Voting Party

Today is election day here in the U.S. of A. Thank God.
For the past many months I have been visually and verbally accosted with speeches, ads and debates. Unlike many people who always vote party lines or simply vote for the white guy or the black guy, I paid attention to the issues, visited the web sites, read all the information and watched the debates. All of these things helped me make my decision. Guess what didn't.
Thats right, yard signs. Wherever I am driving I see hundreds of these things. Why do you feel it is necessary to tell me that your man is Mitch, or that you want Obama for President. What are you trying to accomplish with this?
Seriously, has anyone ever been driving to work and saw a sign for McCain and said to himself "Hmm. I was going to vote for Obama, but after seeing that yard sign in the Jeffersons yard, I might have to reconsider."
The most annoying thing about those sign is that they are sanctioned littering. Yeah. Apparently it is okay to throw paper, plastic, wood and metal in your front yard, so long as it has a stake on the end of it that you can put in the ground. I wish I had a house right now so I could buy a couple of stakes and put a bunch of McDonalds wrappers on the end of it and stick it in the ground.
You know that three weeks from now there are still going to be hundreds if not thousands of those signs around the city still stuckfast in peoples yards. For the love of God people, they are unneccessary.
Another thing that bugs me about election day is the yahoos who stand outside with posters saying to vote Obama or Vote McCain today. Really?
Once again I have to ask myself if anyone has ever been walking or driving along, saw somebody with a sign and said to themselves "Well I was going to vote fore McCain, but seeing the dedication of a middle aged woman standing in the cold at five in the morning holding an Obama sign, I think I will change my mind."
Lets be honest, what you are really trying to do is show your support for your candidate, and to have a voice that is heard over the constand static of political debates and arguments. But there actually is a great way to do that, and it is one I support. Vote.
By voting you are letting your neighbors, the government, and your candidate know you supported them. By voting you are realizing the dreams of the men who founded this nation. By voting you prove that you are an American citizen and your voice counts. Not by yard signs and buttons.

crazy photoshop art

I have been getting into photoshop lately. I have always liked to use it, but now I am trying to make art with it. Not just messing around. I want to make things that are interesting and detailed and fun. At any rate, I had this idea to make a dark and ominous red riding hood. This picture is not at all what I had pictured in my head when I started, but really like it. I would appreciate any feedback from fellow New Media students or anyone else that sees it. Here are the pictures I used. I got them from various websites such as morguefile, but some of them I just found online from google. I know it might be wrong to steal someones work, but I am changing it a lot and using it for personal reasons and school reasons, not for monetary gain or commercial use.

The finished product is an 11x16 poster. I think it turned out really well, but I would love some feedback. What do you like, not like, think is distracting or annoying. Please critique.

enable cookies?

I was thinking about cookies outside the box. What could a person possibly do to cookies that would be different from what everyone else does with cookies? So I looked back through my projects over the semester, and realized that we had been building to cookies all semester, it was inevitable. Eggs, time, "life is like CHiPs," the right environment, relaxing, all of these things tie in to cookies. A little abstract way to look at it maybe, but if you try you will see what I mean. So, for cookies seeing sideways, I have an idea.

First things first. Last class we were talking about the 100 mile diet and being a "locavore," I thought that was interesting. I love food. I love fresh food even better. I love fresh homemade food the best. Which got me thinking about the farmers market downtown. Fresh local ingredients. So I have an idea to make cookies using only ingredients from the farmers market. The website for the market lists the booths and things they sell. I can get my eggs, flour, flavorings, etc fresh and easy in one place. I plan on going early in the afternoon to pick out some primo ingredients. The only things I won't get there are salt and baking powder, things like that.

Also, I want to bring together the entire class so far. One thing I did this class was make an abstract art piece, and I thought "why can't I do that with cookies?" So after I get my ingredients and make the basic batter, I can take portions of it color it, add different ingredients and throw it on the bottom of a large glass or pyrex type of pan and make one big thick cookie. with all kinds of different layers of color and flavors. I will have to be careful that all of the flavors go well enough together, but in every bite you will experience a different flavor profile. Sweeter, more chocolate, more fruit, different colors, more caramel, etc. I will turn the big square cookie out onto a cooling rack and cut it into bars.

