Final Muse

*Chimes* Space, the Final Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Although we are just a not even close to becoming a full-fledged interplanetary species, unlike the United Federation of Planets, we may soon become one. This weeks' muse is Mars.

On Monday I watched the first installment of MARS on National Geographic. For anyone interested in "space-stuff," this show is pretty cool. They mix a fictional future of the first humans arriving and living on Mars with a documentary of the current state of space affairs. This is just the latest in my Mars craze. In late September I watched Elon Musk's momentous announcement for plans for a trip to Mars. And for a while I've been interested in the possibility of terraforming Mars.

We can thank capitalism and the private sector for jump-starting our venture to Mars, and this blog. Anything run by the government is incredibly wasteful, I like to rag on the government, including NASA. That's what's good about the beginnings of the private space industry with companies like Spacex, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. Capitalism makes the space industry cheaper and progress quicker than the in public sector. The increasing privatization of the space industry may in fact bring the first crew to Mars and by the 2030s compared to the 2050s with NASA.

But what's the draw to Mars? We want to start a human colony on Mars, sure. But why?
1. Curiosity (To boldly go where no man has gone before.)
2. To preserve humanity

So, curiosity. Didn't curiosity kill the cat. Yeah it did. It will kill some humans too ... eventually. We want to know if there was ever life on Mars (life may have started on Mars). And we want to know if we can survive in such an inhospitable place.

It's pretty frickin' inhospitable. For starters, there's negligible oxygen (compared to Earth). We have to produce our own oxygen, we have the technology. There is no water, we have to condense it into liquid from the humid martian atmosphere, we have the technology. As for food, it would be MRE's from Earth and crops grown through hydroponics. You wouldn't be able to grow anything directly from the soil of Mars unless the perchlorates from the soil could be extracted. Because there is no magnetic field on Mars, there is no protection from dangerous solar radiation, another thing we need to figure out. We might be able to create a martian magnetic field to hold in the atmosphere and protect us from radiation. The other topic that's often forgotten about is the lack of gravity on Mars. This significantly weakens bone and muscle strength, significantly, and makes eye-sight get progressively worse. A blind astronaut is not a good astronaut.

We also want to start a colony on Mars to preserve humanity in the advent of a catastrophic event like an asteroid colliding with earth. Or in case we destroy the earth with our unsustainable environmental practices.

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So let's say we somehow manage to start a self-sustaining colony on Mars. We now have the opportunity to start re-engineering the planet. We first need to make Mars warmer, it generally ranges from 100 below zero to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. We're pretty good at destroying planets with global warming. One theory to warm the planet involves using satellite mirrors on Mars and the sun's hot rays. If we concentrate the heat on the poles we could start melting the polar ice caps on Mars. This would eventually release water vapor into the carbon-dioxide rich atmosphere. And we would be able to keep this water vapor with a strong enough magnetic field. Both of these greenhouse gasses would help hold this heat. And in 100,000 years Mars would eventually reach Earth temperatures. Once we start to get liquid water we could then introduce microbes capable of surviving in a Martian environment, reproducing and putting oxygen into the atmosphere, yet another greenhouse gas. And eventually we would have precipitation on Mars. This is all speculation and nearly all science fiction.

Courtesy of Daein Ballard

So there are some high hurdles human-kind must jump before a Mars colony is a remote possibility. Lots of people are going to die. But it will be interesting to see if we can do it. But, it definitely won't be as easy as its made to look in the movies and on television. It's not as simple as let's go. 3...2...1 lift-off. Because science ... is not that advanced yet. If Mars doesn't become the next Roanoke, it will be amazing to see what else we humanity can do.

Anyway thank you for letting me collect my thoughts on Mars. I hope that wasn't too awfully boring, I commend you for reading it to the end.

I guess this is good-bye.


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At the end of the day.

I've been hearing this phrase an awful lot lately. I don't like it because it's arbitrary and meaningless. May the muse commence:

at the end of the day
something that you say before you give the most important fact of a situation

I understand this to mean the idiom its just several words strung together that people say before the most important fact, without a reason. That's really stupid. Why not just say I'm going to give the most important fact now? If you're going to use an idiom it should mean something. The idiom should be changed to have a meaning. I'll use the rest of this blog to help develop this meaning.

