Blog #68

       So, between spots of studying today, I finished my Xenosaga 3 game. It was truly one of the best endings that I've seen in quite awhile. Jesus's disciple and Mary Magdalene basically ended up saving the universe by initiating a dimensional transfer that sucked up the Gnosis. The Gnosis are humans who have rejected the world and have become separate entities in the collective human consciousness. They reject the world and wish for the return of better days. The main antagonist wishes to fulfill this wish and stop the destruction of the universe by starting a cycle of eternal recurrence. He wishes to do so by looping time through the imaginary time that the Gnosis generally inhabit, and runs more-or-less parallel to real time. If he doesn't do so, then the logical conclusion will be that the harmony of Anima, the power of the collective human consciousness, will disrupt the universe until its destruction at the hands of the Gnosis. Jesus's disciple, known in this futuristic time simply as chaos, uses his power of Anima to instead join the Gnosis together, and transfer them to imaginary space to help slow down the destruction of the universe so that people may have longer to figure out how to stop. Truth be told, I barely had any idea what was going on, the game had a hard time getting everything explained since it tried to pack four games all into this one. It made me just want to go read some Nietzsche to figure out where half the references came from. The last boss was humorously named Zarathustra, and it was what was supposed to revert the universe to imaginary time, or something along those lines.

Blog #67

      My life is rather uneventful, because I spend my time either at class or playing video games. I started playing the Persona 3 game that I got, and I do believe that it is a perfect game. My friend started it as well, and is having issues with the localization to American audiences because the translation kept in the Japanese honorifics. I don't find it to be too terrible of an issue, although hearing “-san” sounds just odd in such an English tone. I won't be able to finish the game before I move, which disappoints me greatly. I just met my most favorite character, and I'm going to spend most of tomorrow going over old calculus material so I can remember how to do most of it. Although thankfully, that shouldn't be too much of an issue because calculus tends to build on itself and I still use most of every section in the recent material. I was going to spend tonight editing my analytical paper, but I figured I could do that another time, as this is the last night I'd be able to hang out with my friends before I leave ALL summer. My job is going to require me to move there, and although I'll hate the job, it pays pretty well, and I'll have a lot of leeway in my finances next year. My friend is actually coming to work with me, which I'm pumped about. My siblings both took up my vacant position at the pool, which is surprising considering their age. My fourteen year old sister was put at the top of 160 rejected applicants, and with my opening, she was the first selection. The manager even had the mayor personally confirm her hiring, simply because they though I was such a great worker. I'm not sure I was that great of a worker, I'd just get bored and go pick up trash off the ground at time. Oh, I passed 250 words, yay.

Blog #66

Well, I stayed up late playing video games on my last night before massive amounts of studying and editing and all other finals preparations. So instead of actually thinking about my blog, I'll continue discussing the better points of the Wheel of Time series.

A typical book in the series always has an incredibly epic finale, both to satisfy the reader and leave them wanting more. Usually, there is some crazy release of magic, or an amazing fight, and huge advances in the plot happen. In the ninth book, for example, the main character gathers all the strongest mages and decides to clean the male half of the magic. There is a clash of mages as his friends try to defend him from dark witches as he concentrates on the cleansing. The giant spell is also very interesting, as it requires both a male and a female to do, which is nigh unheard of in the series. The entire ritual takes about 24 hours in the book, and ends with males all over the world reveling in their cleansed power.

Sadly, some of the books are a bit lackluster. The prime example is the tenth book. As I said, the ritual in the 9^th took 24 hours and used all the strong mages in the entire world. Well, the tenth book actually takes place during the 24 hours, and chronicles the political adventures of all the people who really can't use magic. Typically, it focused on one queen. While she is usually one of the strongest females ever, she was pregnant and unable to really grasp the power. So most of the book dealt with her trying to garner strength for the throne while coping with pregnancy. Although not a lot got done, since the entire timespan for the 800-page book was just one day. The eleventh book completely made up for it though, because all the male mages could use their magic freely, and the entire world was struggling to cope with the concept.

Blog #65

      I think I will write about the other parts of Wheel of Time at another point. Tonight I will instead blog about my last hobby, aside from reading high fantasy and playing video games, which is reading manga! Now, most people probably don't know what manga is, and those who do are probably just asking, “Really, Cody, you're such a nerd that you'll blog about something so weeaboo-ish?” Well, yes.

      I can't really remember when I first got into reading it, but I know that watching anime came first. I only really got into that because you can only watch so much Toonami before you get hooked on Dragonball Z (and Sailor Moon, if you're an eight-year-old me). Anyway, some of my favorite online readers recently got into some legal trouble due to increasing copyright issues, so they just up and quit with posting manga. Thankfully, most sites are still up, although they tend to be virus-infested. I tend to use a secure download site that stays mostly legal by removing licensed series. Mostly legal means that posting manga for free is still technically illegal, but is basically considered to be in a grey area of legality due to lack of other means for any non-Japanese audience to get hold of the manga. This means free manga that isn't licensed by poor American companies!

      Sadly, the ones that America publishes are heavily censored or changed to suit a typical American reader. Sometimes, companies refuse to even pick up series due to controversial content. Seven Seas was going to pick up Kodomo no Jikan, which was a fantastic social commentary about pedophilia in Japan (it has deteriorated with the passing of certain recent laws prohibiting it being sold to younger audiences...), but they decided it might be touchy, so they simply passed it up.

      I've recently started reading Hayate no Gotoku. It's really one of the better manga I've read, despite it being of the parody genre. I've really been at a loss for what to read nowadays though, so I just stick to my high fantasy novels and weekly updates. I read Bokurano awhile back, and despite it's very interesting story, it was easily the angstiest plot that I have ever read. I think when a character actually says “Oh no... I have to kill every single person in the entire world,” that's when you should try to tone it down a little.

Blog #64 - Wheel of Time

I'm really not sure what to blog about. I spent most of the day trying to wade my way through math equations that I was positive were right, but apparently just weren't. Stupid differential equations not being really easy. Oh wait, I shall blog about the Wheel of Time! Goodness knows I talk about it enough.

The WoT series is written by Robert Jordan, who I've always previously written about. It's my favorite series, currently thirteen books long. (Spoilers) It's about a group of people, primarily Rand al'Thor. Rand slowly comes into his destiny as the Dragon Reborn, a prophesied male magic user. This causes conflicting feelings among everyone, as the Dragon Reborn heralds the end of days, and all male magic users are known to go crazy with the tainted male magic and destroy everything that they can. At the same time, the Dragon is known as the only hope to defeat the Dark One at the last battle. Due to this, several forces try to manipulate Rand into doing their bidding, and he does his best to outwit them, despite having just been a poor farmer boy. The female magic users are just a snotty bunch, and many greatly fear the idea of male magic users for the first time in three thousand years. Their nightmares come true as Rand sets up a school for male mages, and unbeknownst to many, actually cleanses the male magic source.

My favorite character has to be Mat, Rand's best friend. He just has the most interesting, and yet the simplest, ability of all, luck. He performs all kinds of feat with his crazy luck, like tossing 50 coins and having them all land on their sides. His luck proves to be unlucky at points, as he very often wins too many poker matches and people try to attack him. Most of the time, Mat tends to go around to bars to drink, gamble, and stare at pretty women. He actually got engaged to a short, bald princess that wants to kill him in one of the more recent books, which sadly cut away from his typical womanizing habits. Mat is also a top weapons designer, mostly by accident.

I also like Min a lot. Min, short for Elmindreda, is one of Rand's lovers (he has three, but they're all good friends and completely okay with sharing him, no cheating). Min is a tomboy with the ability to predict the future based on the auras surrounding people. She develops into a notorious bookworm in the series, mostly to try to learn how to save Rand. She's one of my favorite characters simply because of how nice and honest she is. Whereas everyone else plots and schemes, Min simply reads and waits for Rand to finish with his political business. When Rand begins his descent into cold madness, Min continues to be the only person that can still make him smile.

I don't think I've really portrayed the series that well, but I have more blogs and not much interesting going on, so I think I'll have a part two of this.

Blog #63

      So I'm going to blog about what I'm really excited about. I got a new video game! It's called Persona 3. It's an interesting game that my friend got me into, although I'd watched him play Persona 4 instead. It's really unlike any game I've played before since it has an odd mixture of genres; it's both a dungeon-crawler and a social RPG. Basically, you have to fight your way through the top of some tower at night, supposing you aren't too “tired.” During the day, you're supposed to raise your social standing with others, because that increases the power of your spells in the dungeon. It's really fun so far, although I ended up dying because I got the game mechanics messed up and couldn't find an exit. Huge bummer.

