I found one of those plastic ring six pack can holders on the ground today. I didn't even know those were still made, and I also thought people would have some brains to not throw them away having seen all the pictures of birds and shit caught in these rings. But I guess I give people too much credit. I also reminds me of the people I see in school who throw their plastic bottles away with a loud, almost deliberate thud in the garbage when the recycling bin is not two feet away. It seems to me like they do it just to spite people that actually give a shit about the future of this planet, that is quickly running out of room for all our shit. Just needed to get that out, have a great night!
--Seth
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Bitches
OK, here goes. I am going to let my dear readers in on a little secret. Some of you may know this already about me, but for those of you that don't, be prepared not for something shocking, I guess just be prepared to know something else about me. But something I have realized about myself increasingly in the past couple years. I really do love women, and before you start snickering, let me tell you I have always sought out relationships of the romantic sorts with women and have never really considered the alternative... just not my thing. When I see the body of a girl I am attracted to, I see curves, and other goodness I probably don't need to get into now. Guys are just guys, kind of like Christmas tree with only one ornament, if you need a visual.
Anyway, enough of that. What I am talking about is the friendships I have developed with the fairer sex over the years. Now I know a lot of you guys out there have friends that are girls, but it seems to me you depend more on your friends of the same sex. I am not trying to preach or try to tell you how you live your lives. As always I am just saying what I see.
It is not that I am saying I don't like my guy friends, because I have a lot of valuable male friends. It is just that I feel I can say more to my lady friends. I can connect on more levels with women than I can with men. For example, when I am telling a story (I like telling stories), girls seem to focus on the story as it happened; rather than guys who seem to focus on what they think should have happened (how I should have touched her butt, or they suggest what they would have done). As you know I am not trying to say this is the case with everyone I know… I am just generalizing because I like to; there are always exceptions to rules.
I think that there are several reasons for this, some which may be discovered by my therapist years from now… But I think that the main one that comes to my mind comes from when I was a little kid. I grew up in the same house without ever really moving around to a new house, and since it was out in the country, I didn’t have a lot of neighbors my age. There was one however that was close by. This neighbor happened to be a lady by the name of Courtney O. Perhaps you have heard of her, she is only the best cowgirl in the tri-state area. So don’t try to impress her with your belt buckle, believe me, I have tried. Anyway, she lived right across the bridge and we were always hanging out together playing little pretend kiddy games. The favorite was “Be Anything You Wanna Be.” I am not sure if you have ever played it but it can go on forever.
Well years went on and I always found it easy to be friends with girls. It got a little awkward once I started going through that weird teenage time when things begin growing and descending, but I got over it eventually and once I got a little older and my hormones leveled out I was ready to continue the friendships.
So I think that is about all I wanted to get out in this little spiel. For my girly friends reading this, I hope you realize that this is a joke title. I just thought it would be funny. I am not saying bitches in a derogatory sense, it is more like when you walk into a party and people start cheering… you almost have to yell “What’s up bitches!?” That is getting off the subject, it is just the fact that I think I am hilarious and that title is just an example of that fact.
For the guys reading this, I hope you can understand what I am talking about. This goes double for the boyfriends; sometimes they can get the wrong idea about what I am about. But I do assure you I am too boring to do anything bad like that. Plus I am usually friends with them as well and I am not a jackass and don’t do things like that.
So to close out this little piece I would like to give some of the favorite women in my life a little shout out, so to speak. I will make a list and say a little bit about why they are important to me. I think listing them in chronological order of me meeting them is the best way to do it (Note: I met the third, fourth and fifth at pretty much the same time so I listed them alphabetically.) Also, I only included girls on this list I have had any recent dealings and meetings with, if you are upset that I am leaving you out, which I sure I am leaving some of you out, you should maybe try to get a hold of me more and stop depending on me to do it and you may just get yourself up on the list.
---Seth
Laureen: Who’s got the greatest mom in the world? I dooo. My mom is number one in my heart; it’s truuuue. My mom’s the best mom, better than your mom, let’s sing it together in harmonyyy. A little reference from a show I like there, but seriously, I think my mom is one of the greatest women in my life. She came from a great family and she raised three kick ass boys to think for themselves and not be taken in by other peoples shit.
Courtney: Well, I know you wanted a shout-out, and it sort of turned into this little thing here, so thanks for that I guess. I have known you all my life and now I think we have come around full circle what with the roommates in another city. It seems to be working out well.
Erin: Oh Erin, you are a great woman, we had a decent relationship in grade and high school, but I think we really connected afterwards. We are both geniuses and we have some more stuff in common.
Jenny: Ah, I miss you Jenny, ever since you moved to Kapmando (heh) GF hasn’t been the same without you here. We didn’t talk to much in high school, but I remember that first night I was ever in GF. The rest of my family was at the bar so I began to wander around campus looking for something interesting, and I have to say you were the last person I expected to run into, but I did and you took me out for a night. The months and years that followed I am pretty sure I learned you were one of my favorite people ever. I think the P Roach concert is what sealed the deal for me.
Susan: Susan, Susan, Susan, my longhaired friend, I don’t know why but we party so well together and out of everyone from back home, I probably miss you the most. Plus you sometimes actually come to see me too. So I think it is your turn to come to GF so we can party and perhaps get some Rhombus pizza.
Alisha: How could I forget about my lady neighbor on the other side? I didn't so that was a pointless question. I am glad you decided to come to GF to hang with me, I didn't really know what to think at first to see you in this different atmosphere out of the Projects, but I really enjoy having you around here and look forward to more days of bugging you at the student union to come.
Amanda: I have known and been good friends with you for quite some time. You have always been there with an open ear for me and sometimes that is all I needed. We may not really see each much now for some reasons or others, but I still miss you and still value our friendship.
Ellie: When I met you I could tell we had a lot in common, but once we started hanging out I found out just how much so. I find that if I have some sort of gripe about people or society I can always bring it to you and even if you don’t agree with it (you usually do it seems) you will at least understand and have some words to calm me down.
Heather: I am not sure if engineering school would be the same without you. I always enjoy seeing you in the halls and study rooms. One of my favorite things to do is to lock you into a conversation about something unimportant while you slowly become late for class. I also really enjoy hanging out with you outside of school as well, I haven’t really been seeing you outside much lately, I am sure there are reasons, also a few theories about why that my mind has come up with, but I think those are not to be discussed here. They are best discussed over Caesars and a cracker pizza at the Frog.
Whitney: I guess I have known you for less than two years but I really enjoy your company. A good night is usually had partying with you and RB. I think we really bonded that night of your 21st birthday… bars are fun.
KELLY: I tried to save the baby, but I let you down babe.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
King James
I am not sure exactly what is going on in this picture here, but I saw that someone put this King Kong pic next to it and I am seeing some striking similarities here, and I feel the need to share it with those of you that come to this little website.
So are the good people at Vogue comparing LeBron to King Kong? Maybe they are a little racist and they feel that black guys are going after poor defenseless white women... much in the same way a giant gorilla would go after them.
That might not be the case since Gisele doesn't look to frightened about that fact there is a large screaming gor *cough* black guy next to her. Although the power of his voice seems to be blowing her hair back and pushing her dress against her body in a very aesthetically pleasing way. Thats it, just a little query for the day.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Here it is
Well, below lies all my Facebook junk. I did read through most of them again when I put them up here. I added some things where I think I needed to, be it to make them more offensive, to make my point a little better, fix typos, or just to make the words flow a little better. So I think you should read through them if you ever have some time. I bet it would take about 45 minutes to an hour to get through them all. Hell, it might take you a shorter amount of time... since you seem to think you are so smart.
But from now on I guess it will be all original updates. I haven't really figured out how often I will be updating, it is a pretty busy time of year for me. But check back on me from time to time, I'm sure you will find something to stimulate both your left and right brain.
--Seth
But from now on I guess it will be all original updates. I haven't really figured out how often I will be updating, it is a pretty busy time of year for me. But check back on me from time to time, I'm sure you will find something to stimulate both your left and right brain.
--Seth
Silver White Winters That Melt Into Springs
Over the years, I have been exposed to many different things. Some of these things were great, others… not so much. Every once in awhile, something presents itself and I feel like I need to share it with my friends. I usually try to tell people about it so they can experience it, but I am afraid it falls on deaf ears some of the time. There is many different reasons for this, which I will not get into right now, so I thought it might be a fun exercise for me to write them down and put them up on here to give a few shout outs and opinions. I think that is one of the functions of the Internet, to help people push their opinions on other people. Also if I feel I need to add something at a later date, I will put it on a different post.
Well lets get started shall we? How about we begin with books.
Douglas Adams: This guy was the author of a trilogy of five books (yes you read that right) called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. These books start with the destruction of Earth in order to make way for a hyperspace by-pass route. Then the ultimate answer to “life, the universe, and everything” presents itself to be “42”. The answer doesn’t really make sense without a question so they must trek across the galaxy in order to find the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything.
Douglas has a way of putting thousands of different words in such an order that he tells great stories and shows you worlds you never would have imagined, yet all these worlds and creatures he describes can tell you about something that exists in our world and just how ridiculous it really is. I am not sure how you guys feel about British humor, but I am a fan and the humor in these books is amazing.
The way he puts some things is great. Here is his take on politics disguised as a description of the home planet of a giant robot that has landed on Earth in the fourth book (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish). This isn’t verbatim, but I think you will get the idea. When the robot landed, he told the first person he saw to “Take me to your lizard.” Back on his planet, you see, the people are people, and the leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards, but when asked why they keep voting for the lizards, they say its because if they don’t vote for the lizards, some of those OTHER lizards might get elected in. All five books are chock full of funny and smart little things like that.
There is also his Dirk Gentley series of books, especially The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul that I have read that are most definitely worth a look to any fiction fan. They are a little more grounded than the Hitchhikers books; they are still strange, but they are grounded because they stay on Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut: I have read around three Vonnegut Novels, starting with Slaughterhouse 5, Then Breakfast of Champions, followed by Cats Cradle as well as a few of his short stories. My favorite one out of all of them is Breakfast of Champions (not to be confused with the General Mills breakfast cereal); I think I have recommended this book to most of the people I talk to on a semi-regular basis these days. Out of all these people, I can recall only three people ever having read the book, and two of them were by my recommendation
Anyway, the book is kind of a commentary on American society. He has a way of describing things for what they really are. Some of the things he says may be shocking to some of my more sensitive friends. Some of these things will be revealed to you right now. Right at the beginning of the book he refers to the “Star Spangled Banner” as “gibberish, sprinkled with question marks”, then he goes on to call Christopher Columbus a pirate. Next he takes aim at how the people in the poorest countries in the world have starving families and yet they still go on fucking all the time (fucking is how babies are made.) Vonnegut also drew some pictures to be strewn about the book to illustrate some of his points. And yes, before you ask, there is a drawing of underpants in this book. This book is highly recommended not only to anyone my age, but also for people of all ages. I don’t want to sound pretentious or anything but I would call this book a “must read” for anyone.
P.S. Check out “Cats Cradle”, it will blow your mind.
Steven King: Given the two previous authors on here, you might be confused as to why I would include Steven on my list. Well let me tell you. Sure he doesn’t use a lot of symbolism; instead he just comes right out and tells you what he wants to say. The way he describes his stories make them easy to visualize. He makes you see his stories, even though they are usually pretty visceral and disturbing, I find them worthwhile stories to read if you are looking for just a good story without all that excess symbolistic baggage. I maybe have just made up a new word there (symbolistic) but I am not sure. It is kind of like watching a movie almost. (edit from the future: I have recently begun listening to his Dark Tower series, I feel it is worthy of reading, the first book is a little slow, but I have just finished the second book and I would compare it to a less boring Lord of the Rings. I have never read any Harry Potter books, but it seems like those, but with more guns, violence, sex, and drugs.) I recommend listening to them in audio book format. Speaking of which…
Books on Tape: This is a fairly recent discovery; it began one spring break with a drive to Salt Lake City followed by a drive to Reno, Nevada. My aunt in SLC let us borrow an audio recoding of The Da Vinci Code for the remainder of the trip. This helped wile the hours away very nicely… especially at night when everyone else was sleeping and I was driving all night with nothing but the darkness and my thoughts to keep me company. Then on the way back I found my CD player had been stolen out of my car in Omaha, Nebraska. Now that sucked and all but one positive thing that came out of that was that I got a new car CD player that had MP3 playing capabilities. After awhile I figured out you could find audio books online for download and you could fit an entire audio book on one CD. Being in the line of work I am in; I am in my car quite a bit. Sometimes I can get tired of listening to my music or the radio and I can throw on a book and it helps pass the time like a champion. Plus I have gotten a chance to experience all these classic books they tell you about in high school and college. Note: I have the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series on audio book; I mention this because the author, Douglas Adams, does the reading for all of them and he does a great job. Plus the stories sound a little better when they are read with an English accent; they sound like that is how they should be read. Let me know if you want a copy.
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Science: Ah science. You got me through many sleepless nights. Growing up I had myself a subscription to some magazines called Ranger Rick and World. With these I was able to learn about all sorts of stuff about science and nature. This, coupled with my parents not being big sports fans, made me learn to appreciate the science of things. The reason I mention them not being big sports fans, is that when people would have their “family bonding nights” or whatever you want to call them, many of my friends would go and watch the football game or whatever event happened to be on and have a grand old time. My family would gather around the TV for an episode of Nature, or NOVA on PBS. I think this may have benefited me more than watching football would have. I used to resent my dad for not taking me out to play catch with the football or the baseball; but now I am kind of glad for it. With the time we could have spent playing ball, he taught me about why the hills we have by our house are there, or why I shouldn’t stare at the sun for more than five minutes; many different things about why and how the world works.
