Wednesday, April 30, 2008

O'Reily Can Even Make Hillary Look Good

I've spent a lot of time lately being pretty ticked off at Hillary. To make her look like a decent human being all you have to do is sit her down next to Bill O'Reily. Amazing.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Eff

Well we all knew it was coming, but I am feeling pretty down about Hillary's win in Pennsylvania. I just need this to end. As always, Obama showed lots of class tonight. Indiana... dont let us down.

Happy Earth Day!!

I wanted to post something cool for Earth Day but Andrew Sullivan is a professional blogger and cooler than I am so he beat me to it. Check out his post on Earth Art.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Why Bother?

My main man, Michael Pollan has a great article called "Why Bother" in the NYT today as a part of their green issue. I also recommend reading about Bill Nye's home, and watching the video about the very green family titled "Life (Mostly) Off the Grid".

Friday, April 18, 2008

Thursday, April 10, 2008

3rd Chimpanzee


1) Read the book
2) I read it, and you know how sometimes if you look at a chimp or monkey you might think "Wow, that looks a lot like a person"? Well, now all people just look like chimpanzees to me, so I just wanted to let you know that you look like a chimp to me. When I look at you I just see a chimp.

Coincidences

I am not a mystical type of person. I'm majoring in Physics cause I like knowing why stuff happens, and having solid logical explanations for things. Lately though I've had a lot of weird coincidences happening to me. I'm not saying I think anything's going on, but it's starting to rattle me a little. The day after I posted Van Gogh's painting, I found a poster of it under my bed. That exact picture. I know it's Van Gogh so it's very famous, but that is weird. Also, today before I went to class I was reading Andrew Sullivan. His post on an atheist's perspective on eternity particularly caught my eye. Then I go to class, and my professor quotes the exact same thing in his lecture titled "A Glimpse of Infinity."

This is really not like me to even notice this kind of thing, but it's got me thinking. I'd love to hear anybody else's coincidences or take on said events.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Van Gogh


Ever since going to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam I have been a huge Van Gogh fan. I don't know why but I didn't see it before. Maybe I'm older or something I don't know. But I love this painting.

KING

The History Channel's show titled King was truly moving, and I loved John Legend's version of "In the Name of Love" that was featured in it.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Nude Remixes

If you haven't already heard, Radiohead made the stems to their song nude available for purchase on iTunes so that anyone and everyone can remix the song. Listen and vote for your favorite remixes here. If you want a perfect stranger of mine reading my life history out loud listen to the hipster runoff remix.

Friday, April 4, 2008

Creation out of Nothing

This quarter I'm taking a class called Physics and Society, and I have a feeling I'll be posting lots of stuff brought up in this class because it's amazing.

One thing we went over the other day in lecture is the mass of a bound system, I'll use the Earth and the moon as an example. Conventional thought would tell us that the mass of the bound Earth-Moon system would be the sum of their two masses (M(e) + M(m)). There is also binding energy in the system, in this case the gravitational force holding the Earth and the moon together. Because of the equation E=Mc^2, which says that energy and mass are two sides of the same coin, we know that this binding energy contributes to the total mass in some way. If we wanted to separate the moon and the Earth we would have to pull them apart from each other, or add energy to the system. So in order to get M(e) + M(m) you have to add energy. The bound system has less energy than the separated moon and earth, and because mass and energy are the same thing the bound system also has less mass than the separated objects. Here's the wiki on Binding Energy.

Right now you're saying ok that's fine, so what? Well, what if the binding energy were really big? Enough maybe that it equaled the sum of the masses inside the system? Then you would have a system with no mass. That would be pretty insane for a two particle system, but it would be really crazy if it reflected the total energy/mass of the universe, which is also a bound system. What if the total mass of the universe was zero? My professor then told us about a recent colloquium held at UW which was titled "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and apparently their conclusion was "Maybe there is nothing, cleverly disguised as something."

Far. Out.

McCain: I Was Wrong

I read the Huffington Post daily. It's a valuable source of information, but it often makes me very frustrated. It has reduced much of its content to partisan bickering, which distracts from real issues, and makes intellectual discourse very difficult. I know that the republicans have been doing this for years and democrats didn't respond, so now dems feel entitled to play nasty. But I don't think it does us any favors. The embedded video below was on HuffPost today with the headline "WATCH: McCain Booed during Martin Luther King Speech". This is true, you can see it when you watch the video. But when I watch this video that's not what sticks out. During his speech he acknowledged to a largely black crowd that he voted against making MLK's birthday a national holiday. He admitted that he was wrong, and it was MLK's virtue that he understood that people could be slow to coming to the right decisions. It is those kinds of moments of honesty from politicians that should give people a reason to respect them. McCain is not the best candidate to become the next president, but that's because of important and real issues, not a tough crowd at one of his speeches.

High School Hoops

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

What I've Been Waiting to Hear

Obama: I'd Hire Gore

Climate change is my number one issue. The consequences aren't as immediate is Iraq, or the economy, but immediate action is required to adequately deal with the greatest challenge in the history of humanity. Obama has acknowledged this issue, but he's mostly touched on it in passing. My passion for this issue has always clashed with my support of Obama. I had faith that his intelligence would require more drastic actions as a president than he would be able to discuss as a presidential candidate, but this was only hope. With all the talk of Obama being a "blank canvas" that people project what they want onto, I was slightly nervous, but every step of the way he confirms to me that he is ready.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

It's Good to Be Back


pic i snagged in the quad on my way back from class