Not to be pretentious...

I saw this on another blog (evhead), but I decided that I had to post it anyway:
"High IQ Link To Being Vegetarian" courtesy of the BBC

xxxmass + TRS

"Christmas," as it is commonly called, is coming up in mere days. Today was the last full shopping day, and as such, urgency was in the air. What the hell would all the children of America do if they didn't get their Xbox 360 games and what would happen to all the adults if they didn't exchange expensive items for other expensive items purchased by other adults? Everyone would probably be happier, there would be less unnecessary traffic and accompanying pollution, and Wal-Mart would go out of business. Okay, I guess the last part is a bit of a fantasy, but I'll defend on the premise that if Christmas was (were?) de-commercialized that perhaps people would do the same with their daily lives and THEN Wal-Mart and friends could finally implode and some of the small businesses that were destroyed by such bastions of consumerism could return.

I guess this started as a rather aimless post. It's going to slowly transform into a basic electronics lesson, starting...now.

I was at Best Buy attempting to purchase a certain circular piece of plastic with certain data on it that would show certain pictures when placed in a certain machine. I decided to take a walk over to the section of the store devoted to computer peripherals as I am considering the purchase of a new mouse of the silicon-related variety. During this, whilst playing with a mouse that had at least five buttons and not one, but TWO scroll wheels, I overheard a man with his wife discussing computer speakers in the same aisle. He was very determined to find a set of speakers with RCA inputs (those red and white sockets that are common on home entertainment equipment) to match his DVD player. I'm not sure why he was looking at the computer speakers for such an item, but that's beside the point. Computer speakers would work perfectly well with a DVD player. He didn't think so, that is unless they had RCA inputs. A few minutes into the situation, while the man was opening a box containing a set of speakers to investigate, a Best Buy employee arrived at the scene. Conversing occured and all members of this three person party seemed more confused than before. I, thinking to myself I would be helping, decided to go to another section of the store and grab an adapter cable (like this) that would solve all their problems, since the speakers the man was scoping out had a mini-jack input (headphone sized, typical for computer speakers). I brought my find back to the group, still perplexed, except now the Best Buy team member was trying to sell the guy a PC sound card that has nothing at all to do with the issue of connecting a DVD player to speakers. I politely proposed that this adapter would allow the man to do exactly what he wanted, and he dismissively responded with "yeah, I KNOW, but that wouldn't be in full stereo." This was wholly untrue.

On a normal, headphone-style mini-plug, there are three separate conductors. They are divided by two insulators, usually black plastic (or white in the case of iPod headphones, etc.) There is the 'tip' at the end, the 'ring' in the middle, and the largest one is the 'sleeve'. The tip and ring carry the signal for the left and right side of your headphones and they represent the positive (+) side of each. The sleeve is split up and goes to the 'ground', or negative (-) part of each speaker/headphone. RCAs are a little different. You can only carry one signal on each RCA plug along with the negative connection, since they only have two conductors. So, our friend at Best Buy would have been right about losing his "stereo" effect if there was only one RCA plug. However, this cable split into TWO RCAs. One for the left side, one for the right, combining for stereo. Here's a little diagram:

You see, both the left and right signal are kept apart, maintaining the stereo signal. The RCAs would have plugged into the back of his DVD player and then the mini-plug could have plugged into his computer speakers and everyone would be happy. I could have certainly argued with the man, but I decided to spend far more time explaining it virtually. He probably would have thought I was just some dingbat kid, anyway.

If anyone ever actually reads this and agreed with my last post about the layout being ugly, I apologize again. The simplicity is really starting to grow on me.

If anyone ever actually reads this, I apologize right now. It looks hideous, and I will be changing the layout drastically when I get the chance.

I sort of wish I would've remembered that there is no Saturday bus to the parking lot where my car is located. Looks like I'll have a nice walk tomorrow morning.

I cautiously read the ingredients on the fruit leather wrapper. Fruit, leather, eggs?! What the hell are there eggs in fruit leather for? A little later, I woke up. It was only a dream...more like a nightmare. There are not really eggs in that fruit leather, nor is there leather in fruit leather. I just double checked. Man, would I have been angry.