I don’t see why I need to know what a touchback is (I actually don’t know what that is, but I know it is from football… maybe) when I know about Africanized bees instead. These little bastards are nearly impossible to tell apart from regular European honeybees when you look at them. But their behavior is easy to discern. When you walk up to a honeybee nest, they will give you about nine seconds to back away from the nest before they consider you a threat and start to attack, and once you start running they will consider you to be “chased away.” If you stumble upon an Africanized bee nest, they will give you about half a second to back the fuck off before emptying the entire hive to come after you. And as you are running away screaming and probably soiling yourself, they will keep chasing you up to half a mile. Now you are probably wondering why I am bringing these Africanized bees up, there are lots of nasty animals in Africa. Well they do not live in Africa. They hail from Central and South America, and they are man-made. Around 1950 some genius named Warwick (first name) decided he wanted to have some bees that could survive in the jungle so he crossed an African bee with a European bee. What he got was a crazy bee that swarms in the hundreds of millions, is insanely territorial, very aggressive, and has killed thousands of people. Oh yeah and it also can survive in the jungle. So of course they escaped and began moving north, and once they got to the American Southwest, it was found they did just fine in the desert as well. And they are still moving north; they are due to arrive in North Dakota around 2010….
Another branch of science that intrigues me more than biology is the Physics branch. This extends to many things, whether it is the collisions of pool balls all the way to astronomy. Anyway, the way that some of these physics things work really blows my mind. One example is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Have you ever been making a sandwich and accidentally knocked the bread off of the counter? It always seems to land with the buttered side down on the floor. This is because it does not have enough time to flip around again to land on the dry side. If our tables were all ten feet tall, this would not be a problem anymore. See, you take all this stuff for granted but if you look into it can be infinitely complex.
I would say my favorite branch of science is astronomy. I love learning about and looking out into space at night and wondering what else could be out there. While looking at Jupiter through a telescope, you can see its four larger moons around it. Each of these moons is like a little mini world that could possibly support some form of life. Imagine what could be around some of the giant red and blue stars strewn about our galaxy. We really don’t have much of an idea… there could be anything, we just have to stop listening to Einstein and crazy evangelicals so much. The speed of light is very easily broken I believe… it is just that I or anyone else cannot even fathom how to do it with out puny human brains. Maybe God can tell us how, well I am listening....
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Music: Ah music…. I love music and I don’t know how I could live without it. I would say I listen to pretty much any kind of music. I have recently even began to appreciate country music… man I thought I would never say that.
I would say my favorite type of music is rock and roll though, all kinds from metal to classic rock.
If I were to have to say, my favorite album of all time is The Wall by Pink Floyd. This perfect album covers all the issues that we as humans are still dealing with today. When I was a kid growing up and listening to this I was moved by “Another Brick in the Wall.” I was frustrated with elementary school (we don’t need no education was the chorus that brought me in) … why the hell do we have to stand in lines constantly and raise our hands to talk in school… all we are being trained to do is to become “another brick in the wall.” The wall is our society and the end of the wall is a drop off into the meat grinder of adulthood, what with voting for crooked politicians, getting jobs we hate, and going to foreign countries to die for “the greater good,” the greater good being someone else’s pockets getting lined while they stay safely behind their desks in DC (Dylan reference). Fuck all that.
As I grew up I began to appreciate the music behind the album as well. It is composed perfectly; Gilmore’s musical and singing talent blend perfectly with Water’s musical and lyrical genius, he also has a great rock and roll singing voice, he conveys a lot more anger than Gilmore does with his voice.
My favorite song from the wall would have to be “In the Flesh”, not to be confused with the opening song of the album, “In the Flesh?” The song I am referring to comes towards the end of the second CD. Musically it is pretty similar to the first song, but the words are very different… it is like the opening song of a concert gone horribly wrong and it turns into a hate rally. It is not Roger actually saying these things, I believe he did that song to make a statement… he does not believe in segregating people out by race, or lifestyle choices. He is a man who truly loves peace.
I have a few different versions of this album, and I would say my favorite is the live version called “Is There Anybody Out There?” It is The Wall Pink Floyd wanted to do without the sound and time restrictions forced on them from the days of vinyl. I listen to it about once a week and I love it each time.
This brings me to my next topic in music, live concerts. Something about a rock concert by a guy who loves his music puts the energy from that music into me somehow and I can really flow with the tunes. I love a good hard rock concert because I can go crazy for some reason. Papa Roach was a good one for that… Also the Rob Zombie/ Ozzy concert was good for my craziness as well.
I would say the best show I have been to would be the Roger Water’s concert I went to in the cities this last summer (would you expect anything else?) He was the man behind Pink Floyd as far as I am concerned. The effects, songs, and the music were all there and were amazing. There was even a flying pig, oh and a giant Dark Side of the Moon prism, complete with the beam of light going in and the rainbow coming out the other side. The crowd participation was great as well. While he sang “Mother”, he asked, “Mother should I trust the government?” a bunch of boos were heard from the crowd. Another example is during the opening song, “In the Flesh”, He is pointing out that he sees a Jew, A coon, etc… When he got to the part where he said, “There’s one smoking a joint” he had to pause a little bit to let the audience finish cheering. You really should have been there it was good stuff.
As for the other bands I like… I don’t feel like getting into them much right now, I will mention that my favorite hard rock band is Tool I would say. Their songs are very long and full of angry anti-establishment lyrics and guitar work.
My favorite new rock band, from a musical standpoint would have to be The White Stripes; Jack White’s guitaring really scratches me where I itch; the runner up from a musical standpoint would be Incubus I think.
For chilling out purposes, I think Cake is what I need, the guys voice blends with some funky guitars and drums… good stuff. For other tastes I have, see my music section in my profile if you really must know more (although it won't tell you more.)
Well I think that will do it for me for now… I could go on to video games or TV or friends I have, but I might leave that for later. I hope you look into some of this stuff and can learn to love it as much as I have. If you want me to help you acquire some of this stuff (the books or CDs) let me know, it is very easy for me and I would be glad to do it. I love sharing these things with my friends in the hopes that they will have their lives enriched by them as I have.
For a little outgoing statement, after reading through this after writing it I have said fuck a bunch of times… I hope it does not offend you. If it does, I guess I don’t care… but do I feel bad for you if you are offended by a word as simple as the word fuck. I think it is one of the most versatile words in the English language and can be used for many things. Well, fuck this anyway, I am gonna stop writing. Also I am getting the fuck out of town for this long Easter weekend; so for those of you around B-town, get a hold of me if you want to see me. As for the rest of you… have a great fucking weekend.
--Seth
Well lets get started shall we? How about we begin with books.
Douglas Adams: This guy was the author of a trilogy of five books (yes you read that right) called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. These books start with the destruction of Earth in order to make way for a hyperspace by-pass route. Then the ultimate answer to “life, the universe, and everything” presents itself to be “42”. The answer doesn’t really make sense without a question so they must trek across the galaxy in order to find the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything.
Douglas has a way of putting thousands of different words in such an order that he tells great stories and shows you worlds you never would have imagined, yet all these worlds and creatures he describes can tell you about something that exists in our world and just how ridiculous it really is. I am not sure how you guys feel about British humor, but I am a fan and the humor in these books is amazing.
The way he puts some things is great. Here is his take on politics disguised as a description of the home planet of a giant robot that has landed on Earth in the fourth book (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish). This isn’t verbatim, but I think you will get the idea. When the robot landed, he told the first person he saw to “Take me to your lizard.” Back on his planet, you see, the people are people, and the leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards, but when asked why they keep voting for the lizards, they say its because if they don’t vote for the lizards, some of those OTHER lizards might get elected in. All five books are chock full of funny and smart little things like that.
There is also his Dirk Gentley series of books, especially The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul that I have read that are most definitely worth a look to any fiction fan. They are a little more grounded than the Hitchhikers books; they are still strange, but they are grounded because they stay on Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut: I have read around three Vonnegut Novels, starting with Slaughterhouse 5, Then Breakfast of Champions, followed by Cats Cradle as well as a few of his short stories. My favorite one out of all of them is Breakfast of Champions (not to be confused with the General Mills breakfast cereal); I think I have recommended this book to most of the people I talk to on a semi-regular basis these days. Out of all these people, I can recall only three people ever having read the book, and two of them were by my recommendation
Anyway, the book is kind of a commentary on American society. He has a way of describing things for what they really are. Some of the things he says may be shocking to some of my more sensitive friends. Some of these things will be revealed to you right now. Right at the beginning of the book he refers to the “Star Spangled Banner” as “gibberish, sprinkled with question marks”, then he goes on to call Christopher Columbus a pirate. Next he takes aim at how the people in the poorest countries in the world have starving families and yet they still go on fucking all the time (fucking is how babies are made.) Vonnegut also drew some pictures to be strewn about the book to illustrate some of his points. And yes, before you ask, there is a drawing of underpants in this book. This book is highly recommended not only to anyone my age, but also for people of all ages. I don’t want to sound pretentious or anything but I would call this book a “must read” for anyone.
P.S. Check out “Cats Cradle”, it will blow your mind.
Steven King: Given the two previous authors on here, you might be confused as to why I would include Steven on my list. Well let me tell you. Sure he doesn’t use a lot of symbolism; instead he just comes right out and tells you what he wants to say. The way he describes his stories make them easy to visualize. He makes you see his stories, even though they are usually pretty visceral and disturbing, I find them worthwhile stories to read if you are looking for just a good story without all that excess symbolistic baggage. I maybe have just made up a new word there (symbolistic) but I am not sure. It is kind of like watching a movie almost. (edit from the future: I have recently begun listening to his Dark Tower series, I feel it is worthy of reading, the first book is a little slow, but I have just finished the second book and I would compare it to a less boring Lord of the Rings. I have never read any Harry Potter books, but it seems like those, but with more guns, violence, sex, and drugs.) I recommend listening to them in audio book format. Speaking of which…
Books on Tape: This is a fairly recent discovery; it began one spring break with a drive to Salt Lake City followed by a drive to Reno, Nevada. My aunt in SLC let us borrow an audio recoding of The Da Vinci Code for the remainder of the trip. This helped wile the hours away very nicely… especially at night when everyone else was sleeping and I was driving all night with nothing but the darkness and my thoughts to keep me company. Then on the way back I found my CD player had been stolen out of my car in Omaha, Nebraska. Now that sucked and all but one positive thing that came out of that was that I got a new car CD player that had MP3 playing capabilities. After awhile I figured out you could find audio books online for download and you could fit an entire audio book on one CD. Being in the line of work I am in; I am in my car quite a bit. Sometimes I can get tired of listening to my music or the radio and I can throw on a book and it helps pass the time like a champion. Plus I have gotten a chance to experience all these classic books they tell you about in high school and college. Note: I have the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series on audio book; I mention this because the author, Douglas Adams, does the reading for all of them and he does a great job. Plus the stories sound a little better when they are read with an English accent; they sound like that is how they should be read. Let me know if you want a copy.
__________________________
Science: Ah science. You got me through many sleepless nights. Growing up I had myself a subscription to some magazines called Ranger Rick and World. With these I was able to learn about all sorts of stuff about science and nature. This, coupled with my parents not being big sports fans, made me learn to appreciate the science of things. The reason I mention them not being big sports fans, is that when people would have their “family bonding nights” or whatever you want to call them, many of my friends would go and watch the football game or whatever event happened to be on and have a grand old time. My family would gather around the TV for an episode of Nature, or NOVA on PBS. I think this may have benefited me more than watching football would have. I used to resent my dad for not taking me out to play catch with the football or the baseball; but now I am kind of glad for it. With the time we could have spent playing ball, he taught me about why the hills we have by our house are there, or why I shouldn’t stare at the sun for more than five minutes; many different things about why and how the world works.
I don’t see why I need to know what a touchback is (I actually don’t know what that is, but I know it is from football… maybe) when I know about Africanized bees instead. These little bastards are nearly impossible to tell apart from regular European honeybees when you look at them. But their behavior is easy to discern. When you walk up to a honeybee nest, they will give you about nine seconds to back away from the nest before they consider you a threat and start to attack, and once you start running they will consider you to be “chased away.” If you stumble upon an Africanized bee nest, they will give you about half a second to back the fuck off before emptying the entire hive to come after you. And as you are running away screaming and probably soiling yourself, they will keep chasing you up to half a mile. Now you are probably wondering why I am bringing these Africanized bees up, there are lots of nasty animals in Africa. Well they do not live in Africa. They hail from Central and South America, and they are man-made. Around 1950 some genius named Warwick (first name) decided he wanted to have some bees that could survive in the jungle so he crossed an African bee with a European bee. What he got was a crazy bee that swarms in the hundreds of millions, is insanely territorial, very aggressive, and has killed thousands of people. Oh yeah and it also can survive in the jungle. So of course they escaped and began moving north, and once they got to the American Southwest, it was found they did just fine in the desert as well. And they are still moving north; they are due to arrive in North Dakota around 2010….
