The panda population in China has risen by a whole FOUR PANDAS! A couple of them would probably die in the next month or so, but whatever. Meh.

You know, I've always wondered whether our ancestors thought of the consequences of putting "giant" behind an animal's name. Sure, it may look big, but it probably wasn't always that big. I mean, you'd think that they would've realised that eventually, they would stumble upon the baby of this animal, and realise that putting "giant" in front of the name wasn't such a good idea. Giant panda babies. Panda babies, that are gigantic.

In any case, are pandas really so important? I mean, what do they even do? Can they make honey? Can they make flour? Can we synthesise plastic from their fur? Do their eyeballs contain the magic elixir that makes Diablo III come faster? Are they anything other than a slow-moving bear, that happens to have cute black-and-white fur? And seriously, the things just sit around all day, eating. They're the inspiration for Snorlax.

And what are we trying to do? We're trying to save these buggering animals. Yes, the whole world wants to save these things. These un-fascinating creatures that roam around bamboo forests, spend more than half their lives sleeping, and have slightly less effective cognitive function than a goldfish. Come on, even geckos are more interesting than that. Aside from being uninteresting, they're also probably a lot less important, comparatively. Look at it this way: Pandas number in the thousands now, much less than when they started out. I don't see The Day After Tomorrow happening in China because of that. There are other animals, like bats, whose populations are being decimated and no one gives a rats ass about them. And they're important, actually doing things that help us. You know, like eating those swarms of insects so that we don't get moths raining on our houses, or even pollinating certain plants.

Plus, vampire bats did a service to us by reminding us that there are things out there that suck our blood. Things that are actually sort of big and don't splatter when you clap your hands.

No, the reason that people want to save the boring bears of the East, is that they're cute. I mean, that's probably the only upside to their existence. They're nice to put on postcards and they are indeed very Chinese-like, since they're always photographed with bamboo in the background. Why they are cute is a mystery indeed. Why would a panda need to evolve to be cute? I would normally like to say that it was probably because cute animals are less likely to be killed for food,.Unfortunately, cute animals are also more likely to be turned into fur coats, thus counterbalancing the argument. I also happen to believe that pandas evolved their cuteness before humans were around to kill them.

It's Survival of the Cutest. No one cares about the microbe whose absence will devastate the Earth's ecosystem. It's not cute enough. No one cares about the worms and molluscs. They're not cute enough. (Although I happen to stand very strongly against such an opinion! Squids are like, the cutest invertebrates ever.) So instead of supporting the saving of important creatures, the world at large just goes "ooh, a panda! We can't let it die!" while remaining willfully ignorant of the number of other things they kill on a daily basis.

I blame this mindset on all those movies that involve a Chinese family pushing through forty-foot deep snow to save a stuffed panda.


I think people should stop worrying about the pandas, and focus on the amount of bamboo they could harvest if they didn't have to worry about pandas. Bamboo is something like the fastest growing woody plant on Earth, and is actually supposed to be a popular choice amongst tree-huggers who refuse to buy teak furniture.

From what I've read, bamboo flooring and roofing actually make nice house materials. They're supposedly able to keep the interior temperature at a comfortable range. I'm not really bothered to look this up, but does that really matter? I mean, it's wood. It wouldn't be all that much worse from another wood.



-Joe

Well whoopededoo. That was one week that I contemplated committing suicide to get out of. I am currently preparing for another. I suppose the German oral examination went alright, and I shouldn't do too badly for Communications Skills. I really am not that bad at making up believable bullshit.

Unfortunately it would be clear that I did not study at all, because it turns out that many of my answers actually have terms attributed to them, which are in the textbooks. Which I did not read.

But really, this week was not really so bad. At least, in comparison to what I will have to deal with next week. Over this weekend, I will have to botch up a presentation, edit a whole bunch of English(ie. deleting everything and re-writing it) and um... Do a chemistry report that, once again, has been screwed up by the teacher.

