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Choke on that, Causality!
Dec. 1st, 2007
05:55 am - Where I've been all month
30 days, 50277 words. Boo-Yah! In spite of work doing its best to keep me away from the keyboard and falling about 10000 words behind by the start of this week, I came from behind for the win! Now I can start practicing (slightly) better hygiene again and restoring relationships with loved ones. Much thanks to Whitney for supporting me and being proud of me. Winners receive a certificate suitable for printing and framing, and a handsome website banner.
Behold! 
It's been a long month. It was a great experiance, and I'm glad it's over :)
accomplishedOct. 27th, 2007
03:46 am - Peter Pumpkin Eater
Much thanks to the Bluebird Equation for making Halloween fun again. The Mario Medley and Legend of Zelda Theme were the best... I wish I had filmed those. Peter Pumpkin Eater is one of their best songs, though, and great for Halloween. My love and I had the best costumes in the house -- Zelda and Link 4EVR!
sleepyOct. 20th, 2007
07:21 am - NaNo preview
It's been so long since I posted anything that it's probably pointless to try and recap the last... month and a half, or however long it's been. I'm feeling a general sense of anxiety over not having landed a new job yet. And over my surely-doomed NaNoWriMo next month (what was I thinking?). I really do need to learn to spit it out, though. And maybe a break from my long, long running novel writing attempt would be good. So here's a free write that may or may not find a place toward the beginning of my NaNo (it probably will, since I don't have any better ideas.)
Sol was a speck somewhat brighter than the other stars. His former employers had been nice enough to give him a push in direction of Earth, the system's most habitable planet, when they set him adrift. If no one found him before then, his pod would reach the vicinity in ten years or so, his long dead body mummified within. But he didn't look forward to being found in this uncivilized region any more than he looked forward to not being found -- the two possibilities held equally dim prospects.
There was nothing to do but look at the stars. Or play games bundled in the pod's computer -- QverN, Pirate Attack! FER'kd, or Tetris (one of the few good things reputed to have originated on Earth.) Or listen to the radio, but there was nothing good on and in this unregulated zone the stations all overlapped. Or calculate his basal energy requirements in order to create a minimal food schedule and stretch out his rations as far as possible. The pod came with fifty standard days worth of food, water, and air, but if he starved himself, drank only enough to stay alive, and breathed shallow... The planning thing was boring, though, and he had trouble getting into it. Besides, any such plans depended on him keeping his sanity, and in order to do that he had to keep his mind occupied. With Tetris.
After a week, he gave up on the castaway thing and turned on the distress signal. Being found by a cannibalistic pirate might be better, and certainly more exciting, than drifting forever. Within a day, half a dozen small ships were homing in on him, and whatever useful supplies might be stripped from his pod. "Come get me, buzzards," he muttered, and waited to see who would show up first.
There you go, Love! I hope today doesn't last too long, so that we can get to the part where we spend tomorrow together already.
anxiousAug. 31st, 2007
04:47 am
Can it be, then, that of our current knowledge nothing will remain?
indescribableAug. 13th, 2007
12:46 am - Long hours apart
My love, you've gone to bed, and I'm sad. Today events -- lunch with the folks, a hot afternoon together, underwhelming ice cream, a movie, and hanging out at Barns&Noble -- might not seem earth shaking to some, but I thought it was wonderful, and now that you've gone to bed I'm morose to be parted from you, even for the night. No one else can make me feel the way you do. I just found out tonight is the Perseids! And the sky is clear! We could lie on the trampoline and scan the sky for meteors. I know you would enjoy doing that with me, but you were so sleepy, and if I woke you up, you might not be able to get back to sleep again. I should probably let you rest. Maybe we can catch the tail end of it tomorrow night. I can't wait to see you again! I love you.
moroseAug. 7th, 2007
05:07 pm - My phobia: humans.