Let's start by looking at some art. That's something I don't say very often. You don't want to be in my company at an art museum.

Evening: The End of the Day (After Millet) - Van Gogh

This painting shows a man who has been in the field all day harvesting millet. It looks like this man has worked so hard he is a little bit weak in the knees. I can see the difficulty he's having with his coat. And you can imagine this man will strain his back just to pick up his hat. And in the morning he will do it all over again. 

In my quick search for "at the end of the day" I found another cultural example of this phrase and it is rather fitting with its Van Gogh connection. We'll play a guessing game.

Their names both start with 'v'

They both have "go" sounds in their names

They're both French

They're both artists

They're both dead

I'm talking about Les Miserables, people, the famous French epic written by the famous French writer, Victor Hugo, that was turned into the famous, originally French, musical. 

The original premiered in Paris in 1980. One of the songs written for the musical was "La Journée est Finie." The english version is a loose translation of the original and the title is "At the End of the Day," but the argument still holds. Here's an excerpt from "At The End Of The Day": 

"At the end of the day you're another day older,

And that's all you can say for the life of the poor.
It's a struggle, it's a war,
And there's nothing that anyone's giving.
One more day, standing about, what is it for?
One day less to be living.
At the end of the day you're another day colder,
And the shirt on your back doesn't keep out the chill.
And the righteous hurry past,
They don't hear the little ones crying...
And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill.
One day nearer to dying!"
Les Miserables - At The End Of The Day Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

These works are the essence for what "at the end of the day" should mean. After toiling in the field, after fighting for subsistence, little else matters. You wipe your brow and continue.

If you really want to use the phrase "at the end of the day" I propose that the idiom is only used in the context of gruelling hardships, not when regarding something as "easy" as doing some chemistry. At the end of the day, you just have to think about the mass of the molecule. This doesn't work. Of course I'll listen to what she has to say but at the end of the day, it's my decision. This doesn't work. I can't think of an example of the use of the phrase at the end of the day based on my definition, or I would share it. 

So if you're going to use an idiom, use one with a meaning and know this meaning. Or just swap it out with a simpler word or more original phrase.

Hakuna Matata

You know what gets people fired up dead elephants. And for this one-time offer I will throw in dead baby rhinos too. Whoa, whoa, whoa where’s he going with this? Hold your zebras (genus: equus). I’m not lion this should be a good blog. Less boaring than last time.

You all remember Cecil

The lion that was shot twice by the Minnesotan dentist. Once by an arrow and again 40 hours later by a bullet ending the life of poor Cecil. That dentist paid $55,000 to kill a lion. I'm not going into whether Walter Palmer is guilty of committing a crime or not, that's not the point. The point is that there's serious money in the trophy hunting industry.

This money is used to protect these animals from poachers. These poachers kill thousands upon thousands of savanna animals each year. These poachers sell parts of these animals across the planet. Making "benign" dentists pay thousands of dollars to animal conservancies to kill the most violent and territorial rhinos on the preserve, that kill other rhinos, is a pretty nice business. This money then gets used to pay for game guards, buy vehicles, and start new conservancies. In some African countries, governments puts a portion of this big-game money into the hands of citizens to create an incentive not to kill the pests, that kill their livestock.

Using money for killing animals to protect them from poachers. This is where I want to go about the marijuana debate. Some people say marijuana should be legalized and that the the tax revenues from its legal sale would pay for any rehabilitation of addicts, its kinda related.  So I'm going to finish this blog with an analysis to see if that's actually feasible.

Let's think about just Colorado, so we have some statistics. Let's assume that every time someone commits a marijuana related offense must go to rehab. Offenses include possession and public consumption, but not DUI, its hard to know how long ago the marijuana was consumed. Its a pretty arbitrary assumption. It'll just give us an estimate to compare to the state revenue from legalization. So, we can look at the number of marijuana related offenses in Denver from the Drug Alliance March. Then I will extrapolate that number to the entire population of Colorado to give me an estimate of people requiring rehab in Colorado.

