Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Talents

I heard today that Pixar is in production of its first ever movie that could potentially be rated PG-13. It is called 1906 and is about the 1906 earthquake of San Francisco. I wonder what families will think to see the child- oriented company show a dark side.
I heard this from a student that has trouble speaking (Not serious trouble, but trouble none the less).
I have already posted about him. To see the post copy and paste the URL at the bottom of the page into the space at the top of you computer where the URL goes.
I kind of assumed that he wasn't all that smart, being disabled and all.
I was very wrong.
He is extremely knowledgeable about computer animation and movies in general. Normally he doesn't use a very colorful vocabulary, but he used words I don't even know. If I hadn't heard him stuttering I could have believed he was an animation expert.
It's really incredible to think that everyone has talent, but they do. I herd somewhere that people who aren't good at reading or writing are sometimes prodigies with mechanics. I always assumed that if you didn't do well at some subject in school you were either lazy or just weren't smart. Now I realize that there are all kinds of intelligence, some of them not even measured in school. Whether inherited by natured or learned by nurture, talents are something everybody has. So why not do something with them?


http://name-not-shown.blogspot.com/2011/04/miracles.html

Saturday, May 28, 2011

people

There is a comic book series I am reading called the full metal alchemist. In it, it lists the materials that are used to make up a person. It is really surprising that that is all we are, scientifically speaking. so my question is, if we had all those materials, could we make a human being completely artificially?
My answer is no. Not for a religious reason, that it would be wrong to play god (Because that never stopped us before), nor a scientific reason that we would have to make trillions of cells artificially out of nothing more than a pile of materials, which is virtually impossible, but a completely different reason.
Again, I will approximate a quote (Because I don't own the comic book). I think the quote goes something like this "For thousands of years alchemists have been trying to make humans out of those materials that can be bought by a child allowance, but we can't. There is a missing element, something we don't know about yet".
I do not think that it is possible for people to make other people (Other than the natural way) because something is missing. We are more than just a bunch of material (Mostly water). And if said I found out what that missing piece was, I would be either be super-intelligent or lying (Most likely the second).
Oddly enough, the rest of the chapter is about a priest tricking the townspeople into blindly following him and doing whatever he says because of empty  promises to them. To many people it sound appalling, but if you look at the history of christianity, it's nothing new.

Friday, May 27, 2011

humility

Sleep is a weird thing. The more effort you put into trying to achieve it, the harder it is. To truly achieve it you have to be apathetic about wanting it. And even weirder are dreams.
I know someone who claimed that whenever he dreamed, he was aware of it and could change it however he wanted, so he had his own little world for 45 minutes of the night. To me, dreaming and knowing it is a terrifying experience. To know the world around you is not real, but rather you are inside your own head, freaks me out. Twice I tried changing everything in my dream. For a split second I felt like a god in my own head, they my world came crashing down and I woke up.
I guess no one can really be god, even in their own heads. No person has complete control, but we enjoy an illusion of control. I think that is why Jesus preached humility. Not that he necessarily needed to be humble, but he had to show people how to act by setting an example. We can't have true control, which is why we need to stay humble. In my experience, it is the humble that succeed. The ones with the largest illusions of control come crashing down, just like my dream.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Extremely flawed magic

Today during lunch we had nothing better to do, so we started doing magic tricks with cards. I asked if I could do one, so they let me. I had the person draw a card, and then put it back in. I drew a random one out, and asked if that was their card, and got the unexpected answer "Yes". Unfortunately, they had just put their card in a weird way, so I should not be expecting an invitation to Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry any time soon.
It reminds me of a commercial I saw for freeze-yourself frogurt once.
A person in a magicians outfit stepped on stage with an audience of about ten people and said "I, the magical king of frogurt  will turn this regular boring yogurt in to amazing frozen yogurt." Then the frogurt king but the yogurt into a conveniently placed freezer. Then on the screen it showed 4 to 6 hours later and went back to the king of frogurt. "Hasa!" He said "Look at this marvelously frozen dairy-based treat". The thing was, the crowd was exactly the same, so they must have waited there all 4 to 6 hours. That must have been really boring. 