The right amount of time and the right environment (i.e. an oven), can produce good cookies. I am also interested in seeing what I can find in the farmers market. I plan on taking a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and making one big batch (no chips), and then portioning that off and adding different colorings and flavorings as well as ingredients to make every batch slightly different. What do you kids think about it? Comments? Also, is anyone allergic to anything?

1000 watts of badass

"Some men claim to be men of few words, I am not one of those men. I am a man of many words. Don't get me wrong, I like to think of myself as a man of action as well. However, I find that in my life words are called for far more often than actions."----Andrew Talarzyk

Hello. My name is Andy, and I am not an environmentalist. Whew. That felt good. Whoa, please allow me to elaborate before you finish tying that noose in your hemp rope, rainbow warrior. You see, it isn't that I don't care about the planet, I do. I truly and deeply do care, however I am skeptical. We base everything we know about the environment and how to protect it on the information given to us by a handful of organizations that would not exist if not for global catastrophe. The reason for this is that environmentalists are a lot like any other zealots, they speak very, very loudly and they aren't afraid to protest, boycott, or sue.

Quickly think about everything you know about environmentalism. Spotted owls, nuclear power, the rain forest, etc. Where did you get that information? Either an organization like green peace, a news article about something green peace said, did or protested, or the governments Environmental Protection Agency which is very reactive as opposed to proactive.

When I was a child I remember hearing in school that 100,000 species go extinct every year. Which we now know is incredibly false. The scientist who said it later said that he made the number up in order to spur people to be more environmental. It didn't matter to anyone that it was false though, we had a number.

It seems to me that there is less and less actual science and more and more ideology when it comes to environmental issues. That being said, I have done some research and I have come up with a few ways to save the world. Some of this may be contrary to what you believe, some of it is just an elaboration on current ideology. I only ask you to keep an open mind while I expound upon my ideas.

1. Build more landfills. I know, I know. Landfills take up space, they smell, they are bad for water tables, birds get their heads caught in plastic drink rings, etc. The horror of the landfill is one that we have all heard. The modern landfill, however, is a lot different from what you may think. A landfill is subject to strict environmental regulations and it has to be located in an approved area away from water. The best part is that when a landfill is full, you cover it with dirt, plant trees and make a park. The best part though, is the gas.

Landfills create active decomposition which creates methane gas. Methane gas can be collected by landfills and used to create a clean, green power. How much power? Well, every person in the united states generates about 1 ton of waste every year. 1 million tons of waste can produce enough power to light 700 homes for a year. With a population of 300 million people in this country we could light 210 thousand homes with landfill gas every year. Pretty significant.

2. Stop Recycling. I should be more specific, stop recycling everything except aluminum cans. The reason is that aluminum has value and you can actually make money from recycling it. It takes far less energy to to recycle cans than it does to mine and manufacture aluminum from scratch. Plastic and paper is another story. It takes far more energy to create a bottle or piece of paper from recycled material than it does to create it from scratch, and recycling is actually bad for the environment. I will repeat that. Recycling is bad for the environment. If you care about carbon emissions from exhaust or manufacturing that is. I would elaborate more, but I want to move on to the next topic, because it is interrelated.

3. Use more paper. And by that I mean non-recycled paper. Here are a few interesting facts. We have more trees now than we did a hundred years ago. There is no threat of running out of trees. Why do we have so many trees? Because we use a lot of wood. Before I go into that, think about this, where does cotton come from? It is grown on farms, right? Is cotton endangered? Do we have more or less of it? How about corn. Is there more corn or less than there was before? I bring this up because lumber and paper, just like everything else is driven by supply and demand. We have more trees now because we have more people.

People need paper, they need housing, they need furniture. When you use paper you are putting an order in to the lumber companies to plant more trees. And most of the wood you use comes from tree farms. Yeah, tree farms. A set piece of land that is used for growing and harvesting trees. Sure it takes longer than a soybean crop, but it is a farm nonetheless. If people stopped using paper, there would be no need to plant more trees, and the amount of trees we have would
decrease.

4. Remove the ban on DDT. Living in a modern, developed country it is easy to say that DDT is bad, though it has never been 100% scientifically linked to any health concerns or deaths. We have banned the use of this substance over the entire world. The difference is that much of the world has different problems than us. I can go out on the river all night, come home and have a thousand mosquito bites, but I more than likely won't have malaria. You see, malaria is a big problem in much of the undeveloped countries around the world. More than a million people die from it every year, mostly children, and mostly in Africa. If we released the ban of DDT countries like Africa could use it and save thousands of children every year.

