Pretty Roman Pictures

So this week's article is archeology-based.  It is about a mosaic that was found under a farmer's field in Turkey.  Now, I am not really sure how you can grow a field over a tile mosaic.  Or, more importantly, why you would want to.  Roman mosaics are so pretty that it seems a shame to cover one up with grass and crops.  This mosaic was from the 3rd or 4th century, too!  That's a really long time for a mosaic to stay in as good a condition as they found it in, especially if there were roots growing down from the plants above.  Anyway, I just thought that the article was cool, since you generally don't think about still finding mosaics unless you go out on an archeological dig to specifically look for signs of a civilization.

SPAAAAACE!

Okay, so my topic for this week's current event is not really based on a specific news article.  Instead, I'm just going to talk about the stuff that has been happening on Mars.  As I am sure you are all aware, there is a rover on Mars that has been going around collecting images and samples for us to study.  Which I think, as a scientist, is way cool.

So, why do we keep returning to space travel?  Humans have always been trying to expand their territories, and they end up needing more and more space to live as the population keeps increasing.  But travelling in space has always been something more exciting.  Little kids want to be astronauts when they grow up, just because they want to get closer to the stars and other planets.  We had the Space Race in the sixties where we went to the moon, and we have had many other trips, manned and unmanned, which send satellites and space ships out to the surrounding solar system.  Why?  Because we want to know what is out there, and we want to eventually be able to see it for ourselves.

Now, Mars is the closest planet to ours, and is the only one so far that we can send probes to without it getting swallowed up by gases.  There have been rovers going to Mars for a while now, but you only hear about the super important events, like leaving and landing.  Most of the rest of the time, the general populace has no idea what that rover is doing.  Unless you have super nerdy geology professors like I do who track its progress.  But I digress.

I think I'm going to wrap up this post.  I just really like the idea of knowing what other planets and stars look like or what they were doing billions of years ago.  Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rambling post about SPACE!

Money, Money, Money...

Okay, so to preface my post, I would like to note that I don't know much about the actual costs of education, higher or otherwise.  Sure, I am in college, but my dad pays for most of it and likes to keep the finances to himself.  So, I'm going to base this post on what I think is happening, and if any of it is fundamentally incorrect, please let me know.

So, I think that higher education has become much more difficult to get into then in past decades, based on what I have been told.  There are now test scores and extracurricular activities that determine whether the college will let you in, instead of just grades.  There are also more people finishing high school and competing for a spot at a college, because it is expected of them and will help them get a better job.  Our society today believes that you have to have a college degree to do well, so more people are being coerced into getting one, which also makes the rush to get jobs significantly harder to people without a college degree.  So, it's a vicious cycle that plays over and over again.

Now, paying for higher education is what most people who elect to go to college are worried about.  The tuition tends to be expensive, and it can be very difficult to pay the university that much money.  That is where financial aid and student loans come in, especially if someone is paying for their own college without the help of parents.  Now, financial aid seems to work well for students whose parents don't make much money, but what about if the parents make a lot of money but refuse to help?  Then student loans have to be taken out, which probably requires a lot of bothersome things I don't know about.  The money aspect of college is probably a factor that deters people from going and getting a college degree, as well, although I don't know that for certain.

Colleges here in the United States also have different policies than elsewhere.  I heard somewhere that Germany (I think) has free college options, and the only reason I can think of that this would be the case is that if you want to go to college then hopefully you will make something of yourself and help the society through your job.  This may not be true, but It makes sense to me.  However, I don't know if it could actually work like that, because then couldn't people get a college degree and then do absolutely nothing with it?  If people have to pay for their education they are more likely to appreciate it and do something productive with their lives.

Well, I think that just about wraps up my post.  I hope you enjoyed it, and I can'r wait to read other's opinions throughout the week.

Who Comes Up With This Stuff?

So I found an article from the Wall Street Journal about decoding books into DNA.  Basically, someone decided to take a digital copy of a book and translates those ones and zeros into pieces of DNA.  The article is much better at explaining how they did it then I am, since I still don't understand how things work once they're in binary, much less in DNA.  But, apparently the space of someone's thumb could hold the entire internet.