You know what would be a really cool superpower to have? The ability to fall into a coma whenever you liked. I mean, think of how many things you could just avoid by falling into a coma at will. Pointless presentation? Coma! Assed-up lab report? Coma! Really unpleasant meeting with someone you can't kill? Coma! Honestly, there are just so many things that I would rather not do, but am forced to. Which is very sad and ironic, because I figured that I would finally be doing what I wanted to do.

One more week. One more week, until I am free from boring and unnecessary obligations. One more week till I can sit down in a chair and pretend to study. No more messed-up lab reports, no more unfun presentations.

On a side note, yesterday's IMB lecture was probably the best one we've had so far. Reason being that a certain person wasn't present. Also, the lecturer for that day was a lot firmer than any of the others have been. This guy was actually willing to put his foot down when idiots in the hall were talking unnecessarily. All he needs is to accept a proposal that I will be writing in the near future to install trapdoors under auditorium seats.

...Which I will also have access to.

Oh, did I mention that below the trapdoors, there'll be a Neuter-Bot, designed by... Someone, that is capable of removing one's reproductive organs in a most painful and sadistic manner. That includes females. They will, however, have to pay a fee, because it's sort of difficult to remove internal organs.

I guess the best thing about that lecture was that instead of just saying "don't write that you got your information from Wikipedia", he also offered an alternative. Unlike every other lecturer at the school.

So, wootcakes. First sign of competence. I sure hope that I'll get to see more of that next semester.


-Joe

The most properly terrifying performance I have ever seen. Normally, I associate the word "terrifying" with things such as children's television programs. I was never serious about the "terrifying" part, but I was always serious about the mental trauma part. Today, I witnessed a piece of art. Art, in the most unlikely of places.

A comic book adaptation.

(Not that comics aren't art.)

In an early part of the movie, we see Batman using guns. I was like, wait, since when did Batman use guns?


The Joker, as portrayed by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, is a true embodiment of fear. Not that he looks really scared in the movie, but rather that he's simply the most frightening thing on screen at any one time. It is not so much the garish makeup, or the blood-red scars, or the straggly green hair. No, those are actually pretty funny-looking most of the time. Instead, its his mannerisms, his speech, and his ability to laugh in the face of everything, that scares me.

And impresses me. I think I've found a new role model.

The Scarecrow was based on instilling fear in his enemies. He did that with hallucinogenic chemicals. While I am pretty sure that these experiences must have been pretty terrifying for the poor citizens of Gotham, it took a lot of imagination to be empathic. The Joker, on the other hand, brings the fear right to the audience, with all that freaky lip-licking and maniacal laughter.

When the villain is based entirely around misleading and manipulating people, it just makes an awesome movie for me. The way The Joker so confidently toys with the emotions of people, making them choose between impossible options... Dressing up hostages like thugs to trick the police, and all the little tricks and traps along the way. I suppose it is the little things that make the film enjoyable. Things like the sheer irony of having firetrucks going up in flames, The Joker sanitising his hands while at a hospital, prior to blowing it up spectacularly. And other stuff, like when he tells everyone a different story about how he got his scars, just like in the comics.

Okay, that's just wrong. This movie is just so different from the other superhero movies. Most of the time, we're given a clear indication of who to root for. Not that there isn't the whole "good guy, bad guy" divide here, but there's just something about The Joker that makes you enjoy seeing him succeed in his plans. Seriously. I was grinning the whole time he was pulling off a little "social experiment". The Dark Knight portrays The Joker as such a badass character in his own way, in contrast to those piece-of-crap villains from other stories, like Stane from Iron Man. I suppose I just really like those mind games.

The other villain, unfortunately, did not get much screen time, as a villain. However, the backstory was certainly satisfying enough. Harvey Twoface and his awesome coin-flipping skills. It makes me want to learn how to make that plingy sound when I toss my coins. Given that I am a huge advocate of coin-tossing(after all, it is the most reliable method of decision-making known to Man), it sure would be nice to make it look and sound more impressive!