The population of Denver is 680,000. The number of marijuana related offenses in Denver in 2014 was 1537. So about 0.2260% of Denver's population requires rehab. Colorado's population is 5,457,000. So if Denver is completely representative of all of Colorado, then 12,330 people in Colorado would have needed rehab in 2014, again its just a guess. Each year this number is decreasing, so there would be less than 12,330 people who need treatments annually in the coming years.

To find out how much this would cost, I'll look at the average rehab cost, and multiply it by the number of people that require rehab. The average rehab cost is $4,500 for 3 months. So to pay for 12,330 treatments the state of Colorado would have to take in at least 55.5 million tax dollars each year for all these people to receive one treatment.

For good measure, lets 100% of these pot-heads don't commit any crimes for 3 months but then commit the same crime, go through the same treatment again and are clean for last 3 months of the year. So I'll multiply our 55.5 million by the 2 treatments just to see if this way-overestimate could potentially work. Doing this I get 111 million dollars a year. Looking at marijuana tax data from the Colorado department of revenue, the state of Colorado raked in 135 million dollars from the sale of marijuana.

So I'm fairly certain this plan would work, all the revenue could support a total of 30,000 treatments.

I'm not sure how much these people contribute to Colorado's economy, but I'm fairly certain it would decrease Colorado's productivity if you take more than 12,000 people out of the economy each year. And treatments don't work if the person being treated is hostile. There are a lot of problems with this plan. So even if all of these people aren't treated Colorado, they can still give treatments to people who want them. Doing this, there would be money left over for strict health education programs to keep people from marijuana to begin with.

November

I really want to talk about politics today. The awful decision that has to be made in November. I think it's important enough to talk about. If you have strong feelings about either candidate I would suggest leaving now. I have a couple of questions about the whole race. My goal in this blog will help me and you make a decision about the bad, awful, horrific, oh-my-god-he didn't-just-say that candidate(s). Just for reference I'm a centrist. A sadly confused centrist.

The first question that keeps me up at night is, how can anybody say they support either Secretary Clinton or Mr. Trump for president? There really are people out there who support either candidate enough to put signs in their yards. This election shouldn't be that black and white, nothing is. This election season the choice is between a racist, sexist, disabilitist?, supposed successful billionaire and a calculating, ambassador-to-Libya-killing, email-deleter, seasoned politician. If we examine these traits we'll see that they're both bad people.

Let's start with the Donald. His major problem is morals, it doesn't seem like he has any. He conned people into paying tuition for Trump University. The lawsuit went to trial by New York Attorney General but time ran out on the case. He said laziness is a trait in blacks. He said he only wants Jewish people counting his money. He said that the illegal immigrants that are "pouring" over our southern border are criminals and rapists, "and some I assume are good people". He mocked a disabled reporter. He used his foundation money to pay off lawsuits in Florida and was fined by the IRS. He admitted to not paying taxes, but did so within the loopholes in the tax code. Just recently, the metaphoric "straw" for many, the 2005 Howard Stern tapes. Where he told Howard Stern that his own daughter could be called "a piece of ass." And that when you're famous you can do anything. Yeah, he has no morals.

Ahhh, Secretary Clinton. She skirts around the law with a watch-maker's precision. Benghazi. I'm sure you've heard the story.  An attack on the American Embassy in Libya was planned for September 11, 2013, which Clinton knew about. Sensing the growing instability in Lybia, a year prior to the attack, Eric Nordstrom a Lybian security expert at the State Department, asked for twelve additional agents to reinforce the seven that were already there. The director of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, under the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, denied to send reinforcements when they were asked for. This denial unnecessarily risked the lives of seven Americans, four of whom were killed.

And the email scandal. She used a private email server, for all 4 years of her tenure. The emails sent from her server were asked for by the State Department, to review and 30,000 emails were given to the State Department. 30,000 emails deemed personal by her staff were destroyed. And then her server was wiped clean ... what was she hiding? She was investigated by the FBI and found to have improperly stored and transmitted classified documents, which is illegal. She wasn't indited, when there was a case against her (maybe she pulled some strings).

