It’s almost over! The third quarter of the 2004-2005 school year comes to an end in two days. Time to celebrate! Ok, so we still have a quarter left of school, enough time left to screw up our semester grades, but we are coming to the final stretch, that last straightaway that leads right to summer, and freedom…more or less…
So what is it that makes the third quarter so agonizing? Maybe it wasn’t agonizingly bad, but there is something about the third part out of four that always seems to drag on and on… I’d like to make an analogy to running the mile (on a quarter mile track). The first lap you zip off the line, settling into a cruise, finding your pace. The second you hold up, feeling a little pain, trying to move up within the competition. And then the third…pain…aaaah you’re tired, and even though you’re already more than halfway done, it seems so far from the end. Third lap is the time of hopelessness, tiredness, boredom, the whole why am I doing this trip… and it’s the same with school. By third quarter we’re all drooping. Classes are putting us to sleep; homework gets more and more sloppy and neglected. Even the multiple week-long breaks don’t seem to help much, I almost would rather just keep on plugging away at school and get it over with! We’ve been in school for so long, yet the end isn’t in sight…
And now we’re almost over the hump, and BANG! Time for the gun lap. Now the race begins. Now it gets exciting. Fourth quarter, the fastest, the most frantic, just what we need in order to wake up from the drone of 3rd quarter. Tomorrow is Friday! There’s only one more chapter in the book! Just two more problems on that endless math homework!
So here’s to the end of 3rd quarter and to the beginning of the Finish!!! Good luck to everyone!!!
*Anyone who doesn’t feel the 3rd quarter blues, speak up! Let us in on your secret to survival!*
I’m asking—Can any of us be held responsible for our actions?
“Of course!!” you say…duh, if I didn’t do my math homework it was just me being lazy wasn’t it? Well, look at it this way. Is it my fault that I’m so lazy that I can’t get myself together and copy a couple numbers down on a piece of paper? Say I just don’t understand this stuff, and I got home late due to various important activities, and fell asleep before finishing. Do I have an excuse? If I don’t get up early to finish in a rush am I at fault for not being motivated enough? Or is this just how I am, and there is nothing to be done about it?
There is always going to be a reason for something getting done or not getting done. If one doesn’t have the will power, or power in general, to do something, well then that person just won’t be able to do it. Is that his fault? Can anything actually be anyone’s fault, if a person is what he is? If I decided to rob a liquor store and head for Vegas, would it be my fault or am I just prone to an overwhelming hormonal rush? I think it was Kierkegaard that made the point that the only reason a person would commit a wrongdoing is if they were ignorant.
Ok, so if we can’t be blamed for anything, can we be rewarded. Hey…so I wasn’t born with supreme intelligence and intuition such as Einstein, so why does he get all the credit? So the person who sits next to me is willing to spend a whole weekend on her English essay…does that mean I’m in the wrong for not being trained to put so much emphasis on my writing? At this moment I’m wishing that I had a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, because there’s a great quote by Atticus during his closing speech. It makes the point that we are not all created equal, it’s just in the court of law. You can look at the music stars and say, well I could do that, if I had their opportunities, I could do that if I had their talent…etc. ****Not to brag…no I’m not saying, oh look at me I’m smart, Ian**** I give myself a hard time about a math test, and my score turns out to be 98. People say to me, “I hate you, you’re so smart!!” and I’m thinking…what did I do… Should I get credit for being good at math if I’m not working at it at all? Once again back to To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus doesn’t want credit for his shooting abilities, because it’s something that is completely natural, and he doesn’t feel like he should get credit for something that he hadn’t had a part in creating. So to generalize this, we could say that everything we do is driven by internal and/or external forces, and we don’t have too much control over this, so should we be given credit.