I really should be revising my paper for my Honors Colloquium class on the comparison between modern man, animals, and machines based on the philosophies of Karl Marx right now, but I'm not in the mood.

I know I've told at least a few people, and I suspect the only people that will ever read this are among those I have told. If not, I welcome you to one of my internet homes.

Anyway, on to the point of this post. The Flaming Lips made me consider dropping out of college. Not because they preach laziness or that education is overpriced or anything, but rather because I wanted to really, truly experience life. After seeing the Lips in Columbus, for awhile I was thoroughly convinced that following them would be the best decision to fulfill that experience. Whether it strengthens or demerits this writing, I'm not sure, but I wasn't even a huge fan of them before the show. Granted, I had listened to them a fair amount and liked a good bit of what I had heard, I was no diehard. However, that show in Columbus was probably one of the happiest single events of my life, and I wouldn't doubt that many others who've attended their shows would agree about that effect. During and after this, I seriously thought that I would be a much happier and simply better person if I followed Wayne Coyne and friends on tour. I think that I might've been right about that idea. There aren't too many out there that seem, to me, to be able to do have such an overwhelmingly positive effect on people. We really need more Flaming Lips, or, rather, people who can have the same sort of effect on so many people's lives, in the world.

In hindsight, I'm even more certain that college, at least from my perspective and situation, is not the best way to really LIVE your life. Maybe I'm not considering the importance of formal education, etc., but besides a relatively small number of people I've met that have admittedly significantly changed my life (though, really, what encounter doesn't change your life in some way?), social experiences with said people, and occasional interesting philosophical/political discussions, I feel largely unfulfilled by the college experience itself. I may have met interesting people in any other endeavor I could have chosen besides college. Likely, they wouldn't have been the same people, but they may have been equally interesting (probably not, though), and as such, college gains very few points for being the social buffer that acquainted me with the aforementioned friends.

In the non-social part of my college career, I have spent way too many hours working on assignments relative to my received grades and personal satisfaction. Maybe I'm not good at school anymore. Maybe it has something to do with the issues I outlined in one of my recent posts. In any case, I guess the point of this post is this: be selective about how you spend your life and, if you haven't, do whatever you have to in order to attend a Flaming Lips show.

Also, watch these:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4SzWtkMVBRI
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aT0qENSrDO4

Man, am I inconsistent. I hadn't posted in 3 months, and now I have 3 posts in one day. Anyway, this one isn't too big, but I had to do put this link up because it might be one of the coolest blogs ever.

Sometimes, I'm not sure if college is worth it. Monetarily, morally, it seems that all that is happening in regards to my current state as a university resident is that I'm being drained.

$1300 or so goes to Kent State's food service division, and in return I essentially receive bagels, orange juice, and some granola bars. I've gone through the proper channels to make an attempt to escape this, since:

1. Bagels, orange juice, and granola really doesn't constitute a complete diet, and although it's probably immensely better than that of most students, I'm far from content with my on-campus options.
2. There is no way I can fathom spending approximately $350-400 per month on the aforementioned foodstuffs.
3. I simply (and strongly) dislike the idea of being required to funnel money into a system that is supposed to provide a means to sustain the health of students, yet most places provided to eat revolve around concepts of fast-food, prepackaging/preserving with sodium, or other unsatisfactory things, such as how most of what is served on campus is delivered in big trucks from Gordon Food Service. Cheap, probably. Healthy, no.

Just recently, between writing everything above this line and everything below it, I attended the weekly meeting of the Kent Healthy Food Committee and found out that we're visiting Oberlin College for our next meeting, which might be eventful since they have a legitimate on-campus healthy food system. I'm excited. 'Stoked,' if you will. Back to the rant.


