I am a member of the Funny Fanny Fan Club!

So Today is tuesday and that means tomorrow is thursday, right? Boy do I feel chemicaled up. I feel like I inhaled 5 cubic meters of diethyl ether, anhydrous of course. I always manage to inhale too much stuff in chemistry lab and then I feel really weird afterwards. My nose isn't happy and I feel slightly airy.

I ate pumpkin pie and apple crisp today, and I drank a coke and ate a piece of chicken.

Ramadan Mubarak to all the muslims. I can tell which ones are fasting because they're the people walking a little slower than other people, and looking weak and tired. But with smiles on their faces. The thing I love about ramadan is suffering with other people. It's sort of wonderful and strange to think that there are somewhere around a billion people in the world feeling hunger with you, at the same time and for the same reasons. It makes me feel more connected to humanity.

I haven't fasted one day yet because I've been too busy with school. I plan to fast on Friday though. Also, I'm going to try to meditate at least 15 minutes every day. My mom sent me a great email today. I told her I was feeling stressed about school and studying and so she sent me this. So if you see me outside tomorrow staring at the sun saying "mental clarity, wisdom and tenacity, enter me now!" you'll know why!

"OK, I worked up a very special spell and I threw it high so it would be caught by the northern air flow and travel to Austin. It should arrive in Austin by noon and will hover over you for 4 hours only. You must snatch it out of the air before the time is up. To do this you must go outside and face the sun; with your eyes closed (so you don't go blind)say, "mental clarity, wisdom, and tenacity; enter me now." You will feel a sense of warmth on your face and head and you will know that the spell is working. Have a good day. I love you."

I did really good on my p chem test and my microbiology test, but in organic lab I am currently ranked 9/14 people so thats not so good. Also, I am terrified of my next organic test which is on Thursday. I don't know if I'll be prepared enough by then. I better get busy. Have a good night everyone.

Drugs

Drugs are a shortcut to feelings and experiences that you could create on your own, if you worked hard enough. My gut instinct is that drugs are bad. But the sciencey part of me says, who cares! One way, you work and the other way, you just take a pill, and wait for the chemistry to change inside of you. Then you experience the world differently. People who practice meditation can reach a state where they feel at one with the universe, and as though the boundaries between the self and the world have broken down. They have learned how to make parts of their brain "quiet down" and other parts of their brain wake up. It's all about chemistry. The way you experience the world depends on the chemistry inside of your brain, and on all of the living functions of your body.

But that seems wrong. It seems like drugs are bad and things like meditation are good. But why is that? What about other drugs? There are drugs that help us to be happy, and drugs to help us concentrate and drugs to help us sleep, and drugs to help us stay awake, and drugs to help us relax. Has life improved because we take all these drugs? Or are we becoming too passive?

I am tempted to do drugs! It seems like I could get something for nothing. But I'm studying for a physical chemistry test right now so I'm thinking about thermodynamics. "The first law says you can't win, and the second law says you can't break even." The answer is woven into the very fabric of our universe! The common sense idea that you can't get something for nothing is also true of every real chemical, physical and biological process that occurs. The first law of thermodynamics is that energy is conserved. You cannot create new energy. The second law says that you can never convert all of your input energy into pure work - you can't break even. Which means that it makes perfect sense for us to be afraid of things that seem to give us something for nothing.

Passively taking drugs is bad in the long run because passivity leads to losing control. And what are we if we lose control? Isn't losing control a bad thing? Some might say that control is what makes us humans. If you lose control, you lose yourself. If you quit thinking, and simply give in to physical feelings, then you've lost part of what makes you human. I guess it could be argued that there is nothing wrong with passivity, or willfully losing your brain. Maybe there is no right and wrong.

Meditating to acheive a state of ecstacy is ok because it involves work. You don't get something for nothing. There aren't any risks because the chemical reactions are produced by a difficult and active pathway that we understand and that our bodies can control. Drugs are dangerous because they cause chemical reactions that wouldn't normally occur in the biological system of our bodies. They short circuit the biology and just play with the chemistry.

So, just remember, the next time you're about to shoot up some sugar you're playing a dangerous game! It involves the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and everything about you that is human.

"The economy will fix it"

Just quickly, heres a reply from my friend Dave. Does anyone agree or disagree with his idea that the economy will fix things better than we can? I disagree with him that the people who are earning such low wages are happy, because it is these people who are organizing the boycott! Furthermore, I doubt that anyone would be happy working long hours for low and unfair pay, especially with kids to feed.

