Late night fuzzy thoughts that cover a wide spectrum and have little coherency

Questions: Do you write in order to figure out your thoughts and maybe find new ones that branch off the old ones? Do you write in order to find out more about yourself, subconsciously? Is it possible to subconsciously analyze yourself? Does the fact that people read your writing make you alter it, whether you realize it or not, like the quantum physics property 'observation changes things?' 

Well. Most of the time I write to figure out my thoughts, in a kind of stream of consciousness manner. The opposite of that would be writing with the purpose of conveying something to someone else. As for writing to find out about yourself, Oscar Wilde once said that art reflects the artist more than the subject matter and I agree with him. Subconsciously, which is even more telling than what is consciously revealed. That's why I think formal writing, as in writing a novel or short story, is so intensely personal that I feel uncomfortable sharing any of the stories I've ever written. And even here, knowing that people can read what I've consciously chosen to share (since this is a blog after all and everyone involved has agreed to participate in a collective consciousness around someone's experiences) changes what I say. 

It's an issue of awareness. I wrote about awareness before, in my post about virtual realities. Specifically about how even if you were immersed in one so realistic you'd have no idea it was artificial unless someone told you, once you did know it was artificial it would lose...something. I'm perhaps a little obsessed with what actually is the difference between being in the box, oblivious, existing, and knowing that you're in the box--by knowing, have you stepped outside of it? No, I don't think so. Because to step outside of the box you have to experience what is outside of it. Simply knowing you are in it does not mean you experience what is not in it. It's like having a negative and a positive control in biological experiments. Awareness is the catalyst step but you've still gotta get outside the box. Or the labyrinth, as Simon Bolivar put it (cool quote btw). Actually, a lot of my posts are grounded in the issue of awareness. Does being aware of something make it less pure? If you're aware of the effect you have on someone, does that make you manipulative, for example?

I'm aware of a lot of things that I don't mention. That often makes me feel dishonest. But maybe that's an idealistic view of relationships among people, and honesty/sharing. I've realized that most people are aware of things that they don't mention, which sometimes overlap with what you're aware of, and so both of you are aware of the same thing but neither of you mention it. So the awareness is there but the mentioning of it is not; it appears that this happens a lot. I sound like an alien observing the humans. But seriously, this baffles me in an odd way. I want to mention this shared awareness--I guess because active acknowledgement rewards my closeness receptors. Very neuroscientific. So since my perception or awareness is fallible, I wonder if I should just take other people at their word since they choose what they share. Or should I keep in mind that sometimes people don't say what they're thinking because of more complex reasons, like politeness or shyness, and ultimately would be happy to be coaxed into sharing (I remember Walter once told me he didn't feel he needed to get to know his girlfriends actively, because they'd share what they wanted to and that struck me as douchey...gut instinct although I think I have a more balanced opinion on that philosophy now). 

I think that people become closer by talking about what they believe in, regarding social things involving people and not necessarily Great Ideals like environmental socialism. I guess that could be considered a "girl thing" but I'm in the girl box! I can't get out! I've noticed how people who share things about themselves that are personal seem to connect better with others--like if you're having a conversation with someone you just met, and they mention how when they were in high school they used to idk skip seventh hour and go home, you bond better if you say something about your experience rather than ask them more about theirs. It's like trading personal "I's." That's something I don't do very well, unless the other person talks less than me. Then I sometimes have to search for things to say and fall back on I's. Although I do seem to be drawing a maybe false dichotomy between personal I statements ("I have become more optimistic since high school") and statements that reflect your philosophy ("I think people become closer by talking...").  

Ahhhhh. I've confused myself. It's very rare that I can think my way to the bottom of a belief. Right now my brain feels like spaghetti, or headphone cords, because those always get tangled up. That reminds me of this theory a good friend of mine came up with (hope he doesn't mind that I share it/perhaps butcher it), where people are like tangles of string and when you have a relationship of any sort with someone, you mix your tangle with their tangle. The significance is the tangle, wherein each person is a cacophony of thoughts, emotions, rules, beliefs. i liked that theory, it was sufficiently messy. another simile that i like, which i recently decided upon after a conversation with crystal regarding her and austin, is how a relationship (this time specifically a romantic one) is kind of like a plant you need to nurture, separate from the plant of your friendship. every couple should have these two plants and can't be missing one. that's why doing couple-y things like going to dinners/trips together/being romantic are actually really crucial too and not just contrived romance--it feeds the second plant, while you should always be feeding the friendship one in your interactions so it need not be so pointed. contact! copenhagen. copernicus. okay i'm like not actually awake right now which is probably a sign that i should do the real sleep thing. 