Bruce Wayne is still Bruce Wayne. His gadgets are cool and all, but he was not really the main focus of the movie. He's a ninja. He can apparently punch so fast that he creates a sonic boom or something with every blow. Seriously. Every time he swung his fist at a crook, there was this immense "POW!" sound. I'm guessing that they did because they weren't allowed to actually print the word "POW!" on screen.

So basically, probably the best superhero movie of the year. I'm probably going to be quoting lines from The Joker for the next couple of weeks or so.


Yarly.
-Joe

This week, and the next, I will find that two very amazing things exist. They are Someone Else's Problem, and Oh Crud I Have Stuff To Do. Because see, these two weeks have been filled with very annoying things that I generally put under "irrelevant bullshit". This Friday, I have my German Oral test. Next week, I need to have both my presentation, and my microbiology website ready for grading. After that, I will have to sit for the German written paper.

That covers the Oh Crud I Have To Do Stuff part of the coming fortnight. Thankfully, much of the issues at hand also happen to be group work. This effectively makes some of the work Someone Else's Problem.

Now, this would be really awesome, if it really were SEP. Unfortunately, nothing is SEP in this place. Reason being that it's pretty impossible to trust anyone to make good on an assignment. And so I shall step in as Editor in Chief, Cleanser of the Unholy scourge of Bad Grammar. Ironic, because I already feel that I have made several past/present/continuous tense errors in this post. It is rather difficult to write in the appropriate tenses, when one mentions both the future and the present, as well as the not-future.

I'm not making any sense.

On the bright side, after next Friday I probably won't feel like killing everyone! Because by then it'll all be revision for the semestral exam. "Semestral" isn't even a word.

-Joe

And thus ends a very relaxing and enjoyable week. Well, that's how it appears to me at this moment. I guess the "relaxing" part didn't start until Tuesday, when I decided to say "F this, I don't give a shit." After that, everything was just plain awesome.

Screw chemistry reports. The person who marks them doesn't live up to his word. This person has no consistency in his standards. There's just no pleasing him. You'd think that after someone said "Just use the results you obtain, even if they're wrong. The important thing is that your calculation methods are correct. Just explain the errors in your discussion.", he'd actually read the damn page-long discussion you give him about why the results are off. Instead of just circling my data and asking stupid questions like "why is this negative?", you'd think that he would probably realise that my reports tend to extend beyond the ignorant slapping down of stupid data.

But noooo, it doesn't work that way. Every single report(after the first one which I had no idea what to do) I have submitted has contained detailed explanation and exposition about the experiment in question. I have tried my best to figure out what was looked out for in technical reports(since we weren't given an example to refer to) and all I found out was that the reports were subject to every whim and impulse of the marker. Those of you who know me, tell me, am I good at following protocol? I may take short-cuts around certain things, but not with work. I have never been (entirely) lazy about work while also expecting good results.

So yeah, after I got back my most recent report, I said "F this." and decided that this moron wasn't worth my time, or my frustration. After all, there was no way that I could pull an A-average for reports now, not after the string of sub-par grades given to me for no good reason.
On top of that, no more microbiology practicals, and I still have yet to receive any more reports back for it. Brilliant. Just brilliant.

So, the hell with it. I don't care. There's nothing I can do about it for now anyway.



Today, during lunch, I had a lot of time to let my mind wander, and I chanced upon that horrible, horrible topic of "What is life?". Immediately, I realised the answer.

There is no "life". "Life" does not exist. "Life" was just a term made up by people because they wanted to believe that things that can move around and eat were special. Unfortunately, nothing is special. You see, the question "What is life?" is a stupid question, for it brings about more questions, such as "where do we draw the line between living and non-living things?" There is no line.

Stuff(being everything) is made up of atoms. It doesn't matter what goes beyond that. When many atoms come together, they become stuff. Rocks are made up of billions of silicon dioxide molecules. Cheese is made up of billions of cheesium atoms.

