Robert Ballard and Ocean Exploration
Posted: March 13, 2012 Filed under: Science Leave a comment »A few times a year my university hosts lecture nights through the Mavericks Speaker Series program. I’ve had the opportunity to learn from some incredibly interesting and brainy people. Lisa Ling and Robert Ballard are undoubtedly at the top of the list, and I’ve only ever dreamt of being in the same room with them.
Last week Robert Ballard came to speak about his adventures in deep sea exploration. When I got to the packed venue the first sound that caught my attention was Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” playing before his introduction. Dr. Ballard has done some groundbreaking work in the field of oceanography but what he’s really known for is his discovery of the Titanic’s remains. That was certainly the appeal for a lot of people to come to his presentation, but I’m thankful that he is down-to-earth enough to gloss over it as just another shipwreck in the long history of human maritime travels. Instead he focused on the thrill of taking a submarine down into the deepest parts of our oceans (including approaching hydrothermal vents that near 650 degrees Fahrenheit!) and learning more about the origins of life. His explanation of chemosynthesis was one of the most mind-blowing moments I’ve ever had, and at the time I wished everyone on Earth could listen in. When you’re forced to look at the intricacy and complexity of our world and universe, you can’t go back to being a normal human being. You want to be exceptional.
His thoughts on global warming and the survivability of the human race are all I can daydream about lately. Not because I’m particularly concerned about the future, but I love thinking about Earth being this living creature who has some tricks up its sleeve:
The cat is out of the bag. The earth is going to heat up and going to continue to heat up. The earth is responding now. A lot of people think of the Earth as this passive victim to human behavior. The earth will be here long after humans are long gone, but we don’t want on our tombstone that we came and went but we were politically correct. The earth is reacting right now and honestly we don’t know how it’s going to react because we don’t have a past history of earth reacting to human beings. So what is it going to do and how is it going to respond? Is it going to dream up some microbe that actively eliminates us? I think the Earth is an active player in this game and not just this poor victim. I’m not worried about the earth, I’m worried about survivabilty of the human race.
Planned Parenthood = Abortionplex
Posted: March 10, 2012 Filed under: Health, Politics, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Recently I stumbled upon this post from The Onion announcing the creation of an “abortionplex” by Planned Parenthood featuring “an IMAX movie theater as well as multiple fetus incinerators.” The source alone should indicate that it was a satirical piece, but if you missed it this paragraph would make it blatantly obvious:
“We really want abortion to become a regular part of women’s lives, especially younger women who have enough fertile years ahead of them to potentially have dozens of abortions,” said Richards, adding that the Abortionplex would provide shuttle service to and from most residences, schools, and shopping malls in the region. “Our hope is for this facility to become a regular destination where a woman in her second trimester can whoop it up at karaoke and then kick back while we vacuum out the contents of her uterus.”
Alas, the world is a strange place and I’m sad to report that there are people in this world who believe this post is the reality. Not only this post, but ALL OF THE ONION’S POSTS. It’s kind of hilarious until you stop and think about uninformed people like these are the ones voting people into our highest offices.
There’s much more to Planned Parenthood other than serving as a permanent protesting ground against abortion for some. It is a place for women (and men) to be educated about sexual health and family planning. That includes unintended pregnancy prevention, which also preempts the need for abortions. Finally, actual medical health services like pap smears for women and testicular cancer screenings for men are provided. If you look at the numbers from PP only 3% of health services provided are abortion services. Which means any threat to remove funding from Planned Parenthood is a direct affront to women & men’s health. Even Stephen Colbert broke character to be outraged!
I can see both sides of the pro-life vs. pro-choice argument, but aren’t both movements aiming for the same outcome? Eliminating the need for abortions? I stand firmly with Cecile Richards’ statement that “Planned Parenthood does more to prevent abortion than any other agency.” We do not live in a world where people will just stop having sex because someone tells them abstinence is the “moral” thing to do. You cannot define the right and wrong behavior for someone else’s reality. But you can arm them with the education and tools to make the right choice for themselves.
It seems like the old is new again, and unfortunately the dated battle on contraception is back. Fortunately there’s much you can do to help the movement: volunteer at your local Planned Parenthood, find a local state representative (or candidate) to assist in the fight, or simply bring awareness to the people around you about what PP really does. You’d be surprised to learn how many people out there believe that Planned Parenthood exists solely to perform abortions. Don’t let one more person walk around with this misconception. Join the movement.
My Love’s Too Big For You (Part 1)
Posted: February 11, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: friends, love, relationships 1 Comment »Love is not like a Disney movie. It’s not a fairy tale.
Anyone else tired of hearing this? I, for one, almost fell for that lie. Maybe it’s a culture shift in American society, or we just hear about it more due to the internet, but it seems people everywhere are settling for “good enough.” One day it’s “He hasn’t responded to my texts…he must be terribly busy” and the next it’s “I guess she wasn’t really cheating because we were on a one week break.” People’s threshold for what they find acceptable in relationships is sickening. It’s like people hit a certain age and the real world becomes a place where we just have to sit back and take the bad.
When did we agree that in “reality” relationships have to be everything outside of a fairy tale? Being with someone should show you the great things life has to offer, not add to the constant struggle that life already brings us. You shouldn’t be made to feel insecure or unsure. To the contrary, your significant other should be an uplifiting source of strength.
This can be applied to friendships as well. I never have real fights with my friends because we respect each other and talk things out rather than hope to fix things with passive-aggressive behavior. When we have something to talk about, we call each other instead of trying to solve problems over texts. If you’re texting anybody to restore a friendship or relationship you are immature.
