Life in Moo Town
Been back in Davis since Friday night...had a
lovely Thanksgiving break. Hmmm, break, yes, nearly literally. I managed to sprain my ankle nicely during the MoAd alumni football game (the Turkey Bowl) Thursday morning. Spent the afternoon in the emergency room and then got to drive, sprained ankle and all, back to Davis the next day. With traffic it took three hours. By the time I got home my ankle was purple and swollen to double its normal size (pressing on the gas pedal wasn't fun). Of course the reason I had to come back to Davis was this *!&$#%@ physiology lab report about human urine, due Monday, that I needed books from the library to complete. After spending 30 minutes hobbling to the library on crutches and another 30 minutes hobbling back I'm in a delightful mood. This is all just an explanation for why my thoughts may be a bit darker than usual.
Question of the day: Didn't the republicans claim they are always good for the economy? Is it just me or has this not been true since Eisenhower?
Thought of the day: When the president pardoned the Thanksgiving Turkey this year, I think it was only to avoid cannibalism.
Back in Saratoga. Done patching the roof and picking apples. Not happy about this curved keyboard. Typing difficult.
I've been thinking a lot about the nature of the universe. Wow, that was deep. No, seriously, why isn't the universe one uniform lump of matter and energy? The laws of entropy seem to dictate that the universe is just a giant battery whose charge is running down. It's only a matter of time before all order collapses into chaos. Just think of all the factories on earth. Each one is creating a small piece of order by generating massive amounts of chaos. Why don't we have an outraged environmental group concerned about squandering order? And how did order get here in the first place? The secret of the universe seems to lie in the separations. Somehow within a single cell, all the chemicals floating in the cytoplasm are prevented from reacting by microscopic barriers. Somehow energy is bottled up behind dams for release on cue. Why is the universe divided up into domains like this? It would make so much more sense for matter and energy to be mixed, the whole of existence just one giant amalgam of everything. Hmmm, must ponder this...need food...more thoughts later.
Question of the day: why did hedgehogs decide it was such an evolutionarily brilliant idea to migrate underground in the first place? Didn't they like sunshine?
Thought of the day: if ideas are really specific firings of neurons in the brain, it should be possible to create a device that reads the firing patterns from one person's brain (say a teacher) and then activates the corresponding neuron's in another person's brain (say a student or a whole class). If this can be done, essentially a class will be able to read the teacher's mind and learn effortlessly since nothing will be lost in the explanation of the concept. Of course teachers would have to be very careful with what they think about. For instance it would be pretty bad for a professor to be lecturing mentally on philosophy of language and then lapse into a thought about the disgusting mole on the forehead of a student sitting in the front row. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the mind-reader worked in two directions as well. If teachers could read their students' thoughts, I imagine their pupils would swiftly learn to focus their minds much more on the topic at hand.
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the only way I can think of to make this technology an actuality would involve removing large sections of people's skulls and inserting hundreds of millions of permanent electrodes into their brains. This is not only technically challenging as an operation, but it would also make after school football rather difficult. I don't think I'd like to wear a helmet and hit people with my head when my brain is exposed and has millions of needles in it. That's just asking for trouble.
The cows have returned to the barn, yet here I am still up slaving away over MCB (actually cows only sleep about 4 hours per day so plenty are out chowing down in the hay but that's not important right now). Sometimes I look out the window and freak out 'cause somebody is staring at me, then I realize it's just my reflection. Maybe I'm paranoid. Hmmm, paranoia. If I had a restaurant I'd serve paranoia polenta. It would be polenta (yellow cornmeal like substance) garnished with some lettuce, with two circular slices of tomato on top with half on olive on top of each tomato. It would look just like two crazed blood red eyes staring up from the plate. Maybe I'd use some chives to make green eye lashes. Freaky, but tasty none the less. Might even go well with a bipolar split. One scoop of chocolate next to a scoop of vanilla with bananas all over it (in my experience, bipolar people go bananas a lot). Guess you'll have to wait until I open my psychological disorder themed restaraunt. I'll call it cafe schizo. This has to be the worst idea I've had in at least 8 minutes. I'm out.
So Yale wants me to write them a 250 word essay on any topic in order for my law school application to be considered. Lovely. First off, 250 words is almost long enough for me to write an intro, forget about a whole essay. Second, who do they think they are anyway, asking me to write them a special essay like this? Just because they are the most selective law school on earth they think they have the right to make me jump through hoops to apply. Well 250 words isn't much, so maybe just a little hoop. But it's the principle of the thing. They think they're soooo special. They're probably right.
If anyone has any good topics for me to write about drop me an email or IM.
In other related news, I just realized that I never wrote why I want to go to law school in my personal statement. Amazing how quickly two pages can be filled without managing to say anything. It's a little late to be realizing this now too, nine of my applications are already under review so they can't be changed. It's probably all for the best. If it were discovered that I'm just in it for the money as a first step in my global takeover, a lot of schools would probably reject me. Let's just keep that little secret between us, they don't need to know. Shhhhhhhh ;-)
Welcome to the first day of the rest of my life. How cliche. I figured everyone else has a blog so I might as well follow the horde. Being part of a horde is nice from time to time. Hordes always get group discounts and stuff. Like have you ever gone with a horde to McDonalds and been like, we want 5,000 cheeseburgers, 2 fries and a coke? How could they charge you full price at those quantities? Actually I wouldn't know, I don't eat fast food, but consider the possibilities.