5. Stop making ethanol. At least from food. We should not use corn, soybeans, or any other food crop to make fuel for our vehicles. For many, many reasons. For one there isn't enough available farmland to grow enough corn to make enough fuel for our cars. Instead, we should make it from algae. You heard me, algae. The case for algae based biofuels is increasingly abundant.

Algae is a single celled organism that uses photosynthesis to convert sunshine to chemical energy, and in some cases that chemical energy is in the form of oil. Not crude, but of the vegetable sort. And since algae is abundant just about anywhere there is water and sunshine, we don't need farmland or grow it. In fact it has been proposed to build large "farms" in the desert where it is otherwise barren. The heat and sunshine would be perfect and the gallon per acre yield is between 30 and 100 times greater than crop based biodiesel. Another big factor is that Algae thrives on the kind of gases that are released from power plants and they expel oxygen.

6. Screw Mars. Simple fact, we know more about space than we do about the oceans of our planet. That is not an exaggeration or a fabrication, it is a fact. NASA's budget for 2007 was $16.7 billion dollars. We spend that much just in this country. 16.7 billion. Well we must spend at least that much researching our oceans using a government agency, right? Wrong. Most oceanic study falls to the hands of universities and non-profit organizations. Seventy percent of this world is covered in water, maybe one of the first steps to creating a better world, is better understanding what is in it.

Most of the oxygen on our planet does not come from trees and the rainforests, it comes from the oceans. Plankton, kelp, algae, coral, sponges and the like produce most of the oxygen you survive on. There may be tens of thousands of new species living in the oceans that are yet to be discovered. That includes plants and animals. We know remarkably little about this diverse ecosystem and its inhabitants. The more we understand it the better, because there is a good chance the cure for cancer and other diseases lies in its depths.


I hope you tried to keep an open mind through my little voyage into making the world a better place. I didn't even put in the bullet points on nuclear power, drilling for oil, tidal and wave generators, vertical farms, or hemp and marijuana to name a few. I will assure you though that I have put every effort into bringing you factual information based on science and not opinions or conjecture.

Sources

http://www.solixbiofuels.com/
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4297370/Ocean-census-reveals-how-little.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28411.html
http://www.wppsef.org/landfillgas.html
http://www.epa.gov/lmop/overview.htm
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/cases/ddt/ddt.html
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/1995/103-11/focus2.html
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1367075.htm
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/technology/hydro/tidal-power/
http://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

The naked eye

When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to be exactly like my dad. I wanted to make him proud. I wanted his attention. So when I found out that my dad had gone to IU to study photography and his goal was to be a photographer for National Geographic, I started taking a lot of pictures.

To be honest this revelation had surprised me at first. My dad has worked for ALCOA for as long as I have been alive. He works hard and sometimes long hours and he never really seemed that adventurous or exciting. To find out that when he was younger he had his own darkroom and cameras seemed such an alien idea to me.

I started taking a camera with me when I went out into the woods or when I was camping. Looking for the opportunity to take a great shot. I loved taking random pictures and getting them developed to see if what I had was visual gold. Photography, it seemed, was not a talent that I had inherited. I had no eye for lighting or composition and the only talent I had was pointing and shooting. That is when I got into regular journalism. I was very good at this, but that is another story.

I haven't taken a lot of pictures in the last few years. I have taken some, but they usually consist of my girlfriend or myself standing in front of something. So taking my camera out and actually taking pictures that were interesting to me was quite inspiring. I took pictures that I thought I could use in the future and pictures that I thought were just visually appealing or ironic. This assignment has awakened a renewed sense of wonder at the still image.

I am thinking of taking a photography course as an elective. If anyone knows of one that would work with my major I would appreciate it.