"Living things", as we know them, are essentially made up of many kinds of Stuff. They are much more complex than a piece of cheese, but it can be said that they are simply many different pieces of cheese existing together. A simple animal has Brain Stuff, Digestive System Stuff, and Various Other Stuff. Each of these Stuffs are made out of cells, which are basically made up of more Stuff. The carbon atom in your body is no different from the carbon atom on the other side of the galaxy(not counting isotopes). So nothing about the individual Stuffs in your body are actually special.

The Stuff Mindset says that no matter how awesomely the Stuff in your body react with each other, enabling themselves to turn other Stuff into Stuff that they want, they're all still made of Stuff. And since every atom an element is pretty much the same(still not counting isotopes), our Stuff is the same as other Stuff. It's just placed differently.

The reason why I like Stuff, is that we no longer have to answer the question "what is life?". There will no longer be a need to draw any line between "living" and "non-living" things. No more wondering about whether a virus is a living thing or not. The answer is, it's not a living thing. It's made out of proteins and genetic material, which are made out of atoms. The fact that they can do things is irrelevant. Human beings are also not living things. They're made out of carbohydrates and proteins and various other Stuff, and the fact that they can do things is also irrelevant.

A human being is a swarm of swarms. It's a swarm of organs, and the organs are swarms of specialised cells. The cells themselves are made out of several swarms, and these organelles are also made out of swarms. What you see on the outside is the result of the infinitely complex reactions between these swarms. And the fact that these swarms are "swarming" is a product of chance. So there you have it: You are not alive. You are the result of chemistry working on Stuff.

So the next time anyone asks me whether or not a virus is a living thing, I will remove his brain-swarm and donate it to the Biofuel plant. The fact that I can turn someone's body into regular stuff shows that he's basically just Stuff in a very ordered position.

Yes, of course, this is a gross overgeneralisation of how complex "living" organisms are. But seriously, we're not that much different from the first self-replicating molecules that formed in Primordial Soup back then. It's just that the random nature of the universe, coupled with natural selection, has allowed those molecules to change beyond their original states to become what most people call "life". Take it as that humans are macro-viruses, and that the Earth is a "life-form". It has its own systems, cycles which have to work in a certain way, or the earth would become messed up, just like how animals and plants get diseases. The earth has a human infection. Humans are messing up the earth, just like how viruses mess up humans. So is the planet alive? I don't think anyone has ever answered that.



-Joe

Guys, this is amazing! They're making those Orbital Strike shells from C&C3 for real. Seriously. You know those urban legends about people getting killed when something falls out of a plane onto them, or off a really tall building? Well, the guys at the Pentagon must have been thinking of that when they dreamt up the Hypervelocity Rod Bundles, or as they have aptly nicknamed, Rods from God.

Although in a completely different context, that isn't really such a good name.

In short, they're making a satellite that houses telephone pole-long tungsten rods, and is able to drop them down to earth whenever someone wants to see what it looks like when a telephone pole is dropped from orbit. The tungsten shell, is propelled only by gravity itself, with some minor stuffies on it for slight course adjustment. The shell would basically accelerate to several thousand kilometres per second, hitting the ground like when Superman couldn't fix his radio and slammed his desk in rage. Because it really matters that you hit the cat instead of allowing the resulting shockwave to decimate everything in about a kilometer from the point of impact.

Yes, because the Orbital Strike System(I'm just making that up, because I think it's better than Rods from God) effectively delivers a nuclear blast, only with zero radiation issues. Unless you aimed it at a nuke. Which, ironically, is probably what this thing is being designed for: To use against countries that are in violation of those nuclear treaty stuffs.

They're man-made meteors, and they can be launched at anything, from anywhere. If you plan on updating your bomb shelter, make sure that you have some sort of missile deflection system. I really doubt that even the thickest shelters can withstand a frickin' meteor strike. A meteor that happens to be made of really hard metal.