Now, this is a very cool idea.  However, apparently it takes several days to transcribe it, and much longer to re-form those strands into a book.  I don't understand how they can do this, since DNA is sooo tiny.  But, someone much smarter then me has figured it out, and so now they can put literary information onto blank strands of DNA.

The better question seems to me to be, Why?  Okay, so now you have a book on tens of thousands strands of DNA.  So, why did you do this in the first place?  Just because you could?  I think we are doing perfectly fine with printed books.  If you want to read books from a computer screen or Kindle, that's fine, although I probably won't join you.  But what on earth possessed someone to say, "Oh, I want to read my book from a DNA strand today?"

Yeah, I understand that we're supposed to be improving ourselves and our technology all the time.  I wouldn't mind keeping things going at a slower pace, but that's just me.  I was born in the wrong century.  This is just crazy, to think of reading something through some complicated process that gets it off the DNA and into print.  But, hey, I suppose nothing will ever be lost again.

So, another article to think about.  Enjoy.

Is This Just Fantasy?

Oh, my favorite topic.  Books!  I have loved to read ever since I learned how, and most days (before I got a laptop, and even then...) I could be found hiding in my room with my nose in a book.  This topic of favorite books, though, is a difficult one.  I have many books that I enjoy, and if I tried to name them all I would be typing for a week.  That said, I'll try to just pick out my favorites and make this just a semi-long post instead of a novel... Haha, puns...

First off, my taste in books is pretty much anything that can be labeled "fiction."  I dislike historical books and biographies, instead choosing fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, and other fiction genres to read.  Fantasy may be my favorite type of book, specifically because there is nothing tying you to this world within their pages.  I suppose this includes books of a supernatural element, with vampires, witches, and magic everywhere.  Sci-Fi is alright, although I'm not much in to outer-space-type books.  Mysteries are also a good read, and trying to solve the case before the end is fun.

The other section of books that I love are myths and legends.  A surprising amount of space on my bookshelf is dedicated to variants of some ancient legend.  Stories of gods, goddesses, kings, and heroes are fabulous, especially when I can tie characters from one legend into another legend and create a sense of the world that may have existed at that time.  Greek and Roman stories, as well as British and Celtic legends, are probably my favorite to read.  Actually, I'm a bit obsessed with these stories, and can probably rattle of a good deal of them.  I suppose the Percy Jackson books should fit here, which were much better then the movie.  I'm currently reading a book that is a variant of Robin Hood, and I just finished one called The Fire Sword which mixed all of these European-based legends into one book, which was interesting.

Fantasy is a great genre.  Harry Potter, for example.  I am an extremely obsessed fan of the Harry Potter books, and have read them all multiple times.  If you would like an exact count, I can tell you, but they range from 3 to 22 times.  First off, J K Rowling is a phenomenal writer.  She created this entire world filled with magic spells, strange creatures, witches and wizards, and more.  The other great writer this connects to is Tolkien.  To my great shame, I haven't read all the Lord of the Rings books.  I have read the Hobbit and the Fellowship of the Ring, but I can't make it through the Two Towers.  Reaching the second half where it is just Frodo and Sam, and I couldn't bring myself to continue.  I do plan on rectifying this, however.

One of my favorite authors is a woman named Tamora Pierce.  She writes semi-children books, by which I mean I read most of them in 5th grade.  Even though they are extremely easy to read and rather childish, I will read them over and over again.  She has two separate worlds for her 27 books, 10 in one and 17 in the other.  One world follows the journey of four children as they learn how to use magic through everyday objects.  The other books split into smaller series that follow different females through their teen years as they become knights (secretly and dressed as a boy or later openly as a girl), or ambassadors, or policewomen (for lack of a better old-time description).  It's kind of difficult to explain her books, but they are great in a very simple geared-for-pre-teen-girls kind of way.