edjoocation

When I was younger, I loved the Little House on a Prairie series of books. I still do, actually. Kelly does as well, so our shared copies (whattup scholastic book orders from Glenn Stephens, 1998) are turning that weird yellow color of old books and sometimes come in three separate chunks because the bindings have given out. Sorry Laura. Anyway, I loved them with an unironic, utterly geeky, earnest love that somehow did not socially isolate me as an elementary schooler and let's be honest, middle schooler. Rereading them makes me happy in a way now that isn't solely a product of the books themselves, but also comes from that feeling you get from re-experiencing something you loved from your childhood. Of course, you can never recapture the exact experience from then which is a little sad, but it's also kind of cool how the feeling itself grew as you did, into whatever nuanced thing you feel now. Maybe things aren't ever really lost, they just undergo metamorphosis. 

So I was thinking about education while reading it, and what an education really means. The social construction of what an education means has definitely changed over time. Back in the 19th century, on the frontier, families sought to educate their children by sending them to tiny schoolhouses taught most likely by young, teenage girls where they learned the very basics of what we now consider an education. I think it's very interesting to think through why an education was important for these families--after all, most of the children in these schools would grow up to be homesteaders, or storekeepers, or housewives. Arguably, what they learned in school didn't necessarily give them an edge in finding a job. Yet schools were still a necessity in the towns that were just being assembled. 

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that an education isn't important or a right for people whose lives don't get fed into the specialized economy. I can see how someone could say, well that situation you've just described is just as true of the 21st century, in less developed places, and thus you're discriminating and evil and should go eat some desert mud. But in fact, I think this just proves that collectively, humans in general have an innate desire to take in knowledge beyond what is immediately practical. 

 And what is "an education" exactly anyway? It sounds like some sort of pleasant thing you get, like a very well groomed pony. In its earliest evolution, I guess that would be proper grammar (hah, that one still evades me), spelling, reading, basic math. And somehow, in the learning of these specific things, you get lifted from lower to upper class. I can see this as a remnant of the days when only people wealthy enough to afford time off subsistence living/working for someone could get schooling, and that fact in itself made education a sign of social status. It's the same principle as scarcity driving value, in an economic sort of way. But an education differs from a diamond in that it can transform itself and the receiver by adding value; it's much more than just an economic commodity, especially given how it has no physical value. Also it's kind of chilling to just think of education as a commodity.

So maybe it's more a question of what you derive from having an education. Education has emergent properties, like neurons firing to thinking and quantum physics to macro physics. From the motions of going to school, sitting through class, doing homework, something more is formed. What is that "more?' Nowadays, we identify one goal of education to be a way of thinking, see "History teaches you crucial means to analyze problems, draw connections, etc." And obviously, it brings about good things (I sometimes talk about how ignorance is bliss, but I mean it very specifically, such as withholding information from someone can keep them emotionally happy, or not knowing an iphone 914G's internet speed won't make you compare your slowass iphone25G's speed with that. Ignorance--broad lack of knowledge/curiosity about the world around you, unwillingness to open your mind or entertain you could be wrong--that's heinous).  Education today brings about job opportunities, which are in themselves opportunities to live a life of comfort in relative material prosperity, as well as (hopefully) opportunities to spend your life involved with something you find intellectually stimulating and rewarding. So it seems to me as if education has two ultimate goals: one being the translation of education into bankable /material value and one is the more amorphous personal fulfillment/way of thinking value. But I guess you can't forget a third aspect, which is the social value attached to "being educated." 

However, as the world gets increasingly educated, the first two of those ultimate goals gets diluted. It's not a bad thing, that's just how it is. More people are going to college now and as a result, the norm gets lifted and everyone becomes more qualified for the same jobs. That's why you get teachers driving taxis or PhD baristas. An education becomes less of a guarantee for bankable value. What does it mean to live in an post-education boom world? I don't know. I don't know anything really, I'm just trying to find meaning by stringing together ideas born from some momentary thought sparked by an old book.  I do believe this: as people are exposed to more and more things to learn, and expected to know more and more, we start to take all this knowing and learning for granted. I sure as hell do.

So this is what i have determined. a) I have no idea what an education actually means. b) i have no idea what it means to be an educated person. c) i take all this for granted. 

and that's somethin at least. 

not phoenix listomania

i'm gonna take a leaf out of becca's blog and make me some lists. i'd make me some liszts too but a) i'd rather bring back a different classical composer, like chopin or mendelssohn and b) i can't. 

also: people have so many experiences within them, that make them who they are in ways they don't even realize. 

things i remember about this year that were good (not really in any order)

1. kentucky; by far one of the coolest things i've ever done in my life. more than cool--i loved it almost unreasonably, and loved how real it felt. within that, driving to tennessee and listening to fleet foxes as the sun rose over the mist shrouded mountains. eating fresh food all the time. eating that pint of ice cream in the walmart parking lot with scott. that reminds me, mail christmas card to janice. 