By the looks of it, the real life Orbital Strike is going to be a whole lot more impressive than GDI's support power. It's going to become the ion cannon of our age. I can already imagine the time when there will be an entire system of these things floating around, ready to smite all who oppose... The people who own the things.

I'm totally going to buy one just so that I can make a Zeeky Boogy Doog joke.

-Joe

Gee. It’s two in the morning.

I have recently gotten my hands on the soundtrack from Spirited Away. Finally. I don’t know why it took me that long to get it.

Simply put, the soundtrack is brilliant. There are beautiful pieces. There are the atmosphere-giving pieces. There are the more sound-effect based pieces. Music makes a movie.

It has probably occurred to most of us before; that without a soundtrack, most, if not all movies, would be extremely dull. Imagine Mission Impossible without that theme. Imagine Indiana Jones without its themesong. Or Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings. It’s just simply not possible to have a nice movie without nice music behind it. It’d be like watching them on mute. Except that you can still hear the dialogue.

Without those swelling scores to accentuate moments of great happiness, or sadness, it just doesn’t feel right. When you watch the Makings of any movie, and they give you a short clip of the cast acting out a scene, you’ll notice that there isn’t any music being played for them. You’ll also notice a distinct lack of emotion and ironically, realness. It ends up looking a lot more like acting.

Now, there is one problem with getting the soundtracks to all the movies you love. After you listen to them a few times, you’d pretty much have them memorised to some degree. Take for example The Return of the King for me. After having had the soundtrack for several weeks, I decided to watch the movie again. During the movie, I could recognise each and every one of the scores being played. While it is rather cool to realise “Hey, that’s _____!”, I found that it sort of made the movie experience less immersive. Instead of being part of the atmosphere, the soundtrack became detached from the movie, like a counter-melody being played a little too far away from the band. I could still hear it and enjoy it, but it and the movie became two separate things.

This issue only really arises for movies which I have obtained almost the entire soundtrack to. For others, where all I have is the main theme, it’s completely different. For some reason, I have yet to procure the Jurassic Park soundtrack, and the movie is still great. I love it when the main theme plays. Bb F- C G, G A Bb Bb A F G.

Soundtracks that include vocals are something else entirely. In the classic, Phantom of the Opera, knowing the soundtrack makes the movie experience considerably more enjoyable. Because this time, instead of just listening to the voices, you can see the singer, and the context the songs are sung in. Better still, you’ll be able to hear all the words, since you’ve already been acquainted with them.

They need to make an instrumental medley of Sweeney Todd songs.

Doh. What am I doing posting at this hour.

-Joe

*Sorry guys, no picture yet. Using my laptop.

Well, sheezwizzles. I get the feeling that debate was never really one of my natural talents. It's always the problem with the most logical decision, and ethics. I always toyed with the idea of joining a debate team. I figured that my argumentation skills were up to scratch. What I did not realise, was that all I have ever argued for involved the annihilation of one or many persons.

But what can I do? I'll just pretend that I care about politics and such for a while... Until the competition is over. It's not like I have much of a choice. Either I ditch them and leave them twisting in the wind, while also denying myself resumé glitter, or I can grit my teeth and sit through it for the sake of having something to write about. What happens during the debate itself is entirely different.

The entire atmosphere is simply not very welcoming. Not exactly encouraging, but it's too early to tell. Although it would have been nice if the other SCL team showed up.


In any case, I've been watching the first season of Smallville over the past week, and something happens every episode: Clark loses his power. This is usually due to one of two things. One, the monster of the episode is infused with kryptonite, and so Clark is weakened when he gets near them. Either that, or the location where the events take place happens to have kryptonite lying around on the ground.

I get it, the only way that Superman can ever be considered a legitimate character is to give him weaknesses. However, the creators of Superman also made it really difficult for themselves by making Clark Kent have God Mode, and every other thing that would get him labeled as a hacker. If the guy is naturally invulnerable, so invulnerable that when he's engulfed in flames, he comes out of it with his hair on, then the only way to actually make it look like the baddies stand a chance is to invent a plot device that deprives him of his powers.