"What does it matter anymore?" This election is vitally important because our next president will likely appoint several Supreme Court Justices. This would upset the balance of power, for one political party. If Trump is elected many of Obama's executive actions will likely be signed out of law, including Obamacare and several environmental regulations that stifle economic growth.

As a little aside, Trump's tax plan according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, would increase national debt by 9.5 trillion by offering tax cuts but not enough budget cuts to social entitlement programs. However, it would also increase our economy's output by 6.9% over 10 years, and add 1.8 million jobs. According to the tax foundation, Clinton's tax plan would increase national debt by 200 billion and would decrease our economy's output by 2.6% over 10 years, putting more than half a million people out of work. Higher taxes means less consumer spending and less growth.

I hope I made your decision harder. It never should be as easy as I'm with her, he's a bigot or she's crooked, I love Trump. My stance is I hate him and I hate her. So go vote, but don't do it blindly.

The Physics of Luck

Many of you who read the blog last week are likely expecting to find out what the scariest elevator on campus is. I wasn't able to pull that through this week. I apologize for the bait and switch. Man. School is really getting in the way of other school, this blog. I have decided to make this blog about bad luck (so much for an introduction  (my attempt at humor to redeem my introduction...inception)).

There is a common quote out there that goes: "Bad luck always happens in threes." Just keep this in mind.

On Monday, we had a paper due. Of course, being the procrastinator I am, I finished it early Monday morning. So I was planning to print it out later in the morning. I get to the Redifer computer lab around 8:40. Login. Open up Google Docs. Download file. Print. And a window pops up, telling me I'm out of paper. *expletive* *expletive* I follow the instructions on the pop up and attempt to buy more paper with LionCash. Turns out, I'm out of LionCash. *expletive* I attempt to buy more paper with my Discover card. Turns out, Penn State doesn't take Discover. *expletive* I email professor Kramer and send it in that way. 

But wait, there's more. I get to Willard by 8:55, 10 minutes to spare. I hit the button to the elevator and ... nothing. I don't know who to call, what to say. So I wait there pathetically, hoping for some miracle. And what do I know, 20 minutes later, a little late for a miracle, two men show up and fix the elevator. I make it to class, albeit late.

If you're one of the next five callers... I leave english and go to physics. Everything is good. Here is where it gets interesting. I go to math, in the Nursing Sciences Building, home to Penn State's school of nursing. They're doing construction and the only handicapped entrance is blocked off. I end up ramming through a door and getting inside. Not to mention the irony of a nursing building not having an accessible handicapped entrance. 10 minutes into class my left foot plate drops at least 6 inches. Now my left leg is dangling, its uncomfortable. But, I'm still able to pay attention during class. Class is over. I start backing out of the aisle. And the foot plate hits the ground. *clank* I wait for about five minutes and some kind person lent me a hand and picked it up for me. I find the main School of Nursing office and see if they have a set of allen wrenches. Luckily for me there was a guy doing construction in that building and he had a set in his truck and kindly reattached it for me.

The moral of this story is "luck" always accompanies "unluck." There is some luck surrounding unlucky events. Like when the elevator didn't work for me (I'll get back to that in another blog). It was an unfortunate event but it was solved by the fortunate event of the people coming to fix it. Same holds true for the foot plate. The unluck of my foot plate falling to the ground was met by the luck of someone being kind enough to pick it up and eventually fix it. Its kind of like Newton's third law:

"For every action [of unluck] there is an equal and opposite reaction [of luck]."

We get so focused on something "unlucky" happening that we continue to look for more unfortunate things. But my theory is that once we reach 3-4 unfortunate things, we think things can't get worse, and then we start looking for the positives.

Yo. Jus' be positive.

No, I'm not Running Out of Ideas

Elevators. They can be kinda creepy. And I would know, I ride in elevators on a daily basis, ethos baby. In this two part series, I hope to first identify what make an elevators creepy and then find the scariest elevator on campus.