4. I hate the Coca-Cola Corporation. I hate that they're the primary beverage company on campus. I hate that they have a totalitarian rule over everything that has to do with consumable liquid on this campus. This is also where some of my moral drainage comes from; although I do not directly consume anything the bastards at Coke create, my money goes to the Kent Dining Services, which has big exchanges with Coke. Millions of dollars worth of exchanges.

Unfortunately, instead of letting me out of the required food plan, they put me on a committee. I'll give it a little longer, because being part of the committee was one of the stipulations to try out before they would let me (or, rather, my parents) hold on to another $2600 every year. Of course, I still have to eat, but not $2600 worth and not the limited selection they have here.

Also, I'm a 'Visual Communication Design' major. Basically, I want to be a graphic designer. Basically, I want to be able to be a professional artist. Basically, I want to be able to draw and take pictures and turn them into things I can get paid for. Basically, I don't want to ever 'work,' per se. However, the only class I have related to my major this whole semester is "Intro to VCD 1," which is where everyone who is in their first semester in the VCD program sits in a large room. Sometimes, speakers speak. Sometimes, class is canceled. Sometimes, we go and sit and leave within 20 minutes because there are no speakers to speak. But, what we definitely don't do is DESIGN ANYTHING.

I feel as though I could be more productive if I essentially decided to "wing it" and not even go to school. I could devote more time to my own personal activities, and I would probably, at least for awhile, gain usable knowledge far faster than I am now. I don't plan on making much money when I graduate, anyway. I plan on being an artist of some sort for the rest of my life, and if I make money, then I will maybe be a happier artist, but besides that, I don't plan on needing much of it. Money complicates things. I will probably build a house like this or this and power it like this. Then, all I need to do is eat. Of course, there are other small costs, such as hobbies and the like, but that's negligible, and right now my hobbies tend to include musical endeavors, and it's possible to break even or make a little money doing that even if you're not famous. I will likely travel a lot. Like this (already started on that one). All this can be done with little money, and I'm sure I'll be happier for it.

ridiculous?

marketing ploy, anyone? Seriously, I'm surprised this exists. Well, maybe not. Land of the free and such...I'm really not sure if there's anything I can say about this with the exception of "wow."

beauty of the American diet philosophy...

This makes me want to vomit. Has anyone ever read the ingredients label on a Twinkie? Granted, you'd probably want to set aside an afternoon to read the entire list, and then set aside the next day to look up what all those words no one can pronounce correctly actually mean. When finished, I would like to think that anyone in their right mind would at least contemplate whether or not this is actually something they'd like to challenge their body to digest. And now, in a country where one in four people is scientifically considered 'obese,' a need is felt to construct an entire cookbook dedicated to a snack laden with chemicals and beef fat (literally).

From an animal rights standpoint, the beef fat alone adds to the disgust, in addition to a choice statistic from the official Twinkie website:

Hostess has several bakeries across the country, which together bakes 500 million Twinkies each year. In order to do that, Hostess needs 8 million pounds of sugar, 7 million pounds of flour and 1 million eggs.

I'm sure all of 0% of these products are produced organically or even remotely naturally, too. This means that 8 million pounds of sugar is processed for this one snack alone, with at least part of it likely done bone-char fashion.

One million eggs. That's 83,333.33 (repeating, of course) dozen eggs. I believe the typical rate hens produce eggs is 1 egg per 24-30 hours. Since Hostess isn't exactly known for their animal rights concern, many, if not all, of these eggs are factory-produced, probably by hens that not only don't get to go outside, but never see daylight or anything besides their cage, and it takes these poor birds 30,000,000 combined hours to produce this amount of eggs. All for Twinkies.

I'd be lying if I said I have never eaten a Twinkie. In fact, I used to eat them quite often. I also was overweight middle-schooler who ate way too much of everything. I am by no stretch telling anyone what they should or should not eat, but it is my opinion that we really should question whether the very temporary fulfillment of indulging on chemical foods is truly worth it in the long-term...from an environmental standpoint, an animal rights standpoint, and even just for your own personal health.

Wired 14.05

I would like everyone who has a few minutes (and who doesn't, if you're reading a blog) to take a look at this article.