This raises the question of whether we have free will. Do we have some power as to direct the course of our lives, or are we machines? Is thought an illusion? AAAAHH freakiness he he
Ok, so say that we can’t be held responsible for anything…and weren’t…THINGS WOULD BE CHAOS! If we can’t be held responsible for anything, the justice system would be rendered irrelevant because there would be nothing to justify. Bad deeds would increase because punishment would be unjustified and that takes away a major external force that keeps the deeds from being committed. Stuff wouldn’t get done because there wouldn’t be any motivation to rise above the rest, since it would just be nature anyways. In short, it doesn’t matter whether we have free will or not. It doesn’t matter whether we can be held responsible…it has to be done no matter what. It holds us in line. If I don’t get a presentation finished in time to present it to the big time contractor and let down my company, I may have had a valid excuse, but it didn’t get done and I’ll have to be punished. Will this punishment do much…maybe not…but it is done in hopes that it will not happen again, to show how serious the misdemeanor was. Sometimes nobody is to blame, but that doesn’t mean the event can just…go away…
And this is why we get so good at making excuses…:grin:
Creation vs evolution is the age old battle that many people are still locking horns over today. In the past, evolution was thought to be blasphemy, and people were condemned for even thinking of something along the lines of God not creating, but something evolving on its own. then came modern science, which we now use to prove that creation is just some myth that Christians hold onto and try to spread despite the ‘irrefutable proof’ that creation is just a bunch of junk. well heres an interesting thought that at this point, is beating down evolution again and bringing the spotlight back onto creation. actually, there’s two different thoughts…
thought #1) imagine this. you’re a ruthless art dealer, who will do anything to make money, even sell fakes to people and stuff. the fakes have to be good right? they need to make people think that there was a history to them. They need to see the brush marks, smell the old paint, feel the roughness accumulated with time, right? they need to believe that it took an artist months, even years, to create it, right? well with a fake, it could take only days to produce something that looks like its lasted for a century or two. its easy. just look at movie props, they all look pretty authentic, at least most of time. now suppose you enlarge this idea to a cosmic scale. imagine God created an already working universe, meaning that everything was built into it to look like it too billions of years to make and evolve. suppose evolution is a cloud that we cant see past because we cant fully comprehend the thought of something creating an already working universe. its like trying to see whats past the event horizon of a black hole, you just cant. maybe we were all created to think that we evolved and the earth took billions of years to make. There’s even a study thats saying the speed of light is slowing down exponentially, and that a few centuries/ millenia ago the speed of light was almost instantaneous, and could travel billions of light years faster than it takes your eye to send these words to your brain. anyways, I’ll continue this thought some other time
thought #2
i don’t know how many of you are familiar with the Krebs cycle, or glycolisis. both are cycles in biology that require many amino acids that are hundreds of proteins long to function. each protein takes a certain amount of ATP (cellular energy) to assemble and to connect to other proteins. Also, the Krebs cycle is completely useless unless it is FULLY completed. Another thing, the net product of these cycles is usually just a couple of ATP. now if each cycle took hundreds upon hundreds of proteins and ATP to create, and only produce a few ATP, its not very efficient now is it? And according to the current model of evolution, we evolved from single celled organisms. and according to evolution, only the most efficient members of the species will survive, and the others die out (Darwinism). now, if you think about it, I’m pretty sure that none of our current organs were present inside the first cells…. and how efficient is half a stomach? or a lung without alveoli (those little air sacs, not sure on the spelling) not too efficient right? now, how do you suppose that those organs came about? why would any member of a species bother to expend energy to create that organ? those things don’t just appear…..they supposedly millions of years to create, and until they are fully functional, they are just plain useless. and same thing with the Krebs cycle. Its completely useless unless fully completed, and it takes thousands of ATP to create the cycle to produce just a couple of ATP. pretty damn inefficient if you ask me. How did the cycle come about? Again, why would an organism expend extra energy, energy that it should be using to ensure its survival, use it to create a fraction of an organ, or cycle, when either one is completely useless to the current species? it seems to me that evolution has a lot of explaining to do
OK that was kind of hard to type, it all just sorta came to me after hearing an interesting point that a friend made. I’ll clean it up later, but i just wanted to leave you with those thoughts…
Buy me! There has been an invasion of smiling people! Have you ever noticed how many websites use images of perfect, happy, smiling people to advertise their website? I’m sure you have. They portray to the visitor that they are a friendly company, a company that you can depend on, etc. I, however, am proud to say that I have developed an immunity to such garbage. I have seen so many of these sites it drives me nuts. For one thing, these smiling people have nothing to do with the company. I can guarantee you that the actual people don’t even work for the company.
