Rico Penguin

  It is a term that gets thrown around so much that it got me thinking. Following off the theme of the last post my question is this: Is anything you do not a waste of time?

  Perhaps it is just a matter of the glass being half empty, half full, or perhaps just twice as big as it should be. But isn’t everything a waste of time?

  Every book you read, every thing you do, every mark you make, each of these things will be null in respect to you once you die. Every person you influence in any manner will also die and with them the events become null. Given humanities overall inability to separate from ancient fantasy I have doubts that humanity will ever make it off the Earth. We are likely to see cycles of intellectual growth, great destruction caused by fantastical ignorance, and then a recovery period. This will extend the time and resources needed to reach a colony in space and just might push us up until the big end.

  That big end for the Earth of course being when the sun expands and swallows it. Every single activity ever committed by a person will be scorched to cinders and yanked into the center of the sun. In that moment every single action of humanity becomes moot. For the exception of maybe some satellites that are well out of harms way but it is only a matter of time before something destroys them.

  So really isn’t everything a waste of time? Then again how do you properly use time? Who is the judge of what is a constructive use of time? These are questions that so frequently seem to be treated as self evident when the answers are hardly so.

  People often ask the question of “Why are we here?” Which I believe I’ve touched on before but most recently it popped a similar thought into my head. To be succinct “Why Not?” Of the massive number of possible formula’s for universes that could possibly exist each has the same chance of existing as every other universe.

  Mathematics, Physics, Biology, and every other science that I don’t fully understand are based specifically within our own universe. It is one of those tautological “It is because it is.” kind of situations. So we are no more special than any other possible universe, sure we have life as we know it, but that is a self fulfilling setup. Anytime we find life it’ll be life as we know it because we have found it and thus we know it.

  Life as we know it has changed over the entire span of human existence and was different before we existed. Life as we know it will continue to change and if we discovered another universe (or even another planet) with different life following rules that we do not fully understand we will now have a new understanding of life as we know it.

  All that separates life in this universe from another universe that may or may not exist from being under our oh so wonderful “life as we know it” tag is us finding it.

  Because of this I see nothing special about this universe which makes me wonder. So it isn’t a question of why we are here, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be here. Not all why questions are necessarily ones that have an actual answer. Just like “Why do people generate more energy than the sun.” I can’t take credit for that revelation, Richard Dawkins had a similar one “Why are Unicorns Hollow.” Just because you can ask it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a valid or important question.

  My question isn’t necessarily better. I realize the irony or hypocrisy in me asking it, but I am finding it odd to assume that life shouldn’t be here. There is no better chance of any other universe than this one, and everything that makes it special is only special because it involves us in some manner or another.

  As a point of clarification before closing this little thought, I don’t hate our reality, in fact I find it very awesome, but I don’t need some unanswerable question to justify that feeling. Since we exist I see reason enough.

  I often wonder how many people are overlooked in the world. There are something like 7 billion people in the world, that is an absolutely astounding number. While we all generally have similar organic configurations the slight variations in each person entail that something amazing can be done by them.

  But it troubles me that so many could die before their talents are discovered. So many people who can actually sing overlooked because they aren’t as attractive as “Generic High School Voice #4”, so many folks who could build grand buildings but don’t get the proper education, discover the cure for cancer but never get the proper science education, great writers who never flourish because of illiteracy.

  7 Billion people in constant rotation. Amidst these folks are some of the greatest ideas of this generation and certainly many of the greatest ideas never thought in the past. Where once great ideas found persecution we now likely are amidst an equally devastating situation of being overlooked.

  I wonder honestly how many great ideas and how many fantastic talents will die by the end of this month. How many of these people will even have close friends or families that knew of their abilities. Just how much have we been stunted technologically and culturally because of trivial issues that could be resolved with an ounce of common sense and maturity.

  For me it is a startling thought, an unsettling pool bubbling at the base of my stomach. Even at the most emotionless level, just thinking of the lost data, it is shocking. At the emotional level it is a good bit heartbreaking, to think of all the lives that could have been great, how many flames merely flickered instead of burned.

  I wonder if we’ll ever reach a point where people will all be granted the chance to do what we do best. Where we’ll credit those who truly earn what they get, where each death can be one of completion and comfort as opposed to another instance of lost opportunity and shattered dreams.