Another branch of science that intrigues me more than biology is the Physics branch. This extends to many things, whether it is the collisions of pool balls all the way to astronomy. Anyway, the way that some of these physics things work really blows my mind. One example is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Have you ever been making a sandwich and accidentally knocked the bread off of the counter? It always seems to land with the buttered side down on the floor. This is because it does not have enough time to flip around again to land on the dry side. If our tables were all ten feet tall, this would not be a problem anymore. See, you take all this stuff for granted but if you look into it can be infinitely complex.
I would say my favorite branch of science is astronomy. I love learning about and looking out into space at night and wondering what else could be out there. While looking at Jupiter through a telescope, you can see its four larger moons around it. Each of these moons is like a little mini world that could possibly support some form of life. Imagine what could be around some of the giant red and blue stars strewn about our galaxy. We really don’t have much of an idea… there could be anything, we just have to stop listening to Einstein and crazy evangelicals so much. The speed of light is very easily broken I believe… it is just that I or anyone else cannot even fathom how to do it with out puny human brains. Maybe God can tell us how, well I am listening....
__________________________
Music: Ah music…. I love music and I don’t know how I could live without it. I would say I listen to pretty much any kind of music. I have recently even began to appreciate country music… man I thought I would never say that.
I would say my favorite type of music is rock and roll though, all kinds from metal to classic rock.
If I were to have to say, my favorite album of all time is The Wall by Pink Floyd. This perfect album covers all the issues that we as humans are still dealing with today. When I was a kid growing up and listening to this I was moved by “Another Brick in the Wall.” I was frustrated with elementary school (we don’t need no education was the chorus that brought me in) … why the hell do we have to stand in lines constantly and raise our hands to talk in school… all we are being trained to do is to become “another brick in the wall.” The wall is our society and the end of the wall is a drop off into the meat grinder of adulthood, what with voting for crooked politicians, getting jobs we hate, and going to foreign countries to die for “the greater good,” the greater good being someone else’s pockets getting lined while they stay safely behind their desks in DC (Dylan reference). Fuck all that.
As I grew up I began to appreciate the music behind the album as well. It is composed perfectly; Gilmore’s musical and singing talent blend perfectly with Water’s musical and lyrical genius, he also has a great rock and roll singing voice, he conveys a lot more anger than Gilmore does with his voice.
My favorite song from the wall would have to be “In the Flesh”, not to be confused with the opening song of the album, “In the Flesh?” The song I am referring to comes towards the end of the second CD. Musically it is pretty similar to the first song, but the words are very different… it is like the opening song of a concert gone horribly wrong and it turns into a hate rally. It is not Roger actually saying these things, I believe he did that song to make a statement… he does not believe in segregating people out by race, or lifestyle choices. He is a man who truly loves peace.
I have a few different versions of this album, and I would say my favorite is the live version called “Is There Anybody Out There?” It is The Wall Pink Floyd wanted to do without the sound and time restrictions forced on them from the days of vinyl. I listen to it about once a week and I love it each time.
This brings me to my next topic in music, live concerts. Something about a rock concert by a guy who loves his music puts the energy from that music into me somehow and I can really flow with the tunes. I love a good hard rock concert because I can go crazy for some reason. Papa Roach was a good one for that… Also the Rob Zombie/ Ozzy concert was good for my craziness as well.
I would say the best show I have been to would be the Roger Water’s concert I went to in the cities this last summer (would you expect anything else?) He was the man behind Pink Floyd as far as I am concerned. The effects, songs, and the music were all there and were amazing. There was even a flying pig, oh and a giant Dark Side of the Moon prism, complete with the beam of light going in and the rainbow coming out the other side. The crowd participation was great as well. While he sang “Mother”, he asked, “Mother should I trust the government?” a bunch of boos were heard from the crowd. Another example is during the opening song, “In the Flesh”, He is pointing out that he sees a Jew, A coon, etc… When he got to the part where he said, “There’s one smoking a joint” he had to pause a little bit to let the audience finish cheering. You really should have been there it was good stuff.
As for the other bands I like… I don’t feel like getting into them much right now, I will mention that my favorite hard rock band is Tool I would say. Their songs are very long and full of angry anti-establishment lyrics and guitar work.
My favorite new rock band, from a musical standpoint would have to be The White Stripes; Jack White’s guitaring really scratches me where I itch; the runner up from a musical standpoint would be Incubus I think.
For chilling out purposes, I think Cake is what I need, the guys voice blends with some funky guitars and drums… good stuff. For other tastes I have, see my music section in my profile if you really must know more (although it won't tell you more.)
Well I think that will do it for me for now… I could go on to video games or TV or friends I have, but I might leave that for later. I hope you look into some of this stuff and can learn to love it as much as I have. If you want me to help you acquire some of this stuff (the books or CDs) let me know, it is very easy for me and I would be glad to do it. I love sharing these things with my friends in the hopes that they will have their lives enriched by them as I have.
For a little outgoing statement, after reading through this after writing it I have said fuck a bunch of times… I hope it does not offend you. If it does, I guess I don’t care… but do I feel bad for you if you are offended by a word as simple as the word fuck. I think it is one of the most versatile words in the English language and can be used for many things. Well, fuck this anyway, I am gonna stop writing. Also I am getting the fuck out of town for this long Easter weekend; so for those of you around B-town, get a hold of me if you want to see me. As for the rest of you… have a great fucking weekend.
--Seth
Too true
Some Real Conversation for Your Ass
Some people have told me that they like to read these little things I write here because they don’t think like me and I guess they find it interesting or something. Well over these 23 years I have been alive now, I have come up with a few theories on today’s society. Now you may have heard these before, be it from me or somebody else, but I assure you these are my ideas. Now before you start reading this I feel I must warn you that I talk about some scandalous stuff in this entry. Sex, drugs, and sluts to name a few; Now I am writing this intro before I start getting into the body so this may change but I have a general outline in my head and I may have some things in here that some people may find offensive. So if you cannot handle talk of black people, drugs, and tapes of sexual escapades whether they be mine or anyone elses… I was going to say to stop reading this, but I don’t want you to… keep reading, you might learn something, probably not, but it is possible. If you are like me and enjoy reading about scandalous things, prepare for a nice double dose of this pimping. Heh, that doesn’t mean anything. Let’s get started shall we…
A lot of people I talk to about this subject have a pretty open mind about this, some, not so much, you know who you are. I know a lot of people that want to “legalize it” or whatever slogan you choose to go by, but let me tell you why I think America will never "Legalize it", no matter what benefit might befall on us. In case you haven’t figured this out yet, I am talking about a lady that goes by the name of Mary Jane. The obvious reason is that there is a lot of money to be made from giving people fines and cleaning the streets of smelly slackers with knit sweatshirts that call me bro even though I have never met them. (I think everyone I have met that wears a knitred hooded sweatshirt has turned out to be a stoner or ex-smoker.) That is not why I think it won’t be legalized here though. They could make plenty of money taxing the shit out of it if they had control of the market.
Before I get into this, let us think about the Patriot Act, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Ministry of Truth, etc… now I will be the first to admit I don’t know that much about the Patriot Act and the other things like it, but I do know it came after 9-11, and it is our way of giving up some of our liberties and freedoms in order to be protected from the Muslims, I mean terrorists. This paved the way for unwarranted wiretapping, searches, torturing, and a telescreen in every home.
Now I am not sure if you are picking up the references in the last paragraph, but the worst kind of changes happen slowly. Now I am no PoliSci guy and I don’t claim to be a conspiracy theorist or anything like that, but it seems like if things keep going the way they are, you are going to look back one day in the distant future when you are old, gray, and incontinent and you might be surprised that things look a little like that story I was referring to.
The way out of this is for rebels to act up against the establishment to let them know they are upset, whether it is killing redcoats or going on hunger strikes. Another way some people in America like to rebel is to smoke marijuana. When people smoke, it takes away their ambitions and makes them think it is just fine sitting around playing games or watching TV or play Frisbee golf. I am not trying to bag on people’s methods, but a lot of people like to sit around and talk about how much they hate the government and what it is doing to our lives. These people are rebelling against the government, which I approve of, but it doesn’t really get anywhere. And that is my point. The government has a way of keeping these possible revolutionaries quiet. Meanwhile, the majority of people sit back and contently drink their alcohol (alcohol makes you dumb too, by the way). So the alcohol keeps the normal “straight laced” people dumb and content with the changes that are slowly happening around them. While the counterculture, the ones that want to change things and go against the flow, are obscured by a cloud of smoke and end up melting to their couch or getting covered in a jazzy cocoon or whatever happens to them in the anti-drug commercials you see these days and they end up sitting back and letting these changes happen even though they think they are rebelling against the establishment.
So that is why I think pot won’t be legalized here. Call me paranoid or whatever you want, but that is just the way I see things. I am not trying to incite you to riot in the streets or anything, but I hear people sometimes wondering why they don’t just legalize it. That is why. Well, now is about as good a time as any to move on to the next topic I guess.
A long time ago, before tractors and combines were invented, early Americans used different machines to get their work done. These machines were self-repairing, easy to operate, and self-replicating. They resembled their owners slightly but there was one characteristic that made them easy to tell apart from the people that owned the machines. The owners were white and the machines were black.
Flash forward to today and these black brothers of ours live among us in general peace and harmony for the most part. There are some rednecks and racists that don’t like these people living among them and their families. These people depend on stereotypes to enforce their opinions and justify their feeling of hate to these people simply based on the color of their skin. Some zealots even think that God purposefully made these people to be subservient to the white people (bullshit, but whatever, moving on).
There are a couple of stereotypes I would like to focus on for the sake of this piece of writing. I think stereotypes are generally bad, but sometimes I think that they exist for a reason, in other words there may be a shred of truth in them. These particular thoughts came to me a few years ago and then came back about a couple weeks ago when I was hearing my roommate talk about this sort of stuff. One of these stereotypes is black people’s inherent athletic ability. The other one is a little harder to talk about, even though I feel the need to address it for some reason, but it is related to the phrase “Once you go black, you will never go back.” Yes that’s right, I am talking about their purported penis size, apparently they are huge. Now I can’t back this up being a man that has not seen many black dongs (none in person) but I guess I have heard some things about them, as I am sure most of you have.
Lets go back in time once more to when the slave traders were just arriving in the colonies and later in the states. When a prospective slave owner arrived, the traders would strip and line up the black men and women to allow the customers to view and inspect the wares. Now I don’t approve of slavery one bit and I think it is a very dark chapter in American history and there are still too many black and white people that are very bitter about that whole situation. But if I were to put myself in a buyer’s shoes, I would think he would want to pick the ones that were the best built and looked the most virile. This means he would probably pick the one with the biggest muscles and the biggest penis. I can see them right now walking up and down the line of people and saying, “Hey this one looks like a stud, I think I will take him”.
Coming back to the future I come to my point, I know it sounds weird and I hope you don’t think I am racist because I don’t feel like I am. I am just being realistic here. It sounds unfortunate, but black people used to be bred in this country like horses. And now I hear people getting upset about how a lot of the sports superstars these days are black, well they have to stick to what they are good at. And instead of being good at being farm machinery to benefit their “owners,” they are now good at providing the ancestors of the people that oppressed their ancestors with hours upon hours of straight, hypnotizing entertainment.
Moving away from that last topic, I am going to change the subject entirely. Sometime not too long ago I turned on my TV to the one channel that I get here in Grand Forks, which is ABC for those of you who may be wondering, and saw a show called Hollywood Insider or some other clone of that show. They tell you the stories you really need to know, one of these stories I saw had to do with Paris Hilton’s rich granddaddy slashing the inheritance he planned to give his family to some sort of ridiculously low amount of a few measly million dollars and the people on the show told us not to worry because she has made about 7 million dollars last year.
Now when I heard this news I said to myself, “Well that sucks, for her”. This thought shocked me a little bit. Why do people even care about this chick? I have heard that she is the woman that is famous for being famous I guess. But how did she get famous? This caused me to start thinking back to when she first started getting in the limelight. It makes me think back to working at Thrifty White Drug and seeing her face splattered all over the tabloids that they kept up at the front counter. I was always trying to figure out who the hell this chick was. Then I heard about this sex tape that was circulating the net featuring her and some other guy. While I think she is an attractive woman and I personally liked the video, plus she pulls in billionaire trust fund money, but she, and her agents probably, wanted more than that.
Then I found it curious that soon after this tape was “leaked”, she suddenly had her very own reality show with this other cute white girl who is somehow the daughter of black entertainer Lionel Richie. So here is what I think, the tape was a stunt. I am not sure if Paris had anything to do with the release (I saw the tape and I guess she did have something to do with the release… if you follow me, giggidy), but I think it was contrived because they wanted to have a reality show where rich girls go and visit poor people and laugh at their backwards peasant ways. They didn’t want to have two relatively unknown girls on this show, so they decided to let this tape out and take advantage of the human obsession with sex to get her name out there. And it worked; the show was a smashing success. And now Paris can continue to live her celebrity lifestyle of sex, drugs, and crappy rock & roll even though her trust fund went bye-bye. Indeed… God Bless America!