      Sadly, I won't be playing Persona for awhile, mostly due to finals and such. I also need to finish Xenosaga 3 first. Xenosaga 3 is basically the perfect game. Although the first one was absolutely fantastic, the second was just dreary and annoying to play through. The third perfected everything that was wrong with the others. Xenosaga is an interesting game, the likes of which I hope to see similar games in coming years. It's mostly a science fiction mix of Nietzsche philosophy (the title of each game is derived from one of his works) and theories of physics from Stephen Hawking. You mix the fantastic sci-fi writing with some cheesy anime-style writing, and you get the script of the game. I rather enjoy games that pull of themes like that, like Eternal Sonata. Eternal Sonata is an odd game that focuses on the music and death of Chopin in a fantasy RPG setting. You can even get little clips that give the details of his life. I have yet to play through it, but I watched my friend play that one for awhile.

Blog #62 - Wasps

      I am really only scared of two things in this world, and they happen to be tornadoes and wasps. I can relate the fears of these two things back to specific times in my past. Tornadoes, the insanely destructive twisters, are from when my mother became overly curious about a funnel cloud. She parked the car underneath a very sinister-looking funnel cloud, and got out of the car. I started freaking out because she wouldn't get back in and drive away. If memory serves, a tornado actually touched down very shortly after we left and destroyed a building. I just can't stand it when the wind starts howling, and then tree limbs start breaking. After that, the power typically goes out and I start to feel helpless. It doesn't help that my family doesn't have a basement, so the little safety I could derive from one isn't there.

      Wasps are just utterly terrifying in their own right. Back when I was younger, I was playing around with my brother at a park, and he climbed over a wasp nest. Wasps proceeded to sting him several times up his neck, and I believe my fear stems from that point. The interesting thing is that I actually really like bees. Bees are the cutest little bugs ever, particularly honey bees. Wasps are terrifying looking. They have awkwardly-sized appendages, and make a weird noise when they fly. Their heads are brutal-looking, and the crawl in such a menacing manner. I keep a can of wasp-killer in my room, and then I keep a can out in my car, just in case the wasps surround one. If they coordinate an attack and guard both of them, I have my brother in a contractual agreement that he will be my sacrifice to get one of the cans.

Blog #61 - Redheads

     So, this could quite possibly be the easiest blog in the world if I just copy-pasted my Commonplace paper, seeing as how the entire paper is written about such a subject. But that would be the easy way out, and I prefer to keep some integrity in my blogs! Well, not really, but at least an illusion of such I guess. So about my concern... I'm concerned about the decreasing number of redheads. According to some studies or something or another, redheads should stop being born after the year 2055 or so. This saddens me because I find redheads to be very pretty in general, and all the guys remind me of Ron Weasley. I'm not exactly sure what could prevent this other than like a redhead breeding program. Of course, maybe there could be some way in the future to genetically engineer the redhead gene into people. Maybe make it into a dominant gene, as opposed to a recessive gene. I'm an extremely dominant person myself, and I'm not sure I have many recessive genes to really pass on. As far back as I can think, my family has had brown hair and brown eyes. Well, except my half-sister, but she got the blonde from her father. In the future, will we be the kind of people who keep genetic oddballs in zoos? That would be incredibly terrible and interesting. I'm curious about the future. I forgot to do the last two blogs because I was freaking out about my car. By the way, if anyone found some keys with a green keychain and beads that spell “Catfish” please tell me, as I'd like to have my keys back.

Blog #56

Since I moved around a lot, and I'm a bit socially awkward, I just have a small group of close friends. They are pretty much divided into two groups, and only a few people travel between the two groups. In one group is my friend Dyllon. Dyllon is a self-proclaimed fourteen year old girl, as he follows pop culture closely and gossips quite a bit. He listens to a lot of punk music, but is also the reason I got into Paramore. We have similar tastes in video games, and his hair is at least as long as mine.

Brandon is my juggalo friend. He's part of the group that Dyllon is in. Brandon has the odd hobby of reading up on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms; he could at one point give the details of nearly 300 different officers in the dynasty era. He's a pretty chill guy, and the main reason that I'm into Twiztid and Atmosphere. We have plans to go to the Gathering next year!

Spencer is the friend I share all my weeaboo tastes with. He's part of the other group, which tends to be a bit more anti-social and nerdy. If either of us ever find a good manga, we tell each other and instantly go check it out. Sadly, he moved to an apartment and has completely stopped hanging out with the friend group.

If I had a best friend, I suppose Montie would be it. Montie is part of the anti-social friend group, which meets every Saturday night to chill and play games like World of Warcraft. He has the same taste in books that I do, and we can spend hours and hours discussing the Wheel of Time series. Although all my friends tend to be smarter than the average person, most of them have done a cost-benefit analysis and figured that getting an easy degree at a low-cost college would be much more worth it in the long run. This has led to none of them going to OSU, much to my dismay.

Blog #55

      I have several favorite places, mostly depending on my mood. Typically, I'd have to say that my room is my favorite place. It has all my computers docked in it, my television, and most of my gaming systems. It has my bookshelf as well, although I'm not typically a fan of buying books. I keep blankets over my window to help facilitate sleeping during the day. When I'm in my room, I'm usually laying in bed, either on my laptop or reading by lamplight. My room is my comfort zone, quite possibly the only place I can sleep in. When I moved elsewhere, I greatly missed the comfort of this room, which my brother tried to take over, rather unsuccessfully.

      Otherwise, my favorite place really changes. My father's old computer room was a fantastic place. I spent a lot of time in my preteen years playing Runescape there with the oddly fantastic smell of tea and fig newtons. For reading, I believe that my favorite place is the beach. The beach is one of the few places I don't listen to music as I read, as the typical sounds of the beach are relaxing enough for me.

      In fiction, I have a place that I just enjoy reading about. The Ireland that Nita Callahan experiences in the fourth book of the Young Wizard series is definitely the place with the best feel. The author really puts a lot of effort into describing the majesty of a rural Irish area, which she does well because I'm fairly sure she lives in such an area.

      On a side note, tonight was my last night of work, since I quit due to having a summer job lined up. This means that I can finally grow out my goatee again! I am kind of curious as to what became of my coworker who took an 8 day vacation and dropped out of college because she was 100% sure that the world was ending on the 21^st. I rather hope she doesn't kill herself, but I guess I'll never really know, eh?

Blog #54 - Maybe a bit obvious

Story Number One:

So I moved down south near the end of my high school career. It was an odd part of North Carolina, rather rural to be honest. The kids in my school were fairly nice people, and it was thankfully hard for them to be openly racist due to the large percentage of minorities in our school. Despite this, several accounts of simply amazing stupidity arose, and I will tell some of the stories that I witnessed and see if you believe them. During civics class (I had to re-take some lower level courses in order to graduate, because Ohio let me skip them to move onto advanced courses), we were discussing the election of Obama. When discussing the president's somehow debatable ethnicity, one girl raised her hand and exclaimed “I don't understand why everyone keeps talking about how Obama is the first black president. He wasn't, Martin Luther King Jr. was.” In Science 9 (why I had to take Science 9 even though I'd taken AP Chemistry, and was in AP Bio, I will never know), we had to track a storm front through the United States. Our teacher told us to name two states the front was currently in. The kid beside me turned at me and asked, “Cody, what is a state?”

Story Number Two:

I once saved Middle-earth. See, my uncle gave me this cool ring on his eleventy-first birthday, and then some old guy appeared. The old guy was a friend of my village, and was better known as a wizard. He said that the ring was a source of evil and that we needed to destroy it, so he sent me and a few of my friends to destroy it in a mountain. We met some cool people along the way, such as a king, a dwarf, and an elf who could walk on snow without making tracks. Anyway, after a lot of walking, we managed to elude an evil eye on a pedestal and eventually toss the ring into the mountain. After awhile, some birds saved us because apparently the ring made the mountain go berserk with lava.