Shyness kind of sucks. It's kind of like having an irrational fear of spiders or heights or tight spaces, except instead of those things you're afraid of humans. The reason it's worse than other phobias is that your boss is not a giant spider (though you may beg to differ) your coworkers are not precipices overlooking a large drop, and your family and friends, while they may be suffocating on occasion, are not, in fact, narrow passageways. If you're afraid of spiders, then fine -- don't talk to them! On the other hand, you are expected to interact with other humans on a daily basis.
Today I needed to make a phone call regarding a job I applied for. Phones are Satan. I can discourse intelligently on the moons of Saturn, politics, prairie dog ecology, climate change during medieval times, the life history of cycads, challenges facing the preservation of global biodiversity, evolution, and any number of plant and animal species, but I can't make a quick phone call to save my life. I'm never sure who will answer, what they will say, or what I will need to say in response. My physical reaction today to holding the phone and thinking about making a call was the same that another person might feel upon needing to pick up a spider or hearing a rattle snake somewhere in the grass near their feet -- a gut level, fight-or-flight survival response. You can't talk your way out of that kind of fear. If you could rationalize it away, then it wouldn't be called an irrational fear! It usually takes me at least an hour or two to work up the courage to make a necessary call. I gave up today around 5:00 when I was near panic and figured it was the end of the business day anyway.
Shyness is, at least in part, genetic -- it never gets "better" and it never goes away. Not that it's all bad. If it were, it wouldn't have been preserved in our genes. Shyness isn't just fear of humans; it also makes it harder to try new things. This is also often an annoyance, but the caution inspired by being more easily frightened (I read once that it may be related to an overactive amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear and aggression) makes you less likely to run off and get yourself killed. So when the bold people bravely go forth to get a big meal for themselves by attacking a cave bear, and become food for the cave bear instead, the meek inherit the tribe. This must have happened more than once in our history. Damn if it doesn't make it hard to operate in modern society, though.
intimidatedJun. 29th, 2007
02:49 am - Why I quit meat
I'm a vegetarian!
I was a consummate carnivore for the first 19 or so years of my life -- I would eat meat in every meal if I could, and I detested almost all green things. But eventually my conscience caught up to me, and I could no longer do so. I weaned myself off of meat over a period of time, first cow, then pig and shrimp (easy because I was never fond of those two anyway) then birds, and finally fish and other marine animals. I still consume dairy products, even though I know that industry isn't much nicer to animals or the environment than the ones that directly kill the animals, but for now I'm content to have greatly reduced my contribution to a bunch of things I don't like.
To my surprise, I found that the longer I went without eating meat, the less I wanted to. A common objection meat eaters (and I used to) have is that I couldn't possibly go so long without eating meat -- as if it would be like holding your breath. For me, at least, the opposite has been true -- the more time passes, the stranger the idea of eating meat has become, and now I can't believe how voracious I once was for it. Commercials for hamburgers -- once among my favorite foods -- now frankly disgust me. I don't believe people when they say they couldn't become vegetarians because they like meat too much, because I was one of them once.
The reasons to quit meat are manifold. Health might be one (you don't see many obese vegetarians). Then again, meat is a rich source of protein, fat, and several vitamins, so that's not the best reason to me. For me, it was a combination of various environmental and ethical concerns. Here's some:
*Factory workers: workers in modern industrial factory farms/slaughterhouses are often trucked-in immigrants. If working conditions are poor or unsafe or when they are injured, they aren't really in a position to complain, given their illegal status. There may be human rights issues here. (Read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser).
*Animal welfare: Cow, pig, and chicken industries have a bad track record of keeping animals in inhumane densities in cages/enclosures that are too small. Cows on feedlots aren't fed grass -- the thing they're designed to eat. Their feed is corn or grain based, which packs on pounds faster but which they aren't able to properly digest -- it would give them deadly stomach infections in short order. So they just lace the food with antibiotics to stave off infection until it's time to slaughter them... this strikes me as unnatural. Slaughter houses are a factory. Cows come in one end, meat comes out the other. Stopping the line costs money. Slowing down the line costs money. Cattle have to be slaughtered as rapidly as possible. Some factories may slaughter several thousand a day, every day. Given the sheer volume, is it even physically possible that they're killed humanely -- properly knocked unconscious before having their throats slit? Is it even physically possible that there isn't a certain percentage that is still conscious while being disemboweled or skinned?