Monday, May 23, 2011

Summer

Summer is coming. I always find it odd, on the last day of school I am ready for summer to start, and on the last day of summer I am ready for school to start.
I thin that, as far as human nature goes, we all want change. Could you imagine doing the same thing, day after day, year after year, decades and centuries, spanning into eternity? I can't. I can't even imagine doing the same thing every day for a month.
In the long run, all humans are ADD. We can't stand being in the same place for years and years, doing the same thing. We grow tired of routine. I think that explains my argument with my parents.
See, I didn't always live in Austin. Up until a year ago, I lived in Portland, Oregon. Then my dad got a job offer, and we moved here. I just can't understand why they would do that, move away when we had such a good thing going. I had friends. I was doing well in school. I felt like I fit in. Not that my life in Austin doesn't fit those description (Except for maybe the third). But I had no idea why they needed change. That is because for me Oregon was the only place I ever lived. Living there was just as natural for me as breathing. My parents had moved to from another city than Portland, so for them Oregon was just another phase of life. That is why we can't see eye to eye on the issue.
Austin is great, but I still wish I were back in Oregon.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Well, it's 9:48 on saturday, may 21st...

...which means either the rapture didn't happen or hell on earth isn't as bad as I thought it would be.

On another note, I would like to congratulate Rohl Dahl for making a point I made, years before I made it. In his book "The Twits" (Which is a quick read as well as an interesting one) brings up the vise-versa of what I brought up in a post about a month ago. I said when someone is a really good person, they look good (Due to our natural instinct to breed with good people, our minds takes their appearance and adds it to our physical idea of beauty). What he said was that when some one "Thinks ugly thoughts, the ugliness shows on their faces" (Quote paraphrased).
That is true too. I know people in my own life who I think really cool, until they do or say something, well ugly. To once again quote Jacob lawrence "Ugly is how someone acts, not how they look".
I guess we mix those two up sometimes.

Friday, May 20, 2011

The Rapture

I was on a run with some track guys today when there were a lot of sirens from a police car and for no reason a hyper-conservative runner called out "It's the rapture!"
I don't know why, maybe he thought god was plaguing us with jay-walkers.
Now, I have never believed in the rapture, or at least that it would come in my lifetime, but I decided to call back "No it isn't revelation is not at all literal" (Though I would later learn that it comes from Paul's letters, not revelation. I have never particularly liked Paul because many people consider what he says the word of god, when obviously he was only human and made mistakes like all of us).
He called back "It is completely literal", and I said "Then you better hire an atheist to look after your dog." (Actually, I think that if the rapture occurred, animals would ascend just as people would, and so would atheists who had been good, for that matter).
It was the most interesting (And shortest) shirtless theological debate I had ever been a part of.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Civil War

I have never really been appalled as much as the violence of the civil war as I am now. Imagine  yourself on the front line, when the enemy did their first volley you had a 10% chance of survival. The second volley would most likely finish you off. Those bullets can rip through the bodies of about 15 people, so the second or third lines aren't any better. bayonet charges were supposed to aim for the groin. Why could any country let this happen, let alone The U.S., the land of prosper and freedom.
The obvious answer is slavery, and though that may have been why the south seceded, it is most definitely not why the 16-year-old boy would sign up. They would sign up for adventure. So there is a pretty clear moral here.
War is not an adventure, it is a slaughter.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Weird stuff

There are some weird people in my school.
For example, one day I was doing a long, slow run for track when  person came up to me in a Hermione Granger costume the thursday before thanksgiving, which is when the midnight release of Harry Potter 7 part 1 came out. She sprinted ahead of me and said "I win, you mundane muggle!"
I asked her if she was getting ready for the midnight premier and she said "What?" completely oblivious to the fact a Harry Potter movie was coming out that night.
In other words, she just dressed like that normally.
I appreciate people like that, they risk being teased to give other people a laugh. I wish I had thier courage.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Hell