Come on, think about it. No other fight in the superhero universe is more one-sided than Clark Kent versus Random Monster Thing. The only thing that stops Clarky from just pulverising everything that stands in his way is his lack of use of firearms. If exposure to green crystals makes you feel ill and lowers your sperm count, then how about trying to shoot the bugger? I mean, that seems like a possible idea.

Oh, while we're at it... Batman could do with a gun. Bat-shurikens are hardly guns.

At least seven episodes after Clark realises that green meteor rocks make him weak, he's still barging head-on into fights. You'd think that he'd have realised, after being told so many times, that the reason why his enemies have their powers was because of kryptonite in the first place.

This effectively makes the Green Arrow more useful, on average, than Superman. Mind you, the Green Arrow doesn't even have any superpowers, unless you count being able to win gold medals in the archery Olympics a superpower. Plus, he dresses like Robin Hood. Doctor Doom also dresses like Robin Hood. Why do you think that is?

I sure hope they don't make a Green Arrow movie. That would be somewhat like The Punisher, except that there would be less pointless blowing-up of things. That doesn't make it any better, though.

-Joe

Ah, and I don't know what happened to the tagbox. I came home Wednesday night and it was filled with dots. I refreshed the page again and everything was gone, with a message from Shaun saying that he cleared the spam. Where the spam came from, I have no idea.

Well hmm. I realise that I have a lot of notebooks. I have something like five notebooks lying around my room. I carry two of them around, and the other three are just sort of there whenever I feel the need to write anything. One of my notebooks has been tainted by homework, and the other has too many random doodles. Both are testament to my handwriting.

For the first time in really long, I actually had a nap! For the past... At least six months, I never had a wink of sleep from dawn to dusk. As in, I didn't even try to go to sleep before it was actually bedtime. I thus have rediscovered the awesomeness of taking a power-nap. I woke up early this morning intending to do some stuff, but after I got that stuff done, I felt really tired. Too tired even to read the morning comics. That was odd. I even made a conscious decision to go to sleep. I said "ah, I've got an hour. I'm going to have a nap."

And so I went and plopped myself down on the sofa and slept. I awoke twenty-something minutes later to a phonecall from some dude at the school. It turns out that I'm being nominated to represent the School of Life Science in some inter-school debate.

So, what the heck, right? I'm giving it a shot. It turns out that I've been put into a team with a couple of Year 2 people. I have no idea what this'll turn into.

Moo.

-Joe

Unbelievable! People are actually signing a petition against Diablo III's new colour scheme and graphics style. We've always expected the best from Blizzard, but seriously, what's wrong with the colour scheme now?

The previous two games in the Diablo franchise were famous for their dark, brooding atmosphere. In the first Diablo, the game was played pretty much entirely in darkness. It was always night, and other times you were deep in the catacombs. After which it got slightly brighter, but only because you were in Hell and there was glowing lava everywhere. Diablo II did showcase a few more brightly-lit and very... Anomalous places, but the theme generally made you feel like you were actually in a time of darkness. You could be in a blazing hot desert, but the way you could get swarmed by mutated lightning-spewing scarab beetles made the game awesome in ways that dim lighting could never achieve.

So then, if we've seen how utterly cool Diablo II could be, even in brightly lit and mind-distorting areas, then why all the fuss about Diablo III? The gameplay video showed a total of TWO areas. One was a dungeon(which was really, really awesome) and the other was this beautiful forested area with rivers and grassy canyons and waterfalls. With zombies. It was really like a wonderland. And then this pristine, Rivendell-esque has hordes of zombies and skeletons rising out of the ground to smite our heroes into the soil. So that they can become zombies too. But the point is that it really seems to give a feel of an invasion of the undead. Which, is actually probably the effect that they were going for.