A tribute and a mocking

Beth said I didn't have to do an assignment with paper. Which was good, because I pretty well expended what little knowledge I had in that area. And while I could have spent this week doing nothing I decided instead to both mock and give a tip of the hat to the artist in the video we watched on Wednesday. In fact it seems that throughout this course we have talked about modern art and art in general. I am not an artist, nor would I ever want to be one, but the more I thought about the guy I started to appreciate his work, however I still thought it was a little too hippie for my tastes. I have never put paint on canvas before, so I thought that I should give it a try. I used colors that are very natural such as green, red, blue, black, and gold. Since I have no brushes and painting isn't exactly my forte, I instead opted to paint with explosives. I got some M-150's and an ice cube tray, and the rest is history. But I also wanted a design similar to the things he did, with the curvy lines and such, so I made one. Tell me what you think.

bliss with borders

Let me start by proposing an idea, maybe you should post things like "don't come to class" on the blog as well. That being said I used my time wisely.

After I arrived at class with my Taco Bell dinner and cherry coke and realized I was the only person there, I realized something was amiss. It is not a usual thing that I arrive before everyone else. So I checked the door and saw the problem. Undeterred I sat down and ate my tacos and cheesy gordita crunches, drank my coke and promptly got the hell out of dodge. Where to go and what to do was another predicament.

Aside from what I typically present myself as in class or at work, I am a quiet person who thoroughly enjoys being left alone. Since I live with my girlfriend and my work and school schedules ensure that I do not have a day off, this time is precious to me. I had five dollars in my pocket, and ever since my nephews came to visit I can't seem to find the keys to my apartment so playing the ole PS2 or even walking the dog was out. However it was a gorgeous day.

I grew up hiking and fishing and generally being outside most of the summer days and nights. My first thought was to go fishing, but my poles and tackle box are in the apartment, so that was out. But there is a little church next to my apartment that sits back on a huge lot surrounded by trees. So I drove there, turned off the truck, picked out some good music, laid down in the grass, and let my mind wander.

I have always been the kind of person that has a lot of ideas. Big ideas. Even Earth shaking ideas. I think about everything. My mind is usually a jumble of new ideas and ways to improve old ones. If technical skill, money, and time weren't issues I am positive I could change the world. I have always been one of those people that truly believe that they are here to do something great. Today though my mind was only on one thing, my personal goals. I want to be engaged and married by next year, buy a house by the end of summer, fix my credit before i buy a house of course, get another dog, graduate by next December (2009), have kids, get a career started, etc.

After pondering my course in life for a couple of hours I got tired of the heavy subjects. I watched the sun set on the overgrown field framing the weeds and tall grasses perfectly against a backdrop of the encroaching shadows, I got up off the grass. I looked around and walked into the taller grass exploring as much as I could in the waning light. After finding nothing truly enticing I got in my truck and drove to one of my favorite relaxing spots, Borders. As I often do I made it look as if I was there to purchase something. Perusing books and magazine all the while planning to treat the establishment like a library until they closed.

I got a caramel latte using the last of my cash and found a cozy little nook to sit and read my comics. Yes I said comics. I never claimed to be a cool guy, but we are all geeks to an extent, I am a comic book geek. I read up on Wolverine and the x-men and even managed to finish reading Planet Hulk before store closing. Angela had called anyway and said she was home now so I could get in.

I guess I rambled on there for a minute and no, I don't expect you to read all of this. What sort of fun would that be?

Men of few words are the best men.

I have been thinking about class on Monday and getting back to the concept of letters and words, I thought it was appropriate to post this. I wrote it a few years ago at around two or three in the morning and I still stand by it.