*Human health: Why do you have to worry about E. coli in beef? Why would intestinal bacteria be on skeletal muscle? Cows on the feedlot live in their own manure, and they don't get a shower before being slaughtered. This may be a little mean, but... guess what gets on your meat? On a personal note, I used to take it for granted that I would get sick once or twice a year in a way that would involve throwing up for a couple days. I never questioned this uncomfortable fact of life. I realized a while back that I haven't thrown up in five or six years now, which also happens to be the amount of time I've been a vegetarian. This might be a coincidence, or maybe the stomach bugs I always got growing up were a result of stuff that didn't occasionally didn't quite get cooked out of the meat.
*Grazing: Large scale grazing poses numerous threats to the environment, such as erosion and water pollution.
*Pollution: Run off from factory farms threatens water quality. I've heard run off from pig farms is especially bad. Cows also belch out methane, a greenhouse gas, and we have so many of them that they may even be a contributor to global warming!
*Rainforests: Often slashed and burned to provide temporary grazing and pasture for cattle.
*Sustainability and hunger: Meat is inefficient. When a cow eats, only some of that food is converted into the meat that you will eat. All told, it takes 15+ pounds of grain to make one pound of meat, so supporting our livestock requires that more land is converted to agriculture and much more fresh water is required to water the crops and the livestock directly than if we would just feed the grain to ourselves http://www.goveg.com/environment.as
*Oceans: I've mostly focused on cows, but commercial fishing harms ocean ecosystems all over the world, and fish farming is very polluting http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co
*The cost in carnivores and other wildlife: This was the clincher for me. Carnivores have always been, and continue to be persecuted in order to protect livestock. There might not be any reason for all the uproar over reintroducing and protecting wolves in the northern Rockies, for instance, were it not for the fears of the ranching industry. Wolves, bears, mountain lions, coyotes, and foxes are killed by the tens, hundreds, and (in the case of coyotes) tens of thousands every year in order to protect livestock. Other animals also suffer: to this day herds of wild bison are not allowed to roam free on the plains, for fear that they would eat too much grass and compete with cattle. The same goes for wild horses, who are also culled. And prairie dogs, who are poisoned en masse partly for fear that they'll eat too much grass and cattle could break their legs in their holes.
You have to realize that when you eat meat you aren't just killing the cow. You're also eating some small portion of the wolves, mountain lions, bears, coyotes, prairie dogs, etc., who were killed in order to protect the cow until it could be moved to the feedlot to finish fattening up for slaughter. I came to realize that when I bought meat I was effectively paying people to shoot wolves, and that is unacceptable to me. The ultimate way to end predator/cattle conflicts is to either get rid of all the predators or greatly reduce the number of cattle wandering in their territory. I'd rather we just not breed so many cattle. The simple market solution is to just not buy it, thereby reducing demand and making it unnecessary to put all those cows out there.
*Compassion: I just don't want to kill animals any more. I could never have looked a cow in the eyes and then slit its throat. Now my diet is in line with that fact.
*Alternatives exist: Which is more important, personal aesthetic pleasure or ethical imperative? Ethics doesn't ask us whether it feels good or not; it only asks whether it is right or wrong. But... meat does taste good. I wouldn't have eaten it for so long if it didn't! And we are acculturated to want to eat hamburgers, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets. Even I didn't want to leave the taste and texture and comfort of these familiar foods behind. Luckily Boca, Gardenburger, Morningstar Farms, and others allow you to eat all those things without killing any animals! The first time I ate a Boca burger, I thought my mom was trying to trick me into eating meat, it tasted so much like the real thing.
thoughtfulMay. 16th, 2007
12:05 am - One Crazy Week (finals, graduation, and fun with my love!)