I think that just about covers the long series that I read.  Most of the rest of my books are individual books, or just a few books to a series.  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is a great series.  I'm reading a series that starts with the first book Dhampir, about a half-vampire vampire hunter and her half-elf partner.  Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey are good authors, although they have way too many books to keep up with.  Brandon Sanderson's books are also good, as are the dragon-based books of Naomi Novik.  R.A. Salvatore is another fantasy writer, with some of his books based on a drow elf who is banished to the surface world.  Another semi-childish series starts with Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer, about an orphan girl who dresses as a boy and goes to sea in 19th century London.  Mickey Zucker Reichert's Nightfall series and some of her stand-alone novels are really good, and I need to read more of her books.

Okay, I think I'm going to wrap it up.  I hope you enjoyed reading the post, even if most of my books are childish and short.  Kathleen's up tomorrow, and I can't wait to read everyone else's posts (and then take a trip to McKay's Used Books).  Enjoy, and don't forget to read!

The Human Species Evolution

Okay, so I was looking for a news story to write about, and I came across one in the science section of BBC News.  It was about a new species of humans that was confirmed to have existed.  Here is the link if anyone wants to read it.  This article was particularly interesting to me because as a geology major, I like that sort of thing.  And I hadn't thought about multiple human species before.

Basically the article said that there have now been at least three confirmed species of humans that existed two million years ago.  The one that we evolved from used to be the only line of humans until about 50 years ago, when another was discovered through fossil fragments, and again recently.  Because there is only one strand of humans today, the others must have dies out.

I had newer thought about having mutations of humans that tried to survive several million years ago.  I mean, it makes sense.  Everything has to evolve, and there are many different animals with ancestors that branched into strands of mutations that became the animals that we see today.  There were species that died out back then, so why not have humans do the same?  Trials of what would works best that used "survival of the fittest" to narrow down the strands until just one is left to form a typical "human."  From a scientific viewpoint, it is obvious that of course there would be different branches of humans.

So I thought that was an interesting article that made me think about something I hadn't considered before.  I hope you enjoyed reading, and Kathleen will end the week for us tomorrow.

Equality for everyone, but please no politics!

Okay, so I liked this topic and spent a lot of time figuring out what I wanted to say, so hopefully I can make some kind of sense.  Discrimination has been a natural part of our history, based on race, gender, and other qualifications.  Many people have participated in discrimination even without consciously realizing it, by their actions against certain people.  Laws have been set up for lowering the amount of discrimination that is apparent in our society, and they have had varying amounts of success.

I don't know much about individual anti-discrimination laws, but they seem to all relate to giving minority groups more rights, correct?  Also, the definition of a "minority group" is a little fuzzy to me.  Why does women count as a minority group?  Aren't there just as many women as men, or is my perception of our population just majorly screwed up?  I don't know, I could be wrong, I have no idea.  I understand Hispanics or blacks in the United States being a minority group, because there is a  lesser percentage of them compared to the whole.  But isn't the gender ratio relatively equal?

So, I also don't really understand feminists who are obsessed with getting absolutely equal rights and then get pissed when the men fire back at them about things like maternity leave.  I don't really get that, but then I also have no idea about the discrimination in the workplace, which is what I think people are generally getting at when they are talking about such issues.  I think that if is isn't really a big issue for you, don't worry about it.  It's not really worth all the fuss to just get a raise or something just because of being a woman, instead of just taking it.  But then, I'm a really easy-going person and don't care much about working politics.

Races are also an interesting discussion.  Due to the lovely racism prior to the Civil War, we seem to still have a general spat between blacks and whites, even though most people have gotten over it all.  It seems to have gone crazy, with a fuss being made when whites do something racist towards minority groups even if there are cases of the opposite happening.  Or maybe that's just what you hear more of, I don't know.  I think the laws pertaining to races should be equal, just on principle.  I have no idea of they are or not, but they should be.

Now we get to sexual orientation.  I think the Chick-Fil-A deal is a bit worn out by now, and I won't go into that at all.  I personally think that non-strait people should have all the same rights and freedoms and such that straight people have.  It should just be like that, and there shouldn't be a major fuss about it.  I could probably go longer on this, but I won't for the sake of everyone reading this post.

So hopefully that wasn't too ramble-y and chaotic.  Enjoy reading the news topics that every is going to be posting next week!