One last little thought that I might as well add real fast came to me because of the environmental engineering class was not originally my thought, I heard it from this guy I worked with, so if you are reading this now, I am stealing your idea… yes it is true, but I only do it because I liked hearing the idea and I would like to share it with those who have made it this far in this little rant I am doing. The class deals a lot with wastewater and the treatment of it so it can be released back into the environment (fun fact from the future: The tap water you are drinking and showering in GF is probably partly composed of water that has went down the drain or flushed down the toilet in Fargo, I wouldn't worry about it though, it has been treated very well... maybe) , so that got me thinking about how I heard this person saying that the Y-chromosome is getting smaller. The Y-chromosome is a chromosome that makes you a male if you end up with it. That is a very simplified explanation of it because that is about all I can remember about it, give me a break, I’m not a fucking biologist. Anyway, I heard an interesting theory about why the Y is getting smaller.
Back in the 1950’s I think, an oral contraceptive was released and began to gain popularity. This pill, that, by the way, was good enough to be referred to as “The Pill”, had some hormones in it that changed the way a woman’s body works and prevents them from ovulating, thus preventing pregnancy.
The synthetic estrogen in the pill doesn’t stay in their bodies. It comes out in the girls’ urine and is then flushed down the toilet. The hormones then begin a long journey through a water treatment facility where it is eventually gets released back into the world. The treatment facilities have a hard time getting rid of these hormones that are constantly coming through with greater amounts of birth control being used in the world. The estrogen rich water goes downstream and eventually comes through as drinking water somewhere else for someone else to drink.
Now as I have said before I don’t have much knowledge in this area to say the least, but I would venture a guess that all of this constant exposure to those hormones would eventually have an effect on some things… Men are always drinking it and women drinking and bathing in the water while pregnant with the men. You would think something would happen right?
Now I realize that some of you with more info on this than me will have some sort of differing opinion on this, you may be right. I am probably wrong, but I think it is good to think about it. This is one aspect of how the humans affect the environment we don’t hear about so often in these days of global warming and trash pollution activism.
Well that is going to do it for me on this one. Sorry these have been getting a little long, this piece is about four pages long in Microsoft Word, but I guess I just have a lot of stuff to say. Also it has been getting easier to write these. It is actually starting to become sort of an outlet for the frustrations I get sometimes in this world. If you made it through this, I have to give you kudos, also I hope it gave you something to ponder over. Sometimes thoughts are fun.
Well, until next time,
Seth
A lot of people I talk to about this subject have a pretty open mind about this, some, not so much, you know who you are. I know a lot of people that want to “legalize it” or whatever slogan you choose to go by, but let me tell you why I think America will never "Legalize it", no matter what benefit might befall on us. In case you haven’t figured this out yet, I am talking about a lady that goes by the name of Mary Jane. The obvious reason is that there is a lot of money to be made from giving people fines and cleaning the streets of smelly slackers with knit sweatshirts that call me bro even though I have never met them. (I think everyone I have met that wears a knitred hooded sweatshirt has turned out to be a stoner or ex-smoker.) That is not why I think it won’t be legalized here though. They could make plenty of money taxing the shit out of it if they had control of the market.
Before I get into this, let us think about the Patriot Act, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Ministry of Truth, etc… now I will be the first to admit I don’t know that much about the Patriot Act and the other things like it, but I do know it came after 9-11, and it is our way of giving up some of our liberties and freedoms in order to be protected from the Muslims, I mean terrorists. This paved the way for unwarranted wiretapping, searches, torturing, and a telescreen in every home.
Now I am not sure if you are picking up the references in the last paragraph, but the worst kind of changes happen slowly. Now I am no PoliSci guy and I don’t claim to be a conspiracy theorist or anything like that, but it seems like if things keep going the way they are, you are going to look back one day in the distant future when you are old, gray, and incontinent and you might be surprised that things look a little like that story I was referring to.
The way out of this is for rebels to act up against the establishment to let them know they are upset, whether it is killing redcoats or going on hunger strikes. Another way some people in America like to rebel is to smoke marijuana. When people smoke, it takes away their ambitions and makes them think it is just fine sitting around playing games or watching TV or play Frisbee golf. I am not trying to bag on people’s methods, but a lot of people like to sit around and talk about how much they hate the government and what it is doing to our lives. These people are rebelling against the government, which I approve of, but it doesn’t really get anywhere. And that is my point. The government has a way of keeping these possible revolutionaries quiet. Meanwhile, the majority of people sit back and contently drink their alcohol (alcohol makes you dumb too, by the way). So the alcohol keeps the normal “straight laced” people dumb and content with the changes that are slowly happening around them. While the counterculture, the ones that want to change things and go against the flow, are obscured by a cloud of smoke and end up melting to their couch or getting covered in a jazzy cocoon or whatever happens to them in the anti-drug commercials you see these days and they end up sitting back and letting these changes happen even though they think they are rebelling against the establishment.
So that is why I think pot won’t be legalized here. Call me paranoid or whatever you want, but that is just the way I see things. I am not trying to incite you to riot in the streets or anything, but I hear people sometimes wondering why they don’t just legalize it. That is why. Well, now is about as good a time as any to move on to the next topic I guess.
A long time ago, before tractors and combines were invented, early Americans used different machines to get their work done. These machines were self-repairing, easy to operate, and self-replicating. They resembled their owners slightly but there was one characteristic that made them easy to tell apart from the people that owned the machines. The owners were white and the machines were black.
Flash forward to today and these black brothers of ours live among us in general peace and harmony for the most part. There are some rednecks and racists that don’t like these people living among them and their families. These people depend on stereotypes to enforce their opinions and justify their feeling of hate to these people simply based on the color of their skin. Some zealots even think that God purposefully made these people to be subservient to the white people (bullshit, but whatever, moving on).
There are a couple of stereotypes I would like to focus on for the sake of this piece of writing. I think stereotypes are generally bad, but sometimes I think that they exist for a reason, in other words there may be a shred of truth in them. These particular thoughts came to me a few years ago and then came back about a couple weeks ago when I was hearing my roommate talk about this sort of stuff. One of these stereotypes is black people’s inherent athletic ability. The other one is a little harder to talk about, even though I feel the need to address it for some reason, but it is related to the phrase “Once you go black, you will never go back.” Yes that’s right, I am talking about their purported penis size, apparently they are huge. Now I can’t back this up being a man that has not seen many black dongs (none in person) but I guess I have heard some things about them, as I am sure most of you have.
Lets go back in time once more to when the slave traders were just arriving in the colonies and later in the states. When a prospective slave owner arrived, the traders would strip and line up the black men and women to allow the customers to view and inspect the wares. Now I don’t approve of slavery one bit and I think it is a very dark chapter in American history and there are still too many black and white people that are very bitter about that whole situation. But if I were to put myself in a buyer’s shoes, I would think he would want to pick the ones that were the best built and looked the most virile. This means he would probably pick the one with the biggest muscles and the biggest penis. I can see them right now walking up and down the line of people and saying, “Hey this one looks like a stud, I think I will take him”.
Coming back to the future I come to my point, I know it sounds weird and I hope you don’t think I am racist because I don’t feel like I am. I am just being realistic here. It sounds unfortunate, but black people used to be bred in this country like horses. And now I hear people getting upset about how a lot of the sports superstars these days are black, well they have to stick to what they are good at. And instead of being good at being farm machinery to benefit their “owners,” they are now good at providing the ancestors of the people that oppressed their ancestors with hours upon hours of straight, hypnotizing entertainment.
Moving away from that last topic, I am going to change the subject entirely. Sometime not too long ago I turned on my TV to the one channel that I get here in Grand Forks, which is ABC for those of you who may be wondering, and saw a show called Hollywood Insider or some other clone of that show. They tell you the stories you really need to know, one of these stories I saw had to do with Paris Hilton’s rich granddaddy slashing the inheritance he planned to give his family to some sort of ridiculously low amount of a few measly million dollars and the people on the show told us not to worry because she has made about 7 million dollars last year.
Now when I heard this news I said to myself, “Well that sucks, for her”. This thought shocked me a little bit. Why do people even care about this chick? I have heard that she is the woman that is famous for being famous I guess. But how did she get famous? This caused me to start thinking back to when she first started getting in the limelight. It makes me think back to working at Thrifty White Drug and seeing her face splattered all over the tabloids that they kept up at the front counter. I was always trying to figure out who the hell this chick was. Then I heard about this sex tape that was circulating the net featuring her and some other guy. While I think she is an attractive woman and I personally liked the video, plus she pulls in billionaire trust fund money, but she, and her agents probably, wanted more than that.
Then I found it curious that soon after this tape was “leaked”, she suddenly had her very own reality show with this other cute white girl who is somehow the daughter of black entertainer Lionel Richie. So here is what I think, the tape was a stunt. I am not sure if Paris had anything to do with the release (I saw the tape and I guess she did have something to do with the release… if you follow me, giggidy), but I think it was contrived because they wanted to have a reality show where rich girls go and visit poor people and laugh at their backwards peasant ways. They didn’t want to have two relatively unknown girls on this show, so they decided to let this tape out and take advantage of the human obsession with sex to get her name out there. And it worked; the show was a smashing success. And now Paris can continue to live her celebrity lifestyle of sex, drugs, and crappy rock & roll even though her trust fund went bye-bye. Indeed… God Bless America!
One last little thought that I might as well add real fast came to me because of the environmental engineering class was not originally my thought, I heard it from this guy I worked with, so if you are reading this now, I am stealing your idea… yes it is true, but I only do it because I liked hearing the idea and I would like to share it with those who have made it this far in this little rant I am doing. The class deals a lot with wastewater and the treatment of it so it can be released back into the environment (fun fact from the future: The tap water you are drinking and showering in GF is probably partly composed of water that has went down the drain or flushed down the toilet in Fargo, I wouldn't worry about it though, it has been treated very well... maybe) , so that got me thinking about how I heard this person saying that the Y-chromosome is getting smaller. The Y-chromosome is a chromosome that makes you a male if you end up with it. That is a very simplified explanation of it because that is about all I can remember about it, give me a break, I’m not a fucking biologist. Anyway, I heard an interesting theory about why the Y is getting smaller.
Back in the 1950’s I think, an oral contraceptive was released and began to gain popularity. This pill, that, by the way, was good enough to be referred to as “The Pill”, had some hormones in it that changed the way a woman’s body works and prevents them from ovulating, thus preventing pregnancy.
The synthetic estrogen in the pill doesn’t stay in their bodies. It comes out in the girls’ urine and is then flushed down the toilet. The hormones then begin a long journey through a water treatment facility where it is eventually gets released back into the world. The treatment facilities have a hard time getting rid of these hormones that are constantly coming through with greater amounts of birth control being used in the world. The estrogen rich water goes downstream and eventually comes through as drinking water somewhere else for someone else to drink.
Now as I have said before I don’t have much knowledge in this area to say the least, but I would venture a guess that all of this constant exposure to those hormones would eventually have an effect on some things… Men are always drinking it and women drinking and bathing in the water while pregnant with the men. You would think something would happen right?
Now I realize that some of you with more info on this than me will have some sort of differing opinion on this, you may be right. I am probably wrong, but I think it is good to think about it. This is one aspect of how the humans affect the environment we don’t hear about so often in these days of global warming and trash pollution activism.
Well that is going to do it for me on this one. Sorry these have been getting a little long, this piece is about four pages long in Microsoft Word, but I guess I just have a lot of stuff to say. Also it has been getting easier to write these. It is actually starting to become sort of an outlet for the frustrations I get sometimes in this world. If you made it through this, I have to give you kudos, also I hope it gave you something to ponder over. Sometimes thoughts are fun.
Well, until next time,
Seth
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
I Couldn't Think of a Title
Originally posted Dec 17, 2007
There is apparently a big movement going around the country. Dirty Godless savages are using a covert subliminal campaign trying to warp our children’s minds into thinking for themselves and not listening to everything adults tell them to believe. This movement is centered on a fantasy movie that was released last week sometime called “The Golden Compass.” The movie is based on a trilogy of books written by this guy named Philip Pullman and while I have never read the book or seen the movie, the previews remind me of the Narnia and Lord of the Rings movies. For some reason($), New Line Cinema found this book and thought($) it would make a good movie($) and decided to take the anti-religious sentiment out of the movie so more people would go see it.($).
Wait what was that last part about anti-religious sentiment? Oh right, the author is also an outspoken atheist. And apparently according to an article at FOXNews, (who we all know check, recheck, and check their facts again) some Christian groups (read: cults- search yourself, you know it to be true) say that this author allowed the anti- religious messages in his books to be removed without much fuss because the poor, impressionable children will see the movie and be taken in by its magical storyline. I guess some fundamentalists contacted the studio making the movie and demanded they removed those themes from the movie. I guess they didn’t realize that once the movie has the hook in their mouths, the kids would ask their parents to buy them the books for Christmas. Then the kids will start reading these stories and then turn into mindless atheists doomed to spend eternity in a lake of fire having limbs ripped off, only to have them grow back to be ripped off again and again. Oh the humanity!
We had this same problem when women and black people started reading, pretty soon they will be getting “ideas” and start “thinking”. Then where will you be? Pretty soon we will have a country that isn’t tied to one idea and we might get a government that doesn’t persecute based on what you believe. A good example of this is Muslims on airplanes. But you can’t say that this guy looks like a Muslim, I am going to search his bags. Nope, in the airport security manual, Muslim has been replaced with the words “Random Bag Check.” Maybe they should make themselves look less threatening, wear pink baseball caps and carry around Hello Kittie Backpacks while sucking on a Popsicle (preferably red flavored (Thanks Dave!)). OK, I am letting my sarcastic brain cell get the best of me here, and I was considering deleting this last paragraph, as it may be offensive to some people, plus it is a little off subject, but I am not going to. Suck on that one time, Mother Fuckers!