Story Number Three:

I was driving on my way back up from North Carolina during a blizzard. My father had warned me very carefully about driving on ice, primarily because my great-grandmother had died on a patch of black ice. Unfortunately, my car was a piece of junk. I couldn't turn my car off during the entire trip, because the starter was effectively dead, and it had taken me three days to even get the thing to turn on. The trip is a total of 450 miles to my home in Newark, Ohio. As I hit Virginia, the snow started coming down so hard that I began to worry. News reports had told me that the eastern states had been getting a lot of snow recently, and that some areas in the mountains had several feet. Because I was first trained to drive on ice before regular driving, I was fine driving. However, when I hit the West Virginia border, my engine began to make a strange noise, and my RPM would drop to 0 very slowly. I quickly exited the highway and found a gas station. My car died completely about halfway in the road, halfway in the station. After several tries, I managed to get it into the station completely. When I asked where I was, I found out I was pretty much 220 miles from either home of mine, exactly halfway between. The blizzard was so bad in this area, the gas station had no more gas to give to people because the gas trucks couldn't come to refill the gas. So I was stuck, hundreds of miles away from home, no car, in a blizzard, in a gas station that wasn't open all night. Fun times indeed.

Blog #53 - Music

      I suppose that the word that comes to mind as I sit here and write this is the word “music.” This choice was probably influenced by the fact that I'm sitting here listening to music as I type up future blogs. My current choice of music is... well, I'd rather not say. It's not a band I particularly like listening to, but it's just so fantastically angsty that it's amusing. Music has always been a huge part of my life, and it's just everywhere nowadays.

      Throughout high school, I was always lauded for my musical ability. I started band back in intermediate school. The euphonium was my first instrument, although I really wanted to play piccolo (but I was told that I had to go through flute first, and I said no, because a flute is a girl's instrument, according to my eleven year old self). As I got into high school and joined marching band, jazz band, pep band, concert band, and anything I could get my hands on, I started trying my hand at other instruments. Due to lack of other actual euphonium players, I was always first chair. When I tried out trombone for jazz, I took a year watching the seniors blow away everyone with their skills, then succeeded them as first chair for jazz (although I wasn't the best... Our top trombonist could just play one mean fourth trombone). I also tried tuba/sousaphone for concert and marching bands. After spending a year under the tutelage of the most amazing tuba player I've met, I became pretty good. The year after that, she had graduated and the second chair (a thug who was oddly amazing) took her place. After he got expelled, I was giving the daunting task of being the section leader of the low brass for marching band. I failed at that pretty badly, in many aspects. One of my members was expelled for pulling a knife on someone while we were at a football game. I was a terrible teacher and couldn't teach the other tuba player how to play at all, so he was simply kicked out. The two euphonium players were both recruits from other instruments, and I could barely teach them how to read music, let alone play their instruments properly. The trombones were pretty independent, and were more under the charge of the trombonist field commander than mine, so that was pretty okay.

     When I entered high school, I also gave a try at choir. Freshman year, I was a new kid who basically had to learn all the steps from our amazing upperclassmen. They graduated, and the choir fell into the hands of the sopranos. As sophomore year came about, I was good enough to try for the show choir (that says nothing at our school though), and even got into honors choir. I was chosen as the leader of the tenors, which was a terrible thing. First off, I'm a baritone, but we just had a complete lack of men who could sing with any decent range. Second, I'm a terrible singer, but among the tenors, you could say that I was the cream of a bad crop. I moved away from all that my senior year to a school were the musical program wasn't nearly as extensive. I basically played in the marching band, and not much else, mostly because that's all they'd really let me do. It really killed me having so much free time that I wasn't filling by dancing, singing, or playing for people.

      Music is just fascinating I guess. I mean, it has such an effect on mood, and comes in so many different styles. I really enjoy listening to so many various genres. My parents were classical fanatics (my middle name is Amadeus, my brother's is Wolfgang, sister's is Mozart!). Playing music while reading really helps to even further block out the outside world. Plus it makes those long drives so much more bearable. Recently, I've had the most current Twiztid album on loop. They've taken a different spin than they usually do, focusing on more emotional issues than the horrorcore associated with them. Although I enjoy their horrorcore music just as much, their new album is still great. Definitely one of my favorite bands, right up there with Scatman John, Paramore, the Pillows, and the Flobots. I actually knew about the Flobots way before they were popular, because I have friends who in Colorado who frequent the underground music scene. Scatman John... I'm sad that he's dead, his music is the most cheerful, light-hearted music that I've ever listened to. I also love Pomplamoose, a Youtube-based band that just has two amazing musicians in it.

      Oh, if you're wondering why this blog is so long, I mostly just like talking about how good I am at something, if you couldn't tell. I'm also procrastinating on studying for my math midterm. Thanks music, for allowing me to go off on a tangent about pretty much anything I want to write about for nearly half an hour. But alas, I really need to go study. Also, if you got all the way here past my pretentious, pompous writing, kudos to you.

Blog #51- Comp Science and Engi

     I am (pre-)majoring in computer science and engineering. Basically, computers have a lot of potential, and I like working with them, so it seemed like a good idea to go into a major focused on them. Best of all, it's one of the several majors that leads into what I would like to focus on after graduation, which is nanotechnology.

      I also want to major in biomedical engineering, as it also leads into nanotech (for medical purposes), but I'll have to drag my grades up a bit for that. I took some classes at a branch campus when I was 14, and although I did well in some classes, I didn't do so well in other courses. I mostly wasn't used to how a college works as compared to how middle school classes worked, so I ended up not turning in much homework (I didn't know that the teacher was even collecting it!) Apparently the only reason I even passed Psych 300 with a D because I managed to set the curve on most of the tests. Not to mention my grades last quarter were terrible, but I learned how to not pass my limit during the week of work and school, and I'm now actually able to study for classes and not sleep through exams!

      I'm also going to try and minor in Japanese, mostly because I want to study in Japan at some point. Either Japan or Australia, although Australia has some fantastically disturbing animals that I'd rather just avoid. If I somehow strike it rich, I'd also like a home in rural Ireland. Ireland just has the best scenery in the world, in my opinion at least.

Blog #50 - Robert Jordan

      I want to meet Robert Jordan (that's a pen name though, his real name is James Oliver Rigney). More than any other dead person (besides Jesus, but hey, I'll do someone besides him), Jordan is the one person of whom I want to ask several questions. See, Robert Jordan is the author of my favorite book series, The Wheel of Time. The WoT series is supposed to be 12 books long, and has been going on for over twenty years. Jordan had been suffering from declining health for some time, and swore to his readers that if he died, the series died with him. Needless to say, when I first heard the news that he died a few years back, I nearly had a heart attack myself.

      Thankfully though, Jordan had decided to leave the series in the hands of Brandon Sanderson. Jordan left several notes about the series, and had about 50,000 words of the twelfth book already written (he managed to finish the eleventh before his death). Although Sanderson has done a masterful job at keeping the feel of this epic high fantasy series going. Sadly though, he hasn't kept up with Jordan's humorous ankle and spanking fetishes that were always appearing throughout his series. Despite all this, I want to meet Robert Jordan and ask him any details that he didn't leave behind. I want to ask how he would've wanted it written, and whether anything differs from his vision of the series. Although thankfully, the last book has been split into three different books. The final installment of the series will be released in early 2012. I'm looking forward so much to the conclusion of what is the most epic fantasy series I've ever read, and dreading the massive ennui that will probably hang around me for weeks afterward.

Blog #49

      Well, most of my dreams are incredibly boring. Boring to the point that it's almost depressing. Even my nightmares aren't interesting at all. My dreams are so lackluster that they put me to sleep. For example, I actually had a continuing dream at one point. The first dream involved me just reading a book. Nothing exciting, just me reading a book that I really enjoyed. I wasn't too happy when I woke up because I didn't want to keep reading. The next night, I had the continuation of the dream. In the next installment, I was telling my friend about the book. We always recommend books to each other, so it was an easy conversation to dream.

      A similar dream is the one where my brother got lost in a blizzard. That was basically just a set-up, because I stopped caring as soon as I went looking for him. Then Draco Malfoy joined me and the entire dream was basically Draco and I just joking around and discussing the newest Harry Potter book (it was definitely an exciting enough event for me to dream about).

      My nightmares follow a similar trend. See, I have an issue where I don't like stuff being hidden from me, or not being able to figure out why something weird is happening to me. In one of my nightmares, every time I closed a door, a grey screen would close over the door. It bugged me because I couldn't figure out why a grey screen would appear. Basically, I woke up cursing about grey screens and fearing that one would appear again without me knowing why.

      Truth be told though, I don't remember my dreams very often. Although since my sleeping schedule is now mostly based off of naps, I often have slight dreams where I go to sleep, because I'm tired and not sleeping enough. Indeed, my dreams just aren't interesting.