In The Worst Situations

When I saw this topic, I was concerned about having enough to say about it.  I don't know much about the laws or reasons behind assisted suicide, so I though this post was going to be super short.  So, I would like to thank Kelsey very much for her topic announcement and her research on the subject!  I think the questions she posted were great, so I'm going to use them as a semi-guideline, if that is all right with everyone.

Okay, so I started thinking about this topic and the little I knew about assisted suicide.  If someone is terminally ill and only have a few months to live with little hope of ever getting better, there is always a chance that they will surpass the doctor's expectations and live for a year or more.  Doctors can just give an estimate to how a person's body is going to respond to something, but they can't actually tell the person what will happen with complete certainty.  Even multiple doctors can be fooled into thinking one way, and something else may occur.  I didn't want to make this about me, so I will go into a short version of the example that automatically comes to my mind when talking about proving doctors wrong.  Those of you who know this already, bear with me.  When I was born three and a half months early, I had a fifteen percent estimation of actually surviving and a zero percent chance of ever walking.  All of the doctors thought that if I even survived, I would be stuck in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.  Needless to say, twenty years later I am walking and able to do much more than anyone ever thought possible back then.

Off the subject of my lovely life story and back to assisted suicide.  I think if someone doesn't have much time to live and they don't think they have anything to live for, they should be allowed to make the decision of whether or not to commit some form of suicide , assisted or not.  Personally, if I was stuck in a white-walled sterile-smelling hospital with no one to visit me and very little time left to live, I think I would want to at least be allowed the option of choosing when and how I want to die.  I'm not saying I would take it, because I like living way too much and would refuse to die in a hospital anyway, but having the option is much better then not.  If someone wanted to die in their own home instead of a hospital, I say let them.  It's certainly the choice I would make, but I hate hospitals so I may be a little biased.

One of Kelsey's questions was does Do Not Resuscitate count as assisted suicide?  I don't think that it should, because it is the person's own decision, or the decision of their family.  It's what they wanted, so I think they should be allowed to choose not to be resuscitated.  If someone is in horrible pain and chooses DNR, I wouldn't want to bring them back to a world of pain and little hope of ever getting better.

These examples are kind of doom and gloom and extreme, and there are always exceptions and different cases.  All the different situations would be impossible to write in one post, so I'm just generalizing the worst situations.  If someone is able to live, heart beating and brain working, then they should try to do so, because you never know what may happen to turn a horrible situation into a better one.  They may have few people in the world who care for them, but at least the doctors/nurses care for the most part if no one else does.  That's something, right?

The last question Kelsey asked was "Should people be required to live if they are physically capable of doing so, because anything else would be immoral?"  The key words here seem to be "physically capable."  If someone is able to physically live a life, that is very different from actually living a life.  One is "going through the motions" (to take a quote from a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode), without actually paying attention or caring about what is going on, and actually living is an investment in other people as well as the physically body.  You have to be mentally prepared to live, and want to actually live, not just do what is expected of you.  If you just do what is expected of you without any emotions or caring, are you really living?  Or do you just walk around like a zombie who is as good as dead anyway?

Anyway, this got  long and kind of ramble-y, and I apologize for that and for forcing my life story upon you as an example, even if it was a good example of the that particular idea.  So, Kathleen is up tomorrow, and I can't wait to read what everyone else has to say about this topic.  Cheers.

Television, Glorious Television

Okay, so I'm going to try to keep this post to a manageable length.  We'll see how success that is.

I didn't used to watch a lot of television.  Until the later high school years, I never had a favorite t.v. show.  Then I started watching NCIS and other shows with my parents.  It's all their fault.  So I'm going to try to make a list that is somewhat organized.

I watch a lot of crime shows.  NCIS, occasionally NCIS LA because I like the main guy, Criminal Minds, White Collar, occasionally Hawaii Five-0 because it's in Hawaii, which is new, and Bones are the ones that I can think of now.  I'm kind of behind on Bones, but I'll catch up eventually.  White Collar just started a new season, which is fantastic, mostly because Matt Bomer can rock a fedora.  And then there are the crime shows like the Mentalist, Castle, and Psych, which are just different enough to make them interesting, and Psych has a great sense of humor.  Okay, so Burn Notice gets an honorable mention on this list because I like it a lot, but am several seasons behind on it.