I would like to first open up to you about my elevator preferences. I like to ride in Otis elevators, Miami elevators, ThyssenKrupp elevators, and Westinghouse elevators. Once elevators lose these name brands, it gets harrier. Its like name brand cereal. You can either trust Life cereal or Live it Up! cereal. You can either trust Miami or Reliable Elevator Co. Yes, the company is called Reliable Elevator Company. I don't want an elevator company trying to convince me they're reliable. I want to know if they're reliable or not automatically.

1. Name brand recognition

The doors open. The lights flicker. The lights are on. You step inside. You push the button for floor 3. The doors close. Off. On. You see a colorful shoe. Off. Thump. You look behind you. Nothing. On. You have a knife to your neck. There are no Penn State students to attack the clown for you. Too bad you didn't have good lighting. With good lighting you would've pulled the bicycle tire iron out of your backpack and beaten the crap out of the clown... instead of dying.

2. Lighting

"Ahhh! the smell of Newark," said no one ever. The Newark airport is pretty run down, to say the least. Birds flying through the terminal. Plastic bags covering door handles (I'm not really sure why). And really smelly elevators. It smelled of sweat mixed with moth balls mixed with alcohol (NOT GOOD!) Some may argue that a weird smell isn't ideal but it doesn't make an elevator creepy. But you don't know what created the smell.  

Credits to: Vileskogen

3. Smell (and birds)

Anything with intricate gold designs or an iron wrought gate that closes before the doors makes me a little unnerved. It makes me think the elevator is old. No offense to old things, but as things get older they start to break down and not work as well. One thing you want to work well is an elevator. If it doesn't work it could drop you. And you would feel light, light, light until SLAMMMM! You're dead. Which brings me to right to my last criteria for creepy elevators.

4. Design

A jolting experience.  That is not good.  If you're riding an elevator you don't want it to stop suddenly when its time to get off. This is unpleasant at the very least and make you never want to ride that elevator again at the worst. When an elevator does that, I don't know if it will fall all the way down after the initial jerk.

5. Jolts

Yup. There they are.

Given all these things that make an elevator ride unpleasant, you would think I'd be happy with a good elevator ride. But, I have a real elevator phobia about them dropping like the Tower of Terror and unlike the Tower of Terror to my death. Pretty dark stuff you're thinking or "ok we get it you're afraid of elevators, don't be a baby." However, having a transparent elevator in my home to get me to my bedroom, I've begun to trust elevators a little bit more. Hopefully, I'll be able to get completely over my fear by riding the scariest, nastiest, dankest (in a bad way), can't get any worse elevator on campus.

... To Be Continued

Sherlock Homeboy

Maximilian Gravenstein. No. It should be Maximillionaire Gravenstein. Its a little longer, longer than it already is, but I'd be totally good with that.

That's right folks, I should be a millionaire but I was cheated by the chip. Lay's Potato Chips. I did them a favor by giving them a flavor idea. And they took it from me.

Lay's has a potato chip flavor of the wavy variety out right now called Greek Tzatziki. This flavor is a part of their Lay's Passport to Flavor promotion. During Lay's Do Us A Flavor promotion in early 2014 I submitted Tzatziki as a flavor. 

I don't have a million dollars. So I did a little investigating. 

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By investigation I mean I made one phone call.

"Your call may be monitored for quality assurance"
[elevator music plays softly]
*10 seconds later*
[music stops]
- Customer service, my name is [I forgot the name] how can I help you?
- Yeah hi, I think you guys have a Tzatziki flavor out right now
- That's correct. We do.
- So in 2014 I created a Tzatziki flavor for Do Us a Flavor and nothing happened. What do I do?
- Do you mind holding?
- No not at all.
- Let me check on that for you.
[Elevator music plays softly]
*3 minutes later*
[music stops]
- Are you still there?
- Yes.
- Ok. So ... I just checked on it and it looks like you signed a contract when you submitted your flavor. Which said that if you weren't one of the finalists they have the right to use your idea in the future.
- So basically because I didn't win, they have the intellectual property of my idea and can make money off of it.
- Yup.
- Ok. I appreciate you looking into it *silent tears*
- Have a nice day
- You too *silent tears*

Wow. They played me. But not really, they used a perfectly legal contract that I didn't read. Today's immediate lesson is to READ the contract. Now this isn't just a pity party, I decided I would also try the flavor.

