with prying fingers. It was…interesting. Then I had to go through the humiliating experience of presenting my legs and arms in different manners so he could scan them with his magical plastic gizmo that randomly beeps when exposed to belly buttons, or at least to his belly button. I’m sure he was relieved to find that my rear didn’t beep, as was I. So he checked my wallet and lo and behold, it beeped. What the hell is metal in my wallet? I don’t know. He doesn’t know. And neither do the people at the x-ray machine that looked at it. It just beeped.So, having finally secured my belongings and told I could continue on my way, I headed into SFO to look for my departure gate and waited. Then I waited some more. And some more. I managed to get through security, even after being frisked and delayed, in about forty minutes, so I had about an hour to waste. The result was this picture:That’s SFO airport. Or a part of it at least. Then there was this picture of me being tired and utterly bored:Alright, so I got on my flight and spend the next five hours or so flying through the air over brown landscape in a slightly comfortable chair until I landed here:That is Charlotte, North Carolina. Well, that’s the airport at least. It looks exciting doesn’t it? There’s a little luggage car zooming by in the background, and some yellow car thing next to a plane nearby. Oh so exciting, eh?Yeah, not. So, I had to get off my plane that landed in Charlotte to get on another plane that flew up to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. No, it’s not exciting. It’s sort of irritating really, but it came with the cheap ticket, so I dealt with it. At least I got fed. Once my plane from Charlotte took off, albeit LATE, we headed off to Philadelphia. Apparently Philly’s international airport gets a lot of traffic because when we got there we spent about thirty minutes going in circles, which confused a vast majority of the passengers who probably thought the plane was either possessed or crashing in a spiral very slowly. I think the plane was possessed, but the logical explanation is that Philly is just busy.So we landed and I had the exciting opportunity to spend about twenty minutes walking from my arrival gate all the way to my departure gate, which was conveniently on the complete opposite side of the airport. Philly’s international airport isn’t small by the way. It’s actually rather big and my feet and butt hurt after walking so much. Then when I got to my gate I found out I had to have my passport inspected to make sure I could legally get on the plane. I went over the the
Oh You Silly Religious
Apparently you can just make it up now. Yeah, I thought it was surprising to. It’s not written in the Bible, but hey, it must be a sin cause the Archbishop said so. Good lord. I proclaim a new sin, since we can just make it up now:Thou shalt not oppress, discriminate, or manipulate people of alternate position due to religious intolerance and thou shalt not profess the name of God in war, nor shalt thou make new sins because of changing times, nor for the sake of man’s indiscretions that that thou mayest have Holy Law as a defense for personal disagreement. Welcome to Shaunism, the new religion of the world, where people aren’t discriminated against for being slightly different or believing in magic bunnies or whatever else they believe in and neither are people killed, imprisoned, or threatened for believing in magic bunnies or whatever else so long as their beliefs do not cause intentional harm to those of the living. P.S.: Yes, I realize the sins in that link are basically decent ideas, but I still don’t like the idea of having to use religion as a basis for creating them as no-nos. Shouldn’t the Church just the address the issue from a common sense point of view? Maybe explaining why we shouldn’t do it rather than saying “well, God said so” would be a much better idea and possibly more effective. Now I feel like we should do all the things they don’t want us doing, just in spite. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Waste, Recycling, and Space: Where Are Our Recycling Robots?