Blog #48

      There is this type of Japanese honey bee that I find utterly fascinating. See, they're these little bees that sometimes have their nests invaded by some kind of monstrous wasp (I despise all forms of wasp). Anyway, when the bees notice a wasp coming along, they will hide in the nest, making it look nearly abandoned. The wasp will then enter, and promptly get surrounded by about 500 of these bees. The bees will start to vibrate their wing muscles and heat up the area around the wasp. The bees can take temperatures of about 2 degrees C higher than the wasp can, and therefore they heat up to 1 degree over the wasp's limit. The high heat combined with the high levels of carbon dioxide kill the wasp, preventing it from started a raid on the hive. Now see, that entire process just boggles my mind. I can't believe that insects are born with the kind of instincts that allow them to pull off such a unique and precise kill. Although I'm a fan of bees (they're so adorable), this kind of thing is almost frightening to think of.

      Otters also fascinate me, although it's more a fascination with how cute they are. There is simply nothing more irresistibly adorable than otters playing around in a stream on a sunny day. Like watching a crab scuttling around on the sand, I can spend quite awhile just observing how otters play around and just generally act (although this is at the zoo, and after about 20 minutes people start staring). They're so playful and energetic, and yet graceful and lithe in the water.

Blog #47

      This topic feels personal to me. I'm not particularly interested in blogging about it. But, points are points.

      The first girl that I ever liked that actually meant anything was this girl in high school named Kelly. Basically, she was a new girl at school, having transferred in earlier that year. I got to know her through all the musical programs we were together in. At first, she was just in choir and show choir, but through the persuasive efforts of basically everyone, she also joined band. She was a fantastic dancer for show choir, and an amazing singer. I was the tenor's leader, and she was in charge of the second sopranos. She also eventually began to lead the pit section of the band, and I was in charge of the low brass (I was a pretty fantastic musician, best instrumentalist in school... but I seemed to have lost most of my talent when I moved, and I have no idea why). I was widely considered the smartest kid in school, although I'd typically end up reading instead of doing homework/tests/quizzes/assignments, and she was the person with the highest grades otherwise. Unfortunately, most of our time spent hanging out was in the after school musical stuff, because she typically wasn't in the more advanced courses that I was taking. Kelly was immensely popular, being bright, cheerful, and (in my opinion) cute.

      Anyway, she started dating my best friend and then I moved and I didn't have a means to contact anyone. So I lost contact with her and basically everyone else from school, then moved and didn't find a single interesting girl in my new school. And thus the story of a one-sided crush comes to an end.

Blog #46

      I do believe that I discussed my major pet peeve in the grammar blog. Therefore, I will instead blog about the peeves that get me otherwise. Although grammatically I also hate people who type without using any punctuation or putting any break in between sentences it gets really annoying to read like this.

      I suppose I've developed a major peeve about drunk drivers recently. Working night shift around several bars, we get plenty of drunks coming through every night. Not only are most of them just terribly rude, they typically have no idea what's going on, where they are, or what exactly they're ordering. Worst of all, they're just straight up all driving drunk! The cops don't even care, they'll sit outside our store just to make sure that we're not dealing drugs (hate my job), and let all these drunk drivers roam around town. I suppose that I'm a little touchy about it, having heard so many stories like Katie Flynn's, but still, it's a pretty loathsome thing to do. But really, please don't order food when you're drunk.

      But I suppose that's more of an issue than a peeve. A better peeve to write about would probably be people who buy tattered jeans. Admittedly, my sense of fashion is, well, non-existent, but I think it's just a dumb idea to spend money on those. But hey, if you're going to waste money on clothes, better those jeans than crocs.

      Lastly, it bothers me when people post depressed-sounding things on (social network site of the year), and then say that they won't say anything about why. It's angsty, it's annoying, and it's just rather boring.

      Apparently I get annoyed at a bunch of things. I should relax more.

Blog #45

Sigh at Blogger being down this morning, and me not being able to post this on time because of it.

My family really only goes one place, so I suppose I'll just blog about vacationing there. We always go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. It's typically a yearly thing, and most often for two weeks at a time. It's been a tradition ever since my stepfather went there with his mother all his life. I pretty much just enjoy chilling at the beach. The water only provides limited amusement, but my favorite part is just throwing up an umbrella and reading on the beach. I'll burn hours at a time just reading on the beach. The serene sound of the waves and the smell of the seawater just provides the perfect background.

I think the most meaningful time was the time when we were there for Hurricane Gustav. The rapid-fire tropical storms and hurricanes that came while we were there provided a very interesting experience. We had to go outside wrapped in towels to keep from getting cut up by the sand. If I remember correctly, that's also the year when all the sea cucumbers kept washing up onshore. I found what I believed to be a pink one, but when I put it in water, it unraveled into a sea anemone.

I travel to North Carolina a lot, because my father lives down there as well. Because I moved in with him for awhile, North Carolina is basically my second home. Unfortunately, I don't get along with a lot of people down there. The people in the town where my father lives all have the same political views, and they're all the exact opposite of mine.

If I could remember much about it, I would've blogged about my trip to Canada. My grandfather took me to an island where some Indians (what do I call them? Native Americans? Is that for all of them in North America, or just the United States of America? Because it's Canada... Nope, pretty sure it's all of North America) had once lived. He even gave me a book that had a story involving one of particular note, a pity I don't remember any of it.

Blog #43

                There are really two gifts that I received that were just plain fantastic.  One was more practical than the other.  The more useful gift was definitely my GPS device.  I got it for Christmas before winter quarter started.  See, I’m the kind of person who gets lost terribly easily.  Most notably, I’ve managed to get myself lost less than a block away from home while driving to the supermarket on the corner.  While driving to North Carolina, I also took a wrong turn and only figured it out when I ended up in Kentucky.  I constantly carry a map of campus around with me, since I have trouble finding my way around.   Having a GPS device in my car has saved the day many times, and has allowed my continued transportation to and from Columbus every day.

                The other gift I received was my beloved laptop.  5 years ago or so I got it for Christmas.  I had been using the family desktop for all my gaming and homework needs, and it was bogged down by the misuse of my Luddite family members.  Once I got my laptop, I found an entire new world found within the coding of my computer.  Everything from online networking to software programming, my laptop placed it all in my hands.  Naturally, I also became an avid computer gamer, although I’ve moved on from such games as Runescape (I’m lying).  Since then, I’ve gone through a few  cheap laptops, and currently own four or so computers that I keep in my room.  I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a nerd, but you can’t deny that having four computers set up isn’t cool.

Blog #42 - I loathe McDonalds

      I have had two jobs in my time. One was utterly fantastic, the other is the bane of my existence. Working at the pool was my first job. I got it as a summer job to help me pay for band activities. It was incredibly fun. No, I was not a lifeguard, I was a concession person. The sun, the cheerful people, and the lax managers really made for a good time. Best of all, I only had to be active for 15 minutes of every hour. Because of the downtime, I started bringing a book, and could get upwards of 300 pages done in a single work day. Sometimes I would finish my book, and become incredibly bored. Due to my lack of desire to socialize with my coworkers, I basically asked the managers for odd jobs to keep myself occupied. Due to this, I became known as a hard worker, and the managers always praised my work ethic.

      My other job is at McDonald’s I work there simply to pay for gas and books until I move to Columbus next year. McDonald’s is the worst place I could ever imagine, and continuously frustrates me. I work night shifts, which seems like it would be devoid of customers. This isn't true, mostly due to the fact that we are in the middle of a pentagram of five bars. These bars supply us with a steady flow of customers throughout the entire night. Despite the number of customers, I am the only person in the back of the store. That's right, I am only person cooking food and preparing sandwiches. Sometimes, we can beat dinner shift in the number of orders served, and I'll be the only person doing it all. Worse than that, I also am the person in charge of doing all the dishes (there are a lot due to the dinner-breakfast change), the sweeping/mopping, and various other cleaning duties. If another shift is unable to finish all their dishes or duties in time, they simply leave it for me to do, because third shift is apparently “lazy, and don't work much anyway.” So even on nights where I constantly have two dozen sandwiches to be made onscreen, I still have to fit all that into the night or I get written up.

      McDonald’s wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for my coworkers. I always figured that most of them would be poor college kids like me who were just holding a spot there to pay for various things until they could settle in somewhere better. I was wrong, some people only have enough skills to make careers at McDonald’s My coworkers who work windows don't have nearly the workload I do, and sit around and talk while I try to rush to get my job done. While they could easily be helping me, they would rather spend time socializing, and I have often been forced by a manager to add her (only female managers) duties onto mine so she could go call a friend on the phone. Most of my coworkers are so bored that they follow conspiracy theories to keep themselves interested. Just last night I had a coworker try and show me definitive evidence that Obama is a Muslim Kenyan anti-Christ twin-brother-of-Osama-bin-Laden. Another was trying to tell me exactly why Lil Wayne is the current leader of the Illuminati. While they may somehow be right, I have a hard time finding any credibility in most conspiracy theories.  For this reason, I spend all my time with headphones in, and my two weeks notice is going to be turned in next Saturday.