I guess what really bothered me about all this hoopla over this movie is that even if the hype is true and the author does in fact want to spread the atheist message around a little bit; us Christians already have the jump on them. I recall going to Sunday school, we called it CCD in the Catholic church, as a kid. When I could barely read, I was already pledging my body, heart, and soul to this God fellow and his illegitimate love child, Jesus (side note: Mary was probably the last girl to be able to use that excuse for cheating on her husband. “A God came and seduced me, there was nothing I could do” was a pretty common phrase back in the days of Greek and Roman mythology, read into it, the gods had a lot of half mortal children running around, dirty whores.) Anyway, as a kid growing up in a Catholic family, I didn’t have much choice about what to believe in, then I learned that this God once killed every man, woman, and animal except for a small fraction of people he kept imprisoned at sea for 40 days and 40 nights. Upon hearing this, I accepted it to be true without a question. Yet I still offered my life and soul to this intangible authority figure shaking his finger at me from thousands of years ago; it must be from all of the heavy inbreeding that has went on since that flood.
I guess what I am trying to say here is this; Hey Christians, you already have this country in a death grip, maybe it is time you loosened up the choke hold a little bit. Remember you have done this before; a couple years ago you protested a movie called the Da Vinci Code. This was a movie that suggested that Jesus was a real person with real human need for tang and he acted on it by getting married to a harlot. I am not sure how it was handled everywhere else, but in GF some Christian Soldier stole the lenses (stealing is a sin by the way) for the projectors so they could not play the movie. I haven’t watched the movie, but I heard the movie didn’t do very well. I think the protest might have had something to do with it, but I heard it just wasn’t that good of a movie. I could be wrong, the movie may have done very well, but I have not researched anything for this note, this is all coming from my head, except for that FOXnews article I guess. (edit from the future: I figured I could use the FOXnews article, because I found a link to the site on a protesting Facebook group, and I figured the story was pretty much the same everywhere else)
I know I have talked about this stuff a lot before, but this new story just kind of bugged me. Religious people think they can brainwash kids in order to spread and maintain their beliefs, but when someone with an opposing belief tries to brainwash kids, they run and tell their friends in the Bush Administration or Al Sharpton or whoever the go-to guy is these days and it gets on the news and the Christian soldiers around the nation take up arms and let their voices be heard. Yeah we get the point, you love Jesus, don't we all, now shut up please.
I feel you should know that this is not a pro-atheist rant. An atheist’s judgment is flawed too; the belief in nothing above all else is still the belief in something. They are saying they know that there isn’t anything more out there. We are humans, and I hate to be the one to tell you this if you didn’t already know, but we don’t know shit. We probably understand about 5% of what goes on in this universe we live in. (another edit from the future: A comment was left about this note on my Facebook profile by someone who is foShizzle, it featured the lyrics to a Rush song by the name of "Freewill" I think. There is a line in the chorus that goes as follows "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." then he goes on to say "I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill." I don't know where I was going with this, but I felt it should be included)
So, to sum up yet again, my real beef with this Golden Compass hoopla is that we should let people make up there own mind, you don’t need to freak out every time someone whose beliefs differ from yours releases some sort of media that may succeed in spreading their message. If your message is really as powerful as you seem to think it is, you don’t have anything to worry about.
Well I guess that is all I want to say for now; I need to keep my mind limber over Christmas break. And if you think I am going to study school stuff I will say “Good day to you Sir!” Also there are lots of parentheses strewn about with what would seem like reckless abandon. For some reason I enjoy using a parentheses here and there, it is a good way to put in a fact or a snappy comment without having to make a different sentence. Also I would like to thank everyone for reading these and giving me feedback, I enjoy reading the comments and hearing what you say in person about as much as I enjoy writing. Well, if I don’t talk to you, have a good Christmas.
Amen,
Seth
**************BONUS AFTERTHOUGHTS**************
Three things I learned last weekend.
1) The new Futurama movie is fantastic and a great way to continue an already awesome series. If you remotely like the show then you will like the movie. They tie a lot of loose ends left in the original series up very nicely.
2) When cooking with hot oil in a pan, keep the handle in, not out. If you happen to put your hand down on the handle to hard, physics demands that the scalding hot contents of said pan must be launched onto your hand, causing much discomfort.
3) It is still possible to laugh all the way though a movie. I watched Superbad a couple days ago and I was laughing for most of the time. Maybe because there is a lot of truth in it…. Plus a lot of people named Seth were involved in the production of it. I like that there are more Seths becoming famous, it is a great name and everyone should have the chance to enjoy it.
Wait what was that last part about anti-religious sentiment? Oh right, the author is also an outspoken atheist. And apparently according to an article at FOXNews, (who we all know check, recheck, and check their facts again) some Christian groups (read: cults- search yourself, you know it to be true) say that this author allowed the anti- religious messages in his books to be removed without much fuss because the poor, impressionable children will see the movie and be taken in by its magical storyline. I guess some fundamentalists contacted the studio making the movie and demanded they removed those themes from the movie. I guess they didn’t realize that once the movie has the hook in their mouths, the kids would ask their parents to buy them the books for Christmas. Then the kids will start reading these stories and then turn into mindless atheists doomed to spend eternity in a lake of fire having limbs ripped off, only to have them grow back to be ripped off again and again. Oh the humanity!
We had this same problem when women and black people started reading, pretty soon they will be getting “ideas” and start “thinking”. Then where will you be? Pretty soon we will have a country that isn’t tied to one idea and we might get a government that doesn’t persecute based on what you believe. A good example of this is Muslims on airplanes. But you can’t say that this guy looks like a Muslim, I am going to search his bags. Nope, in the airport security manual, Muslim has been replaced with the words “Random Bag Check.” Maybe they should make themselves look less threatening, wear pink baseball caps and carry around Hello Kittie Backpacks while sucking on a Popsicle (preferably red flavored (Thanks Dave!)). OK, I am letting my sarcastic brain cell get the best of me here, and I was considering deleting this last paragraph, as it may be offensive to some people, plus it is a little off subject, but I am not going to. Suck on that one time, Mother Fuckers!
I guess what really bothered me about all this hoopla over this movie is that even if the hype is true and the author does in fact want to spread the atheist message around a little bit; us Christians already have the jump on them. I recall going to Sunday school, we called it CCD in the Catholic church, as a kid. When I could barely read, I was already pledging my body, heart, and soul to this God fellow and his illegitimate love child, Jesus (side note: Mary was probably the last girl to be able to use that excuse for cheating on her husband. “A God came and seduced me, there was nothing I could do” was a pretty common phrase back in the days of Greek and Roman mythology, read into it, the gods had a lot of half mortal children running around, dirty whores.) Anyway, as a kid growing up in a Catholic family, I didn’t have much choice about what to believe in, then I learned that this God once killed every man, woman, and animal except for a small fraction of people he kept imprisoned at sea for 40 days and 40 nights. Upon hearing this, I accepted it to be true without a question. Yet I still offered my life and soul to this intangible authority figure shaking his finger at me from thousands of years ago; it must be from all of the heavy inbreeding that has went on since that flood.
I guess what I am trying to say here is this; Hey Christians, you already have this country in a death grip, maybe it is time you loosened up the choke hold a little bit. Remember you have done this before; a couple years ago you protested a movie called the Da Vinci Code. This was a movie that suggested that Jesus was a real person with real human need for tang and he acted on it by getting married to a harlot. I am not sure how it was handled everywhere else, but in GF some Christian Soldier stole the lenses (stealing is a sin by the way) for the projectors so they could not play the movie. I haven’t watched the movie, but I heard the movie didn’t do very well. I think the protest might have had something to do with it, but I heard it just wasn’t that good of a movie. I could be wrong, the movie may have done very well, but I have not researched anything for this note, this is all coming from my head, except for that FOXnews article I guess. (edit from the future: I figured I could use the FOXnews article, because I found a link to the site on a protesting Facebook group, and I figured the story was pretty much the same everywhere else)
I know I have talked about this stuff a lot before, but this new story just kind of bugged me. Religious people think they can brainwash kids in order to spread and maintain their beliefs, but when someone with an opposing belief tries to brainwash kids, they run and tell their friends in the Bush Administration or Al Sharpton or whoever the go-to guy is these days and it gets on the news and the Christian soldiers around the nation take up arms and let their voices be heard. Yeah we get the point, you love Jesus, don't we all, now shut up please.
I feel you should know that this is not a pro-atheist rant. An atheist’s judgment is flawed too; the belief in nothing above all else is still the belief in something. They are saying they know that there isn’t anything more out there. We are humans, and I hate to be the one to tell you this if you didn’t already know, but we don’t know shit. We probably understand about 5% of what goes on in this universe we live in. (another edit from the future: A comment was left about this note on my Facebook profile by someone who is foShizzle, it featured the lyrics to a Rush song by the name of "Freewill" I think. There is a line in the chorus that goes as follows "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." then he goes on to say "I will choose a path that's clear, I will choose freewill." I don't know where I was going with this, but I felt it should be included)
So, to sum up yet again, my real beef with this Golden Compass hoopla is that we should let people make up there own mind, you don’t need to freak out every time someone whose beliefs differ from yours releases some sort of media that may succeed in spreading their message. If your message is really as powerful as you seem to think it is, you don’t have anything to worry about.
Well I guess that is all I want to say for now; I need to keep my mind limber over Christmas break. And if you think I am going to study school stuff I will say “Good day to you Sir!” Also there are lots of parentheses strewn about with what would seem like reckless abandon. For some reason I enjoy using a parentheses here and there, it is a good way to put in a fact or a snappy comment without having to make a different sentence. Also I would like to thank everyone for reading these and giving me feedback, I enjoy reading the comments and hearing what you say in person about as much as I enjoy writing. Well, if I don’t talk to you, have a good Christmas.
Amen,
Seth
**************BONUS AFTERTHOUGHTS*************
Three things I learned last weekend.
1) The new Futurama movie is fantastic and a great way to continue an already awesome series. If you remotely like the show then you will like the movie. They tie a lot of loose ends left in the original series up very nicely.
2) When cooking with hot oil in a pan, keep the handle in, not out. If you happen to put your hand down on the handle to hard, physics demands that the scalding hot contents of said pan must be launched onto your hand, causing much discomfort.
3) It is still possible to laugh all the way though a movie. I watched Superbad a couple days ago and I was laughing for most of the time. Maybe because there is a lot of truth in it…. Plus a lot of people named Seth were involved in the production of it. I like that there are more Seths becoming famous, it is a great name and everyone should have the chance to enjoy it.
Alright, Who divided by Zero?
I've got 83 Channels of Shit On the TV to Choose From
Originally posted Nov 11, 2007
There is an old saying I saw on some sort of movie once that goes something like this, “If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out; but if you put a frog into water at room temperature and slowly start to boil the water, the frog will stay in there and burn to death.” To me, this saying means that if you are around something while it is happening you won’t notice it as much as much as you would if you are somewhere else and come back to find this thing in full swing, and you are left flabbergasted wondering, “What the hell happened?”
One good example of this is when a radio station wants to change it’s sound. They will occasionally play something totally different and out of the ordinary and then go back to the regular programming. But as time goes on (as it always does), this new style of music becomes more and more prominent until one day… BOOM, that is what the station is about. That is fine; the entertainment business needs to keep things fresh to keep up with people’s increasingly short attention spans. There is one style of entertainment that I feel needs to just stop. I am talking about reality television.
Now I know that this has been a very obvious statement for about the past five years, but now I feel it is moving up to epidemic proportions. Moving back to that quote at the beginning, I have been experiencing a “frog in boiling water moment” for about the past year, which I suppose is longer than a moment, but I am going to move on anyway for the sake of myself.
When I lived in the dorms and in my first apartment, there was cable TV in both of them. So I would suppose I have had cable in the places I’ve live for a little less than 2 years total, I never had cable as a kid. Now there are some fine programs on cable, I love the nature shows and history channels and all that stuff. Even [adult swim] and some comedy central and syndicated sitcoms from when I was little are good for me sometimes. During those years I was also subjected to many of said reality shows. Particularly the last year when I was spending a lot of time around this girl who had an affinity for crappy TV (I will get into her in a future post perhaps). One of the shows I was exposed to was called “Flavor of Love.” Now for those of you not familiar with the show it stars this guy who resembles what it would look like if the devil ate a giant clock and it passed through her digestive tract only to be crapped out on the floor with the rest of the Devil's shit named Flavor Flav, who was a drummer or producer or something and I think he is famous for wearing Viking hats, giant clocks as medallions, and inventing the stereotypical black man slang. Anyway, on this show, he sleeps with a bunch of girls because he is trying to find love, also he can’t remember their names so he gives them nicknames.
Since then I have seen examples of some pretty ridiculous shows. One was called Rob and Big, in this one there is some guy who is a skateboarder named Rob and a fat black guy whose name is Big, and they go around town and get into trouble and cause ruckus. Now I approve of ruckus, but not when it is contrived by some 50 year-old producers that sit on their highchairs in MTV headquarters that decide what the kids are going to think is cool this year.