2. spending hours at the terrace in the summertime and feeling completely content

3. corollary to 2-sunsets on lake mendota

4. extendocorollary-being on lakeshore/picnic point whenever i wanted

5. seeing all the animals on my runs esp the loons, cranes, and swans

6. going to devil's lake multiple time--howling build me up buttercup with the motley group, walking down the road. famping and crystal was there! the snarky little bitch ohhh middle school kids, me dislike. fires, food, brian scaring the shit out of everyone on the night walk

7. that one time in the summer, when jack and i got randomly invited onto the sailboat with a bunch of drunk grad students and hoofers people. drinking beer in the lake, swimming fully clothed and floating, looking up to see the stars. 

8. busking (that word got so much more use this summer)...and earning like five dollars, popcorn, and water. FUTURE JOB!!

9. going to the farmers market with scott and getting fresh veggies/fruit/baked goods

10. shadowing doctors at st. mary's and especially watching the surgery in the o.r.

classes thus far in college that have made me think 

1. am env history

2. geo 139

3. psych 

4. neurobio

5. enviro 360

6. african history

songs that stuck out in the year

1. fleet foxes: all of fleet foxes (the album) and some of helplessness blues, including helplessness blues and bitter dancer

2.  love and doubt - slow runner

3. freelance whales: all of the album weathervanes

4. everlasting light - the black keys

5.  what the water gave me - florence + the machine

6. ghosts that broke my heart - laura marling

7. the bleeding heart show - the new pornographers

8. ambling alp - yeasayer

9. sun hands- local natives

10. cough syrup - young the giant

top non-school related things that email me

1. nytimes (and then taunt me with articles)

2. recall walker 

3. the happiness project

4. positivity blog

5. kaplan (take the MCAT prep course for only $1900.78!!)

6. stonesoup

7. myhabit

8. amazon

some notebook margin dumps from this semester

1. mirek as a fish professor 

2. can't pay attention :(

3. "don't talk to each other, see if i care"

5. "if you're a tasty morsel, and i'm sure every one of you is..."

6. view of world is restricted at scale you see it

7. rarely thought of superpower: ability to make someone blocking your view transparent

8. "you know what a ferret is, right? those one foot long evil creatures."

9. "as you can tell I don't like this guy. he is full of shit"

10. "voltage gated eel"

the quotations come from tony, my british-bordering-on-lost-it neuro professor

to accomplish

1. draw more

2. make this and also these, all of them, all at once

3. go to nyc (january!!??) 

4. go wwoof again

5. get a better job 

6. live more spontaneously 

7. explore madison 

8. restaurant crawl (this has been talked about for AGES)

9. finish that damn scarf 

10. read about biochem/immunology/use PubMed more and read more papers

make more lists? meta. metabolize. i shall metabolize more. there's so much to learn and do and see! what a great place, this world

we need to talk

all right ann emery. i've put up with your behavior long enough. this is unacceptable. they should have taught you at building school that you have to be yourself, and imitation is not the way to grow as a person thing. that's why i have to inform you that it's been very disappointing to see you trying to be something you're not. the antarctic death trap phase is one that will pass soon enough, just like those jelly shoes people wore back in elementary school, or youthful optimism. you might not be aware of that phase, since you are a building, but it happened. note the past tense. that is in fact a (now rather ironically outdated) phrase people employ to indicate the hip-ness of an object or idea: "happenin" and let me tell you, THIS SHIT is not. it's not even "hap."

let me clarify what THIS SHIT pertains to. while there are organisms, such as sphingomonas echinoides, that thrive at -25 degrees celsius, the three inhabitants of Apt 201 are not such creatures. we are of a higher phylum, order, family, genus, molecular makeup, intelligence, sentience, and surface area. given this, here are some examples of unacceptable behavior:

exhibit a) hank. upon walking into the living room/kitchen (approx 9 ft x 13 ft, which is smaller than the size of your average cadillac escalade), one may notice that the oven, Hank, is open and on. this is because without Hank, said living room/kitchen approaches temperatures commonly seen in deep sea trenches or alternatively, on the surface of the moon. 