Next.  Hmm, sci-fi and supernatural television next?  I watch almost all of my television on the internet, so getting episodes from way earlier is not a problem.  Brandon got me hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, which I still watch when I don't feel like watching anything else.  This in turn led me to Charmed, a fabulous show about witches that ran for seven or eight seasons in the late nineties and ... the decade after.  Next would be Firefly, another show by Joss Whedon that I watch whenever I feel like it, since it only has fourteen episodes.  Firefly's Nathan Fillion is also the reason I started watching Castle.

Okay, so Britain's Doctor Who and Torchwood would not have fit in that same paragraph, so they get their own.  One of my roommates got me addicted, so I've now seen almost all of the new revamp of Doctor Who, plus some of the 1960's episodes (or possibly more than I should have seen, considering how long it takes for anything to happen back then in t.v.).  Torchwood I've only seen most of the first two seasons, but that's okay because I'm pretty sure I could watch John Borrowman's character all day doing nothing.  Or making out with whatever guy or girl happens to come along...  Which may be the real reason I watch.  So, I tried not to go too fangirl-y in this paragraph, and I think I was successful.

The last shows I'm going to mention are kids shows.  My roommate informed me that I need to get caught up on watching Avatar, because I don't remember the episodes I saw previously very well, so that I could watch Korra.  And I'm not sure if this last one makes me super weird, but I also am trying to get caught up on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  It's okay if that gets me shunned, because I have three roommates that also watch it.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed looking at my list of television.  It is quite extensive, and I apologize for that.  I'm not sure if writing them out in a list made me feel good or bad about the amount of time I spend watching electronic screens...  Oh well.  Kathleen's up tomorrow, and enjoy reading about the rest of the television shows that people watch.

Modernism with a side of Traditionalism?

Okay, so I don't know much about either of the views of religion that we are debating this week.  So I am going to define what I think these mean, and go with it from there.  I think of traditionalism as a literal translation of something, and modernism as an individual's interpreted view of that same thing.  I suppose since we are talking about religion, that something would be the Bible or some other holy book.  Oh, I guess I should give you my religious background, since I wasn't here in the beginning when you all posted about it.

I'm a Mormon.  My entire family is Mormon, and I grew up surrounded by church and other religious things.  That being said, I'm not a very strict Mormon.  I do most of what they say, like not drinking or smoking or stealing, because I don't have an overwhelming need to do those things.  I can come up with non-Mormon related reasons just as easy for most of the things I do or don't do.  However, I don't agree with many of the viewpoints that the Mormon church has that have to relate to other people.  I am definitely all for non-hetero marriage and other things of that nature, and the Mormon church is, well, not.  For the most part.

Anyways, enough about me.  On to traditionalism vs. modernism in religion.  Mormons are generally traditionalist in their views, I think.  They really like quoting scriptures and talking about what they mean in context and how they apply to a person's life.  They tend to allow individuals to come to their own conclusion on how they want to apply something personally, but they definitely have a decisive idea on what the particular scripture means and how you are supposed to follow it.  So, I can understand the point of a traditionalist view on religion even if I don't generally follow it.

I am (relatively) open-minded, and I don't care much how other people decide to follow the rules set down in their holy book of choice (or no book).  Unless it's screwing their life up.  But, that's not on topic.  I think a person should have enough good judgement to have the ability to decide for themselves what is right, wrong, and which one they are going to choose.  Consequences will generally follow, but they should be able to at least know what they are doing and how it should affect them.  Now, there are exceptions to everything, but that would take way too long to cover, and I am already rambling.

Okay, to wrap up, since I'm not sure I actually made any sense in this post.  I think most people try to have a more modernism view, because then they can have a more flexible set of rules to follow and decide how much they want those rules to have an impact in their life.  This topic required a lot of thought and rambling, so I hope you all got something out of it.  Kathleen will post tomorrow, and I can't wait to hear what everyone else has to say on this topic.

Pictures are Worth a Thousand Words

I don't really know how to define art.  To me, art is a picture on a wall.  I like landscape pictures, normal ones that tell you exactly what you are looking at.  The abstract ones that have crazy colors and you stare at it for hours trying to figure out what it is?  I don't like them.  I like simple, plain backgrounds.  People are okay, but I prefer ones without them.

