I Have Better Friends Than You

I am better than you simply because my friends are better than you. I know the most amazing people, and I’m not entirely sure your friends will ever compare.

Things my friends do:

• Win Goldwater scholarships
• Evolutionize (its a word) new and novel proteins
• Study literature and culture for fun, I swear that’s it, in Norway
• Implement engineering strategies worldwide to aid humanity
• Study potential cancer therapies
• Becoming the teachers, engineers, doctors, and scientists of tomorrow
• Model the Big Bang
• Program for the queer community
• Organize activist coalitions for underrepresented and discriminated demographics.
• Volunteer for the homeless.
• Work for woman’s rights organizations
• Get better grades than literally anyone else
• Run marathons
• Win national intern competitions
• Dream to teach the disadvantaged and disabled
• Have a refined cultural taste and a passionate political sensibility
• Finish college early
• Never leave college

That’s only the beginning. Basically, in a fight between my friends and the justice league, everyone finishes with a smile and a falafel.

An occupation you should know about

There is currently a group of University students and community members peacefully occupying the ground floor of the Social Sciences building. They began Monday, and have since developed a list of demands worth a read:

Because we are residents of Minnesota, and because this is a public, land-grant university,

We demand the right to peacefully occupy space at our university,

We demand that the general public has reasonable access to university resources;

We demand that the university respect the rights of all workers to organize and to earn at least a living wage;

We demand tuition and fee reductions;

We demand that regents be democratically elected by the university community;

We demand that the university treat student groups fairly and equitably with respect to funding and space. We demand student groups on the 2^nd floor of Coffman Union be able to keep their spaces.

In doing so, we stand in solidarity with the people of Wisconsin, and students and workers worldwide

You can read their twitter here and their blog here. There is an interesting and ridiculous conversation going on at their facebook event “University of Minnesota student and community member OCCUPATION!”. Some students seem to think they know more about how to create effective political change and would like to educate the occupiers.

I have a hard time trying to come up with serious criticisms for this group. I’ve been following the social media closely (dear occupiers, moar please) after stopping in by the occupation Monday.

Everyone should read their media at least once and consider stopping by if your on West Bank. Realtime activism rarely happens here in this form, and this isn’t one you want to miss.

Evolution

Sometimes biologists point to embryonic development as evidence for evolution. Personally, I’ve always been fascinated by the questions developmental biology asks and seeks to discover, but I’m much too busy reading sites like these. This is likely to be expected.

On a short note, we see in our embryonic development the germ cells, and later, fetus, going through stages that look a lot similar to those of other species. The more related we are to a species, or the species that shares the closest ancestor back in evolutionary time, is probably going to have a more similar embryonic development. In fact, you even see a set of vestigial gills on the fetus (don’t worry, they go away for most people).

This can likely create a line of thinking that because of evolution, we end up going through all of our past “beings” before we can start developing as a human. This is obviously a part of my fantasy religion, something I’ll write about later.

So I’m currently reading Love In the Time of Cholera. I feel like I’ve found my evolutionarily distant romantic ancestor. This guy spends months and years romancing this lady without them ever speaking. He’s successful (to an extent). This sort of ridiculous tomfoolery reminded me of middle school and early high school, when everyone was much too afraid to speak openly to the people they liked and instead spoke through notes, friends, or the internet.

The internet?!?! Great, now I’m going to sound like an old crock who complains about how the internet is ruining social networks.

But seriously, the internet is ruining social networks. Much in the same way evolution ended up producing gay people. I’ve learned in public health that starting drugs and alcohol early can hamper social development–not because you’ve wasted your brain away on harsh chemicals (it helps), but because the social construct surrounding the use of these illegal chemicals forces users into isolation. So while they’re trashing their bodies, they’re also spending a lot of valuable time away from society gaining social lessons everyone else gets. The empirical evidence my course provided was basically null, but the idea sounds plausible (read: major gaping hole in my blog post. do me a favor and don’t rip me a new one in the comments, bitte.)

If social media and gaming are having the same effect on the development of our social life, will this start impacting us in a noticeable way? Will my “real” social network be more diminished than it could be? What did young adults used to waste their time doing, and what kind of social activities did these outdated time wasters facilitate? Perhaps social media and networked gaming do promote positive growth in social intelligence, albeit a different “field” that promotes teamwork?  Why did my Disney Princess-shaped Spaghettios look nothing like Disney Princesses?

The real issue is my year-and-a-half battle of whether or not I delete facebook for good.

Mental Illness

I’ve always hated the word mental illness, because it makes it seem like there’s a normal standard people have to attend to in order to be their true selves. It’s obvious bull shit. This postsecret had a pretty big effect on me, but I was too scared to post it on Facebook like I usually do, because I know only some people will read my blog (despite blog updates also being posted on Facebook), and they’ll likely have more empathy and understanding.

My post-secondary education has afforded me a new perspective on “mental illness”, such that I take nothing from anyone for granted and that I’ve ditched most of my common sense (it’s for the better). The number of resources for mental and social conflicts has risen considerably over the past century, yet stigmas concerning these programs and resources, or the people that use them, hasn’t changed for the better yet.