Blog #41

     I am a huge fan of Japanese culture. Admittedly, I'm pretty much just a weeaboo. A weeaboo is someone who mistakenly believes they know a lot about Japanese culture due to an odd obsession with anime and manga. Although I have never gone to such lengths as putting on cat ears and going around screaming “kawaii!” at everything, as several kids at my school did. Despite being a bit of a weeaboo, I do like to think that I know a bit about the culture. I am trying to minor in Japanese in order to further my knowledge of the language and the culture.

      The culture itself is just appealing to me. As far as I've been able to gather, they're just flat out more polite than us crude Americans. I may be a bit old-fashioned, but I've always been a fan of that kind of behavior. They even have a completely different way of speaking in a polite setting, and use it when referring to customers and such. I suppose I simply grow weary of the crassness of the culture I'm part of.

      On the other hand, I don't think I could really go over there. I have severe issues in dealing with crowds and if I went to a bigger city, I think I would probably have a heart attack. Columbus is bad enough for me, especially when I'm mostly used to traversing places at night when nobody is around (I work night shift). I may be able to make it in some of the more rural areas, but that just doesn't seem as interesting.

Blog #40 Family members

      My brother has always tried to be exactly like me. From my (incredibly poor) sense of fashion to my taste in music, my little brother has tried to be a Cody-imitator. For example, when I stopped wearing jeans, because denim is incredibly uncomfortable, he instantly swore them off to, much to the dismay of our mother. When I got a poster of a band that I enjoyed, he got the exact same poster, albeit a smaller version.

      Of course, he is 3 years younger than me, and this stopped about a year and half ago when I moved away. Now, he has started trying to get into the scene scene, and has started wearing denim again, although in the form of skinny jeans. Instead of all that, now I have him read books that I enjoyed, as most of our other tastes have completely split as well. Recently, I got him to start reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. For those of you who enjoy high fantasy and haven't read it, I highly suggest that you do. It is my most favorite fantasy series of all time, although the Sword of Shannara holds a close second.

      My sister is kind of similar, although in a different sense. Whereas my brother was like me, and then split off, my sister used to be distant, and has recently become more like me. Five years younger than me, she is steadily becoming the sheltered recluse that I often like to title myself. I'm introducing her to the various aspects of nerd culture, most notably video games and anime. Despite my numerous attempts to get her to read, she refuses, stating that “books are boring.” This only goes to show that she is only a half-sibling, as a full-blooded sibling of mine could never utter such blasphemy.

Blog #39 - Grammar

      Well, I suppose one of my biggest grammatical issues would be with redundancy. In trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about, I often make things much wordier than they should be. Of particular note is my issue with saying “Four a.m. in the morning.” I mean, I already said a.m., isn't morning implied?

      Of course, there is one grammatical error that other people make that gets on my nerves more than anything else, and I will interrupt people in the middle of anything to correct. That is, when people say “I could care less,” I get rather frustrated. That's saying that you do care, and thus have the ability to care less than you currently do. The correct way should be “I couldn't care less.” That way, you are stating that you have no caring for it, and therefore could not possibly care and less than you already do. Please don't do this people.

      Wait, we're supposed to do research on a rule? I'm not sure how I'm supposed to studiously study on redundant redundancy in my written writing. Oh, apparently I also use redundancy when I use acronyms, like PIN number or ATM machine, which makes sense.

      Another thing that will sometimes mess me up is when I use text-speech in my academic papers. This usually only happens after a long summer of being on my computer. Even then, I typically write just as impeccably as I do usually, except for three things. I don't capitalize often, I don't put my apostrophes in contractions, and I say “u” instead of “you.” Of these, my writing programs auto-correct capitalization and contractions (which I really shouldn't use in the first place (ha, shouldn't)), but sometimes I let a “u” slip by and my teacher will correct it with a smiley face. Although that really only happened in high school, and I think I have yet to pull that off in a college paper.

Blog #38

Losing the Feeling of Loss

The death of Osama Bid Laden: a reason for jubilation throughout America, but how desensitized does it show we are that we are celebrating the death of a human? Indeed, Bin Laden was the reported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and most will agree that he deserved nothing short of a swift death. Despite all this, is it ever right to rejoice in the death of a fellow man? It all goes to show exactly how little we care about death anymore.

Although it's not the joyous partying that occurred in the case of Bin Laden, other examples are still incredibly prevalent in modern news. The thousands of deaths in Libya hardly register to most of us. I've even heard quotes along the lines of “Blasted Libyans, now 'cause of them, gas prices are through the roof!” This rather callous state expresses a sentiment felt by many people. The individuals without faces mean nothing to us, and even the cause and death of however many hundreds doesn't compare to the loss inside our wallets. We are truly becoming a cold world.

Second opening:

In a postmodern world where apathy is the hip way to go, is it getting to the point that we no longer care about death? We are able to watch the news about a fatal car crash and think to ourselves, “Hmm, I wonder if traffic will be able on my way to work this morning?” The lack of emotion is a rising trend that started to develop with more news coverage, and communities not being as closely-knit as before. Whereas before, when most deaths were of someone that a person knew, now we witness the deaths of thousands of faceless nobodies.

But alas, the aren't faceless nobodies, they are the same as us. When someone dies, they (generally) leave behind family or friends to mourn for them, to feel the impact of their loss. Should we feel grief as well, that our race has lost another member to the ever-victorious reaper? Asking people to care about it all would be asking the impossible. It would be illogical to ask people to express so much overwhelming grief. Yet, we can try to not look at deaths with such cold eyes. For the sake of its humanity, mankind needs to feel for itself a little bit more.

Aye, the endings of the opening are rather corny, but they'll be more of a lead-in in the actual paper. Also, the comments on my title amused me quite a bit, as it seemed like it just alternated between “Grabbed my attention!” and “not very attention-grabbing...”

Blog #36 - Hypothetical situation

                It is incredibly hard to come up with a hypothetical scenario of something that happens all the time in a myriad of forms.  Could I say “Well, imagine that some country in Africa is constantly perpetuating genocide of innocent people, and hardly anybody pays much attention to it?”  No, because that’s not hypothetical, that’s the truth.  Could I say “Imagine that thousands of people died in a natural disaster, but people are more concerned about the price of gas, as evidenced by the more news articles relating to it?”  I cannot do that either, because that is the truth as well.  I cannot go with an exaggerated scenario either, because people do overcome their apathy after a certain point.  I don’t think using a hypothetical situation would be useful in a paper for more suited to the prolific tragedies introduced by reality.  But for the sake of the blog, I shall try.

                For a time, let’s imagine that Russia has several more Chernobyl-like accidents, and is essentially wiped off the map of the globe, along with most of its inhabitants.  The resulting radiation has the potential to spread to America (this may or may not be scientifically correct, but it’s all for a point), and could endanger our water supply slightly.  Which do you think people would be more concerned about, the millions of lives lost in Russia, or the small threat posed to themselves?  If there was no threat, people would be more likely to care, although only maybe, but even the smallest hint that something could endanger them, and people instantly start ignoring the outside world to focus on their own safety.  In this sense, we see how truly little people care about the lives of millions of people who they hold almost no relation to.

Blog #35

      The entire point of my paper is to get people to realize the apathy that is so prevalent in the world today. Truth be told, that is simply the only purpose of my paper. I am not going to take a stance and try to get people to side with it, because doing so would be unreasonable. I would basically be asking people to start caring about everyone who died and tell them to take on an unnecessary burden. The entire situation doesn't particularly bother me, what bothers me is that people don't exactly realize that it's going on. Thus, my paper is about remedying that lack of realization.

      I suppose one purpose would be to get people fired up about it, although I wouldn't be getting them fired up over one stance over another exactly. They could make that decision themselves, if they so desired. My paper's only objective is to get a point out there, and let people analyze it as they see fit. Maybe I should take more of a stance on it, and try and persuade people how to feel. If my paper seems to be lacking an argument, or doesn't have a clear direction, I suppose I could take up the stance that tells people that they should care more. Regardless of what stance I take, the point of the paper will have already gotten across, hopefully, and people will start to look at themselves and society in a slightly different light. In doing this, maybe some people will choose to look at death with a heavier light.