I'm not sure if that says anything about art.  But this post is going to be super short.  Sorry about that.

The Life of a Serial Killer

So, this is a topic that I don't know much about.  However, I know which of the two I am leaning towards based on my experiences and I'm just going to go with it.  I think nurture, a person's environment, has the largest impact on what they end up doing with their life.  Also, as a note, I am not the serial killer mentioned in the tittle...  Just putting that out there.

My own experiences point toward nurture.  I don't know much about the genetics part of nature, but it seems to me that once you are born you make your own decisions based on what surrounds you environmentally.  Now, I grew up in the "definition of normal" house with two parents and two sisters, one older and one younger.  This is just a background for those of you who aren't familiar with my extremely nice and wonderful family.  And that wasn't sarcastic.  I didn't fight with my sisters, contrary to the idea that all siblings are always at each others throats.  There was no reason not to, no punishment if we fought.  We just didn't fight.  We still get along fantastically.  I'm pretty sure that is caused by environmental impact instead of genetics, although your guess is as good as mine at which factor caused it.  Anyway, enough about me.

On to television shows and murderers.  Now, I watch way too much television, and most of it is crime related.  In particular for this discussion, Criminal Minds.  They have a lot of serial killers they catch, and there are many reasons why these people kill.  Some times, they have genetic disorders that make them think killing is okay, or that they are actually doing something good.  This is definitely pointing to the nature side.  However, a lot of the time, the person killing was abused or tormented as a child or teenager, and these events turned them into brutal killers.  This makes sense to me.  Something bad (or, I suppose, good) happens to someone, they never forget it.  It becomes a part of them, even if they end up leading normal lives.  It could affect how they interact with other people, or something as small as what movies they won't watch, but it does affect them.  Experiences in life shape people and turn them into who they become later in life, even if they don't realize it.

So, that ended up being a bit more rant-y then I meant it to be, but I hope I made a point somewhere along the way.  Kathleen is finishing up tomorrow, I can't wait to read what she has to say!

Annoying Things That People Do

Okay, so this is my first actual post.  I can think of quite a lot of things that drive me crazy is specific situations, but most are just things that I find irksome based on the person or the mood I am in, so I don't think those really count.  However, there are a few things that I dislike in general.

Catcalls.  You know when you are at a band/music concert or a recital and people start yelling their friend's/family member's names?  Drives me completely nuts.  I have sat through way too many of these types of performances, and I don't understand why people insist on doing this.  I mean, I know you want to tell someone to do a good job, but is yelling their name right before they have to remember whatever it is they are performing really a good way to help them do well?  No, it isn't.  It probably distracts them because they hear someone say their name, and the automatic response to that is to look up and find the person who yelled, not to ignore them and concentrate on something else.  It would be so much more considerate to yell their name after they have performed, so that you aren't distracting them and they won't be stressed out trying to remember what to do with people yelling their names all the time.

That's all on that subject.  There is one other thing that I have recently found to be really obnoxious.  Now, I didn't realize this until the last year or so, but I don't understand about half of what comes out of college students' mouths.  They talk about something that they think is the best or funniest thing ever, and they I'm supposed to react in some appropriate way.  When I look at them blankly because I didn't understand the reference to whatever they were saying, or I didn't laugh at a joke I didn't understand (not that I laugh much out loud anyway...), they get offended or confused because I didn't think it was "the best thing ever."  Now, I say a lot of things that most regular (normal? aka, not as weird as I am) people don't understand, but if they look at me strangely I say "don't worry" or "you didn't need to understand."  I don't just stare at someone until they ask how that was an amusing joke/story/whatever.  I have a friend at college who just stares at me with a "that was so funny, right?" grin until I ask her what the point was, and she is shocked when I don't get it (and she's known me for two years now...).  So, yeah.  People expecting me to understand everything that comes out of their mouths when they have known me long enough to know better apparently really bug me.  I don't mean to write so much on that.

Anyway, I think this is where I am going to end this post.  I hope everyone has enjoyed reading everyone else's posts this week on the things that bug them.