Because, see, I think that the actual timeline that the story is set in must be known before any comments can be made about "atmosphere". If it's a fresh, new attack of demons, you'd expect that your trees would still be green and buildings still shining ivory. Unless it's like in the previous two games, where you begin your journey sometime into the scourge, when Hell has already, literally, broken loose.

So people should just hold their horses and not accuse Blizzard of messing things up after seeing a tiny, tiny fraction of the whole game. Which will be made even smaller after the inevitable expansion pack(s). In any case, if they can render a forest and a mausoleum in such detail, I can't wait to see what the new Hell is going to look like.

Keeping with today's theme, I'm going to wonder about zombies and skeletons. In much medieval lore, zombies are reanimated corpses that hunger for living flesh. They've got nothing really keeping them together, and are essentially corpses being pulled by invisible strings. Skeletons, on the other hand, are the bones of fallen warriors, reanimated either by the repossession by a new spirit, or a magicky spell.

According to most accounts, zombies are slow, lumbering monsters that can be easily avoided by increasing the length of your stride slightly. Skeleton tend to be portrayed as fast moving, intelligent undead creatures, capable of wielding weapons and armour. By this contrast, skeletons are clearly the superior undead creature.

However, since zombies are not preserved in any way, their flesh would eventually rot off and they would fall to pieces. After some time, all there would be left are bones. And bones make skeletons! Assuming that there are always plenty of mages around to animate skeletons, all zombies would eventually be "upgraded", so to speak.

Oh and then there's that other issue with mummies. If mummies hardly decompose, then they'll never become skeletons.

Augh why am I even talking about this.

Anyway, I figure that skeletons would probably be the most difficult undead creature to fight, assuming that none of us have any knowledge on how to exorcise spirits inside bones. I mean, there isn't any flesh to attack. You can't poke a skeleton in the eye, or kick one in the crotch. You could do your best saber-lunge at a skeleton and all you'd get is your sword poking through an already hollow ribcage. No, the only way to destroy a skeleton would be to disintegrate it completely.

Which is why someone will need to build Planetary Annihilators. So that we can destroy skeletons, in case they ever start attacking us. By the way, that's also a good reason to learn how to drive. Because, you know, there might be a zombie apocalypse anytime during our lifetimes, and so it'd be good to learn how to use a motorised vehicle.

Of course, we'll be hoping that the zombies are the Diablo II types, and not the Resident Evil types. Really slow.

Very cool xkcd comic.

-Joe

According to Wikipedia...

Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite procrastination as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. ^[1] For an individual, procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt, the loss of personal productivity, the creation of crisis and the disapproval of others for not fulfilling one's responsibilities or commitments. These combined feelings can promote further procrastination.

I also seem to have found an actual piece of mathematics regarding procrastination.

I'm not really sure if that's considered a real law, but it's something studied in psychology. In case you were too lazy to read that, the Matching Law basically says that people tend to do things more, when they it's psychologically reinforcing. It's really not that different(after being boiled down to really simple terms) from a chemical addiction. People pretty much become addicted to their own brain chemicals.

Procrastination is a strange thing. Generally, in order to procrastinate from something, you need to do something else. However, when you try to do that other thing, you might end up procrastinating from that too. That happens to me a lot.

I've realised something new. I can procrastinate by simply not doing anything useful. This is basically when my procrastination activity is a very passive activity, and invokes emotions often identical to that of being bored. There was a time when procrastination actually helped me to get other things done. This was good, because I was usually supposed to do those things anyway. It seems now, though, that I seem to be running out of useful things that I can put in the "other things" category.

... I suppose I could um, rearrange my 1 piece of furniture.

But really, why would I want to reshape my room, when I could just get on the computer and go typety typety, and "explain" the dynamics of procrastination to people? Yes, this is in fact a form of procrastination.

