Oh the north and the South

Well, having moved from one side of this line to another, I have come to a sharp conclusion, the north is not as care free and liberal as I was told, in fact I feel like I have been lied to, and have moved from a mountain based conservative church going god fearing racist community to a corn based conservative church going god fearing racist community. And the worst part is that the mountain based version while vocal suffered from it in a less severe manner. And by that I mean for every nut job, there were a lot of folks who understood the importance of racial issues and knew not to tromp on them. That isn't to say the majority wasn't racist, they just tended to deal with the issue rather than to let it sit and brew.

But having heard stories from Ohio, Massachusetts, etc. all northern states, I have come to the conclusion that the new yorker map of America is probably right on



That being said, I think it important to note, that there is no north and south any more, rather there is "The East Coast Major Cities", The Center of America, and The West Coast. These are the 3 new areas of the United States, and we can really break it down further to "The Coast" and "The Center". The center is composed of highly retard based populations who often vote republican, share religious views, and feel the need to scream that they are patriotic so the rest of the world can hear. They also fear change and hate anything that they don't understand. Meanwhile the Coastal areas, having an ocean to escape on are often the actual targets of attacks against American soil, and feel alienated, highly liberal, and attempt to move away from standard religion (save perhaps Judaism) and the racism is directed at actual foreigners, rather than different races who have been in the United States since its foundation.

With all this in mind, I think the only choice location is clear... Europe, but the problem is that while the United States is working on eliminating freedom of thought, the EU is working on getting rid of freedom of action, with every corner infested with a camera in London, France and other European nations seeing the tension between Muslims and their own citizens building, and the Eastern section of Europe still being the path where everyone else goes through, creating the doormat effect.

Southeast Asia isn't a much better choice. While the economy may flourish, the price is often at the cost of human lives and the novel idea of a vacation, and while I'm all for working towards a greater humanity, I'm fine doing it at a pace that allows for the equal opportunity and human rights preservation. Leaving South America and Africa, which are sadly still shitholes

That is all.

Partison Fuckery

Well I thought I'd take a moment to step away from my bitching and complain about more global issues that are far more worthy of my hatred. You see I grew up in the south, and as such I am used to a pretty one sided perspective of politics. That being said I must admit that things are getting rather nasty this year, far nastier than they usually are. With McCain almost setup to loose (lets face the old fart never really stood a chance against a torrent of angry democrats who are tired of dieing because they didn't have enough money to pay the bills). So despite my usual approach of waiting until the last minute (for which I am so well known for in the past ) I am going to go ahead and say that if the democrats don't' win this election that they might as well just QQ re-roll another country.

That being said it would seem that their lackeys have gotten quite the rap for being racist and bigoted assholes, that is on both sides of the argument. While the McCain camp has gotten down to nothing short of calling Barak Obama a dirty terrorist who is hell bent on taking over the country and somehow making all white people slaves. Oh yes and Arabs are all horrible. Meanwhile the Obama campaign while not quite so much on the bigotry and the hatred, has certainly had non stop fun in picking apart those who don't happen to have all the time to listen to all points of view. By just degrading these people, I believe (personally) that these kind of things are uncalled for, there is no need to simply call these people stupid. The big problem is they honestly don't know the whole story.

Anyway it just shows how politics can never come in the form of something, We in America have this love of dirty politics, because we could care less for the truth. We would much rather just stick to mud slinging than actually listing to C-Span (I mean this is why C-Span still sucks in the ratings, but should you want the truth go no further, they actually just tape the senate for the shits and giggles (that poor cameraman)

Alarm Clocks

LF A better method of waking up. I have been trying for weeks to find a more stable way to wake up (as I'm not one of those people who can a.) set an alarm clock and wake up the first time or b.) wake up when I am supposed to via some natural timer). And the problem is that I am getting odd ours of sleep to begin with (2AM - 8AM and the likes) And it occurs to me that my oversleeping may catch me in a bad spot someday. Now so far I haven't missed anything critical (an early morning math class, a C&IT 176 class or two, but nothing critical) but what concerns me is that if this keeps up I may very well miss something critical. I can't remember how it is I managed to wake up pretty much on time every day for chat state, but I think it had to do with the distance of my alarm clock, in addition to that I seem to have "adapted" to the sound and now even in sleep can flat block it out.

I've been using my phone (as I can change the alarm on that) with some mild success, but I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas on a sure fire method (short of rotating my sleep schedule as right now I can not do that) of waking up on time. It's be an annoyance to wake up and go "Shit, I can't go to class now, they're right in the middle of things" especially as final's and projects loom ever closer to getting started.

I have tried the phone option as I said above, I tried switching my alarm clock to radio so that random music would play, but none of these methods really work. So I am at a loss...

So for the next few days I'll just update you on what does work, and maybe I'll find a sure fire method of waking up to get something done.

Draconic Practices

For a long time I have been an advocate of technology in the classroom, and I have finally landed in a situation in which once again technology is seen as holding back and preventing students from learning rather than providing assistance. This instance of course has to do with Purude Universities policies regarding the use of calculators. You see in draconian wisdom they thought that it would be prudent to simply disallow the use the ever popular TI-83.