"Congress Shall Make No Law Prohibiting or Abridging The Freedom Of Speech." Hopefully you all know what that is. Hopefully you understand those words. Hopefully you know that our forefathers deigned that Amendment specifically to protect all speech whether it is KKK Nazi hate or your televangelist crap, and it certainly includes profanity.
Words are the greatest invention of modern man. Language is a living thing that is ever evolving into something different. In the 1800's it was taboo to say "breast." Even when ordering chicken people would try to tastefully steer away from that word by saying "white meat." However while that word is no longer offensive, "cock" has had its meaning changed completely. While it still means many other things, the most common usage is referring to a man's cock. And by cock I mean penis.
I have heard some people go as far as to say that when they hear someone using "bad words" they think that person ignorant or uneducated. However, I say that any person who refuses to use a word simply because they are uncomfortable with the way it sounds is a very ignorant and uneducated person. In fact, how can you be uncomfortable with the way a word sounds?
I know what you are going to say next, it isn't how the word sounds; it is what the word means. Okay, let's say you are right. Would this sentence "That's nonsense Harry, I can't believe how you messed that up," mean the same thing as "That's bullshit Harry, I can't believe how you fucked that up." Because if it does then you are basically saying that the wording is meaningless, the tone or inflection of your words are what is important. And if that is that case who cares if I use piss, shit, ass, bitch, fuck, cock, or Bob Saget. If the way you say it stays the same, your tone of voice and the meaning behind the word is the exact same, then aren't you still cussing?
Technically, people aren't telling us to be nicer. We are simply being told to use different words. As if the words are the important part and not the emotions that they convey. And if we simply replaced the curse words with more acceptable words, over time those words would become profanity. It is a never ending cycle, and everyone knows it. It just gives Susie soccer mom in Kansas something to form a petition about because she thinks her child's brain is being corrupted. Basically using her crusades as a way to supplement her underdeveloped parenting skills.
By the way, who decided which words are "bad words"? There are no bad words. Words are great things and wonderful tools. The correct word can sum up an entire paragraphs worth of emotion. If I hit my thumb with a hammer, I am going to scream "SHIT". That one word sums up everything I am feeling. And "profanity" can be used to express more than just anger or pain, it can express joy, relief, surprise, and more.
Some people, however, are offended by swear words. They act as if hearing simple words can bring them emotional or physical pain. All that amounts to is a minority of small minded, myopic, impotent people who try to impose their will onto free thinking individuals. It is the same want the ten commandments in schools, pro-life, no smoking, green peace people who always try to force their ways.
If you don't want to use swear words, that is your right. But the constitution of this country protects individual rights above the comfort of the people surrounding us. I can stand in the middle of Times Square and yell "DAMN DAMN DOUBLE DAMN SHIT FUCK SCREW ABBA DABBA EAT SHIT BITCH FUCK YOU" and not a damn thing can be done about it. Or at least not a damn thing should be done about it.
The problem is that more and more people are stifling the English language and imposing laws and rules that cater to the moral minority. This country needs more freedom, not less. Thomas Jefferson once said "the course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." We don't need laws that censor us. We need laws that protect us from being censored.
A little known fact about me, and one even I have trouble believing at times, is that I am a very smart man. Okay, man/boy. I retain information easily, I can relay my thoughts and emotions very eloquently, and I have an IQ well out of mental retardation range. However I am going to have to bow to the superior collective intelligence of our forefathers who drafted one of the most envied, most copied, well respected constitutions in human history.
And if you don't agree with me, the terrorists win.

I basically got onto this tangent because last night I watched Jesus Camp for the first time. I watched these kids being brainwashed to, among other things, believe that Harry Potter was the devil and only books and music centered around Jesus or God and his teachings were acceptable. Besides the other problems I had with the people in this movie this strikes, and will always strike, a cord with me. While I have never read Harry Potter, it got an entire generation of kids interested in reading and that is good enough for me.

I am the tofu of human beings

Tell a story. This instruction seems easy enough, and in fact it is. Taken at face value this could be a simple assignment that is conceived and completed in a relatively quick and precise manner. Who is to say what a story is? It does not have to be a good story and we are not being judged on the sentence structure or the plot points of our story. I could easily take a previously written short story of mine copy, past and move on with life. But I am going to take this literally. I am going to tell a story, and it will be something that you can experience with the big three senses. My story is really two stories, the first I will write about here and the second I will demonstrate in class.

The first part of my story takes place in the third grade. My teacher, Mrs. Moore, who was probably the first teacher that I had to take a genuine interest in me as a person, not just a student, was very interactive. She would give us puzzles and other activities that helped us learn in different ways and looking back I can still remember the emotions I felt. I used to get so frustrated at school, I would get done with my quiz or busy work and then I would get bored and get into trouble. Being the person she was, Mrs. Moore didn't say I needed riddalin, like other teachers and adults had suggested, she understood that I needed something to do. She would find extra puzzles like crosswords, jumbles, word finds, mazes, etc. in her teaching books and other places and make copies to give to me. So when I would finish my assignments I would have something to keep me focused.