Another one is VH1’s celebreality, this is where you take celebrities that were popular when the 18-24 demographic was younger and put them together and make them fight and sleep together and wish they could get real work. This is actually where Flavor Flav comes into play. I guess viewer eyeball focus was up when he was yelling “Yeeeeeeeah Boooooooy” so they decided to give him his own show as mentioned above. On this show was an angry black girl that he named New York. I am not sure if she won or not, but since Flav came back for Flavor of Love 2, I guess it didn’t work out. Anyway, yesterday, while at the Wellness Center, I was running on the treadmill and glanced up at the TV to watch Seinfeld (great show by the way). Next to Seinfeld was another TV tuned to VH1 or one of those worthless channels; and on this TV was this New York girl with a new boob job alternately eating and watching these guys fighting. I think that is the entire show. Now that was scary enough on it’s own, but what really freaked me out was the title of the show. The show was called “I Love New York 2.” Enough of you people watched whatever happened on the first one that the network thought they would make more money by making a second one.
I think the worst one that I know of is one that I saw a commercial for a month or two back. I am not sure what it was called but I think it is on the E! Network. It stars this girl named Tila Tequila. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is this girl who had a bunch of friends on Myspace and then she posed for Playboy or something like that. But the point of the show is that she is trying to find somebody to love, don’t we all. Well that seems like typical reality show fodder, there is a twist to it. She tells us she is bisexual, so she is gathering around 15 straight men and 15 gay women together to decide who is really right for her and to probably pull some shenanigans. My God, I don’t know if there are words to describe how terrible that is.
Now I have talked to some of you about this before and you tell me, “I only watch reality shows when nothing else is on,” or “I only watch them to make fun of them” now at this point in the conversation I would nod and say “ok” or something to that effect, but what I really wanted to say was something like “give me a fucking break.” I do like those people, In fact I love some of them, I just have a different point of view, which I just happen to think is better because it is mine.
I could tell you a bunch of things you could do instead of watching reality shows, but I am not going to, I think I have preached enough for today. If it were my decision, I think I would play a videogame, those at least require some input from you to get the output, instead of the straight output you get from regular TV.
I don’t want to put off the impression that I am perfect, I have some weekly shows that I watch either on the internet or from my bunny ears. Heroes is the one that is on right now that I like to watch. Then of course there is Lost, which I believe is one of the best shows on TV right now. These shows have some mystery and suspense, plus they are written by professionals and not producers coming up with situations and just recording the results.
Well I think that is all I have for you right now. I just needed to put this out there because I need a good rant every now and again or I get the shakes. I guess it got a little long, my bad; thats what I said, to her. haha, I walked right into that one.
Peace,
Seth
There is an old saying I saw on some sort of movie once that goes something like this, “If you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump out; but if you put a frog into water at room temperature and slowly start to boil the water, the frog will stay in there and burn to death.” To me, this saying means that if you are around something while it is happening you won’t notice it as much as much as you would if you are somewhere else and come back to find this thing in full swing, and you are left flabbergasted wondering, “What the hell happened?”
One good example of this is when a radio station wants to change it’s sound. They will occasionally play something totally different and out of the ordinary and then go back to the regular programming. But as time goes on (as it always does), this new style of music becomes more and more prominent until one day… BOOM, that is what the station is about. That is fine; the entertainment business needs to keep things fresh to keep up with people’s increasingly short attention spans. There is one style of entertainment that I feel needs to just stop. I am talking about reality television.
Now I know that this has been a very obvious statement for about the past five years, but now I feel it is moving up to epidemic proportions. Moving back to that quote at the beginning, I have been experiencing a “frog in boiling water moment” for about the past year, which I suppose is longer than a moment, but I am going to move on anyway for the sake of myself.
When I lived in the dorms and in my first apartment, there was cable TV in both of them. So I would suppose I have had cable in the places I’ve live for a little less than 2 years total, I never had cable as a kid. Now there are some fine programs on cable, I love the nature shows and history channels and all that stuff. Even [adult swim] and some comedy central and syndicated sitcoms from when I was little are good for me sometimes. During those years I was also subjected to many of said reality shows. Particularly the last year when I was spending a lot of time around this girl who had an affinity for crappy TV (I will get into her in a future post perhaps). One of the shows I was exposed to was called “Flavor of Love.” Now for those of you not familiar with the show it stars this guy who resembles what it would look like if the devil ate a giant clock and it passed through her digestive tract only to be crapped out on the floor with the rest of the Devil's shit named Flavor Flav, who was a drummer or producer or something and I think he is famous for wearing Viking hats, giant clocks as medallions, and inventing the stereotypical black man slang. Anyway, on this show, he sleeps with a bunch of girls because he is trying to find love, also he can’t remember their names so he gives them nicknames.
Since then I have seen examples of some pretty ridiculous shows. One was called Rob and Big, in this one there is some guy who is a skateboarder named Rob and a fat black guy whose name is Big, and they go around town and get into trouble and cause ruckus. Now I approve of ruckus, but not when it is contrived by some 50 year-old producers that sit on their highchairs in MTV headquarters that decide what the kids are going to think is cool this year.
Another one is VH1’s celebreality, this is where you take celebrities that were popular when the 18-24 demographic was younger and put them together and make them fight and sleep together and wish they could get real work. This is actually where Flavor Flav comes into play. I guess viewer eyeball focus was up when he was yelling “Yeeeeeeeah Boooooooy” so they decided to give him his own show as mentioned above. On this show was an angry black girl that he named New York. I am not sure if she won or not, but since Flav came back for Flavor of Love 2, I guess it didn’t work out. Anyway, yesterday, while at the Wellness Center, I was running on the treadmill and glanced up at the TV to watch Seinfeld (great show by the way). Next to Seinfeld was another TV tuned to VH1 or one of those worthless channels; and on this TV was this New York girl with a new boob job alternately eating and watching these guys fighting. I think that is the entire show. Now that was scary enough on it’s own, but what really freaked me out was the title of the show. The show was called “I Love New York 2.” Enough of you people watched whatever happened on the first one that the network thought they would make more money by making a second one.
I think the worst one that I know of is one that I saw a commercial for a month or two back. I am not sure what it was called but I think it is on the E! Network. It stars this girl named Tila Tequila. For those of you who do not know who she is, she is this girl who had a bunch of friends on Myspace and then she posed for Playboy or something like that. But the point of the show is that she is trying to find somebody to love, don’t we all. Well that seems like typical reality show fodder, there is a twist to it. She tells us she is bisexual, so she is gathering around 15 straight men and 15 gay women together to decide who is really right for her and to probably pull some shenanigans. My God, I don’t know if there are words to describe how terrible that is.
Now I have talked to some of you about this before and you tell me, “I only watch reality shows when nothing else is on,” or “I only watch them to make fun of them” now at this point in the conversation I would nod and say “ok” or something to that effect, but what I really wanted to say was something like “give me a fucking break.” I do like those people, In fact I love some of them, I just have a different point of view, which I just happen to think is better because it is mine.
I could tell you a bunch of things you could do instead of watching reality shows, but I am not going to, I think I have preached enough for today. If it were my decision, I think I would play a videogame, those at least require some input from you to get the output, instead of the straight output you get from regular TV.
I don’t want to put off the impression that I am perfect, I have some weekly shows that I watch either on the internet or from my bunny ears. Heroes is the one that is on right now that I like to watch. Then of course there is Lost, which I believe is one of the best shows on TV right now. These shows have some mystery and suspense, plus they are written by professionals and not producers coming up with situations and just recording the results.
Well I think that is all I have for you right now. I just needed to put this out there because I need a good rant every now and again or I get the shakes. I guess it got a little long, my bad; thats what I said, to her. haha, I walked right into that one.
Peace,
Seth
Kitty was never the same after he discovered televison.
Science
Originally posted Aug 24, 2007
Over the past few weeks, my eyes have been opening wider and wider. Because of this I have been able to see some new things, and also I can see things in a new and different light. Take alcohol for an example, I use to see it as a volatile liquid made out of clumps of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Also, it is known for its intoxicating (read: poison) effect on most carbon-based life forms when taken in non-lethal doses. There are even some kinds of birds that like to eat rotten and fermented berries that get them drunk. I think I would like to see a drunken bird flying around.
Anyway, now I can also see alcohol as something else. Most of the kinds of alcohol we drink are made out of yeast and some starches or sugar. The yeast likes to eat the sugar. Once the sugar passes through them, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are rearranged and waste comes out. This waste is alcohol. Shortly thereafter, the yeast drowns in its own excrement. So when you think about it, when we drink, we are actually getting drunk on the dead bodies of yeast floating around in it’s own shit. Chew on that one for a while.
While you are chewing on that I will get to the point. Over the summer I didn’t really end up doing much. Mostly sitting around watching old movies and TV shows. Now I am not sure what this does to the rest of you, but I ended up gaining about ten or fifteen pounds, and I know that I didn’t gain any muscle mass. Now that the school year is pretty much in full swing, and I have this nifty new apartment right near campus, I have a nice gym I can go to whenever I want for free. I actually am starting to enjoy going there and working myself to exhaustion, I think it is all the endorphins. That is not the only reason I enjoy going there though, there are entertainment factors as well.
For one, I can see some of these guys that like to stare and make very serious faces at themselves in the mirror while they grunt and lift weights. Some of you may consider that a little homosexual that I observe this, but I personally think it is a little entertaining and funny to me.
Another good thing about the gym are the women that decide to go there at the same time I do. Yes, I look at girls while I am at the gym; there, I said it. Now, I don’t want you to think I am some kind of pervert, just hear me out. To illustrate this point a little bit I would like to tell you a story. A couple days ago I was walking into the Wellness Center with my roommate. As I was about to open the door, I saw a girl walking out of the door. Now this girl was an attractive girl both to me, and by society’s standards. I gave her a passing glance, nothing too serious. But then she did something that caught my attention pretty quickly. I saw this girl, who most likely just got finished with a very strenuous workout, cross her arms and grab each side of her shirt. After that, she began to pull her arms up while her hands were holding firmly onto each side of her shirt. After about a second (but what seemed like about thirty seconds) her shirt was completely off. Under this shirt was some nice tanned skin; a little bit of this skin was still covered up a little by a hot pink sports bra. She then proceeded to stretch her arms from the most likely strenuous, sweat-producing workout she just had.
Now this did catch my eye and I found myself turning my head so my eyes could follow her as she walked away, out of my life, perhaps forever. My wandering eyes caught my roommate’s attention, prompting her to point it out to me that my eyes were wandering in case I did not know. Now I knew that I was staring at this girl, but it is something I did without really thinking about.
This got me thinking. Why do I do this? Then it came to me. There are some things I see that catch my eye that I can’t help but look at. What else is there that I look at and can’t really help looking? Shooting stars are one thing I can compare seeing an attractive woman at the gym, or maybe seeing a couple girls kiss at the bar. When I see a shooting star, or one of those other things, I don’t pause and think, “Hey, should I be looking at this?” If I stop and think about looking at it, the opportunity to see it will be gone.
So I am sorry if I offend anyone by the things I see and choose to look at. I know most of you are guilty of the same thing I am. Sometimes when I pass a girl during the course of my day, I glance at her, but I can see her glance right back at me, sizing me up, which is fine with me. Or when I pull up to an intersection, I see the person next to me look over to see whom I am, I only see this because I turn to look and see whom they are. This stuff is going on all the time. I know that some of you may see me looking at certain things from time to time, but you have to admit that you do it sometimes as well.
I guess that is all I have to say about that for right now. I hope I didn’t come across as perverted or sick or anything like that. I am just a normal (sort of (OK not really)) person like the rest of you. Good luck with the coming school year for those of you it applies to.
--Seth
Over the past few weeks, my eyes have been opening wider and wider. Because of this I have been able to see some new things, and also I can see things in a new and different light. Take alcohol for an example, I use to see it as a volatile liquid made out of clumps of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Also, it is known for its intoxicating (read: poison) effect on most carbon-based life forms when taken in non-lethal doses. There are even some kinds of birds that like to eat rotten and fermented berries that get them drunk. I think I would like to see a drunken bird flying around.
Anyway, now I can also see alcohol as something else. Most of the kinds of alcohol we drink are made out of yeast and some starches or sugar. The yeast likes to eat the sugar. Once the sugar passes through them, the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen are rearranged and waste comes out. This waste is alcohol. Shortly thereafter, the yeast drowns in its own excrement. So when you think about it, when we drink, we are actually getting drunk on the dead bodies of yeast floating around in it’s own shit. Chew on that one for a while.
While you are chewing on that I will get to the point. Over the summer I didn’t really end up doing much. Mostly sitting around watching old movies and TV shows. Now I am not sure what this does to the rest of you, but I ended up gaining about ten or fifteen pounds, and I know that I didn’t gain any muscle mass. Now that the school year is pretty much in full swing, and I have this nifty new apartment right near campus, I have a nice gym I can go to whenever I want for free. I actually am starting to enjoy going there and working myself to exhaustion, I think it is all the endorphins. That is not the only reason I enjoy going there though, there are entertainment factors as well.
For one, I can see some of these guys that like to stare and make very serious faces at themselves in the mirror while they grunt and lift weights. Some of you may consider that a little homosexual that I observe this, but I personally think it is a little entertaining and funny to me.