Empathy. Care. Compassion. Love of self/others. Loss of pride.

Dragging

 

 

 

 

 

 

Personally, I feel accomplished for those ribosome-protein complexes. I did an E coli transformation today, and I felt apparently sexist while setting the cells to do the busywork around the lab. I’m not sure my DNA Replicase is accurate, but then again I told someone else that the outer layer of the cell is a glycolax, which, um, it’s not.

To be certain, lab is alright. I wrote quite a romantic post on it when I first started, which is still completely appropriate. I love lab, and science is <beauty, amazing, sadistic, the love child of Carl Sagan and Descartes>. I’ve also been accepted to the DirecTrack to Teaching program. The summer is wide open. I’m unsure of what I’ll be doing yet. Preach science on Northrop Mall?

Book Review, Sort of

So I’ve spent the last week (almost exactly) reading Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. First and foremost, these books are almost nothing alike. They have a similar format, such as each chapter beginning with an ambiguous parenthetical that sets the stage for the entire chapter. They both deal with humanity and ask a lot of questions, and these are so obviously helped by the presence of advanced technologies and alien races. Certainly never before have I seen as well a though out way of considering sentient beings. I have also not read a lot of science fiction.

I was extremely skeptical at first. Orson Scott Card has built up a reputation that isn’t exactly favorable, and a lot of people like the Ender series. (read – white suburban kids). But, Card convinced me with his stunning character development and novel ideas. His science may have been a little wishy-washy at times (the ansible- really? NOTHING travels faster than the speed of light, okay people? Talk about hand waving! And the descolada?? puh-lease). But even his science often worked in the ways that we justify the means sometimes by the ends. We never actually do that that in science, but thank god for fiction.

I, of course, was intrigued by the idea of the Speaker of the Dead, who speaks such the objective truth of humanity to people’s faces and they accept it! What a bold statement on truth! Card obliterates the idea of relativity (outside of space travel, of course), and we sort of expect that from a known Mormon.

Speaker for the Dead will almost certainly live on longer than Ender’s Game, which is nothing but a quick and thorough character sketch. Speaker seriously addresses thoughts on what it means to be human, to be sentient, to fall in love, but most importantly, to forgive.

So the real question is from here, do I go on to read Love in the Time of Cholera, Cosmos, or the next Ender book, Xenocide? Agh!

And he rested on the 8th day

Certainly we can’t rest unless we work. Otherwise we just faulenzen, and each day becomes just like the one before. Certainly there are ways we can spice up or days. I’ll never know if my boyfriend will choose to wear his tight maroon pants or his tight white pants. The consistency of my pancake batter changes every morning. The weather is always variable, and at least in the spring, it usually better each day. Summer comes soon, though. One week in March, all of April, and one week in May. That is the amount of school left in this semester, and it doesn’t amount to much. A lot of ochem chapters, a few biology chapters on ecology and populations, a yeast two-hybrid library transformation, a few essays on alcohol and college life, and… who knows.

I’m finishing Speaker for the Dead, and I’m not sure where I’ll go from there. Perhaps if I manage my time right I’ll feel comfortable diving back into GEB, but for now light fiction has been doing me well. I’m finishing this semester, and I’m not sure where I’ll go from there. I might go to Germany, but I may be here. I love this apartment a lot.

So I’m going to do better this half-semester. I might deactivate facebook again and leave it off until break. I’ve been toying with the idea of leaving facebook altogether for almost a year now. Love and distance is what keeps me there. To live a simpler life, though, is a strong motivator. The philosophies that have guided me through the past few years tell me to do so: focus on the people in your life, shave way excess, thrive in your activities by eliminating the least beneficial, experience life and nature, enrich yourself.

So while it seems my friends have disappeared into blogging purgatory (hellooooooo??), I’ll probably start disappearing into facebook purgatory.

invisible hole

the lake fell back a few feet, but
it was always there. grey-green.

your sand castle isn’t very tall
you don’t understand why the moat won’t stay
the lake, it was always there

plastic freezer pop wrapper flag
twig bridge over the soaked moat
cedar branch fence, it smelled
leftover crayfish claw post
you don’t understand why the moat won’t stay

smell of cut grass and burgers
the boat knocks 4 times against the dock
the lake is calm, it’s always there
but you smashed your castle to oblivion

don’t worry. the lake is always there

Why are we here?

The problem with language lies in association. I mean, association is the essence of language–we associate a pattern of sound with something tangible or something abstract. We generally see language as symbolic, which it can be, but symbolism doesn’t really capture the full extent of what language does.

Language is something that has written itself into the way our body is wired. If someone shouts “STOP” at you while you’re running, you won’t think about what they said and then weigh the pros and cons of whether you should stop or not. Instead, your ear drum passes along the auditory information from the environment to your brain, where it’s processed by a few different areas, mainly in areas localized around Wernicke’s Area along the cerebral cortex, up in yo’ occipotal lobe (neuroscientists and psychologists feel free to correct me). Your amygdala jumps in at some point, recognizes this specific signal (sound waves turned into a series of releases and uptakes of ions in your brain) and lets parts know that they need to chill out. [And this is only a rough, quick summary. Remember, you didn't mediate any of this].