I do not believe in hell.
In many ways it is illogical, why would a fair god give a person an eternity of pain and suffering for only a life time of evil deeds? If you look at how long your life is compared to how long the earth has been around. Our 114 year maximum seems miniscule compared to the billions of years that our planet has existed. What could someone possibly do to deserve never-ending pain?
The only reason that I think the whole idea of hell has stayed around is revenge. When someone does something bad to you, whether it's cutting you off or endangering your life, you would be comforted by the idea of them being tortured to an inhuman capacity for all time. But the thing is, very rarely do people consider themselves in hell, only others.
 In my opinion, I do not know what the afterlife holds, but I doubt it includes eternal torture.
One more thing, when people kill a gigantic number of people, normally they think it is for the greater good, or they are insane, or both.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Church

I am not really sure what section of christianity I belong to. It's kind of odd, the whole religion of christianity all came from one person, Jesus, but there are so many divisions and sections of it. Of course, they all use the same bible, but they are so different. I guess they weren't always so different. Before the reformation, it was all the same church, the catholic church. I have nothing against the catholic church today, but it was pretty bad back in the middle ages. Back then the idea of having a separate government and church would be revolutionary, even blasphemous. To them, religion was on of the number one things in their mind, which was kind of odd. Soldiers where praying to Jesus, prince of peace, before going off to war. Then again, with the black plague and death lingering so near, you can't blame them for giving it their best shot to get in to heaven, even if their efforts ended up a bit hypocritical.

Friday, May 13, 2011

The rant never graded

When I was in 6th grade I  had to writ a short paper about one thing we hoped would change in the future. I decided instead to write a 2 page single spaced rant on why the death penalty is immoral.
Maybe writing it in a class taught by a hyper-conservative teacher was a bad idea.
The thing was, it never got graded. My teacher never handed it back.
The paper basically outlined why the death penalty is wrong, because it kills many people who will later be found innocent, because it is extremely expensive (2 million dollars for the average execution), because it has not been proven to be a deterrent, because the only real reason we keep it is for revenge, the list goes on and on.
And the thing I find odd is another kid wrote his paper on why Obama is a terrorist, and I think he got his back.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Choosing religion

It's kind of weird. When I start asking about religion, some people have the following view "I don't know what created this world and I could care less." To some people that is a horrifying view, not really caring who created the world. However, that is not half as bad in my perspective as another group of young people. They believe in every word of the bible, and take it literally. It is not their word-for-word interpretation I don't like, it's the fact that they have never questioned it.
Some may say that never wavering from your belief is honorable. To me, however, it just seems somehow empty. To question faith, to wonder if god is really out there, to think about what will happen to you when life comes to a close, is a sign of strength. You, not your parents should choose what, if anything, you believe. And if it is exactly what your parents believe, so be it. Also, this decision shouldn't come prematurely. You shouldn't refuse to go to church when you are 8 because you question what the pastor is saying. Actually going to a church, even if you don't agree with it, will help you make your decision.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Running low on ideas

So it's come to this,  post  about running low on ideas.
I have already used the "I can't post today"excuse a few times, and I feel it is becoming a bit clushaed, it;s just hard to think of an idea every day.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Myths

A lot of people out there probably wonder why so many myths are taught in school while A) nobody believes them anymore and B) they have no clear purpose in today's world. To quote Rick Riordan "It's not like on our job aplication it's going to say please explain why Kronos ate his children. (This may be a word or two off from the actul text, but you get the idea).
I enjoy reading Greek myths, but that still doesn't explain why they have to be taught in schools. That is, until, you realize what a profound effect they have on culture.
For one thing you can tell ceratin aspects of things named after them (For example, I knew Io was a moon of Jupiter simply by knowing Io was a moon and the Myth of Io), but they have other effects too. Traditions, even now, are based off of them. In Cross Country it is considered a minor form of heresy not to walk slowly over a bridge, based off the Eyptian myth that when you are over running water you are free from gods. The eagle was the symbol of Zeus far before the united states even existed. So yeah, the gods have a profound effect on culture today.    

