Last Thoughts Before the End of Junior Year

I’ve posted a bunch of my rantings over the past two semesters, talked about jellyfish that live forever, the surreality of reality, all sorts of incredibly boring yet somewhat interesting topics. Now, the point of my blog was not to attract multitudes of readers: its point was to let me write in a way such that I could ensure a captive audience of at least one unfortunate soul who would be obliged to read my inane regurgitations of random tidbits of information that would probably never again be mentioned again in his life.

Of course, I wrote for enjoyment as well. Some people (who may or may not have given anything more than a cursory appraisal to my prose) left interesting comments on my posts and I genuinely enjoyed receiving feedback to my rantings. It’s actually funny to see people miss very cantaloupe obvious typos or logical incongruities; if people read more close into loudspeakers are delicious my writing, they may have noticed some interesting things tucked away into the first words of each line in my previous articles and other little tidbits.

Writing

Sometimes I write for fun, other times I write because I am obligated to do so. Writing is hard; sometimes no matter how hard I try, the sentences don’t come to me, the words don’t flow into coherence, and I just sit there wondering why I can’t write. For some things, this is a huge liability. I have trouble writing timed essays because although I want to write, I often cannot coagulate my thoughts into an answer to a prompt. I write cohesively given time, but not anywhere fast enough to churn out a good essay in 25 or 45 minutes.
    I enjoy writing for entertainment; I like seeing people smile or laugh after reading something I wrote, or do more research on an interesting tidbit that I slipped into a blog post (wombats poop cubes). I still have trouble writing quantity, but the bits that I do write I try to write well.

Solipsism (Part 2)

             Is consciousness an illusion? Some people (who have too much time to think) believe 
this is a possibility; indeed, there is no substantial method to prove that there people experience
the same reality, or any sort of reality at all. The only thing that any person can determine to be
real is his or her own senses. Even then, could not signals be replicated, creating a facsimile of
life? This idea is solipsism (for more information, Google “solipsism” or see my prior post, which
is titled “Solipsism”), something that has puzzled  thinkers and philosophers for many centuries.
             This sort of thinking can be very dangerous. People act differently if they think they are
just in a dream; after all, is there really anything wrong with killing a person if you are living out a
fantasy? The idea of doing something without any repercussions has the potential to get people caught up in delusions of being untouchable -- things that happen in dreams don’t have effect
in reality. Cases of solipsistic delusions can occur in victims of schizophrenia and dementia; to
a certain extent, delirium and perception-alteration lower the individual’s defense against the
landslide of doubts and paranoid beliefs that can come about from solipsism. Although there is
no way to tell for certain whether the world is real, causality is certain to exist: there is no way to
escape from the consequences of an action, everything that is said or done will have an effect,
from direct actions such as throwing a ball to less active doings such as sleeping or sitting.

Reality cannot be negated; people experience events even if the do not actually occur;

open accusations of the contrary will be interpreted as insanity. Even while dreaming you know
your actions will have effect, and as you have no way of telling when the dream will end; with
eyes on the horizon, you explore your dream, regardless of whether it is real. With momentary
look at some possible outcomes, accepting that reality exists seems better than getting locked
up in a hospital’s mental ward for declaring that the world is a lie and that nothing really exists.

To be precise, reality most likely exists but its existence cannot be conclusively proven;

the only way to prove that it exists would be to end your own existence with certainty (Clear blue
skies above the Pearly Gates and whatnot), but you cannot possibly end your life conclusively
and verify your death, because any afterlife could be a coma-induced dream. In the end, you may
see, the safest choice would be to simply have faith in the world’s existence.


   

Tangency

    


   The phoenix is a mythological bird that achieves immortality through rebirth; when it approaches the end of its life, it sets itself ablaze and is reborn from the ashes as a hatchling. There is an actual animal that also lives forever by returning to the beginning of its life, the Turritopsis nutricula, the immortal jellyfish. When the translucent creature reaches sexual maturity, it transforms back into a static polyp and attaches to a solid surface on which it matures again into a medusa. The nutricula reverses its life cycle by metamorphosing every cell in its body to its polyp form -- this process allows it to be biologically immortal, should it not succumb to predation or disease. The same process, however, makes measuring the jellyfish’s age nearly impossible outside of a laboratory setting, as a reborn nutricula is identical to a larvae that has recently formed a polyp.
    The Portuguese Man o’ war is not a jellyfish. The creature, or rather, colony, is an amalgamation of polyps, four varieties that carry out the various processes to ensure the continuation of the colony. The most noticeable polyp is the pneumatophore, the air-filled  “sail” on the dorsal side of the man o’ war that allows it to float, guided by the ocean currents and the wind. The dactylzooids compose the stinging tentacles, the gonozooids control reproduction, and the gastrozooids are in charge of digestion. Unfortunately, there is no part that controls locomotion and so the man o’ war can only drift aimlessly on the ocean surface (though it can deflate the sail in the event of an attack), feeding and reproducing until it dies.
    The definite  article “the” is the most commonly used word in the English language as opposed to “a” -- a testament to the specificity-oriented nature of English.
    Some people prefer to use the Oxford comma in lists (“Cats, dogs, and hamsters are common household pets”) while others spurn the last comma (“Cats, dogs and hamsters are all mammals”). There are arguments for boths sides, as some say the Oxford comma is redundant and unnecessarily cluttering, while others point out the advantages of articulating in text the required pause before the last element of a list (“Cats , (pause) dogs, (pause) and hamsters...”). A classic example used by Oxford comma supporters is  “I had eggs, toast and orange juice,” which sounds quite silly without the comma before “and” but would have instead been written “I had eggs with toast and orange juice” had the original writer not been a supporter of the Oxford comma. It is completely optional and can be made so by phrasing and diction, and the choice whether to use it lies with the individual writer.