It's going to take another week or two to process everything that happened last week, the last week of my undergraduate career and a great visit with my love. It was an amazing whirlwind. Here's a summary:
Monday, May 7 2007: Wrote take home final for Critical Thinking: Biodiversity. Did not sleep because of it. The night turned into Tuesday morning, and I had to finish up, print it out, and head to class.
Tuesday, 5/8: I turned in the Biodiversity final, took a short nap, went to the Calculus final review, studied frantically, and took the Plant Biodiversity and Evolution final. I didn't manage to study for the calculus final afterward... I was too tired and needed to get some sleep.
Wednesday, 5/9: Got up early to pick up my love at the airport. The reunion was sweet, but I soon needed to get in some studying for the calc final. I was apprehensive about it, not knowing if I would pass the class. The final came and went, and I stumbled out hoping that I managed 50-60% of the possible points, which I hoped would be enough to secure me a needed C in the class. I showed Whitney around campus, especially the library, until it got dark. We went out to eat at Chili's, happily eating the traditional black bean burger and fries.
Thursday, 5/10: Attended the Departmental Recognition Ceremony for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. It was a warm, sunny day, and mercifully it was held under a big tent -- the cap and gown were warm enough as it was, and would have been terribly hot if we were sitting in the sun. The reception was at 1:00, catered with very fancy and delicious looking sweets. My Whitney, my parents, and my brother and his girlfriend attended. The ceremony started at 1:30. The EEB department chair did a good job of keeping things light while also impressing the significance of the event on us. He was also very generous about providing photographic opportunities for parents. It was better than other graduation ceremonies: every student -- doctors, masters, and even undergraduates -- were allowed to take the microphone and speak a few words (of course, doctoral and master students were allowed to say quite a bit more, talking about their research and so forth, while undergraduates were limited to a few words thanking people or telling of future plans, but still, it was very cool). I thanked my love, my parents, my 1 of 3 siblings who showed up for the ceremony (haha) and all the good teachers I had over the years, naming those who were present, including TA's.
The ceremony ended right on schedule, at 3:00. Afterwards Whitney and I toured the library some more, where she gave me a fantastic graduation present. We left and went to dinner at the Leaf, a vegetarian restaurant in Boulder, with my whole family (and Clint's girlfriend) joining us. We were late getting there, not knowing where to park and ending up in a garage about 6 blocks away. But it made us walk through the Pearl St. Mall, which is a neat outdoor mall where the street has been converted for pedestrian only use, so there's little traffic noise, lots of shade, and a fair-like ambiance. We decided to come back later. Food at the Leaf was delicious; I had an Indian curry dish with many vegetables and tofu, and Whitney had a tofu dish that was nice and crispy. Everyone's meal was good, and it was the first time in recent memory I've been able to sample the food on other people's plates. We walked back through the mall, stopping at a very cool bookstore. We watched most of Return of the Jedi when we got home.
Friday, 5/11: We went back to boulder to pick up the poster for my Plant Biodiversity and Evolution class that I earned by taking pretty pictures and having one receive the most votes from the class, thereby giving it the large, center position, with smaller pictures from the class (almost half of them mine) ringing it. It's large and attractive, with descriptions of the photos and credits to the photographers, plus small photos and names of the whole class. Two of the descriptions are misplaced and one of the photos is mis-credited to me, but otherwise it's great, and they even framed it for me. Then we returned to the Pearl St mall. Whitney bought a purse from an Indian imports store, and we spent most of our time hanging out in a great kite/toy store, where we bought stuff we didn't need -- who cares, toys are fun! We both got cool bouncy balls, Whitney got some cool decks of cards for her collection, and I got a very cool Allosaurus and smaller toy dinosaurs; we also got some colorful little stretchy frogs for my niece. We strolled the mall and ate Italian ices while listening to an older couple play didgerydos.