Another good thing about the gym are the women that decide to go there at the same time I do. Yes, I look at girls while I am at the gym; there, I said it. Now, I don’t want you to think I am some kind of pervert, just hear me out. To illustrate this point a little bit I would like to tell you a story. A couple days ago I was walking into the Wellness Center with my roommate. As I was about to open the door, I saw a girl walking out of the door. Now this girl was an attractive girl both to me, and by society’s standards. I gave her a passing glance, nothing too serious. But then she did something that caught my attention pretty quickly. I saw this girl, who most likely just got finished with a very strenuous workout, cross her arms and grab each side of her shirt. After that, she began to pull her arms up while her hands were holding firmly onto each side of her shirt. After about a second (but what seemed like about thirty seconds) her shirt was completely off. Under this shirt was some nice tanned skin; a little bit of this skin was still covered up a little by a hot pink sports bra. She then proceeded to stretch her arms from the most likely strenuous, sweat-producing workout she just had.
Now this did catch my eye and I found myself turning my head so my eyes could follow her as she walked away, out of my life, perhaps forever. My wandering eyes caught my roommate’s attention, prompting her to point it out to me that my eyes were wandering in case I did not know. Now I knew that I was staring at this girl, but it is something I did without really thinking about.
This got me thinking. Why do I do this? Then it came to me. There are some things I see that catch my eye that I can’t help but look at. What else is there that I look at and can’t really help looking? Shooting stars are one thing I can compare seeing an attractive woman at the gym, or maybe seeing a couple girls kiss at the bar. When I see a shooting star, or one of those other things, I don’t pause and think, “Hey, should I be looking at this?” If I stop and think about looking at it, the opportunity to see it will be gone.
So I am sorry if I offend anyone by the things I see and choose to look at. I know most of you are guilty of the same thing I am. Sometimes when I pass a girl during the course of my day, I glance at her, but I can see her glance right back at me, sizing me up, which is fine with me. Or when I pull up to an intersection, I see the person next to me look over to see whom I am, I only see this because I turn to look and see whom they are. This stuff is going on all the time. I know that some of you may see me looking at certain things from time to time, but you have to admit that you do it sometimes as well.
I guess that is all I have to say about that for right now. I hope I didn’t come across as perverted or sick or anything like that. I am just a normal (sort of (OK not really)) person like the rest of you. Good luck with the coming school year for those of you it applies to.
--Seth
What would this note be if I didn't put up some random hottie on here? Probably a little more classy, but here it is none-the-less
Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert
Originally posted on Aug 14, 2007
I was looking back through my previously written notes the other day and I read though the second note I posted on here and there are some things I would like to clarify for some of my more sensitive friends. My first issue I would like to bring up is the title; “George Bush Doesn’t Like Paris Hilton”. This statement is something I made up randomly because I thought it was funny. Upon looking at this again I now realize that this title is wrong. Bush (by Bush I mean the entire administration, not just the single person, he doesn’t seem to have much say on his own, anyway… continuing with the previously started sentence) most likely adores Paris, Nicole, Lindsey, Brittany, ect… because of this simple fact: The more these girls screw up and get on the news about it, the less they talk about Bush and the way they are messing with everyone’s lives.
Now, if you have gotten this far in the note and you are saying to yourself “Great, all I need to hear is another rant about Bush” you may as well stop reading (I don’t mean that, just hear me out on this one). This isn’t really about Bush, but they are merely the main outspoken group the people seem to listen to.
In case you missed the note I am talking about, it was a rushed piece that tried to find some benefits to one of the, if not the most hot button issue in today’s politics. I wrote this note because I feel this issue needs to be looked at from both sides. This issue is, of course, the dreaded “A-word”. No, not Ass play you sick little monkey, I am talking about abortion.
At this point I suppose I need to tell you how I feel about this issue. Personally I don’t support having abortions, but it is not because of the usual reason of God and the Devil and blah blah blah. Sex is something that is a very personal act that is both dealt and accepted with increasing frequency these days. People need to accept the fact that you can have a child from having sex. That is the purpose for having sex; but by some unfortunate cosmic joke, sex feels great for humans, so we put it into almost every aspect of our culture because it makes us feel so good. The proliferation of sex in our society makes some people throw sex around like it is no big deal and then when you find out a month or two later you are going to be a father/mother you freak. This is understandable. But personally I don’t think I would be able to kill off something that is half me.
Now because I don’t agree with abortions doesn’t mean I think they should be outlawed. I am just a guy, the only person whose life I need to have that much control over is my own. Also, I have never been in the position that I might need to consider anything that drastic. Plus, I am one of those fifty percent of people that were born without a uterus. It sucks that this is such a sensitive issue with so many people. It sucks that a smart qualified man with actual leadership skills can be denied a position he deserves simply because he is pro-choice. I know several people who immediately dismiss a candidate if he turns out to be pro-choice. It seems to me there are more important issues dealing with what people are doing to people who are alive and conscious.
I think I would like to close with this statement. When you were conceived in the back of that wood paneled station wagon, the combination of chromosomes that made you into you could have resulted in about 40 billion different combinations. That means that you are the winner of a fantastic lottery. So maybe you should apply that luck to something else, like traveling, painting, trying to attain world peace, watching a movie, or playing a video game. Don’t use your time here on Earth trying to tell people how to live their lives when you aren’t living yours to the extent you could be.
--Seth
I was looking back through my previously written notes the other day and I read though the second note I posted on here and there are some things I would like to clarify for some of my more sensitive friends. My first issue I would like to bring up is the title; “George Bush Doesn’t Like Paris Hilton”. This statement is something I made up randomly because I thought it was funny. Upon looking at this again I now realize that this title is wrong. Bush (by Bush I mean the entire administration, not just the single person, he doesn’t seem to have much say on his own, anyway… continuing with the previously started sentence) most likely adores Paris, Nicole, Lindsey, Brittany, ect… because of this simple fact: The more these girls screw up and get on the news about it, the less they talk about Bush and the way they are messing with everyone’s lives.
Now, if you have gotten this far in the note and you are saying to yourself “Great, all I need to hear is another rant about Bush” you may as well stop reading (I don’t mean that, just hear me out on this one). This isn’t really about Bush, but they are merely the main outspoken group the people seem to listen to.
In case you missed the note I am talking about, it was a rushed piece that tried to find some benefits to one of the, if not the most hot button issue in today’s politics. I wrote this note because I feel this issue needs to be looked at from both sides. This issue is, of course, the dreaded “A-word”. No, not Ass play you sick little monkey, I am talking about abortion.
At this point I suppose I need to tell you how I feel about this issue. Personally I don’t support having abortions, but it is not because of the usual reason of God and the Devil and blah blah blah. Sex is something that is a very personal act that is both dealt and accepted with increasing frequency these days. People need to accept the fact that you can have a child from having sex. That is the purpose for having sex; but by some unfortunate cosmic joke, sex feels great for humans, so we put it into almost every aspect of our culture because it makes us feel so good. The proliferation of sex in our society makes some people throw sex around like it is no big deal and then when you find out a month or two later you are going to be a father/mother you freak. This is understandable. But personally I don’t think I would be able to kill off something that is half me.
Now because I don’t agree with abortions doesn’t mean I think they should be outlawed. I am just a guy, the only person whose life I need to have that much control over is my own. Also, I have never been in the position that I might need to consider anything that drastic. Plus, I am one of those fifty percent of people that were born without a uterus. It sucks that this is such a sensitive issue with so many people. It sucks that a smart qualified man with actual leadership skills can be denied a position he deserves simply because he is pro-choice. I know several people who immediately dismiss a candidate if he turns out to be pro-choice. It seems to me there are more important issues dealing with what people are doing to people who are alive and conscious.
I think I would like to close with this statement. When you were conceived in the back of that wood paneled station wagon, the combination of chromosomes that made you into you could have resulted in about 40 billion different combinations. That means that you are the winner of a fantastic lottery. So maybe you should apply that luck to something else, like traveling, painting, trying to attain world peace, watching a movie, or playing a video game. Don’t use your time here on Earth trying to tell people how to live their lives when you aren’t living yours to the extent you could be.
--Seth
A Great Day for Freedom
Originally Posted on Jul 4, 2007
Well it has been a long time since I have wrote one of these. I have been observing lots of things this summer but I never wrote anything down so a good number of my thoughts on these things I see are now buried somewhere in my mind, perhaps to resurface suddenly one day when they are needed once again or maybe they will just fester until they come out in the form of some sort of public freak-out.
Anyway, as some of you may know I have recently attended a Roger Waters concert in St. Paul (Roger Waters was one of the lead singers of Pink Floyd, and the founder as far as I am concerned). But it was basically a Pink Floyd concert, which was perfectly OK with me. Since I was able to understand music, and probably before, my dad would always be listening to Pink Floyd around me, so I have been a fan of their music for pretty much one hundred percent of my life. After actually seeing them live, it seems to me like some sort of door opened in my head and I have now moved up the ranks from big fan of Pink Floyd to a Pink Floyd fanatic, if you were there, you would understand, but you weren't(except for those of you that were) so I don't expect you too.
So today I was working, and while I was working I was listening to Dark Side of the Moon (Which, by the way, was performed in its entirety at the concert). And I think I might have figured out what he was trying to say at the end of the album on the song "Eclipse".
Now before I get into that I would like to offer a quick explanation of what the dark side of the moon actually is for my less astronomically minded friends. The moon is orbiting the Earth every twenty-eight days which is why we get a full moon about once a month. In one of those strange cosmic coincidences, the moon rotates on its axis once every twenty-eight days as well. The result of that is that for those of us on the ground, we only see one side of the moon. The other side, or the dark side, is actually in the sun as much as the one side we see, but since the rotation takes the same amount of time as the revolution we only see one side of it.
Getting back to what I was talking about, when NASA’s Apollo missions were underway, and we first started orbiting the moon, men were seeing this “dark side” of the moon for the first time. When they started walking on the moon, one guy would always stay in the orbiter while the other two would go fuck around on the surface of the moon. While this one guy, I believe his name was Michael Collins, was orbiting the moon, half of the time was spent on the dark side of the moon. While he was there, he commented that he was the most alone any human had ever been. The nearest humans to him were over two thousand miles away, and the next nearest person was over two hundred thousand miles away on the Earth. Even all the radio signals humans are constantly pumping out into space were blocked by the moon. This meant this guy was in total and complete isolation from all of mankind.
In the lyrics for “Eclipse”(see below), Roger Waters seems to be saying that when people start getting to him with all the things that they do, he can go into the dark side of himself and all these troublesome things are eclipsed by the moon. This theory makes sense to me because that is one of the reasons he built the Wall, so I have been told.
I should probably go on but I think this is getting a wee bit long so I am going to cut myself off. Have a good Fourth of July.
--Seth
"Eclipse" by Pink Floyd
All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All that you feel
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All that you save
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy
beg, borrow or steal
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say
All that you eat
everyone you meet
All that you slight
everyone you fight
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
Well it has been a long time since I have wrote one of these. I have been observing lots of things this summer but I never wrote anything down so a good number of my thoughts on these things I see are now buried somewhere in my mind, perhaps to resurface suddenly one day when they are needed once again or maybe they will just fester until they come out in the form of some sort of public freak-out.
Anyway, as some of you may know I have recently attended a Roger Waters concert in St. Paul (Roger Waters was one of the lead singers of Pink Floyd, and the founder as far as I am concerned). But it was basically a Pink Floyd concert, which was perfectly OK with me. Since I was able to understand music, and probably before, my dad would always be listening to Pink Floyd around me, so I have been a fan of their music for pretty much one hundred percent of my life. After actually seeing them live, it seems to me like some sort of door opened in my head and I have now moved up the ranks from big fan of Pink Floyd to a Pink Floyd fanatic, if you were there, you would understand, but you weren't(except for those of you that were) so I don't expect you too.
So today I was working, and while I was working I was listening to Dark Side of the Moon (Which, by the way, was performed in its entirety at the concert). And I think I might have figured out what he was trying to say at the end of the album on the song "Eclipse".
Now before I get into that I would like to offer a quick explanation of what the dark side of the moon actually is for my less astronomically minded friends. The moon is orbiting the Earth every twenty-eight days which is why we get a full moon about once a month. In one of those strange cosmic coincidences, the moon rotates on its axis once every twenty-eight days as well. The result of that is that for those of us on the ground, we only see one side of the moon. The other side, or the dark side, is actually in the sun as much as the one side we see, but since the rotation takes the same amount of time as the revolution we only see one side of it.
Getting back to what I was talking about, when NASA’s Apollo missions were underway, and we first started orbiting the moon, men were seeing this “dark side” of the moon for the first time. When they started walking on the moon, one guy would always stay in the orbiter while the other two would go fuck around on the surface of the moon. While this one guy, I believe his name was Michael Collins, was orbiting the moon, half of the time was spent on the dark side of the moon. While he was there, he commented that he was the most alone any human had ever been. The nearest humans to him were over two thousand miles away, and the next nearest person was over two hundred thousand miles away on the Earth. Even all the radio signals humans are constantly pumping out into space were blocked by the moon. This meant this guy was in total and complete isolation from all of mankind.
In the lyrics for “Eclipse”(see below), Roger Waters seems to be saying that when people start getting to him with all the things that they do, he can go into the dark side of himself and all these troublesome things are eclipsed by the moon. This theory makes sense to me because that is one of the reasons he built the Wall, so I have been told.
I should probably go on but I think this is getting a wee bit long so I am going to cut myself off. Have a good Fourth of July.
