Yay, Bush Administration.

How old is the Grand Canyon? Park Service won't say

The Word of Wisdom isn't all about health

Some reasons why you may want to consider following the Word of Wisdom for obedience's sake.

Coffee Aroma Alone Combats Sleep Deprivation
Study: drinking coffee may help reduce diabetes risk
Eat (Chocolate), Drink (Coffee) and be Merry

Of interest

A species with such Big Brains that it may well have killed them. Is thinking harder than we do lethal? =)

War and misogyny may be as closely related as the term "chauvinist" suggests.

Chicken brains

Animal Planet News: "Chickens think about the future"

New York Times: "If chickens are so smart, why aren't they eating us?"

EggIndustry.com: Chicken intelligence - expert opinions

Milius, Susan. "Breaking the Code on Chicken Clucks." Science News, 156:9 (28 Aug 1999) 135.

Quebec name changes

"Both spouses keep their birth names after marriage and continue to exercise their civil rights under that name, i.e. they must use their birth name in contracts, on credit cards, on their driver's licence, etc. However, women are free however to assume their husband's name socially. Women married before April 2, 1981 who already use their husband's last name to exercise their civil rights may continue to do so." (Quebec Ministry of Justice)

CTV.ca article on marital name change in Quebec (2007)

Articles to read

Senate makes themselves useful for the first time in my memory

Myanmar becomes slightly less unbelievably insane

The US tries to pick a Cold War

Appeals court rules Texas is plagued with judicial idiot

Most common sleeping positons

New Class Blog

The Obligatory Blog, for my Persuasive Writing class, is under way.

Andyogramy

I have a new post at andyogramy.blogspot.com. Random exercises from last night.

New list

My newest list is a list of things I don't like to eat. My mom has been asking me for this list since the beginning of time, so now I'm writing it down as I think of it. Love you, Mom. Thanks for putting up with your picky sons.

Graduation

I applied for graduation! Somehow, having given the school $15 to print out my diploma just makes it all so much more real. Too bad I'm still here for another 4 months.

Also, I'm really cuddle-hungry. I've been thinking all day about how much fun it is to relax on the couch with someone you love, and also how much of a difference it makes if that love is of the romantic sort. It's too bad my beliefs disqualify me in the eyes of a substantial percentage of the school's available women.

It's probably the most frustrating part of my day-to-day here at this school that I realise this is one of the few places in America where my faith is semi-criminal. It's strange how persecution can be both the cross a community professes to carry and the weapon it wields against those around it; at the same time, it's the abused that are most likely to become abusers, isn't it? Maybe I should concentrate on that point of view so I don't fall into the same pattern myself.

Confucianism versus Mormonism

Sometimes, I think I'm trying to get myself expelled from BYU. It's a good thing my TA is Understanding. Here's the last paragraph of my most recent homework entry, on the differences between Confucianism and Mormonism.

The greatest difference I can see between the two schools of thought is that while Confucianism is rather misogynistic, it makes no attempts to justify its beliefs, nor does it pretend to put men and women on any sort of equal ground. The Church of Jesus Christ, instead of embracing its sexism, continues to make bland and unconvincing claims that the roles of men and women are separate, but equal. While my position is obviously very much an inflammatory one, I stand behind it, and am quite willing to discuss it in greater detail. I consider the chauvinism of the Church quite beyond reasonable doubt, and while I reserve a personal opinion of the Church's gender roles, I don't mean to suggest God would have them defined otherwise.

K'iche' play

The play was entitled "the Death of Seven Macaw". When I read the Popol Wuj version of the story, it seemed more to me that he just lost all his coolness, and therefore had nothing to make him noteworthy. He does die, though, so it must have just been the translation I read that confused me.

I have pictures on Facebook. I think you should be able to view them even without an account, but if you have a problem, let me know.

View the program for "All the College is a Stage"

Updates I realise I never provided

A) I am single. Classic Red and I broke up in January. Her choice.

B) I am an existentialist. This also involves weak atheism.

C) I am trying not to hate God anymore. If He doesn't exist, there isn't much to hate anyway, is there? Also, I have a feeling that when I leave BYU and feel somewhat liberated from Big Brother, I may realise that the Church itself wasn't all that bad. I may even decide the same about God.

D) I am probably taking way too much lithium. I can't see how anything else could be knocking me out like this.

Too lazy

There are so many important things I should be doing with my time. Why am I here, writing a blog post?

Too lazy.

Now, I feel great pride for the simplicity of life that is mine right now. I love the fact that I can sleep 10 of the 14 daylight hours with minimal damage to my agenda, but that doesn't mean it ends up being much fun. I mean, the first 8 hours of anything can be okay, depending on what it is and who's on your team. But after 13 hours of being unconscious, you want to spend some quality time building enough memories to keep you believing that it really is possibly Tuesday already.

Classes are going great. I'm feeling good about grades, and pretty okay decent maybe not so much about language fluency. I tell you what though, there's nothing like taking K'iche' and ASL at once to get you translating everything that walks by into ideas, rather than words. I hear that's harder than it sounds - that many people don't really believe that it's possible for most people to think in complete thoughts without introducing a syntax and sound system to the brew. Maybe they're right, but I feel that, at certain times of clear thought, I can manage it.

There's a couple being ridiculously cute just in my peripheral vision. She looks a bit like Broom Curls. He looks nothing like Existential Linguist. As expected, they've raised my blood pressure a tad.

And I'm officially watching my weight. Yes, the referees of my health are sprinting to my navel as we speak. The goalkeepers of my marrow are beelining it for my bones.

Two months later

Not much of a post, but here it comes.

In the new section of the library, from the first floor to the second is 15 feet. From the second to the third is 17.5 feet. The scale model that is located on the first floor has the school floating about on a level with my belt (measurement pending). The scale is 1":40'. From the first floor to the third floor totals in 32.5 feet, or 390 inches. 390 inches on the scale equals 15,600 feet. The distance from the first floor to the surface of the model is about 3.5 feet, and the distance from the third floor to my eye level is about 5.5 feet. That means an extra 2 feet for the total height from my eye to the model. 2 feet equals 960 feet on the scale. Therefore, when I look down at the model, the model looks as it would if I were 16,560 feet above the campus, which is a moderately high (but common enough) altitude for skydiving.

God is greater.

Low Quality Version
High Quality Version
I'm not sure how to feel about this. From what I read on the website, seems (I'm not good with Arabic) to suggest that God is the one who made the cows fly past the car in Twister and is also the one who killed 300,000 people in the 2004 tsunami disaster. Comments from the peanut gallery?