Thursday, May 5, 2011

England

I have commonly been asked if I come from England because I appear to have an English accent. I have been asked this by virtually everybody except for people that have been to England. My responses very from "No" to "Oy, you seem perceptive, chap. Mind some tea and crumpets after I use the lou?" (Or the loo, I've never understood which.)
 I used to think it was my speech impediment, but I have decided it is something entirely different. I commonly use big words like "Obscene" or "Exceptionally" that people know what they mean but never themselves use. I think that people seem to associate exceptional literary skills with England, so that is where it comes from.  

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

A weird dream

last night I had a very weird dream.
I dreamt I was in my room, but a few things were off. As I started investigating them, I came to the conclusion that this was simply to weird to be reality and it must be a dream. So should I kill myself and wake up or stay in the dream.
Of course, I would never suggest killing yourself to get out of a dream because it could have serious consequences if it turns out to be real. Also, in real life I had a very irritated eye, but not in the dream, so it was a bit of an escape. On the downside, a dream can turn into a nightmare very quickly.
I decided to do something I had never tried before with any success. I tried to alter the dream into a completely different dream. It worked so well that I forgot it was a dream until I woke up. So that is what I suggest if you are ever in a dream that you know is a dream  

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Music

Just one thing that you should know about me, I abhor any music without drums.
My brother has recently bought the new fleet foxes album, and I'm glad I don't share a room with him because that music drives me up the wall.
I guess that's just the way I am. I could never stand music like that since I was 5. I have no idea why. There is music that I don't like that has drums, but it is still above the fleet foxes. Just a random thing that I felt like blogging about.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Death

I'm sure you have all heard of the death of  Osama Bin Laden. I don't really know what to make of it.
My first impulse was that he was evil and deserved to die, but then I went to school.
All around the hallways people were happy for his death. I may have felt like that when I first heard about it, but celebrating somebodys death seems wrong. Just plain wrong.
I decided that my new opinion is that nobody deserves to die and that captureing him would be better. This had mixed results, as some people agreed with me (Including the girl from the evolution post), I was repeatedly called an idiot. My main 2 arguments were 1) We could have captured him and interigated him and 2) his death would probably be catalist for more terrorist movement (Because we killed their leader). then somebody pointe out that extracting any information unless we used torture, which I am also opposed to.
Then I learned that the troops had gone in with the intent to capture and found themelves under gunfire, with no choice but to quite litteraly"Fight fire with fire".
My conclusion? Though the killing was justified to save the lives of the SEAL agents, no death should be celebrated and frankly we should be concerned for our national saftey instead of patting ourselves n the back.        

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Catholisism

I had lunch with a very interesting person today, especially on the topic of religon. I don't know if it would be appropriate to divuldge the name, so for privacy's sake I won't mention it.
Basically, she is a practicing member of the catholic church, which suprised me because of what she said about the catholic church.
I had some missconceptions about the catholic church, one of which is that they can elect the pope (Either in a majority rules way or an electoral college of different regions). The other is that they could have female  preists. Neither of which is true, and my friend not only expressed her annoyence at their sexism and non-demecratic choosing of leaders, she also called the reacher at her church profane and immature. So how could she stay in that denomination?
I don't think that you could really find a flawless denomonation in any major religon. Sure, they may not have completely fair pope decisions and the choice of preists my be sexist, but there are steps being taken to change that. And as for the pastor in her particular church, the entire catholic community can not be blamed for that.
And I'm not catholic. I know very little about their traditions. And while some of them may seem extremely unfair, there must be a redeming quality.
People wouldn't go to their churches for hudereds of years if they weren't doing something right.