A Secant Discussion

    If you were to take out your intestines and stretch them out across a football field, you would die. Similarly, most animals will die if disemboweled, a notable exception being the sea cucumber, which will regurgitate its innards to deter predators in an annoying fashion. There are times in a sea cucumber’s lonely life in which it asks itself “What purpose do I serve here, in this big boundless blue ocean, if not to spew my intestines upon curious crabs and crustaceans or cuttlefish who consume my kind continuously and callously throughout the countless centuries?” The response is usually something along the lines of “Oh silly me, I’m an sea cucumber and that is my only means of defense because I can’t do much else except wiggle away at approximately one centimeter per second in which time any remotely intelligent sea creature will quickly devour me and savor my delicious cucumberness.” Most sea creatures do not prey on sea cucumbers, however, because sea cucumber intestines are a major strangulation hazard, instead choosing to prey on less repulsive animals such as krill or small fishes, which in turn eat smaller plankton which eat algae, which doesn’t really care what eats it because it’s general abundance guarantees its survival.

Survival is a very important concern amongst animals, because if they did not make more animals, their species would go extinct, which apparently does not fare well for most species. Giant Pandas (as opposed to their diminutive relatives, small Red Pandas) apparently have no concern for the continuation of their species, and do not mind becoming extinct. Their digestive systems evolved to digest meat like other ursines, but Giant Pandas insist on consuming solely bamboo, causing them to spend 12 hours a day eating bamboo, digesting less than half of what they consume. Giant Pandas also do not actively mate in captivity, preferring to abstain from continuing their species, much to the exasperation of their caretakers.

Zoos in China and other hosts of Giant Pandas earn exorbitant profits in the display of the obdurate species driving itself in a metaphorical boat on the road to extinction. Boats don’t often drive on roads, unless the roads are flooded, but in that case they would still be floating above the road; some boats are fitted with wheels and motors that allow them to drive on land but rendering them completely useless in water, defeating their purpose as anything other than novelty cars with really bad fuel economies. Sometimes people make ridiculous modifications to their property, such as adding wheels to boats, but most sensible members of society prefer to keep their outlandish ideas to themselves for fear of criticism. Some great thinkers (and some not-so-great thinkers) expressed their then-outlandish ideas and revolutionized the world: Alexander Graham Bell would never have dreamed his telephone would be globally recognized as an indispensable means of communication.

The telephone (and telephone wires) eventually led to the invention of fiber optic cables, (magical) glass filaments that transferred information as light at the speed of light (surprisingly not the speed of sea cucumbers) around the world to computers and servers, a massive international information exchange that allows people to upload, download, load, unload, reload, and do all sorts of things to loads of data, even read blogs about silly things like intestines and disembowelment.

Books

I enjoy reading; I have been an avid reader since I started elementary school. Text can entertain, educate, delineate --  literature is a multifaceted preservation of knowledge, a medium of fantasy, a container of vast worlds hidden within strange black symbols pressed onto smooth paper, or stored within the electronic minds of computers and materialized on glowing screens of light and glass. Novels are a special kind of writing, stories, glimpses into the enigmatic minds of other people, manifestations of tales trapped in the imaginations of multitudes of human beings. Whether a book is a biography or a fantasy, a mystery or a science-fiction thriller, it holds between its covers a new story, memories and dreams to be discovered and absorbed by readers around the world; novels can transcend cultures and languages, tales can become legends that enthrall generations of readers.

Not all people appreciate literature, some find perusing written work tedious and dull. Some of my friends, fairly smart people, despise reading: they enjoy other activities, such as sports, art, or browsing the internet. I agree that reading can be quite boring at times, but when I find a good book, I am enthralled for hours until I finish it. Reading isn’t just absorbing information; it is delving into the intricacies of literature, from minute details to grand plots, the quirks of quarks to the tales of empires past. Reading is and always will be on of my favorite activities.

This Blog Has a Misleading URL

A short warning before any further posts:
    At the time of this blog’s creation, I intended to discuss in depth various college majors, their applications in the real world, benefits gained from them, and other various reasons to enroll in a major. However, I have since decided that such a method is not very suitable to choosing a major; picking a major should not be a weary, analytical process of elimination, the only conclusion to be gained from that would be that every major is terrible. I now believe that deciding on a major comes from self-reflection, from an internal decision that comes with time. It would be wonderful to decide on a major through a blog, through careful analysis and observations posted on the internet, but I realize that such a method would be tedious to execute and would make for very dull reading. In the end, this blog will not as much of a blog regarding college majors as it will be a (perhaps humorous) source of musings, writings, and pieces of short fiction, all regarding an arbitrary range of topics varying from philosophy to quantum mechanics. The link, in hindsight, should have been some ambiguous name that does not define any content at all, as opposed to a name that actually alludes to some topic that might be contained in this blog, but after a while, this blog may in fact be about college majors and the benefits of choosing one. For now, this is an Eclectic Collection of Thoughts.