Third grade was the best year of school I can remember. I learned a lot and I was excited about school, this was a big change for me. In the second grade my teacher was Mrs. Tucker. She was the most hated teacher in all of Newburgh Elementary School. She is the teacher that told my parents I needed medication for hyperactivity and that I was not very bright. She and I did not get along and after the second grade I was turned off of school. Mrs. Moore was an educational angel for me and I will always remember her that way.

This brings me to a very special memory I have of Mrs. Moore. One day in class we were supposed to tell a story. She didn't say it had to be fictional or non-fictional, it didn't have to really happen to us. She just wanted us to tell a story. I remember telling a story about going fishing with my grandpa. He used to take us to Huffy Lake on his boat and we would fish with minnows, he preferred the over worms. The story I told was of a time we went fishing and I had a bad day. I fell into the minnow bucket soaking myself. I didn't catch anything for the longest time and I was pissy and miserable all day. I wanted to go home and complained a lot, but my grandpa told me that we weren't going in and to stop being a baby. If I didn't want to fish I could sit there but if I did I could join. After a little while watching my little brother have all of the fun, I asked for my pole back and ended up catching a bunch of fish. I learned a lesson that day and it is still one of my favorite memories of my grandpa.

After the class told their stories, Mrs. Moore told one. It wasn't a true story, it was one she had read in a book somewhere and she handed out a piece of paper and instructions to the class. It was a good story and it was interactive for the kids. I have told this story countless times since then when I used to babysit, when I would talk to kids, during a demonstration speech in high school, etc. It is a perfect example of a story and of knowing something and of remembering something. That is why I will tell the story and demonstrate the story in class.

life is like CHiPs

The more I think about the subject of time and the absoluteness of its existence I get even more interested. As of the moment you read this there is no way to manipulate time. The past is gone and we can not see it with our own eyes anymore, the future is a blank canvas yet unseen. The only way to judge the past is to read the texts and observe the objects left behind. The only way to view the past is with pictures. Many people see pictures as moments of time that we capture and hold onto. But at the end of the day most pictures are incomplete. I don't know how many pictures I have of friends and family and I can not remember where we were, what we were doing or what time or day it was. If a picture is a captured moment of time, and there is no time, what is the picture?

Since I posted this I have continued to think about time and the subject of my project has changed. Ever since the assignment was given I have been thinking nonstop about the concept of time and space-time. I was watching an old episode of Cool Stuff, How it Works on my DVR the other day and they have developed new technology that lets you see air and how it moves. I thought that was incredibly cool and exciting. And then I got to thinking, if you can see how air moves, I wonder if anyone will ever be able to view time? If so, how would it look. So throwing away my inhibitions with drawing and once again going outside of my comfort zone, I drew a sketch of how I think time actually travels around us.


Basically I think that we are constantly surrounded by time. We take this time with us and leave behind small bits of it as we move through space. Ahead of us there is already some of this time left behind by other people and things but we add ours on top of it creating our own specific timeline. I do not believe that time is cyclical and I do not believe that you can travel to the past, there are to many paradoxes, but I do think that you walk on top of the past everyday. It is tricky because you can go to Egypt and stand where the pharaohs stood, you can touch the same things the slaves touched you can see what they saw, smell what they smelled, experience the same things, but you can never be in the same place that they were. Even though you are surrounded by the past you can never interact with it, you can see small glimpses of it but the more recent past covers up all but the most prominent pieces of the distant past. For example, if I put a piece of trash on the floor. You can see it, you will probably still be able to see it minutes or even hours from now, but eventually it will be moved and that particular patch of floor which previously held the trash is covered up by a more recent past and that is basically how that theory works. Just like a river that is constantly refreshing itself.

Everyone understands space is basically XYZ. You can move in three dimensions, but there is a fourth dimension, time. I think that space moves in a constant envelope of time. Larger things like the earth move around the sun in a predictable pattern and pass over the same place they were at this time last year, but as they pass over it they cover up the past they left there. I hope some of this makes sense to you.

Andy Talarzyk, May 19, 2008

No time like the present

On my drive home from class today my mind was racing thinking about time. When you really start analyzing the concept of time you get into a very strange place. Time is intangible, yet you feel it every day. You can not see the passage of time, but you see their effects. My mind started at this place. It is a variable in almost everything and it is the great equalizer. Let me start from the beginning to kind of corral my rambling.