Now I would like to stress that I am well aware of the logic behind this decision, you see for all of us out there who simply can't stand the lack of full equation support on a one line calculator there is someone out there who will download a program to the calculator and use it to easy mode their way through courses. My problem with this is that college has never prevented stupid people from reaching the workplace before, and if you want proof of that all you need to do is look at a CS major, half of them don't know what a variable is, they just know who to talk to for homework and a good deal about copying.

Another perhaps more important section of this is that it is helping no one by forcing them to downgrade their mathematics skill, making us use a 1 line calculator won't help us to understand the concept any more than with a TI-83 or equivalent, all it serves to do is cause us to take our sweet time making sure we type in everything correctly the first time and praying that the massive equation we typed in wasn't wrong at some point. With a TI-83, we could look over said equation and simply place the cursor where need be to fix any problems. And if someone does program their calculator to do integration or the likes than all the more power to them, I would think that shows more skill and understanding of the math not less as math is the basic and fundamental point for all programming, so if they are programming the equations in they probably have the core theory down pat.

My point falls back to this draconian practice of eliminating technology for fear a student will not learn, and than forcing students to believe that by letting them suffer through intolerable basic math that they are keeping their wits sharp. All it does is serve to distract from any core curriculum that the class may have been trying to teach because while you are teaching the ideas of an infinite series your students are still trying to get the first 3 nonzero integers in that series to add together with the correct parentheses.

So there you have it, I haven't bitched in a month or two, but this has become an annoyance, and I just thought that I would bring it up

Man I hate doctors

Alright, so I have come down with my bi-annual sinus infection, the problem is that I am no where near home. So I thought to myself, it's a good time to stop by a doctors office so that I can get a prescription written for some antibiotics, take them for 3 weeks, and kindly be on my way. So I scheduled an appointment with the schools in house Doctor's Office (kindly referred to here as PUSH), for something around 10:30. Thanks to a combination of missing the bus and my alarm going off at the wrong time, I wound up waking up around 9:50, for those who don't know it's a 20 minute walk just to get down to the center of campus, plus or minus the time it took to take a quick shower and get changed. Long story short I ended up getting there at 10:35 ish, And thanks to standard doctor like love, my appointment had been scrubbed. So I asked what I could do in the mean time, and they told me that I could either pay to see the Emergency Care ward (way to go American health System), or I could reschedule for another day, due to complications tomorrow is out of the question.

So they set me up with this triage nurse in the meantime to help me make the reschedule, she didn't seem to understand that I really couldn't come in on Friday, and seemed even more frustrated that I was irritated by the manner I was being treated in this whole thing. She proceeded to list a string of medicines which she thought might be helpful (advil cold and sinus, afrin, etc.) for those of you who get these bi-annual sinus infections, you know that those medications will do all of nothing to stop the creature, and that until you start taking rounds of antibiotics, you're pretty much looking at the symptoms for a long time to come (Did I mention that even though I listed the symptoms, explained I am well acquainted with, and know damn well that it's a Sinus Infection, she proceeded to tell me I have a cold). Needless to say right now I'm a little upset, a little tired, a little hungry, and quite miserable from a combination of lonely depression, and a horrible Sinus Infection

Don't get me wrong, I understand that you are supposed to show up 15 minutes early not 4 minutes late, but it would seem to me that if you are that backed up with students, you wouldn't have told me Yesterday (at 4:50 after you had closed normal business) that you have openings from 8-noon. I don't know maybe a 1000 mystery patients called in the night, or maybe I just was so busy being miserable yesterday I misinterpreted the young lady. If you add to all of this the fact that "PUSH" isn't really covered by insurance, you get this lovely mess. Add to all this that all of the local doctors aren't anywhere close to the Bus Routes, (or at least the doctors my insurance covers) and I'm looking at a very long weekend.

You know, how fucking hard is it to go here take this antibiotics for a few weeks. It's not like I'm going to use them to make a meth bomb or sell them on the street, I feel like shit and I want to get better, and I know the quickest way to do that is to take some Antibiotics. And yes I know that doctors are supposed to give a diagnosis of the situation before they can proceed, but fuck, you know after 20 years of this living hell, I think I would pick up on when my sinuses are acting up. It's not a god damned mystery, and even if it was a cold the Antibiotics aren't going to help or hurt, its not like it will destroy my immune system.

People in the field of biology are so wrapped up in this fear of releasing the next super bug, that they often forget what the hell they became a doctor for. It's not to make a quick buck, it's not to shuffle as many human beings through a door at any given time, its to fucking help people. And if you can't be bothered to meet with someone whose fucking miserable and just a bit late, than what the hell can you be bothered with? I mean goddamnit people, I just want to see a doctor so that I can feel better, so I don't have to blow my nose ever 5 minutes.

Doctors within the US health system need to stop going out to play golf every god damn chance they get and try to remember why it is that they made the Hippocratic Oath

Phaser Really Begins to Rant

I ask all those out there to please take a moment and think if there are any charities worth to you.

Ask an Atheist

So I have decided to let people ask me questions about my lack of faith (I see a lot of misconceptions out there). So I put out this video, no script to go with it. But yeah check it out =D