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There is a big problem with what you are saying about the morality of buying goods being made by people who earn extremely low wages. The problem is that it is much more prevelant than just taco bell. Read your clothing labels; made in India, made in Pakistan, made in Malaysia, made in China. The people there are paid very little, and sometimes they are children. If you boycott Taco Bell, you should also boycott most clothing companies. The same goes for shoes, toys and and many, many other goods. The list d goes on and on and on....

Our country is facing a recession because so many manufacturers are moving their manufacturing offshore where labor is cheap, extremly cheap, thereby putting Americans out of work. Families are losing their homes because the manufacturing jobs are getting more and more scarce. Talk to the professors in the Economics Dept about this for specifics.

On the other hand, if the people in the undeveloped countries were not getting the jobs manufacturing goods for America, their income would be even less than it is and they would be much worse off. Your boycott may cause people who work for the Taca Bell suppliers to lose their jobs, end up with much less than the $7500 income. Indeed they may be very happy to be able to make that much, and think they are well off.

Unfortunately, I think the tide is irreversable. I believe that the situation where some nations have insanely high standards of living like the USA and Europe, and some have exceedingly low standards of living like the countries mentioned above, is exremely unstable; increasingly so as we move toward a global economy. I think that the net result is that the standards of living of all nations will move toward a common center, which means ours will increasingly be lowered while that of the undeveloped nations will increasingly rise.

What many Americans do not realize is the happiness and standard of living do not necessarily go hand in hand; People don't need insanely huge, expensive, gas guzzling SUV's to be happy. People do not need all the fattening food they eat to be happy. They don't need big houses with tv's in every room and two car garages to be happy. One of the things that makes people unhappy is desire for material goods that can't afford, goods mostly that are unnecessary and wastefull of natural resources. People don't need 10 pairs of shoes and clothes that get worn only once or twice.

Unfortunately, if everyone came to their senses, and stopped buying in excess, the country would face the worst recession in history; our whole economy is based on people buying much more than they need to be happy.

Part of growing up is seeing that the economy is a huge complicated system and attempts to fix one aspect of it may have undesirable consequences in another aspect. I certainly don't know how to fix it; I doubt that anybody knows
how to fix it. Sometimes I think that a free market approach, where everybody is free to buy things at the lowest cost, and make as much money as they can is the best answer. But this needs to be coupled with a strong labor movements to keep manufactures from exploiting labor too much. Much of the offshore labor is exploited, and unionism is not accepted.

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In America, we still live because of slave labor. It is not so blatent and the definitions of slave and slave labor have become fuzzier. It is hidden so that if we don't want to think about it, we don't have to. The Black slaves were set free hundreds of years ago, but even then freedom was a tenuous thing, and now we have and even bigger problem. Today, we have a society that is in many ways more beautiful than ever, but in many other ways, it is more horrific, injust and convoluted than ever before.

I live in the beautiful part. I have never been hungry, or worried that I wouldn't be able to survive. I do what I want, I go where I want, and I live a great life. I buy burritos at taco bell for less than a dollar, and unless someone forces me to think about it, I don't have to think about how I can eat a burrito at taco bell for less than a dollar. Taco Bell buys tomatos from a company that pays it's workers less than 7,500 dollars a year. These are people who have families, and because of debt and poverty live in a sort of servitude. I am part of this problem because I eat at Taco Bell and help fund a company that exploits people to gain wealth.

It's hard not to live easily when nothing is physically stopping you. Why would you make life more difficult for yourself, when you don't have to? Why worry about global warming, and injustices that are miles away, and overpopulation and wasting too many resources? Statistically, the individual doesn't really matter. It seems like the forces that drive global changes are rarely the concious decisions that individuals make after thinking about an issue. Even a million drops of water in an ocean of billions and billions of drops of water hardly makes a difference.

Humans are creatures of habit. How can we make changes happen then? It takes so much work to stop the river from raging forward, and then to turn it around and reshape the direction of it's flow. Individuals have forced change to happen before, but it takes sacrifice and dedication. To free the decendents of the Africans that were brought to America to be slaves for the European Americans, it took a war and luck. The war that freed the slaves was not just about freeing the slaves. And after the war was over, it took the blood and sweat of thousands and thousands of people to change the mindsets of their generations and generations to come. It is still an ongoing struggle, and it's been more than 100 years.

So what can we do? Here's what I'm going to try to do:
1. Learn as much as I can
2. Decide what is right and what is wrong.
3. Act on it!