  Now I’ll admit that I’m not a fan of killing anyone. I find it highly unfortunate that we at times place ourselves in situations where people are killed or where it becomes difficult to support the sustained life of a certain person. It’s a shame and indeed is a global problem.

  However on that note of killing there is another major problem with (at the very least) the US’s general take on problems. Militant cures to social problems has been an issue that has unfortunately reared its ugly head many times in the short History of the US. We often have situations that require a small amount of regulation and instead assault them with a violent fervor that is unnecessary and in the end entirely destructive and unhelpful.

  While this might look like its obviously leading to any of our various failed “wars on X” I’m actually looking more so at Abortion. Abortion is an issue that we are told is very much on the forefront of people’s minds, I disagree, I do think though that it is largely blown out of proportion and discussion on it are wrought with misinformation and deception.

  When looking at a problem that you see the first response should not be to outlaw it. Outlawing something does nothing to lessen the issue. The people who would have done it will still do it, the people who were unlikely to do it will not do it, and the people who would have never done it are still never going to have done it. What you do do however is create criminals for no better reason than to justify a crusade against differing life views or styles.

  Abortion really should just be a last response to medical problems with mothers and the birth of their children. I recognize that it isn’t and that is what we’ll look at. First the answer to nearly all problems is education. Believe it or not if you educate people honestly and openly about a situation they will inevitably come to an educated conclusion about it. I’ll admit that doesn’t happen 100% of the time but nothing ever does that humans can verify.

  So first you educate people fully about what? Well sexual education, abstinence education is an entirely unscientific system presented to kids for no better reason than to push religious beliefs on them. This is a terrible idea and it has been proven that it doesn’t work, how is it proven? Well unwanted pregnancies are a good example. I can educate people not to breath because it makes me feel better but it is their biological need to breath that will override my personal views.

  Once you have educated people and they know of all the highly effective methods (as opposed to ones that only work in theory) to prevent pregnancy until they are prepared. After this we move onto the next issue. What if people take all the proper precautions and are still finding themselves in the situation of an unplanned pregnancy? Well we take after various wonderful places (such as Sweden) and we make it feasible for them to still be able to raise the child or at the very least we make the time between conception and birth as non traumatizing as it can be. Strong support for the expected mother and all the information necessary to be a strong parent. Or even explaining the possibility of Adoption (albeit that is for many just as tough a question as abortion, its not easy for the mother at all).

  So we’ve accomplished two fold a fix. First we educate people openly and honestly treating them as they should be treated. Then for the people who may still get pregnant (a very small percentage assuming the first step) we treat them with respect and help give them all the available options. You will find that the amount of abortions in the country would indeed drop dramatically.

  The stories about fun time weekend abortions are likely as strongly based in factual events as reefer madness. Don’t allow people to take extreme militant approaches to problems because it will never do anything but make it worse. Historically this has and likely will always be the case. I just hope that with my generation growing, more intelligent and grounded people will take control of governing bodies. Who knows.

  There have been many lessons over the last 4 years of college for me. I think the greatest of ironies is that little to none of it was intended by the college. The first thing that I learned is that much of what I earned from college was not from any of the curriculum.

  If you are moving into Psychology you should expect something very disturbing. Namely the fact that you will be reading report after report of how to properly educate people in ways that will result in long term retention of information. However that information alone is obviously not disturbing, it is the fact that at no point will you ever experience this information in your courses. You will take spaced out massively cumulative exams and be taught in a very limited setup that is justified in the same manner every time “Well this is how I was taught.” You may not believe me yet, but just wait till you are in college. That was the same response I got from every Psychology professor and I imagine it’ll be the same for you.

  Diversity is more important than education. This is a very important thing to remember when going to college. Now I’ve been told that I will never understand because I’m white, which in no way will perpetuate stereotypes, but my understanding of the importance of diversity is unimportant. At least at this college you will hear the word diversity more than you will ever pride over quality of education. Humorously enough when you DO hear about the quality of your education it will be explained with the word diversity. This press of grotesquely uneven importance is why you are likely meeting all sorts of college graduates that are no more informed about anything (let alone their Majors) than the average Joe. Your brain is astronomically less important than your lineage or the natural color of your skin (sorry fake tanners).

  People do not go to college to become educated for the large part. More often than not when you ask folks why they are in college the answer is short “Job”. Because of this there is a much more prominent level of cheating. When your goal is education there is no logical reason to cheat, however when you goal is to get ahead it is almost a self fulfilling prophecy. I found it disheartening how many times people discussed in class how they were cheating with friends. What surprised me was not how prominent it was, that’s something my cynical self tends to assume, however it was how extraverted they were about it. It was absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. After all all that college is is a 20-40k dollar application to your career.