I started with the thought of the present and how objective the passage of time really is. The thing that best shows this concept is sleep or being in a coma. I wonder what it would be like, not that I would ever want to find out, to fall into a coma when you are 10 years old and wake up out of it when you are 40. Thirty years would have passed, your body would have gotten older, you would have gone through puberty and not even realized it and in fact you would probably be balding. You would wake up feeling as if you just fell asleep moments ago. Can you imagine trying to wrap your mind around a concept like that. You would have the mind of a ten year old. You would want to play in the sandbox and swing from a rope in your backyard. IN a way we experience something like this every time we fall asleep.

We fall asleep and in an instant we are transported through time in the blink of a subjective eye. We wake up and maybe only minutes have passed, maybe half a day or longer, but it always feels like the same amount of time has slipped by. You never wake up and mentally think you have been laying down for hours and hours. You traveled through time in the only way man can. You didn't travel through space because your body stayed in one distinct location, but time did pass and you did not see, feel, or pay attention to it.

Which got me thinking about time travel. Einstein had a theory called the "theory of relativity." If you haven't heard of it may I suggest the idea that you shouldn't be in college. Also maybe you should put down the damn video game controller and pick up a damn book. But I digress. The theory has two parts, general relativity and special relativity. Special relativity basically states that time is experienced differently by people traveling at different speeds or in different states of movement. This is exceedingly interesting to me. I got to thinking about the present and how it only exists, in my opinion on an atomic level. Which got me thinking about atoms.

Atoms are what make up everything. Atomic structure is fascinating in and of itself but in relation to time I think atoms are even more interesting. Atoms are in constant motion and when excited they move faster. Boiling water is an example of atoms getting excited and producing heat. But anyway if you could take a single atom and excite it to the point that it was vibrating or moving at the speed of light I wonder what would happen. Would the atom simple vanish? Would it move through time? Would it be forever suspended in a type of limbo where it is moving so fast the eye can't see it and time seems to stand still for it? Which got me thinking that a man is just a bunch of atoms. If there was a way to make every atom vibrate at the same time on a molecular level to where you body didn't vibrate violently back and forth but your atoms vibrated singularly in minuscule distances subatomic distances while keeping the entire structure together would man stop time? Or would he fall apart or roast because of the increased temperature?

Back to the original though of the present though. For me the present does not exist in a measurable space. The smallest increment of time doesn't do justice to how fleeting the present is. Even if you stand still, other things move around you, the earth moves beneath your feet, the core inside the earth still spins, a hummingbird flaps its wings in Jamaica, etc. Time marches on no matter what you do. As I said in class, time exists because things exist. Without living things time would mean absolutely nothing. The smallest amoeba or the largest sequoia is affected by time. Which makes me think about atoms again. Certain atoms must have built in timers or clocks that tell you when time is up. Every single person has a clock in their cells that says that time has expired on that person. How do you reset that clock? Why is it there? Is it possible for science to isolate this particular cellular trait? And if so, can it be turned off? What would happen if you could? Could your body continue to exist? Would time allow it?

Time is how people quantify their experiences, their jobs, everything. How much are you paid an hour? What time is it? How did you spend your vacation? People are constantly treating time as a commodity that they are charged daily. The good thing is that unlike money time is immune to inflation, the bad thing is that you can never buy more of it. As I write my girlfriend is telling me that I need to spend more time with her. So I am. While time marches on you have to know how to spend it and what to spend it on. People make budgets for their money, make one for time. I am going to spend some quality time with my girl. But take this one last thought away. After reading all of this, how much time did it take that you will never get back?

There are a lot of tranny's on campus.

My first blog is a little late, but hey, class doesn't start till 6. Thinking of doing something interesting with an egg is hard, but instead of focusing on that, I am focusing on something else Beth said she wanted us to do, which was try to do new things and really work outside your comfort zone. So this semester I am going to try to do that by being asymmetrical. I am very symmetrical. Very. I get bothered by things that are unevenly weighted or just uneven. If anyone saw my poster you would understand what I mean. So for this entire class, any project I do I will try my damndest to make asymmetrical designs and projects. Which can be hard for me.

So I made this picture of an egg. It is as uneven as I can do on a first try. There is more weight on the right and the egg is on its side which makes it uneven as well. I tried to make something that would be interesting and pleasing to the eye even though it is uneven and unpleasing to my tastes. if that makes any sense.