Just for reference: Tzatziki is a greek sauce made of yogurt, dill, cucumber, and garlic that you eat with grilled meats

I put the crispy, pleated, paper-thin chip onto my tongue. *CRUNCH* *MUNCH* *CRUNCH* I looked around pondering the flavor profiles. HMMMM! Its like sour cream and onion but less tangy and more flat. Cardboard with an aftertaste of cucumber and garlic. I get my sister to try one. She hates it. I get my mom to try one. She is overall meh about it. (My dad eats the whole bag)

2/3 is pretty good. I'm relieved to know that the family consensus for "my" flavor is unfavorable. I'm happy that Lay's won't make too much money off of it. And I also disproved their old slogan: no one can eat just one ... until now.

Not Bad Apple

Evil Apple.

iPhone 7

The big takeaway: no more headphone/earbud jack, now earpods.

I'm not ragging on Apple. Samsung is not much better with its exploding Note 7's. I'm talking about obsolescence. (Watch if you have some time)

Planned obsolescence. It's what Apple does. Even if McIntosh didn't start the trend.

Planned Obsolescence
noun
the policy of deliberately limiting the life of  a product in order to encourage the purchaser to replace it.
 
General Motors started the trend. Our government saved these evil masterminds in 2009. Anyway... that's for another blog. So GM decided in 1924 to start making new models every year. The whole marketing scheme fueled from jealousy.

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The coinage of the phrase goes to Barnard London in 1932. He used the phrase to describe a way for America to get out of the Great Depression. London thought that the government should require the obsoletion of products after an artificially defined period of time. This would then hopefully increase consumer spending, leading to an increase in aggregate demand and eventually an increase in GDP.

In Vance Packard's 1960 criticism of capitalism, "The Waste Makers." He blames businesses for making us poor, unhappy (always wanting newer, more functional products), and wasteful. Packard helpfully divides planned obsolescence into two categories, obsolescence of desirability and the obsolescence of function.

Apple likes to promote the obsolescence of function in their products to make people buy their newest thing. They like to get people to install iOS updates on their older iPhones. This makes your phone really laggy and your battery doesn't last as long. New phone. Then there's this thing. They make their products with tamper resistant screws so you can't easily repair your own machine. If it breaks it breaks And if you happen to spill liquid on your keyboard. You're screwed. Its not covered by the warranty plan. New machine. They switched from microUSB to the proprietary lightning charger. UNIVERSAL serial bus, no longer universal. Just to get you to buy more of their stuff.

There is some aspect of the promotion of the obsolescence of desirability. They roll out with new iPhones every year. These unveiling events have a lot of hype. After the event people go to wait in line at the nearest Apple store. New machine. People get jealous. New machines.

The last straw. On the new iPhone 7, although its faster and water resistant and has a little better camera and battery life, doesn't have a headphone jack. You can just buy our earpods. They get rid of something that's useful to get you to buy more of their own products. Its not a conspiracy its a fact! (What all conspiracy theorists say.)

Rant, much?

The above are why I don't use iPhones and never will use iPhones. I prefer the "people-sourced" android phones. They won't switch the most common connection on me. There aren't hyped unveiling events. So no one get jealous over which model you have. They're much easier to repair.

Obviously?

Obviously
adverb
1. in a way that is easy to understand; evidently
2. without subtlety
3. (sentence modifier) it is obvious that; clearly

Thanks to my friends at Collins English Dictionary for the definition.

So I'm sitting in my math class, trying to figure out what my professor is saying, in his accent, and the implications of what he's saying. We're going over the epsilon delta definition of a limit, a difficult concept to understand. "Wee well obviously choos a epseelon eequel to 1, to satisfy deltah." After that, I was done taking notes. I was just going to read the textbook. (Not the smartest move on my part)

I still don't have a concrete understanding of it. But I can understand him a little bit better. Progress.