I’m not saying that relationships aren’t hard and shouldn’t require work. You have to put everything you have into something to make it successful and I’m more than willing to pour myself into the challenge. But the challenge must be worth it, and it must be something that brings positivity and real love into my life. Why put your efforts into someone who makes you emotionally worse off than when you started? Or simply date to have a placeholder before the real thing comes along?
I haven’t dated anyone in over a year because I don’t want to waste my time with someone I have lukewarm feelings for. Love should be explosive and wonderful, not just average.
Michael C. Hall, where you at?
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Viral Clones Race
Posted: February 2, 2012 Filed under: Outings | Tags: 5k, charity, the color run Leave a comment »Today I signed up for a very cool 5K event that takes places in several cities across the United States. It’s called The Color Run, and not only is it charitable, but it seems like a really good time.
Just look at this girl!
From the site:
The Color Run pretty much has 2 SIMPLE rules. 1. White shirts (any mostly white T will work great) mandatory at the start line and 2. Color plastered EVERYTHING at the finish! Runner/walkers begin the 5k at the start line like a brand new pristine coloring book, they end looking like they fell into a Willy Wonka… tye died… vat of colored goodness.
How could I NOT partake in that kind of silliness? I can’t not. You know? The best part (in my humble opinion) is our team name. I could act like I don’t know where I come up with these things, but I love reading about fungus, viruses and basically anything else parasitic so the first thing that came to mind was…
Enterobacteria phage T4.
YEAHHH TEAM ENTEROBACTERIA PHAGE T4!! Can’t wait to see that on our shirts.
Basically, this race is E.coli, and it’s about to get owned.
…
!!!!!
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I Love Rdio
Posted: January 30, 2012 Filed under: Music 2 Comments »
…and it’s not just because they sent me this awesome shirt. Rdio is by far the only music streaming service worth subscribing to.
The combined aesthetics, intuitive navigation and social aspect of Rdio makes it incomparable to any other subscription service out there. It is the best $9.99 I’ve spent every month since 2010 for web and mobile access to their growing music collection. I could go on a very extensive rant about this and almost did, but I suggest you try it out for yourself. It’s free.
Maurice Sendak should adopt me
Posted: January 27, 2012 Filed under: Books Leave a comment »Had to share this with my two fans and regular readers. I want to be related to this man so badly. You can watch the brilliant Stephen Colbert interview my new idol here. Watch both parts!
“Fuck them is what I say. I hate those e-books. They cannot be the future. They may well be. I will be dead, I won’t give a shit.”
Source: Washington Post
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The genius that is Thomas Sowell
Posted: January 24, 2012 Filed under: Politics | Tags: economics, ows, politics, thomas sowell Leave a comment »Last semester I had a brilliant professor for a Law & Economics course. I’m working on a political science major/economics minor, so this was the class I was most excited about every week. A longer post coming soon about the most amazing professor I’ve had the pleasure of learning from, but for now I’d like to share something he introduced me to. Or more like someone.
From the beginning, Professor S asked if we’d heard of Thomas Sowell. We all had blank looks on our faces so that was a definite “no.” Between cramming legal terms and comparing Pigou vs. Coase (The Problem of Social Cost is worth the read) there was no time in my undergrad schedule to bother with something that we weren’t even being tested on!
Then comes Occupy Wall Street. Professor S casually mentioned that Sowell had written a very good article about the whole mess (which is my own preferred term.) This was written a few months ago but I come back to it frequently and I just had to share. It maps out exactly my own thoughts on the OWS “movement” so I shan’t say more. Read his OWS post and bookmark his column.
I am interested in you
Posted: January 21, 2012 Filed under: Books | Tags: books, interaction, loyalty Leave a comment »Earlier this morning I was re-reading my favorite chapter in The Power of Kindness by Piero Ferrucci. It’s titled “Loyalty” and in it the author addresses distraction and the fickle nature of humans. Here’s a brief excerpt:
Distraction causes continuous loss. “What were we talking about? I have forgotten. Anyway, it doesn’t really matter, so I’ll just change the subject.” Thus interruption levels and trivializes our interactions. When I interrupt you, I bring you down to my level, making you my equal. Interruption has probably always been around, but in contemporary times, the greater superficiality, new technology, and acceleration in almost every field have hugely encouraged it. We live in times when our need to be faithful does not find expression in a relationship but is twisted and exploited for commercial ends. It is a way of living in which we risk losing continuity of relations through time. We lose the thread.
We lose the thread. That speaks volumes about what is acceptable common human behavior nowadays. Go to any social gathering and you’ll see someone trying to have a conversation with a person who’s typing away on their iPhone. Or bow out of a discussion because the phone rings and “I have to take this.” Technology isn’t the problem, but it definitely exacerbates it. We’re all guilty of not really being as present as we should be in our daily interactions, but why partake if our focus will be on something other than the matter at hand? We end up with wasted and failed interactions. We pay for this later on when our friends try to update us on a story about their life that we didn’t pay attention to when it was initially told. They learn to keep things superficial later on because you won’t remember anyway, so why bother? The worst part is most people are too self-involved and not self-aware enough to realize how rude they’re being. If I have to retell something to the same person five times I strongly believe they should be quarantined on the LOST island because at least there they won’t have to be bothered with attempting human connection.
The only way to grow is by knowing more. We learn from our interactions with people and their stories. Every time we’re distracted by our mind or technology we lose those opportunities to grow. Even worse, we make people feel like they aren’t important enough to keep our attention. Make it a challenge to be more present and involved in all of your relationships. Ferrucci rightly says that “hand in hand with loyalty go reliability and faithfulness.” Let us all be loyal today.