These pictures are called Stock Images, and they suck. There is a whole market for this. The pictures are taken, posted to a stock website, then bought by enterprising companies that want smiling people on their website. Anyways, they are made to appeal to the dumb people who think “Well this smiling person likes their product, so I probably will too!” Just say no.
On another note, I’ve made some spam improvements. I doubt any spammer will ever make it past this! Here’s what I did: I added a text field when you try to make a comment, with a question that asks “Are you a spammer?” If you type in ‘no’ or ‘No’ or ‘nO’ then you are set. This only will show for people who aren’t logged in. If you aren’t a registered user, consider registering, it’ll spare you writing “no” in every time.
Very recently I noticed that everything sucks these days. I just seems like you can’t enjoy anything without it also sucking to some extent. Everything that makes you happy is either immoral, illegal, or makes you fat. The sun gives you cancer, the water poisons you, the air is full of toxins, the food is full of “bad” cholesterol. Yet we’ve been eating and breathing since before anyone can remember.
People have too much to fear: death, public speaking, heights, sickness. You know what I am most afraid of in this world? Spiders. That’s right, I’m Arachnophobic. I ain’t proud of it, but it’s the truth. Everybody is afraid of something, I’m actually quite glad I’m not afraid of daylight or something big like that.
People can’t get it into their brains that we’re all going to kick the bucket at some point. All you panophobics out there can suck it, because I just don’t give a damn anymore. If I die at age 20 from an infected kidney, what the hell, I had a good run.
Hello Everyone,
Props to Andrew for finally fixing this site.
Now on to business, last night I ushered at CCCT. Ushering is quite a bit of fun, and I enjoy it and it’s not that hard either. I just wanted to recap on an incident that happened last evening.
One of our jobs, one that I was assigned to during Intermission was watching the entrance to the theater and to stop people from eating or drinking in the theater. This job is always a nice low stress job; one just has to politely ask people to follow a rule that’s written on the wall next to the door. As most of you know, most people can’t read. 
Well after about 8 or so min. into intermission, I noticed a lady holding an unopened cookie and walking into the theater. As I was instructed to do, I got prepared to tell her to keep all food and beverages closed while in the theater. I was about to remind her of this when she proceeded to open her cookie. I politely stepped in front of her and told her that she was not allowed to eat in the theater. She stared me straight in the eye and said
Yes I can!
I gathered that this lady was going to try to get me to give up and let her into the theater without actually barging in. So I calmly responded to her like I did this all the time (which I hadn’t because this was the third time I had ushered and so far I had never encounter a person who questioned my motives 
) I told her it was the theater’s policy (which it was) not to allow food or beverages into the theater. She replied:
Well doesn’t someone clean up in there!
By then I had sensed that this lady really was a jerk, (I mean common, what is she going to accomplish out this?) I told her that yes we did clean up after the performance, but that just because we did that didn’t void the theater’s policy. This lady started getting annoyed that I wasn’t letting her into the theater with her cookie, that she had paid a dollar for. Her final attempt to get herself into the theater was by saying:
Well I was just on my way to my seat!
I didn’t really understand how that was relevant but luckily for me her “friend or companion” made the comment of why couldn’t she just eat her cookie in the lobby. Thus, she gave up, and ate her cookie in front of me until intermission ended.
Reflection: (I love this part!)
First off, this is a behavior I would have normally expected from a rebellious teenager. Wouldn’t you? Usually when people reach a certain age they understand the rules and are willing to follow them without a fight. Something that really bothered me was this lady was well into her 60’s if not early 70’s. I would have assumed by then that she would have learned some respect. Well that just goes to show you that no matter how sweet grandma looks she can still be an *******.