What is the world’s ugliest building? Esquire says it’s the Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. The interesting thing about the hotel is that it’s only ugly because it’s not finished, but if you finished it and get it a nice color and flashy lights it could very well be the coolest hotel outside of Las Vegas. It looks like a spaceship, or a spired pyramid of sorts. If you spruced it up it would look awesome. Heck, you could even go as far as to make it a space-themed hotel! So what’s the problem with the hotel other than it’s ugly? Well, apparently it’s unfinished and it will never be finished. That means that North Korea has poured millions of dollars into this thing only to quit a good portion of the way through for whatever reason. Rumors are it’s because there is some structural problems, but I don’t buy that. My guess is that they simply ran out of money, or stopped funding it, or some such. It seems too idiotic to build something so massive only to get most of the way through and realize “oh, well that’s not going to work”. The North Koreans are not that stupid. Sure, they might think it smart to shoot test missiles over Japanese waters, but since we’re dealing with a nation that has some idea what its doing, even if some of those things are rather stupid, we can assume they’re just not dumb enough to screw up on a project of this size. Additionally, if they never finish this hotel we can expect it will just rot. Not only did they waste money, but they also wasted a lot of material that could be used for other things. It’d be interesting to figure out how many houses or apartment complexes could be build from the materials of this hotel. This is a regular thing for us humans. We’re incredibly wasteful. All of us are, even in those little countries that think they aren’t. You’re lying to yourselves; you’re wasteful, just not as much. But this isn’t a contest. One pound of waste or ten pounds of waste is still waste we have to deal with. The U.S. might be one of the most wasteful countries in the world, but to point the blame at us is somewhat hypocritical. Until you’ve achieved zero-waste, you can’t really complain. We don’t just waste materials on the planet either; we waste in space. Sure, space is this vast, seemingly never-ending place, but space debris can be dangerous not only to us (the folks on the ground) but to the astronauts (those folks up in space). What do we do about it? How should I know? I don’t work for NASA. There are probably options, but are they worth spending the money on? A lot of the debris in space falls down of its own accord, burns up in the atmosphere, and is never seen again. Some of it stays up there for quite a while. Some of the oldest debris is from the 50s. One thing we really have to start paying attention to on this planet is our waste output, not just in space but everywhere. We could probably manage to ship a lot of our junk into space and shoot it off at the sun where it would burn up entirely–wouldn’t it be great to do this with nuclear waste? The problem is that any waste we send up to space is a potential disaster in the making. Space travel, as we are all painfully aware, is not 100% reliable. If anything it’s only about 90% reliable, which might be good, but isn’t what we really need for something as dangerous as moving waste. If one of those 10% times happens there will be massive problems for thousands, maybe even millions of people, especially if we’re sending anything more harmful than some typical garbage stuff from your average household. One screw up could ruin the lives of a lot of people. Probably our best bet for shooting waste into space is not doing it at all, or building a space elevator–there is a company actually doing that by the way, or at least planning it, since a space elevator is much more reliable than a space ship at this point. What about recycling? Well, unfortunately there is only so much we can do at this point for recycling. Currently most of us aren’t recycling everything. When I say “most of us” I mean everyone on the planet and by “everything” I mean anything and everything from banana peels to Styrofoam. One of the easiest ways to combat the ever-growing piles of waste is to develop the means to recycle everything. The problem with that is getting people to recycle properly. In all honesty I am not the type who likes separating the recycling into cans and cardboard, etc. Other people are like this too. The problem is that those out there who want recycling to be done by everyone are also trying to force laws on the rest of us that say we have to do it. The legal route is the wrong route because often times it punishes good people on top of the bad people. Some cities require you to pay a recycling tax and put your recycling in the little green bin. Some cities have fees and legal action if you don’t do what they want. Rather than thinking about this from a humanistic perspective, law makers are taking a rather dictatorial approach: “You will recycle or else”. The greatest way to fix the recycling system is to create a machine that automatically does it all. Create a machine that takes garbage, digs out all the materials and puts them in their own sections, breaks it all down so it can be used again, and repeats itself. This would be a lot easier than we might think. With the Japanese doing things with robots that were unheard of twenty years ago and
The Good and the Bad of Attending Uni