Procrastination is usually linked to having either a very interesting "other thing" to do, or when the "thing" that you're supposed to do is just really unappealing. This type of thing is usually of little to no point to a person, or has something about it that is just unpleasant to deal with. They're usually those things for which the "ah, the hell with that" philosophy just doesn't work for. Really unfortunate.

Of course, these things, however obscure, usually have some kind of a point. Okay, not really, but I... Think that doing what appear to be useless and menial activities may be beneficial anyway.

This would certainly not be true for people who have actual, useful "other things" to do. For people like me, however, who do not really have that many useful "other things" that they'd like to do, and end up doing nothing as their procrastination activity, these sorts of situations are just productivity killers.

It's like there's a flowchart in my brain. You have pointless chemistry homework! Do you want to do them? Y/N

N

Do nothing! Cool/whatever

Cool

*leaves rustling*

Yeah, so basically, I end up doing nothing way too much. I would blame my environment, but that just isn't really wise.

As quoted from Wikipedia:
Procrastinators are also thought to have a higher-than-normal level of conscientiousness, more based on the "dreams and wishes" of perfection or achievement in contrast to a realistic appreciation of their obligations and potential.

...Maybe. I haven't been doing all that much thinking recently. Or maybe I have, but I've just been forgetting it all.

I suspect that the source of my procrastination is really that Wikipedia is just that much more informative than school. And I suspect that my procrastination from using Wikipedia has to do with that playing Hedgehog Launch is really that entertaining.

Does playing puzzle games count as a useful activity? Does solving puzzles really train the mind? Does it increase brainpower? Cubing certainly doesn't count. The only advantages that can be derived from that are stronger, nimbler fingers, and slightly better colour recognition. But what about puzzles that don't have any particular methods and rely on sheer intellect?

I'd conduct an experiment on myself, but I suspect that it would end up in similar ways to my other experiments. I procrastinated from them and switched to a new experiment.

Ugh. I've been drawing cartoon personas of myself lately.

And thus ends this rather meaningless post. I'm not even sure how I started it. I've forgotten.

In Soviet Russia, post makes YOU!!!

-Joe

And so, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN is just about getting ready to go sometime this August. Supposedly able to achieve temperatures as low as 2 Kelvins, the LHC is theorised to be able to shed light on several things, such as whether or not liquid cake will ever be made, and to allow scientists to figure out how elementary particles can possess mass.

It's that big.

Now, I'm not exactly an expert on supercolliders, but if there's one thing I know, it's that a supercollider that's larger than the previous one isn't going to end the world. It's amazing, really. There actually are people who have the impression that the world is going to end when the LHC goes online. I mean, judging from the wording, they believe that the universe will spontaneously turn itself into the shape of Jar Jar Binks. Which would be really bad. I don't think anyone could stand the thought of being part of anything to do with Jar Jar Binks.

Now, the thing is, it's not actually known whether the Large Hadron Collider is going to be able to produce micro-black holes. For one, it's not really that easy to tell if they came into existence in the first place, given that they supposedly evaporate via Hawking radiation. And this whole thing about magnetic monopoles- If my memory serves me, the LHC shouldn't even be able to make monopoles that do anything wacky. Such as turning the universe into a cake.

In any case, maybe I should get started on Fabric of the Cosmos, now that I'm just about done with Origin. Origin was really just a huge illustration of stuff that we already knew. For the modern reader, On the Origin of Species is but an affirmation to the model of evolution. Enlightening in some aspects, as there are just certain things that you cannot find on Wikipedia, and also wonderful, when you realise that Darwin lived over a century ago. You know, around the time when leading physicists would burn you at the stake for witchcraft if you showed them a cellphone.

Zeeky boogy doog.

If they make the Zeeky. H Bomb out of the LHC, I'm going to convert to a new religion.

Today just felt like a bad day. It is likely that this has much to do with tomorrow, when I will lose my afternoon to something that involves helping the first batch of biofuel. I also feel like I have signed away my weekends for a few months sometime in the future.

And I've never had such unappealing homework, ever.

-Joe