Blog #34

      Due to the nature of my paper being all about feelings (or in this case, a lack thereof), an appeal to emotions. This pathos seems to be the logical approach to most arguments concerning death, and especially our reactions to it. It should be particularly compelling to college students, who always seem to be the ones who take opinionated stances on moral issues such as this. Because they usually care about these issues, the ideal approach would be to try and get them fired up about it.

      Sadly, pathos is a style that goes against my general writing habits. My writing tends to be dry, and I do my best to appeal to reason using my admittedly limited rhetorical abilities. As such, my writing will still have a strong stance in the use of logos. This is mostly to prevent me from changing my writing style too radically. Truthfully, it will probably help my argument. As I'm not taking much of a stance to get people fired up about, pathos can only go so far. Because my only point is to get the situation realized, logos will be able to have more of a role than if I tried to get people to take up my side.

      Admittedly, my view of college students is a bit biased, so they might not be the emotional ethics-lovers that I make them out to be. As such, an argument relying too much on pathos would most likely be ineffective, as college students also love logic and reason. As Commonplace stated, the best method is indeed a mixture of the different ways to compel people.

Blog # 33

My proposed idea is relevant to college students because of our current surroundings, and the environment we grew up in. With the advent of realism in films and games, we are the first generation to witness such a digital reality. As such, we should be the ones to confront the moral dilemmas that it produces. However, I don't intend to go into how it should be faced, I just wish to make the situation known. Although desensitization to death seems to have been a growing phase throughout the past hundred years or so, it seems to be escalating a far more rapid pace than it had been. The students in college now are old enough to objectively view the world around them, and are therefore able to realize what kind of situation they are placed in.

All in all, my paper is relevant because the problem is the worst with our generation, and we are the ones old enough to think about what it means. Although it may continue to get worse, I believe it may be in our best interests to address the desensitization now. Personally, I'm rather concerned about it, because I can only imagine what would happen if it got worse.

This idea is also relevant due to the current events that I discussed in my previous two blogs. As political and military events seem to be keywords of interest among the ever-curious college students, they should wonder what effect it has on them as well. With all the recent deaths and the controversy that surrounds video games, college students seem to relate to them in some fashion or another.

Blog #32

The paper about desensitization to death is timely due to all the modern events that are going on currently, as well as the culmination of the surroundings our generation was raised in. Movies like Lord of the Rings (I don't watch a lot of movies, haven't seen anything recent since Despicable Me) have casualties in the thousands, and we only mourn when Boromir dies. The deaths are on the side, they have no impact, seemingly no meaning. We watch movies like this all the time, and yet you never see anyone cry in the theaters when Nameless Soldier A gets shot while the hero escapes. Nowadays we have things like Call of Duty and Halo. Call of Duty is a game prominent in American gaming culture, where people can get online and shoot each other. Killing isn't just a side event in these games, it's rewarded. People get excited to kill, and get bonuses and benefits from killing large numbers of people. How is one expected to care about something that is trivialized into a game?

The news that shows up only helps to prove the point. The media was all over the Libyan conflict for quite awhile. Although I'm sure that it had many followers, I noticed that people cared very little about the casualties and events of the conflict, and were much more concerned about the rising gas prices. No sorrow for the people dying, people were instead grief-stricken about the effects on their wallets. Worse yet, after the Japanese tsunami hit, headlines barely mentioned Libya for several weeks, focusing on the event that could produce bigger numbers. In all honesty though, there was quite a response to the deaths in Japan. Thankfully it seems that enough people dying can elicit some emotion in these times, but the number simply seems too high.

Blog #31 - Caring About Death

     I decided to do my paper about desensitization to death. By desensitization to death, I am referring to the ability with which we are able to watch and hear about people dying with absolutely no emotional repercussions. In a real life setting, the media constantly reports the deaths of people in a very calm setting. A newscaster can talk about how many thousands of people died without changing tone from discussing the latest football games. Even when discussing specific deaths, the news tends to focus on the implications of the death, as opposed to expressing any sorrow for the loss.

      The fictional setting may be an even greater culprit. Movies nowadays show people realistically getting killed by the hundreds. Unless it's a main character, people simply don't care about the deaths onscreen. In War of the Worlds, we watch several people get turned into ash as the main character tries to escape. I may be different, but I found myself not caring and only rooting for the main character to escape the death ray. Video games are also a potential cause for desensitization. As shooting games try to reach the highest level of verisimilitude, we are actually able to feel the gun in our hands, and kill people onscreen over and over.

      Although this may seem like a terrible situation, would it be better if it wasn't true? To express guilt and sadness over each death may be a huge burden in today's world. In older times, it was more acceptable due to the close-knit communities, where you relied on the other people and were able to feel a greater loss. Nowadays, where we are in contact with all 6 billion other people, it would be emotionally devastating to feel for all of them. But despite that, is it really okay to look at death with such uncaring eyes?

Blog #29 - Nerds

Four-Eyes No More: The New Nerd

By Chris Hofer

http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/commonplace/index.php?q=node/3793

This was a rather amusing article about nerds. Because I classify myself as such, this article piqued my interest. The author states that nerds no longer have glasses. While only a few months ago, I was able to point to myself and agree with that statement, I no longer can. After spending several years completely glued to either a book or a computer screen, I have become incredibly near-sighted. Now I have joined the ranks of the bespectacled nerds that the author claims are dying out. In general, I think his assumptions are based on the wrong side of things. He claims that nerds are becoming more socially accepted. From all my experiences in multiple high schools, this isn't quite the case. What's becoming more socially accepted is technology. Having a cell phone is a social must, as well as computer access to get on Facebook or Twitter or whatever kids are using nowadays. Also popular amongst guys are video games, particularly shooting games. Well, to be honest, it's mostly just Call of Duty anymore. Nerds are still socially outcast, and can often be picked on by the “cool” kids. Don't believe me? Then you've obviously never had a cup of soda thrown down your tuba at a football game. The stigma of being a nerd has lessened slightly as technology continues to become an ever-important part of our lives, but there still remains a strong social barrier that allows the cool kids to express their inflated superiority over some group of people.

Blog #28

Colbert[ican] Politics: Red, Blue, or Purple?

http://www.mhlearningsolutions.com/commonplace/index.php?q=node/5581

The article I read is about the supposed politics of Stephen Colbert. Seeing as how I'm a bit of a fan of his show (much bigger fan of Jon Stewart though), this article seemed appealing. Stephen Colbert, the wacky newscaster who doles out humorous criticism across the entire political spectrum. The author goes in depth about Colbert's character and the persona he uses to help make us laugh. He goes on to state that Colbert has neither a conservative or liberal bias, being part of “purple” politics. I generally have to disagree with this statement.

Colbert generally takes an over-exaggerated conservative approach in his episodes. This helps make fun of of liberals through the use of blatantly sarcastic remarks about them, and makes fun of conservatives by stating their ideas in a nearly nonsensical fashion. In playing the conservative side of acting though, I feel that he's acting almost like a counter to the similarly-styled, and yet liberal-leaning, Jon Stewart. Jon is less sarcastic than Colbert, and has a much more definitive liberal feel. Despite all this, I feel that Colbert plays the conservative role more naturally due to having an actual conservative leaning himself, even though he can point out when others are being ridiculous. One such example is during my favorite Christmas episode, where Jon and Stephen were both irate to the point that their sarcastically bitter remarks lost a lot of sarcasm, and began to simply be bitter attacks toward government actions at the time. Colbert is simply good at presenting his news with only a sarcastic bias, and doesn't let it control what he presents.

Blog #27 - Introduction

      Creating a super soldier is a dream for any military that has existed. A super soldier is a vague term that implies that someone has extraordinary abilities in areas that soldiers require. Superhuman endurance and tactical knowledge are important, but the ability to fight is the most desired. A super soldier is typically depicted as having tremendous skill with firearms, unmatchable hand-to-hand fighting abilities, and excellent stealth tactics. A popular example is Captain America, one of the more popular comic book heroes. Captain America gained his identity after a frail man took some experimental concoction; the serum gave him nearly all of the abilities mentioned above. Captain America, with his newly discovered powers, fought comic representations of America's enemies for years to come.

      The serum that the frail young man took in has some questionable implications that are of much importance in the actual development of super-soldiers. Notably, it was an experimental drug, which means that it was not at a final stage, and could have had disastrous results instead of superpowers. The man took the serum willingly, giving his consent and knowledge to the project. However, this is rarely the case with the actual development of super-soldiers, as tests are dangerous and often performed on unwilling or even unwitting subjects. Any “serum” that is tried often can have disastrous results, and even within America has led to the death of test subjects. To go further in depth on these issues, we'll first focus on another fictional setting, the Firefly movie, “Serenity.”