exhibit b) electricity bill. way more expensive in the winter than in the summer. why? spaceheaters running. for the sake of argument, let's say that's just one 1500 kw space heater running for a low estimate of 8 hours per day. mg&e's winter pricing is  $.2589. that equals $3.11 per day spent on heating. now let's say that we use this hypothetical space heater a modest 25 days per month. that's $77.75 in fucking space heater payment alone. 

exhibit c) i just calculated how much money we may be spending on our space heater. that is a problem. i do not want to do math. that is an exhibit all in itself. furthermore, i am writing this in my giant puffy winter coat, with slowly numbing fingertips, already numb toes. 

that is just three exhibits. i would write more but the frost is creeping over the screen. farewell fond world. you'll find me in a week, encased in a lump of ice like jack from the shining. on my gravestone please inscribe the words "it's been cool."

ps the resounding bass and drunk langdon streeters are just icing on the cake 

eta pps who the hell has sex at 2:41 am? upstairs neighbor, you must recently have gotten an accommodating finals fuck buddy in which case, power to you but move your bed away from the wall. and lower your elephantine feet more gingerly 

Things

six sugar cookies with reindeer heads
so delicious, will eat until dead
one fluffy cat, jack please give her to us
individuals with nonfuctional MBL alleles susceptible to meningitis 


three dishes at a chinese restaurant
one a ginger fish with its head still on 
a lot of interesting woodman's aisles
god fucking damn mother ass christmas carols


becca's learning unibomber anatomy (HAHAHA)
seven pages of james joyce philosophy
whisky river aka noise violations
three hours of window shelf air conditioner fire escape vibrations


stop this this is self indulgence
nothing like finals to up your procrastination 
blahdittyblahblahblogdittyblah
i found a leprechaun and it was a frog 

WARNING: i'd say it's an essay pt 1

Sometimes it seems like scientific literature of the past seems to exist in a non self-aware manner. Take the population crisis argument of the early 90s for example. Articles from that time period seem to highlight narrow-minded statements like: "second, and vastly more important than continued study of the problem, is strong and unmistakable advocacy of human population control by conservation scientists." Generally, I don't disagree with the population problem theory (more about that later). But would such a statement be acceptable in an article today? It unapologetically draws one conclusion and tells the public You Must Do This. I feel like in these days we now meta-analyze our thinking more, or at least offer more dialogue between opposing viewpoints. We certainly don't come to many straightforward points anymore--even in climate change articles, possible consequences come phrased with "most likely" and "potential" and "I can't publish anything that takes a stance because my funding gets cut." When Erlich published Population Bomb in whatever year that was, people freaked out because it was precisely so straightforward (and apocalyptic). An Inconvenient Truth is probably the only comparable book (in that it reached the general public, since a lot of more dire environmental books get read by the already converted), but that wasn't nearly as straight-talking, and the effects of that have already diffused.


Maybe that's actually a drawback of the more connected and informationally accessible world today--with the sheer amount of stuff out there, including intellectually stimulating stuff as well as the Texts From Bennett stuff, our reactions are dulled to everything. Sort of like the function of FBS in cell culture--the analogy my old lab PI made (my previous lab PI, not my elderly doddering PI) was of taking a drop of chocolate milk and sticking it to someone's face. If you then dunk them in white milk, the desirable chocolate drop milk becomes more difficult to find/take note of. If you make an analogy about science that would never make sense in real life, it becomes 288x easier to remember.


So perhaps a lot of exposure even to topics that can grow your mind across various fields has a negative impact. That's a depressing thought. STOP LEARNING. Also, I wandered away from my original point. Which was a) maybe certain periods of time in the academic/scientific timeline are more...narrow minded? definitive? than others and b) we are potentially more aware of counterarguments now or just more feeble about drawing definitive lines dammit. I think it's fair to say we've dumbed down and thinned crossover messages from the scientific community to the non in an effort to cater to the lumbering political/economic machine.


And what will we look back and say the philosophies of our era were? What ideas will characterize it? Will we see ourselves as blinded, obviously wrong? That speaks to how when we're in the present, we simply cannot step out of it.  But it feels like at this point in time, we're quite a self-aware intelligentsia.

Oh boy. 

I'll post part 2 later so I can save cybertrees. 

bootfall

that was a great football game. intense too, when duckworth caught that ridiculous pass. but the best part was watching with people. and seaWorthy the cargo tanker of course. "thigh arms" indeed. ahhh funny things. sports announcer has gotta be one of the easiest jobs. all you have to do is say things like "adversity...both teams face adversity like they're football teams playing each other" since no one's actually paying attention to you anyway, then when shit gets real, you just scream and yell like everyone else watching and thus still no one's actually paying attention to you. cushy.