SOPA

Well, this is a bit late to the party, but I'd like to mention that I oppose both SOPA and PIPA bills in all of their forms.

Issues with starting to teach, as well as who, and what, are we fighting against?

Christmas is over; a new school semester, a new year, and New Year's Resolutions are all starting soon. I never did take much stock in those resolutions since the success rate is so abysmal; besides, if you are going to actually "change" your life, it will take effect when you get the proper motivation—a new year is a normal event, not something to get excited about, and definitely not something that will motivate you. In light of that, I'm making a resolution: teach a Sunday school class (or equivalent) on Biblical Creationism. Ever since I've learned about this subject, I've seen the absolute lack of education on creation and wanted to correct it. It's not the reason I started this blog, but it is the reason I've continued it.

Of night, sleep, and music.

At this point, I usually like to pose a open-ended and rhetorical question. It is not meant to be answered; it perhaps can't be definitively answered. However, I'm struggling to find both answers and questions to what is happening in my life. I am at the point of uncertainty—whether that is a real term or not, I know not; however, it fits very well to my circumstances. You must bear with me as I jump around, this piece is not planned, nor am I intending to do much editing past spelling and grammar. It is a true stream-of-consciousness post.

Creation vs Evolution

Ah, the seemingly endless debate of whether we came into existence via a singularity known as the Big Bang, or a single voice stating, "Let there be light" (1). It is the epic battle between those who follow science and those who follow religion. Each side seems to be completely blind to the other's assertions, passing them off as baseless, twisted accounts of the facts, fairy tales, or altogether ignoring the other's claims. Neither the Creationists nor the Darwinists can give ground without their very foundations being rebuilt; they are mutually exclusive (2).

Culling the Rampancy Inducing Thoughts

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

After reading that piece from the NY Times, which was very interesting, I thought of what initially seemed like a good idea: buffet style restaurant where you cook your own food, but it has more of the raw materials available than the cook-it-yourself places I know of. Like a supermarket where you can sit down, cook, eat, and all the other things you would normally do when you cook with friends.

Meh, the idea would have novelty appeal at first, then fizzle out as customers realized they were paying a premium to do exactly what they could do at home. Long-term appeal would come from the convenience of having everything in stock and not having to buy a large package of something when the customer would never use such a large amount of that food.

Whatever the appeal, need, or niche that could be carved out for such a restaurant, I don't have enough of the next topic to pursue the idea even if I had enough enthusiasm for it.

Time
Just had the thought that I would be quite okay with 48-hour days. I'm not talking about merely adjusting the coefficient on time—that would be silly and pointless. Thinking about this as I write, it makes more sense to ask for sleep to be required less. That would sidestep all the issues with the world rotating less and the innumerable side effects that would entail.

There never seems to be enough time. The root is more likely my schedule than amount of time; nonetheless, it would be nice to have more time to do things. Many, many things are rushing by my mind's eye related to this issue: sleep, karate, job, school, romance, friends, this blog, programming projects, and many more. While some of those items do not have entries on my calendar at the moment, I do not see how they would fit in if they needed a slot.

I've often wanted to "pause" life, or at least slow it down considerably, to learn more about a subject. To focus on nothing except that particular subject. Not every minute of every day, mind you, but have no other pressing items. Of course, I would want to return to where I was to begin with, with no adverse effects on other aspects of life (friends, and other things).

Spell Checker
I wrote most of this post on my tablet and then edited from my desktop. When using the tablet, I used common acronyms such as "atm" with the intention to change those to proper English. When doing the final cleanup passes, I realized that Chrome's spellchecker does not flag "atm" in certain circumstances. Unbelievable.

Pay Walls
Lately, I have come across several technical articles about many different topics linking to papers published in scientific journals. However, to access these papers you must have a subscription to the journal, which usually costs quite a bit. My school offers many of the journals for free, but the articles are delayed one year—much too long to be of any use to me.

I don't fault the journals for trying to make some money, but I wonder how a student such as myself is supposed to learn about the latest technology if I can't access the scientific papers.

Crazy Few Weeks

The question isn't so much what has happened since the last post, more on the lines of what hasn't happened. In reverse-order, I've had to play catch-up with school, TKD tournament in PCB, prepare for TKD tournament, get school things sorted out for the tournament, etc. Oh, and I received a sweet new tablet from my grandpa. Now, sorted by my whim, here is the exposition on those topics.

Half-posts, character limits

I frequently find myself wanting to post some thought or something, but it isn't nearly long enough for a full post on RI or I don't have the time, energy, or enthusiasm to post about it. This could be helped if I do "half-posts," yet I don't want to clutter up the posts on here. I've thought about using another platform to publish these smaller thoughts, however, I have yet to find one I like.