I believe in equal work for equal pay. I believe it is wrong for one human being to exploit another. So, I'm not going to eat burritos from taco bell anymore and I'm going to encourage everyone I know to do the same. So, DON'T EAT AT TACO BELL! If you believe in something, you should act on it! Right?

Here are some links. Please post a comment if you're interested in having a discussion.

About taco bell
About modern day slavery

Here's to dancing in circles. :)

Another beautiful day! I decided to never go to another microbiology class again. I don't get anything from the class and the teacher is terrible. So, instead I will study! I did it for the first time today. I found a wonderful website from the university of wisconsin. It is free and really well-written. It seems like alot of good things come from wisconsin! Here's the web addy: http://www.bact.wisc.edu/MicrotextBook

I'm going to the Renaissance fair this weekend. That will be fun. :) I have never been to a Renaissance fair.

I wonder if I'm bothered about Arnold just because he's a republican... that's a stupid reason to be bothered. But! I am bothered by it also because there were other great candidates like that girl, whose name I can't remmeberd who was really young and ran with alot of great ideas behind her.

But I wasn't that bothered when Jesse Ventura was elected to be governer of whatever state he was elected governer for. That was probably because he's an independent and I like independents alot. I hate the 2 party system because it tempts people to quit thinking about real issues and just think about "republican" or "democrat" which are abstract words that don't mean anything.

I guess it is unfair of me to be too upset about Arnold when I don't know much about him. I can justly be upset that, once again, a popular person won something just because their name is recognized and they are familiar. Or something. But I have to try to control my knee-jerk liberal reactions. Knee-jerk bad! Just like all jerks.

Just quickly some things going on in the world today, before I finish my p chem homework, so that I can look back and shake my head and wonder why when I'm 34.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 9 — A suicide car bomber drove through the gates of a police station in northeast Baghdad and detonated an explosive Thursday morning, killing eight people and injuring 28, police and the U.S. military said. The vehicle’s driver and a passenger also died in the blast. Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier and a Spanish military attaché were killed in separate attacks.

And "Ahnuld" won. For the 2nd time in US history there was a recall election of a governer, and the Californians voted to get rid of Gray Davis and elect Arnold Shwartzenager. It sort of bothers me that he won. It bothers me alot.



There are other things going on in the world, but I don't know about them.

Oh! And today is my old parent's anniversary. I completely forgot about it last year.

Oh, I forgot to say why I was so upset in that last post. After a month and a half of waiting, they gave up. They finally said "we can't do it because we can't figure out what a half street is." They canceled our order because they can't figure out how to put into their computer system "715 W. 22 1/2 St." And after calming down from being mad, I can see thats kind of funny. :)

My first tests went ok.... to make As I will have to work harder. To be a chemistry emperess who looks at a bubbling Erlenmyer flask-full of liquids, and sees in her mind, the molecules joining together and coming apart and the flow of electrons, I will have to work harder.

And get sleep! I need to remember to sleep. If I don't, I get more and more irrational. I drink more and more caffine, and I can't see how tired I am so I sleep less and less.

Here's to the beautiful life.
Here's to the restless endless life
while it lasts.

The only time in my life that I have been so mad that I wanted to stab people with rusty nails was when I was younger and my brother would do everything in his power to get me to that point of anger, just because he loved to see my face turn red, my hands ball up into fists, and tears squeezing out of my eyes in frustration, and loud angry animal-like noises emitting from my mouth. I have never felt that angry before, except for NOW!!! I HATE AT&T. In fact, hate is too kind!!! They are EVIL! I haven't had a phone for a month and a half and it's because of lies lies lies and ASLDKRUEOISRRRRORRAR!

Do you want to know why they haven't been able to "process our order"? They can't understand what a half street is. My address is 22 1/2 street. Yes, that's right. And they don't get it. It's too complicated. So every week, they lie and say "yes ma'am, we fixed the problem ma'am, you'll have a phone in 3 days!" Or "oh, I'm sorry ma'am, I understand why you're mad. Believe me, we'll take care of this right away ma'am." And I believed them! I believed their lies!

This is why adults don't believe in love and truth and joy anymore! All of the world's problems are because of people like the AT&T people, who act really nice and sweet and then BREAK their promises, and leave their customers alone, sad, and jaded. ROAR!!!! And now I'm going to my chemistry lab, where there are alot of breakable things, and I'll have to try to control this rage.

Now, not only do I not have a phone, but my free internet isn't working. This is not good!

I'm a little worried about myself. In less than 1 week, I have had:

13 cans of coke
28 cups of coffee
10 bags of tea

That's since Sunday. I think I need to cut back!