Blog 25

My specific real world connection is the testing of Frank Olson. Frank Olson was a military scientist who had hallucinogenic drugs tested on him by the CIA. They did this as part of the MKULTRA Project, which was a project designed to create mind control, which could lead to the ultimate soldier or assassin. While I would have preferred a situation where someone like River Tam was actually made, this has never been the case. Therefore, I am doing my situation on one of the most notable tests in an attempt to create something like her.

Frank Olson was a bacteriologist in the army. He was given drugs by the CIA against his knowledge. After taking these drugs, Lux of Erowid claims that Olson fell into a depression. After some time, Olson reportedly killed himself. News articles of the time state that he jumped from a 10^th story hotel window, probably due to his recent depression. Olson's son didn't believe this answer, which was only supported when the CIA admitted that they had given Olson LSD as part of their project. His son believed that Olson was (almost ironically) assassinated in the opportune fashion of dropping someone out of a window. Although the exact details of his death will never be revealed, the fact remains that Olson had been drugged by the government in their attempt to further their project.

Although a bit more roundabout than an ideal situation, the drugging and subsequent death of Frank Olson exemplifies the ruthlessness of the government in trying to create the ultimate assassin. Incredibly similar to the situation of River Tam (albeit with lower technology, and not as directly), the death of Frank Olson demonstrates the terrible methods involved in creating the ideal killer.

Blog #23 - This is for hens to laugh at

      For my scene (which I admittedly did not blog about), I chose the one where River Tam sees the subliminal message in the advertisement, and goes on a killing rampage. At first Mal watches in shock, and seemingly some amusement and fright, but then attempts to grab his weapon. When Mal grabs his weapon, he and River have a short standoff before Simon Tam came in and shouted a phrase that put her to sleep.

      Probably due to the sense of detachment usually felt when watching movies, the lack of importance of the people in the bar, and the general amusement of watching a 90 lb. Summer Glau rip through dozens of men, I did not really feel the underlying terror that this scene really should instill. This scene isn't quite the first to show her assassin abilities in action, but is the first that shows her going on a complete rampage, killing without provocation or difficulty. This slaughter of innocent people shows the true terror of what a super soldier is capable of. Not just the terror of the slaughter, but also of who the super soldier is. However hilarious it is to watch this child engage in the ultimate bar fight, its just evidence of the terrible testing and training that she went through to achieve that state. The R. Tam Sessions help to back up most of these arguments, detailing some of her experiments, and giving an early example of her ruthlessness as she kills her interviewer with a pen.

      Of particular interest is the control of River exhibited throughout the scene. From the commercial advertisement that had the code to send her into the super soldier bar fighter to the code phrase that Simon shouted to put her to sleep, River has codes implanted within her to control her. This is very relevant to a point that Lux made in his article about needing control over the perfect soldier/assassin. Slightly paradoxical, as you want complete control, but complete control means lack of initiative or ability to operate outside of parameters. The codes seem to be a good compromise that allow for a strong degree of control anyway.

(Just a small note, my title is the translation of the phrase that Simon shouts)

Blog #18

      The Nazis were infamous for their desire to create the perfect people. The Aryan race, as it was called, was the race of ideal men. Blond haired, blue eyes, many people know of the basic characteristics that Germany desired, despite the leader of the movement looking very different himself. Seeking to complete what they considered to be Nietzsche's Ubermensch, the Nazis systematically wiped out those they considered to be the opposite of their ideals. Although that part is well-known, little is known about how the horrors of how they tried to genetically engineer even more Aryans.

      Josef Mengele was a scientist who tried to discover a way to produce Aryans. Accurately named the Angel of Death, he specialized in his experiments on twins and children. His experiments were some of the darkest of the period. “Children were castrated, had limbs amputated, or their eyes injected with chemicals in an attempt to make them turn blue. One twin would be injected with typhus, then both would be killed and their organs compared.” (Bogod, 1155). Although some of them lack a clear purpose, having their eyes injected with chemicals has an obvious motive. If Mengele could find a way to successfully turn someone's eyes blue, that was one step closer towards perfecting the master race. Truly a more brutal method of trying to create a superhuman to be a supersoldier, the methods are only a step beyond the CIA's covert testing. Whereas the Nazis did kill several times as many, the CIA nevertheless did have a couple casualties.

Blog #17

      Dr. Ewan Cameron, a university researcher, had been doing experiments that attempted to restructure personalities. He did so through a repatterning process that made use of the psychedelics that were so abundant in science of that time. His main goal with this procedure was to cure schizophrenia by eliminating multiple personalities. The CIA saw a different opportunity in this.

      The CIA, ever seeking more covert methods to gain advantage over the Russians sought to create the perfect assassin.An ideal assassin would be similar to one written about in a popular 50's fiction novel, and thus called a “Manchurian Candidate.” According to Lux of Erowid, “. . . A 'Manchurian Candidate' is someone who has been brainwashed to carry out covert actions such as assassinations and sabotage against their will, without having the awareness that anything is amiss.” (n.p.). If this assassin was created, the CIA could have people be killed without the killer knowing that they did it, an ideal situation. Such a killer could be theoretically produced using personality restructuring, so the CIA began to secretly fund Cameron's work as part of their MKULTRA project. The MKULTRA project was a project based around the use of drugs to create a form of mind control. Cameron's research constituted a potentially perfect method for developing mind control, and thus being able to make the Manchurian Candidate assassin. Cameron was fairly unsuccessful in his research, as he could neither completely submerge a personality, nor restructure a personality without having the old one resurface. This reflected the overall outcome of the MKULTRA project, which was unable to accomplish any of its major goals.

Blog #15

Faden, Ruth. ACHRE Report. Pittsburgh: U.S. Government Printing Office, Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html>.

      This article contains further information about the MKULTRA project. The MKULTRA project was an operation by the CIA to try and create a form of mind control using various drugs and psychedelics. Unsuccessful and illegal, most of the records about the project were deliberately destroyed in 1973. As opposed to the tests performed, this article mostly talks about the legal ramifications of the testing.

      Due to the fact that drugs were tested on unwitting participants, the government faced a lot of legal issues after everything was said and done. Unfortunately, the government is largely successful in manipulating the government, and therefore could avoid some of the lawsuits that seem like they should have gone through. Some participants even died as a result of the testing, most notably Frank Olsen. In some cases, because the performed tests on military personnel, the CIA was able to get by with calling it duty or service, and the Supreme Court even agreed. The MKULTRA tests were related by several people to the testing done by the Nazis, and how America blatantly ignored the results of the Nuremberg Trials. This leads to an interesting tie-in between the Nazis, America, and the events in Firefly. All three were trying to create something for warfare. The Nazis were trying to complete the perfect soldier by genetically engineering people to be Aryans, America was trying to develop mind control to help win the Cold War, and the Alliance was trying to build the perfect assassin, as well as create something that could pacify planets.

Blog #14 - Annotated Research 4

"World: Pattern of Terror." TIME 24 Aug 1970: n. pag. Web. 8 Apr 2011.

This article is simply a collection of some of the more major incidents of various political assassinations that took place in Latin America in the 60's and 70's. Most of the assassinations are of ambassadors of various nations. The killings themselves seem to primarily be done by guerillas. Not much reason is given for these assassinations, except one mention of it being done based on “war crimes.”

The 60's and 70's were infamous for the assassinations and disappearances that took place in Latin America. These assassinations seemed to be similar to the situation in Firefly, to some extent. In the movie, the Operative is trying to hunt down the crew and fetch River Tam. Cold and willing to kill, the Operative ruthlessly hunts them down, and murders several people who get in the way. This is all done based on the escape of River Tam from an Academy that was training her to also be an assassin. Her brother helped her escape from the mental torture that they used to train her. In helping her get out, he managed to steal valuable secrets that could compromise the integrity of the Alliance. Although not for the same reasons as the Latin American assassinations, they are done in a similar vein. The Operative does fail in the end, but several crew members end up dying. The crew then manages to broadcast the history of the Reavers throughout the system, forever damaging the reputation of the Alliance, but not taking it down.