Then it was home for my graduation party. People were slow to arrive. My brother and his girlfriend were the first, followed by most of my D&D group and the friends I've had since elementary school. It was a little awkward and hard to juggle because the two groups didn't really mix, and I was afraid I was neglecting my Whitney, who was alone most of the time. After the last of my friends packed up and left (leaving 3 xbox controllers behind) Whitney and I spent the rest of the night lying on the trampoline under a blanket, looking at the stars.
Saturday, 5/12: Elitch's. We left an hour later than we intended, at 1:00, and got there around 1:45. We spent two hours of our lives in line for one roller coaster, the Mind Eraser. It's an OK coaster, but not worth two hours in line. We found ways to keep ourselves amused during the wait, however. Afterward we invested in "fast passes" to reduce our time in line, and proceeded to ride the Twister II, the Flying Coaster, the Sidewinder (surprisingly fun for such a short and simple ride!), The Twister again (can't beat those old fashioned wooden coasters), the Mind Eraser again, and finally the Boomerang, which had been closed. The pass definitely made it more fun, although it was kind of expensive. When added to the ticket price, it made the cost of our visit 50 bucks each, plus 15 dollars to park! Whitney beat me at whack-a-mole and won a frog. When we got home we ate, watched the Mountains episode of Planet Earth (her parents got me the series for a graduation present) and quickly fell asleep on the couch. We woke up later, however.
Sunday, 5/13: We got up early and headed to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We saw a lot -- the gems and minerals, most, if not all, of the museum's world class animal diorama exhibits, the kid friendly space exhibit, the Egyptian mummies (it wouldn't be a museum without that!) and the Prehistoric Journey -- always cool, and once again we were rushed at the end, so I've still never really taken in the whole exhibit. We also caught the Cosmic Collisions show at the planetarium, which was very cool with eye-filling, very intricate animation. I bought another couple of dinosaurs at the gift shop. Then we had to leave, and proceed to the airport. Our parting is always traumatic, and hopefully this living 800 miles apart thing will soon be a thing of the past.
I'm still reeling from it all. With my grades back, I know that I really did graduate last week; it was all for real. And all the activities and time spent with my girlfriend were pretty much perfect, and still being processed. I can't believe I'm free from school, free to have some free time, and free to start the next stage of my life... all I have to do now is find a real job!
shockedMay. 15th, 2007
10:27 pm - The Best C Ever (I really graduated!)
Oh, dear Lord, thank you! I got a C in Calculus 1 with Biological Applications! That means that what happened last week really happened -- the graduation ceremony and party were for real. I have a Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology!
That calculus class was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. I got an F the first time around and had to retake it. The grueling course dragged on through the spring, five days a week, 20-30 hours of work outside of class each week. I scored a 97 on the first exam, but the second exam was during the week (see previous post) when I was deathly ill. I must have been delirious to think I could take the test... I didn't do well. The material became more difficult after that, as I knew it would, and I didn't do well on the third exam, either. The dreaded prospect of failing again, having to retake it a third time, and in doing so preventing me from getting on with my life until next December, loomed large in my mind. I struggled. I went to office hours and the math help lab. I still did poorly on the final, I thought, but it was enough to get me somewhere in the 60's range, and the curve (there was no curve in the fall semester!) brought me up to a C. A blessed C.
It was a given that I would get A's or B's in my biology classes and have all my other requirements fulfilled -- getting my degree hung on this one grade, and somehow, I got it. This is the sweetest C ever, even better than when I got my act together and salvaged my grade in General Biology II back in 2001, and when I managed to pass General Physics II and General Chemistry I. Sometimes hard fought C can be even more satisfying than a well deserved A.
ecstaticMar. 15th, 2007
10:33 pm - illness
So sick. I'm as sick as I've ever been. I get colds sometimes, but not like this. I don't want to do anything, especially make dumb blog posts. I prefer to lie about and moan day and night.
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