But yet, language is the key to higher level thinking. I think, therefore I am. Unfortunately, language has gotten us into a recent bout of trouble that involves quite a bit of self-privilege.

When we see almost any form of life, we see a will to live. An ant certainly is not carrying out cognitive processes on a scale even close to ours, yet not only does it not think about the meaning of life, or whether it should live, it still does everything in it’s power to stay alive and to promote the continuation of its colony. After a dog has her pups, she brings them anywhere, and offers up her milk at almost any whine from one of her pups. We do not demand she offer up an explanation for why she feels the need to provide sustenance to her offspring, she simply does.

But, when a person looks at their life, looks at their neighbor, and looks at human culture, they demand to know: what is the meaning of life? Who or What is God? Why are we here?

This is almost self-referential thinking. We think that because we think, and the animals don’t, we must be inherently different in such a way that our existence has a meaning. It’s not surprising, every thought and every word we trade in cultural exchange has currency and meaning behind it. It flows rather easily to say that I am worth something and that something has intrinsic meaning to the universe. How selfish!

The most surprising phenomenon is when you let someone in on the “secret”. They’re astonished to think there are people who go about their life without any pretense, without any meaning. I came to college wanting to understand how life works, and I’ve gotten far more than I bargained for. There is no meaning to life, and this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. Such a revelation should help humanity as a whole. I imagine most wars would stop. People would probably give more the poor. We’d be more focused on education.

I promise, we would not lose our sense of morality. Animals have no bible, they have no moral standard, and yet they do not murder and rape their neighbor (okay, well, some do). Even if some do, we understand that we’re “happier” when it doesn’t happen. So maybe there is a meaning to life, and what it is is that we evolved certain characteristics that allow us to flourish, to love, and to grow.

So stop being so obstinate about having meaning for yourself. You are a blip in the life of this universe, and it doesn’t care about you. Skip church and read Camus instead. Forget lent and eat out at B-Dubs every Friday. Drop the poster’s and let the families mourn in peace. Drop your sense of self-worth and let the gays marry, abolish the absurd immigration process, and cook casserole for your neighbor. Forget the worship and dance to Mika instead.

A wager of a new kind my friends.

A celebration of pi

For my entire life, my interest and excellence has normally been focused in the realm of the math and science. I’ve dipped considerably into the field of english literature, culture, and music, but somehow always manage to return to science. There’s a certain beauty to it, and that includes a type of philosophical wonder many people think only possible in the liberal arts. An introduction to this wonder begins at pi, one of the first irrational and transcendental numbers students learn.

Wait. “irrational”? “transcendental”? Obviously these are things science does not deal with. But pi is real, and not real, at the same time. Pi is irrational, meaning it cannot be expressed as a ratio of 2 numbers, yet the definition of pi deals with the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Pi is transcendental, meaning no algebraic sequence can be equal to it’s value. Simply put, pi only exists in the real world implicitly, as a relationship, and in our heads–in theory land.

We define pi by describing it. Sure, we can use a simple geometric equation to begin to calculate what pi actually is, and taking pi to the 1/100000000th is probably a fair approximation, but in the realm of pi, it’s actually way off. We can also use calculus, and series, and algebra, to attempt to gain a better idea of pi, but although these math equations will look complicated and convincing, they still never can write on paper exactly what pi is.

To be honest, we can say the same about love, which has quite a history behind it of men attempting to say exactly what it is. For all intents and purposes, though, humanity does know what love is even if they can’t say it objectively. Humanity knows that love isn’t just one concept (it has certain variations…pi doesn’t), but it knows quite well what love is when it happens.

Ultimately, we end at the final conundrum of definition and the idea of thinking. In the popular fantasy series Eragon, there is a language inherent to nature that perfectly describes everything and allows the person who speaks it to utilize telekinesis to control nature. We, however, are stuck in a world with hundreds of languages that use a gamet of descriptions to describe one thing. Psychology tells us it is thanks to language that we can think at all, and that certain languages leave us vulnerable to certain biases (Sapir-whorf hypothesis). Add that onto the confusing whirlwind of rhetoric we experience in one day from English in America, and the truth behind claims, ideas, and definitions begins to blur behind the objective and subjective truths we spin every day.

We conclude with science. Science undergrads say they like science because there’s no wish-wash, gray area, maybe this maybe that. Really, though, science is subjective at times, but it’s able to formulate it’s subjectivity into a clear, organized manner that we can all look at it and agree. Math and science simply can’t objectively state everything, but they are able to use observations and logical deductions to accurately describe the rest.

Thus, pi. Celebrate the ambiguity of it by celebrating the diversity of math. Eat an irrational amount of food today, and be transcendental in your love for baking by making me a pie. (oh no! We’ve come to the real reason I blog–to convince people to make me food!)