  So when you are sitting there with someone who has an absolutely astounding GPA and everything they are saying sounds like utter ignorance you can thank college. While it would be unfair of me to make such a statement about all folks who do well in college or all college students I do think it would be equally unfair to act like College actually educates the vast majority of its students. At least–not intentionally.

  On Episode 6 of Season 3 I believe that Penn and Teller said it far more succinctly than I have when they called College “Bullshit”.

  PS. I also met tons of lovely folks and easily a half dozen amazing professors (the rest were great people but mediocre instructors). Not everything about college is negative however none of the positives really have to do with the entire point of college which is the problem. You are not a bad person for going to college but it in no way makes you better than a large percentage of folks you meet on the streets. They can get the same education by reading the books you’ve read in most cases and save tens of thousands of dollars.

[ Index ]
Part 1 – The Introduction
Part 2 – From Universe to Solar System
Part 3 – From Solar System to Earth
Part 4 – From Solar System to Earth

  So time has passed and we have reached what we would now call Humans, Homo Sapiens, or any other clever naming agent you can grow to love. There is little to talk about here, not because much hasn’t happened, but because it is all easily accessible in the plethora of required history courses you will take in school.

  One can hope we’ll survive ourselves. Assuming we do we have many millions of years to go before the current theorized end comes (the scientific one not all the religious ones that pop up annually). We are years away from what is the predicted end. That’s a much less clean way of saying 1 Googol years from now, or (arguably) even cleaner would be 1 with 1 hundred zeroes following it. It’s a fantastically long time that even I didn’t quite grasp till I saw it written out in this post.

  Over this time we’ll have stars born and stars die. Black holes will grow and shrink (via a process championed by Stephen Hawking). Galaxies will soar away from one another with each passing day, planets will be consumed in the expansion of stars, the Earth will be scorched by the sun (all things left as they are). Eventually all matter will be stretched to an extreme and ever widening point where heat is no longer generated. This will leave an entire universe with absolutely no action which technically would also mean that time has ‘ended’.

  I’m skeptical as I’ve stated before. We have not accounted for the excess gravity all over (the idea behind the possible existence of dark matter) and frankly there tends to be new information found with each passing year and certainly with each passing decade. It’s not to say we don’t have ages, 1 Google years is an amazing amount of time. So many wonderful (and unfortunately terrible) things can transpire between now and the purposed end.

  My theory? While I’m hardly a better source than any astrophysicist I think that there is some currently unknown rubber band response to the expansion. At a certain point the stretch will get so extreme that everything will then rocket inwards. It seems quite reasonable to assume that this is what has happened the X amount of times in the past and will happen the X amount of times in the future. Of course there is also the possibility that the recoiling inwards is exponentially proportional to the expulsion outwards with each ‘bang’ and perhaps we are experiencing what will end up being the final shot. Who knows, it would be quite unfortunate but we still have far more time than needed for just about anything.

  It is currently the state of all things mortal or otherwise to reach a state of inaction, it would be nice if we put more energy into prolonging and enhancing the time of action we each have. With each dollar we spend on death instead of life we are creating a large imbalance that could indeed snowball one day. I just hope it hasn’t already begun.

  I’ve left out unimaginably large amounts of time, but that’s because who knows what will happen down to the number. The chaos effect makes estimating things highly difficult if not impossible. Neat stuff.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=2474

  This sort of news actually isn’t all that rare. It would appear that Europa more than likely has a serious amount of water underneath a thick layering of ice. Now the thing that people should always ask is if there is really ever a case where water exists and there is nothing living in it (without man-made interference). Even in the most extreme of aquatic conditions you will find some sort of life (no matter how small).

  To me it is not a question of if there is life on Europa it is more a case of what life is on Europa. Considering that the major building blocks of life are 4 of the 5 most common elements in the universe (Something like hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon if I recall…might be off on one or two of those, the non-essential one is helium which isn’t very conducive to making friends. Assuming I didn’t get hydrogen and helium mixed up Forgive me it is late).

  So if the Earth had a warm core, tons of water, and formed life. Europa has a warm core, tons of water, and a shell of ice to protect it from just about anything harmful (not unlike our atmosphere) it makes one wonder just what is living under that shell. I’d be happy with just about anything, even a tiny fish like creature with a couple eyes and a really cute grin.