--Seth
"Eclipse" by Pink Floyd
All that you touch
All that you see
All that you taste
All that you feel
All that you love
All that you hate
All you distrust
All that you save
All that you give
All that you deal
All that you buy
beg, borrow or steal
All you create
All you destroy
All that you do
All that you say
All that you eat
everyone you meet
All that you slight
everyone you fight
All that is now
All that is gone
All that's to come
and everything under the sun is in tune
but the sun is eclipsed by the moon.
Any Colour You Like
(Originally posted on Facebook Apr 11, 2007)
I sometimes like to consider myself a scientist. Probably not a scientist by the traditional definition. But I like thinking about questions that don't have any solid answers, and trying to see if I can come up with something of my own. I guess after reading what I just wrote, I see that pretty much is what it means to be a scientist. I don't get paid for it anyway (just made fun of) so I don't have the title, only what I call myself in my head. OK, so even I can barely understand what I am trying to say here so I am just going to move on.
Humans have free will. This allows them to think about, and do, whatever they want, theoretically(that is for another time though). We also have faith and beliefs that are crammed into our brain alongside the free will section of our heads. This addition tends to make us very stubborn and set in our ways when it comes to changing something we believe in.
Indulge me for a minute and take a trip back five hundred years to Germany or Poland or somewhere, the borders were a little fuzzy back then. This is where Copernicus first came up with the idea for a heliocentric (sun centered) solar system. His idea began to circulate around the western world.
Flash Forward another 100 years in Italy and you will find Galileo. He defended heliocentrism to the church. The churches reasoning for denying his claims was from a few bible quotes as follows....
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved."
Psalm 104:5 says, "[the LORD] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved."
The reason I bring the Bible into this is because while I was researching Galileo I came across these bible quotes and they reminded me of something. What was it? oh thats right. I hear it all the time from Christian fundamentalists arguing against atrocities that have the potential to tear our society apart, such as gay marriage( A man shall not lie with another man as he lies with a woman--- or something to that effect). Societies change, people change, perhaps the thing that these people use to guide every decision they make in their day-to-day life, then in turn try to force on the rest of us, should be updated. Now before you get outraged I am not suggesting that we rewrite the Bible. We need to take it down a peg or two. I think these people, these fundamentalists need to realize that this book was NOT written by God. It was written by the same bald pink monkeys that write everything else on the world.
Now I am not just bagging on Christians, but since I am one, I have the most material to do so. It is happening all over the world. A first grade text book from Saudi Arabia has the following quote( as well as I can remember it) "Islam is right, all other religions are false" . They are saying this to first graders in school, not in church.
Crap, this kind of turned into a rant about religion, thats not what I am trying to to I am just trying to illustrate man's stubbornness to changing his ideas/beliefs.
When Chemistry was first introduced, it was met with great disbelief. Things that we can't see affect every little part of our lives? Yeah right. But now it is taught in all our schools. (an interesting tidbit about the father of modern chemistry, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, is that right before he was beheaded for being a scientist/ tax collector, he performed his last experiment. He asked the executioner to count how many times he blinked his eyes after he was decapitated in order to see how long the head remains conscious after it is separated from the body(dedication)).
Noone has ever seen a proton, neutron, or an electron before. We see evidence of their presence so we can assume that they are there. but we still can not see that they are there. We have all the equations written down in laguage that we(well some of us) can understand. But what if, in the future, it all gets proven wrong. Would you be able to accept it? or would you become angry and defensive because it goes against what you chose, or were told to believe?
In closing I just want to say that just because something makes sense to you does not, by any means, mean it is right. Keep an open mind about things and come and join me in the gray area. It is very comfortable here and I don't find myself getting offended by much of anything, except ignorance....and Paris Hilton
Well I hope you all managed to get through this mess of thought fragments, and bad grammar all right. Until I see you again...
Have a scientastic day,
--Seth
I sometimes like to consider myself a scientist. Probably not a scientist by the traditional definition. But I like thinking about questions that don't have any solid answers, and trying to see if I can come up with something of my own. I guess after reading what I just wrote, I see that pretty much is what it means to be a scientist. I don't get paid for it anyway (just made fun of) so I don't have the title, only what I call myself in my head. OK, so even I can barely understand what I am trying to say here so I am just going to move on.
Humans have free will. This allows them to think about, and do, whatever they want, theoretically(that is for another time though). We also have faith and beliefs that are crammed into our brain alongside the free will section of our heads. This addition tends to make us very stubborn and set in our ways when it comes to changing something we believe in.
Indulge me for a minute and take a trip back five hundred years to Germany or Poland or somewhere, the borders were a little fuzzy back then. This is where Copernicus first came up with the idea for a heliocentric (sun centered) solar system. His idea began to circulate around the western world.
Flash Forward another 100 years in Italy and you will find Galileo. He defended heliocentrism to the church. The churches reasoning for denying his claims was from a few bible quotes as follows....
Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and Chronicles 16:30 state that "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved."
Psalm 104:5 says, "[the LORD] set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved."
The reason I bring the Bible into this is because while I was researching Galileo I came across these bible quotes and they reminded me of something. What was it? oh thats right. I hear it all the time from Christian fundamentalists arguing against atrocities that have the potential to tear our society apart, such as gay marriage( A man shall not lie with another man as he lies with a woman--- or something to that effect). Societies change, people change, perhaps the thing that these people use to guide every decision they make in their day-to-day life, then in turn try to force on the rest of us, should be updated. Now before you get outraged I am not suggesting that we rewrite the Bible. We need to take it down a peg or two. I think these people, these fundamentalists need to realize that this book was NOT written by God. It was written by the same bald pink monkeys that write everything else on the world.
Now I am not just bagging on Christians, but since I am one, I have the most material to do so. It is happening all over the world. A first grade text book from Saudi Arabia has the following quote( as well as I can remember it) "Islam is right, all other religions are false" . They are saying this to first graders in school, not in church.
Crap, this kind of turned into a rant about religion, thats not what I am trying to to I am just trying to illustrate man's stubbornness to changing his ideas/beliefs.
When Chemistry was first introduced, it was met with great disbelief. Things that we can't see affect every little part of our lives? Yeah right. But now it is taught in all our schools. (an interesting tidbit about the father of modern chemistry, Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier, is that right before he was beheaded for being a scientist/ tax collector, he performed his last experiment. He asked the executioner to count how many times he blinked his eyes after he was decapitated in order to see how long the head remains conscious after it is separated from the body(dedication)).
Noone has ever seen a proton, neutron, or an electron before. We see evidence of their presence so we can assume that they are there. but we still can not see that they are there. We have all the equations written down in laguage that we(well some of us) can understand. But what if, in the future, it all gets proven wrong. Would you be able to accept it? or would you become angry and defensive because it goes against what you chose, or were told to believe?
In closing I just want to say that just because something makes sense to you does not, by any means, mean it is right. Keep an open mind about things and come and join me in the gray area. It is very comfortable here and I don't find myself getting offended by much of anything, except ignorance....and Paris Hilton
Well I hope you all managed to get through this mess of thought fragments, and bad grammar all right. Until I see you again...
Have a scientastic day,
--Seth
Nothing to do with the topic... I just think it is fun to look at.
Life, the Universe, and My Chain
(Originally posted on Facebook Mar 9, 2007)
For those of you that don't know, I am not much of a jewelry person. I like it on other people, but I don't like adorning myself very much. I do have one piece of jewelry I like to wear. I usually don't take it off, even when I sleep. It might sound a little weird but I almost feel naked if I don't have it on my neck. The story of how this necklace came to rest around my neck is an interesting story, at least I think so, that spans both time and lots of space.
Around 13.7 billion years ago (or a couple thousand, whichever works for you (heh, zing bitches!)) a mass that was infinitly small and infinitly dense; something we like to call a singulartiy. This singularity eventually grew tired of being what it was for some reason or another and began to expand outward at an alarming rate. Shortly after this, the matter that came out of it, mostly hydrogen, electrons, protons, neutrons, and some quarks thrown in for fun, began to be drawn to each other by gravity. The more material that gathered together, the larger the gravity force became and more material was drawn into this mass.
Over time, enough hydrogen clumped together and the hydrogen at the center of this mass became crushed together from all the weight above it and formed helium. This simplified reaction, called fusion, produces tremendous amounts of heat and radiation and is the basis for why the sun shines. As the sun goes through its 10 billion year(give or take) life span the matter in the center is kept under heavy pressure. This pressure adds new parts to the atoms turning them into different heavier atoms. This eventually results into an iron core in the star.
Other atoms result from this as well. Every once in a great while a gold atom forms in the center. If you must know, there is about 1 gold atom for every million or so iron atoms. Once the star's life cycle is up and it runs of of hydrogen to fuse, the star expands into an enourmous red giant. To give you an idea of how big they get, when our sun dies it will expand out far enough to where it will consume Mars, the planet right after us. Most of the time the star fizzles out and becomes a hunk of mostly iron floating around space. But if the star is big enough something else happens...
After the star has expanded to a red giant, the core cools faster than the outside and it begins to collapse on itself. As the outside races toward the center it gains heat. This makes a fusion chain reaction which causes the star to explode with more brightness than an entire galaxy. This spews all of the atoms it fused together, including the gold, across the galaxy in a hellstorm of cosmic fury vaporizing anything it comes into contact with.
Eventually, this matter will condense into another star. The leftover material will begin to clump up on its own to form a planet, while still attracted to the larger mass of the sun, and begin orbiting the new star. Mixed in with this leftover material was a few tiny gold atoms. This gold lied in wait inside the planet for a few billion years until it was stumbled upon by a wandering human. This man thought, "I like the look of this stuff, let us use it as money," and so it was. Over the years, gold was exchanged for other goods and then became popular to wear as decoration.
Then, a few trillion of these gold atoms were brought together to form a a series of concentric, interlocking circles by some douche who wanted to make money to buy his girlfriend a tightly compacted piece of carbon that she will not think is good enough for her.
But anyway, I digress, these circles form the very chain that goes around my neck. That is why I feel it is special, it is a little piece of the history of universe around my neck. It has traveled billions of years and who knows how many miles to arrive here, on my neck.
If you think about it, everything you are made of, except hydrogen, has come from these firey cataclysms. I'm not trying to freak you out or anything by saying that, it is just that these are the kind of things I like to think about. I also think that this is about it for me. Until I speak with you next, have a nice vacation, I know I will.
---Seth
For those of you that don't know, I am not much of a jewelry person. I like it on other people, but I don't like adorning myself very much. I do have one piece of jewelry I like to wear. I usually don't take it off, even when I sleep. It might sound a little weird but I almost feel naked if I don't have it on my neck. The story of how this necklace came to rest around my neck is an interesting story, at least I think so, that spans both time and lots of space.
Around 13.7 billion years ago (or a couple thousand, whichever works for you (heh, zing bitches!)) a mass that was infinitly small and infinitly dense; something we like to call a singulartiy. This singularity eventually grew tired of being what it was for some reason or another and began to expand outward at an alarming rate. Shortly after this, the matter that came out of it, mostly hydrogen, electrons, protons, neutrons, and some quarks thrown in for fun, began to be drawn to each other by gravity. The more material that gathered together, the larger the gravity force became and more material was drawn into this mass.
Over time, enough hydrogen clumped together and the hydrogen at the center of this mass became crushed together from all the weight above it and formed helium. This simplified reaction, called fusion, produces tremendous amounts of heat and radiation and is the basis for why the sun shines. As the sun goes through its 10 billion year(give or take) life span the matter in the center is kept under heavy pressure. This pressure adds new parts to the atoms turning them into different heavier atoms. This eventually results into an iron core in the star.
Other atoms result from this as well. Every once in a great while a gold atom forms in the center. If you must know, there is about 1 gold atom for every million or so iron atoms. Once the star's life cycle is up and it runs of of hydrogen to fuse, the star expands into an enourmous red giant. To give you an idea of how big they get, when our sun dies it will expand out far enough to where it will consume Mars, the planet right after us. Most of the time the star fizzles out and becomes a hunk of mostly iron floating around space. But if the star is big enough something else happens...
After the star has expanded to a red giant, the core cools faster than the outside and it begins to collapse on itself. As the outside races toward the center it gains heat. This makes a fusion chain reaction which causes the star to explode with more brightness than an entire galaxy. This spews all of the atoms it fused together, including the gold, across the galaxy in a hellstorm of cosmic fury vaporizing anything it comes into contact with.
Eventually, this matter will condense into another star. The leftover material will begin to clump up on its own to form a planet, while still attracted to the larger mass of the sun, and begin orbiting the new star. Mixed in with this leftover material was a few tiny gold atoms. This gold lied in wait inside the planet for a few billion years until it was stumbled upon by a wandering human. This man thought, "I like the look of this stuff, let us use it as money," and so it was. Over the years, gold was exchanged for other goods and then became popular to wear as decoration.
Then, a few trillion of these gold atoms were brought together to form a a series of concentric, interlocking circles by some douche who wanted to make money to buy his girlfriend a tightly compacted piece of carbon that she will not think is good enough for her.
But anyway, I digress, these circles form the very chain that goes around my neck. That is why I feel it is special, it is a little piece of the history of universe around my neck. It has traveled billions of years and who knows how many miles to arrive here, on my neck.
If you think about it, everything you are made of, except hydrogen, has come from these firey cataclysms. I'm not trying to freak you out or anything by saying that, it is just that these are the kind of things I like to think about. I also think that this is about it for me. Until I speak with you next, have a nice vacation, I know I will.
---Seth
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