I'm not quite sure how common it is for professors to say obviously or of course, but I imagine you've experienced it before. I think I may be able to begin to clear up the frustration by laying out the role of the professor and the role of the student.

The professor's role is to teach (interesting article from CMU), do research and contribute to the college community. The professor organizes old knowledge to teach it to their classes. The professor compiles and analyzes new results from their own research and adds it into the big picture of their subject.  Without the professor, there wouldn't be anyone to analyze their own specialized results. The professor is also to be a role model in the way they behave (New York Times). Influencing students to be studious and well-mannered.

The role of the student is to learn and to develop their skills and knowledge about themselves (Dr. Louis Joughin). This knowledge is then to be applied to something greater than themselves.

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We're done with the boring part!

Professors think their subjects are easy (at an introductory level). And they should. They've dedicated their entire lives to their subjects. Students on the other hand are in the class to learn. If I thought everything being taught in the class were obvious I would obviously be in a different class where I could learn. ARRRRRRGGGGH!

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Its as frustrating as...

But hey, maybe I'm interpreting it wrong. Maybe he was holding the class to such a high standard that he already expected us to have a general idea about the information.

Either way it wasn't a very good use of the word obviously.

Bad use of obviously:
"Coldplay fans are the best in the world. If you like Coldplay then you're obviously very intelligent and good looking and all-around brilliant." - Chris Martin

That's really not apparent. I mean listen to this. The first 13 seconds don't agree with me.

Good use of obviously: none

I don't think anything is really obvious. No one understands everything in the exact same way. Something that's easy for one person can be really difficult for another person.

Food for thought. (I hope)

Walkxting Muses

The word muse. A double meaning.

In Ancient Greek mythology, a muse was anyone of nine sister goddesses. These sister goddesses were given the duty of protecting a specific art or science. It also means to ponder on, usually in silence. *pen drops in background* Thanks to Collins English Dictionary for the definitions.

With my blog I will think about the little things, although relatively unimportant to most, important to me. I also hope to protect the art of rhetoric and civic life. *Aggahagkasdf* Shameless plug. 

The weekly muse, not the news.

So class lets out and you're walking (or #rolling in my case) down East Pollock Road. And what do you see? Well, maybe you don't even notice it anymore. As they're walking, students, necks strained, heads down, staring at their back-lit smart boxes.

walkx*ting
verb
     to walk while texting.
     "He was walkxting when he fell down a man-hole."

This is a problem. I'm sitting at the back of a big, steep lecture hall. The responses to the last clicker question are entered. Class is over. People start gushing out of the doors. And so I wait until the gushers have gushed. Now I think its time to make a break for it. I start getting into position to exit, the gush has now subsided to a trickle. They look at their phones. Climb three stairs. Look at their phones. Climb three stairs. And I don't want to cut in front for fear they'll end up in my lap. So I wait. The trickle is now more like a drip. And I'm able to sneak out.

It may seem like a selfish thing for me to be preaching about. But there are real dangers to walkxting.

Like not noticing gorillas in fedoras.


Or getting hit by a bus...

via GIPHY (I have two sisters)

That escalated quickly. When you text and walk you pay less attention to your environment and you're more prone to tripping and falling and getting hit by buses. Let's look at the facts. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, pedestrian fatalities peaked this year over the past 40 years. Pedestrian fatalities increased 10% this past year. YIKES! Smart phones are to blame, well sort of...

When Thomson/Reuters asked for an explanation for the increase in fatalities by a co-author of the report, Richard Retting, says that the increase in fatalities coincide with an improving economy and decreasing gas prices. For any of you taking macroeconomics, this would lead to increased discretionary spending. And it goes like this: parents start buying more cars for their teenage kids. Teenagers are at the greatest risk for car accidents. An increased number of people are more interested in their phones than their lives or the lives of others.

Smush. (I won't end all my blogs this morbidly)