  Food for thought . I’d write more but I had to transit back home (vacation over). So you’ll start seeing far more educational posts starting Tuesday, taking a course on prehistoric organisms (IE Dinosaurs), psychopharmacology (study of drugs essentially may be changing this course), history and architecture of museums, and finally Greek Epics if memory servers .

  Good night all and happy interstellar hunting.

  I know technically I should say “human” or “person” or something but frankly women on average already live 7 years longer than men, I’d say since I’m likely to die almost a decade sooner than a lady that I should be at least given the joy of popping my gender into the title. There will be at a time someday when its ironic.

  There are so many reasons that the human life is just sadistically short. The wonderfully bright radioactive mass bursting brightly at the center of our universe lives for an estimated 10 billion years. That means that at best I’ll survive likely 1 hundred millionth the span of our sun. In the history of our universe a human life vanishes so quickly that its not even a blink, it’s hardly a trillionth of a blink if that. We take up something like two square feet of area when the very planet we are standing on takes 5 in a half quadrillion square feet…we are the tiniest of tiny ants upon a small rock in the middle of a vast expanse.

  Some people talk about heaven, an afterlife, but I’m not satisfied. I don’t want an afterlife, I want this one. If I were to paint my own heaven ala, what dreams may come (good movie), it would merely be our current reality but with me immortal (and likely invulnerable). But all in all it would be the same thing. I love reading about this world, watching it, seeing it evolve, I want to watch the continents change and move. For new land masses to split and for others to crash into one another.

  To see the first massive space ship begin its trek across space warping space and surviving the impact of hyper fast matter with nothing more than the shields wrapped around it like saran wrap. I would love to colonize my own planet, terraform it, and begin my own civilization. I want to watch a star die at the absolute smallest safe distance I can possibly imagine.

  I want to see a time when we come to a point where we no longer are discovering the universe but making our own. I think in the end I just want to see a point in which the life of man doesn’t vanish into nothingness, to see a point where the irresponsible nature of a half dozen fanatics cannot nearly obliterate everything.

  It is truly a frail and meek existence we life in, I hope to see a point in which life ends on our terms.

  I think as a whole our country is starting is starting to slowly realize that you cannot live beyond your means for very long before it comes back to haunt you. Many have lost their homes while others are struggling to hold onto what little they have. I don’t necessarily blame anyone in particular in fact if you take my college loans into account I too am living beyond my means and it will be something I have to deal with for years to come. Although I was given the choice of either waiting till I was 24 or getting into college now and considering my last place of employment just went under across the entire united states I feel I made a sound one. But I digress.

  The most recent noticeable victim in the vicinity of where I live is Western Washington University. They are looking at a possible 36 million dollar shortfall and they say that this sort of cut will show noticeably upon their quality services. While I could easy attack the ludicrousness of western providing quality server I will instead carry on with my point. This college lived beyond its means for quite some time, hoping that each year would be a mirror of the past and that it would be able to keep on running in the negative. I know many would argue that state funding doesn’t put you in the negative but when you run in a manner that without someone else’s financial support you cannot function then you are living beyond your means.

  This will be a good wake up call for Western if they take the event to heart. Much like this could be a great turn around for many people. The credit system is (without making conspiracy theories) a very corrupt one. The smallest bits of information are permissible in granting someone a credit card in your name, this has been an obvious shortfall for a decade or more and nothing has been done about it. I hope that with this big crash people will look towards living within their means. Enjoying all the things that are around them and if that isn’t enough working hard to gain legitimate access what they love (or at least want) most.

  Since at one time I’m pretty sure that’s how the US worked. If you wanted great things you worked hard and accomplished great things. We’ve entered a weird period (which perhaps has been longer than I’ve been alive) where you can get an major in business move to New York and make millions off the efforts of others. It’s a weird world where those who work make less than those who observe. The last time that was a major source of income in the US it ended up leading to a war and being abolished. Not to sound too much like a dramatist of course.

  Questions emailed in (depending on legitimacy) will be answered in the order they are received. If they are good enough (IE. Not complete nonsense) I’ll answer them on the here. If you don’t want to comment or can’t figure out where my email is hiding feel free to posit things via the comment system. I’ll also re-open the forums sometime down the road for people to ask things there.