Well, this has been an interesting time these last few months. I’ve begun university level coursework at University of California, Santa Cruz, and it is proving to be a much different experience than I thought. There are things that really annoy me, misconceptions, etc. that I feel should be addressed for anyone out there thinking of attending a university level college. Misconceptions: Private schools make the claim that at public universities, like my school for example (and yes, there was actually a private school that specifically targeted my school for this), you will never be able to talk to the professors, your classes will be enormous and only be lectures, etc. This is really somewhat of a lie. I have only taken one course that had more than 80 people in it, and that was a class that EVERYONE has to take (no matter the major, it’s a requirement). It’s understandable that that course would be full. While the class was only lecture, with some time for discussion, the sections (discussion groups separate from class) were really smile. There were only 15 people in my section for that class. I spoke to my TA every section, directly, without having to beg for an appointment.Of my other courses, only one was over 30 students, most were under 25. The idea that you can’t approach professors is actually a lie. You can approach them and they encourage you to utilize their office hours, email them, set up other appointments, etc. I get the impression that really students don’t bug them enough for their liking. Remember, these people have valuable information. If you have questions, ask them. Professors love answering questions (well not all of them, but a lot do). They like to know you’re interested. You will read so much you’ll never have fun again (or at least until you graduate). This has more to do with managing your time than having lots of reading. Last quarter I had about 20 books to read, this quarter it is significantly less, but equally difficult. It’s actually not that hard to read all that, if you just sit down and do it. Public universities don’t help their students in a bind. That’s a lie too. While those lovely private schools might want you to think this, it’s really not very true. If you have a legit problem, there is usually some sort of help. Talk to your financial aid office. Often times they can work out deals with you, etc. Truths (the bad): University level work is expensive. Yes, it is. Not cheap. I get my fees, books, travel, and living expenses paid by tax payer’s dollars. I’m making good use of that money. I’m not failing my classes, I study, I’m working on going to graduate school, etc. I also paid into this for several years and I am grateful for people who do pay for my college. College is not cheap. Text books are disproportionately expensive. Another great truth. Text books are actually ridiculous, especially at university level. You buy these books for 20 or 30 bucks (we’re talking small novels here, not giant science texts) and then when you want to sell them back you can’t get much more than 1/10th of that. I list mine on Amazon, because I can get more money back for them. Another problem is that a lot of these books don’t get used again for a long time, which further reduces how much money you can get for them. Course Readers are stupid. Yes, they. Here’s why:When you buy them you can’t sell them back, even for a small chunk of change. You also can’t sell them online because they aren’t actual books, but groups of articles put together by the professor into a ringed binder. Alternately, that reader will likely never be used in the same way ever again or articles will be changed. That means, basically, you’ve just spend money on something that is useless to anyone else. They’re essentially a waste of money. University students bitch and complain about the stupidest crap ever. I’ve heard this one a lot: “I can’t get out of bed by 9:30 to get to class by 10:00. That’s too early.” Bull. You know what’s hard? Trying to get to campus by 7:45 when no buses run that early where you live. Yeah. They also complain about things like “Gosh, I have to read five pages tomorrow” or “I had four weeks to start my essay but now it’s due in two hours”. I’ve also heard other complaints that have little to do with school, and they are equally as stupid. Get over it. This is the easy life. Wait for the real world. I’ve been there. The “I can’t get up that early” excuse is a surefire way to get yourself canned. Learn discipline now while you still can. Yes, things can be stressful, but that’s no reason to bitch about stuff that, in all actuality, is trivial. You reading five pages is not remotely the same as someone losing their home, or being booted out on the streets, etc. Campus transit is somewhat difficult during the middle of the day. The problem is that university students are excessively lazy. Here’s an example: I’ve seen students take a bus that goes all over campus, only to get off two stops (about a quarter mile) later. Were they late for class? Nope. They were just meeting friends. Now the problem with the transits is that they are overcrowded during the day. Nobody walks. They all cram into the buses. This is stupid and counterproductive. Just walk. It’s good for you and you can walk just about anywhere on campus in twenty minutes. I know, I’ve done it. Some lack of diversity in coursework and difficulty in finding professors with similar interest. If you love science fiction, it’s rather difficult to learn more about it in an academic setting in most universities, including mine. Lack of discipline.