Blog #13 - Annotated Research 3

Finucane, Brian. "Enforced Disappearance as a Crime Under International Law: A Neglected Origin in the Laws of War." Yale Journal of International Law 35.171 (2009): 171-195. Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/35-1-finucane-enforced-disappearance.pdf>

This article focused on enforced disappearances, particularly done by a government. Most of the article details the Nazi regime (similarly to the drug based articles), and the Night and Fog operation. In the Night and Fog operation, people were forcibly taken away, and presumably killed or detained in a concentration camp until their inevitable death. The detainees had no way of contacting their family to let them know what happened. This led to fear and horror among the families, who never received information about where the person went. The journal article talks about the difference between war crimes and and crimes against humanity, and how the Nuremberg trials classified enforced disappearances as both. Such acts are obviously war crimes in a military situation, because the people are being targeted and not protected in any fashion. The main point is the classification as a crime against humanity due to the mental terror inflicted upon the families. The criminal implications of enforced disappearances outside of military situations was also touched upon, and how there could be individual trials and consequences under those circumstances as well. This relates heavily to Firefly, as the Alliance is trying to kill off River and Simon Tam. Although not quite making them disappear, it is obviously an undercover effort, and has negative consequences when it is exposed. The assassination of the Tam siblings to keep inside information safe is similar to the Nazis using enforced disappearances to quell resistance. The familial implications are mostly lost in the Tam situation though, as it appears they are staying undercover from their parents as is.

Blog #12 - Annotated Research 2

Lux, . "MKULTRA: Psychedelic Mind Control and Its Legacy".." Erowid Extracts. N.p., 27 Mar 2009. Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/war/mkultra/mkultra_article1.shtml>

This fascinating article details some of the actions of the CIA under the MKULTRA project. During the Cold War, the U.S. tried to find various ways to use mind control to gain an advantage over communism. Seeing psychedelics as having the most profound effect on the mind, they strongly went with that route. MKULTRA was basically a covert operation that tested LSD and other psychedelics on unwitting participants. In doing so, the CIA hoped to gain a truth serum, or a form of mind control. Seemingly, neither was obtained. Most of MKULTRA was illegal and violated ethical standards. In one project, prostitutes were paid to take men to a certain building and drug them with LSD. The testing had negative effects at points, even driving one man to apparently kill himself. This article relates strongly to the Firefly movie. In the movie, the Alliance tests drugs on an unwitting planet, also with their hopes set on a form of mind control. Similarly, the CIA tested LSD on various participants, although with a much less severe outcome. Although the participants weren't turned into Reavers, the LSD tests did seem to provide much of the background for the psychedelics usage of that time. Thankfully, MKULTRA was shut down in the early 70's, although the impact that it had on the government's reputation was minimal, and no charges were pressed against the former operatives in the project. This seemingly relates to the Alliance, as its only damage proved to be a bit of a reputation loss.

Blog #11 - Annotated Research 1

Bogod, David. "The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments: Forbidden Data?." Anaesthesia 59.12 (2004): 1155-1156. Web. 8 Apr 2011

This article is all about the experiments that Nazis performed on its prisoners. Considered to be some of the worst scientific testing to date, this article primarily focuses on the hypothermia experiments performed by Sigmund Rascher. People were often submerged in cold water, or stranded naked in a blizzard. As they froze to death, their vitals were recorded, and most were left to die. This article goes on to describe several other experiments as well. Several chemical tests were performed on women, men, and even children (particularly twins). They were pumped full of various chemicals, and had the results recorded, even in the most obvious of tests. I chose this because I find it to be similar to the testing that Alliance from Firefly did on the planet of Miranda. The Alliance tested a new pacifying drug on the planet, and ended up killing over 99% of the population. The small remainder became the feral Reavers, and now terrorize the solar system with their disgusting deeds. It provides interesting insight as to how such scientific data is treated, and somewhat why the Nazis performed these tests. Regardless of how cruel the tests were, most were seemingly done in an attempt to “better” one group of people. The hypothermia tests were done to help freezing pilots; the chemical tests were done to try and genetically engineer a master race. This is similar to the reasoning that the Alliance seemed to have about testing the drug on Miranda; they wanted to make a drug that would calm people down. However, both had a very poor approach in the application of their tests.

Blog #10 - Research

I want to research illegal government operations, primarily those revolving around scientific testing and forced disappearances. Not only do I want to find out more about certain cases, I want to find out the reasoning behind why it went on. This comes from the questions posed in the Firefly movie. It is mostly about scientific testing, and the negative consequences of it. Thankfully, a lot of governments that were particularly well-known for engaging in these practices have been overthrown, and this information released to the public.

Bogod, David. "The Nazi Hypothermia Experiments: Forbidden Data?." Anaesthesia 59.12 (2004): 1155-1156. Web. 8 Apr 2011

Faden, Ruth. ACHRE Report. Pittsburgh: U.S. Government Printing Office, Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html>.

Finucane, Brian. "Enforced Disappearance as a Crime Under International Law: A Neglected Origin in the Laws of War." Yale Journal of International Law 35.171 (2009): 171-195. Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.yjil.org/docs/pub/35-1-finucane-enforced-disappearance.pdf>.

"World: Pattern of Terror." TIME 24 Aug 1970: n. pag. Web. 8 Apr 2011.

Lux, . "MKULTRA: Psychedelic Mind Control and Its Legacy".." Erowid Extracts. N.p., 27 Mar 2009. Web. 8 Apr 2011. <http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/war/mkultra/mkultra_article1.shtml>.

Blog #9 - Serenity Prospectus

I plan to do my analytical research paper on the Firefly movie, Serenity. Although I have yet to watch the movie, as I wish to see it after I finish the series (this weekend), I have read enough about it to decide what I want my paper to be about. The movie focuses primarily on the corruption of the government through two aspects. The leading cause of the conflicts in the series are caused by illegal government testing. They tested a new drug on a planet, leading to the Reavers, and they tested on River Tam, which she escaped from. This leads to the second point of corruption, as the government tries to have River assassinated. Although Joss Whedon has stated that the Alliance is meant to represent the American government is some fashions, I want to research the actual practices of governments in this field. This will be rather difficult, due to the fact that it's not a common practice for such information to be revealed, but there have been enough practices of the sort throughout history to glean enough information. On who and for what reasons are scientific tests done without consent? Who is assassinated by the government and why? Firefly provides us with a government that does things on a wide scale, and we can see the darker undercurrents that move some of their actions. While it's not so obvious in the real world, I think it raises a bunch of interesting questions. A good scene to use would be one where they discover how the Reavers were made.

Blog #8 - Getting myself lost and confused in the philosophy of post-modernism

Here is another example of more postmodern nonsense. Trying to use irony to describe reality doesn't result in reality being ironically different, it just creates seemingly philosophical contradictions. Saying that a metaphor has the ability to be more real than whatever situation it is referring to is, in my opinion, not feasible. A metaphor can help to present a intangible idea in a more tangible sense, this is true. However, the reality of intangible ideas, such as fears, is that they exist as something intangible. Putting them into a more tangible form does not make them more real, it simply presents them in a fashion that can be more easily understood and represented, and sometimes even related to. Doing so does create a fantasy, a fictional setting in which it does become a reality. It is a reality within the fantasy, but the fantasy is not real within reality. Metaphor can bridge the gap between reality and fantasy, but is unable to ever set fantasy above reality, despite what we may perceive. For example, the “M” from McDonald's seems to represent a hyper-reality where one can obtain fast food that is quick and always the same. This is not true, but we seem to associate the “M” with such things nevertheless. Thus the fantasy is presented, and within the fantasy presented by the “M,” the food is fast and identical.. Within the fantasy of the arches, that is all reality. However, the arches truly promise nothing, leading to the argument that the hyper-reality is what we perceive, and is thus more real than what actually constitutes our reality. This is false, as the consciousness does not make up reality through its assumptions, but the reality of what McDonald's truly is makes up reality. Although the “M” does not promise us fast and identical food, it is nevertheless connected to McDonald's, although a more realistic one. The reality is that the “M” is related to a realistic McDonald's, where the food is finite and contains minute differences. The “M” only represents a metaphor to the perfect McDonald's food, and even should we believe in the fantasy, it becomes obviously false once you get the food and reality sets in. The “M,” while being a metaphor for the perfect McDonald's, is unable to ultimately change our perception of the end reality of our food. Therefore, any hyper-reality is really only an illusion, and cannot last in the truth of our actual reality. In any fantasy, a metaphor can indeed become real. As the article describes it, Buffy takes metaphors and makes them more literal in order to better express something can be hard to communicate otherwise. These metaphors create an amusing fantasy, often ironic, to express something hard to express in reality. This fantasy where our fears are literal and tangible is a hyper-reality, an illusion similar to the perfect food promised by the “M.” However, the reality is that fears aren't tangible in the same way the food isn't perfect, and what's found in the confines of fantasy can't change reality, despite how we may perceive it.