Weather. One of the main topics of small talk, which I hate, and one of the main causes for sunburns, which I hate. But also the reason I get to swim outside and not get cold on some days and yet play in freezing cold snow on others. The reason I get soaked and cold on rainy days and can't walk or bike anywhere, but also the reason that I can be weird and dance in the rain in a T-shirt and shorts. The reason I get sweaty and disgusting on sunny days, but also the reason I can go to the pool. We all love and hate weather. Or at least I do. I'm not sure why I'm writing this. It's basically a more specialized recap of my favorite seasons post, but I guess I had to write about rain and sun, and this was the first thing I thought of. In any case, this will probably be both really weird and really... um... strange.
I don't like hot weather. And by that I mean, I HATE HOT WEATHER. There are a million downsides, and the only upside is that the pools open in the summer, when it also happens to be hot. But I don't like feeling dirty and disgusting and smelly, so I don't like sweating, and I don't like feeling like all my bones are melting, so I don't like heat. Actually, that's probably why I like the pool so much, plus the fact that it makes it feel like you're floating. (I don't really float in the water, though. I kind of wish I did.) I don't really mind cold weather. I get to be in the snow, and I don't get cold easily. But I do sometimes start sweating in the middle of the winter because of all the gear I have to put on, and my skin gets dry because I hate lotion. I really just hate all oils, though. I mean, I don't mind them just sitting out, but if they're on my skin, its just gross. Also, I have to have a humidifier running, making it cold inside as well as outside, or I get a series of bloody noses. But overall, I like cold weather. Or, rather, I like snow, and I don't really mind cold weather. But that's basically the same thing.
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This is a question we've all asked ourselves at some point in our lives. Do we all see the same red? Blue? Yellow? Other colors I don't feel like listing? When I was little, my mom told me that not everyone saw us in the same way. I'm not sure what she meant by this or even if it was real life and not a dream, but I took it very literally. So is it true? Could I be seeing someone else's blue strawberry even though I thought of it as red?
So I did the obvious. I looked it up. I got many results, but I clicked on the one at the top, livescience.com. They said that this was most likely true, but it's not the same as we've always believed. I value reliability. This may make you think that I'm the kind of person to want everyone and everything to be extremely predictable and predetermined, but that would be SO boring. Reliability, to me, means that you keep your promises, show up on time or close to it (two minutes late is understandable, fifteen is not without a good reason), and answer your phone (or call/text back soon after). I value this because I like to know what's going on. Again, I don't want to plan everything, but I do want to plan regular things like getting picked up from school and other places and meeting up with someone to hang out. I want to be able to communicate and decide on a new plan if something goes wrong.
I also value freedom. I want to have the option to walk to the library to get a book or to go to the store and buy a snack. I don't want to be forced to do anything, and I need to have my own choices in life. Everyone needs this. But I need a little more freedom than some. I feel this way because I get stressed easily, and when I do, I don't react well. I begin to feel trapped- as in I can actually see a box around me, holding me in. Thankfully, since this is a mental situation, the box doesn't actually hold me in place, but it definitely feels like it. Who taught you that things don't always work out the way you want them to? That would be the world. Oh, and my parents. When I was younger, I was the kind of kid who would always want to actually finish what I was doing before moving on to the next task. I still am, really. But sometimes when we really needed to get going, this got in the way, because a tower or a "house" I was building kept falling down or just wouldn't go together in the first place, and I would want to stay right there until it did, which was never. So my parents, or really whatever adult happened to be there, would remind me that you don't always get what you want, that everything doesn't always work, and we'd leave, and I'd be haunted by that unfinished structure for the rest of the day. I guess I valued reliability even then- I always wanted to finish things just as I had planned. How did you learn about the tooth fairy, or other characters? In- I think it was third grade- I began to doubt the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. The tooth fairy came pretty randomly. I had just lost a tooth, and as always, I told my mom as soon as I could and stuck it under my pillow before going to bed. But when I woke up in the morning, it was still there. So when my mom got up, I told her what had happened, then asked her the million-dollar question: "Is the tooth fairy real?" At this point, she had to give in. She told me where she kept the teeth, and I really wasn't surprised. And the next day, I was wondering about Santa too, thinking that if one was fake, why not the other? So I talked about it with some friends at school, and one of them told me the answer, explaining how she had found out herself. So that night, I talked about it with my dad too, and he confirmed the theory. But even though I know about these things doesn't mean I don't have Santa and the Tooth fairy. I had to keep up the Santa act for my younger cousin and then younger brother, and my mom didn't want to give up the Tooth Fairy just yet, so I agreed. I mean, it's basically free money. Why not? I would say that this connects back to my value of reliability. I don't want things to stay the same forever, but losing your baby teeth doesn't last forever, and I wouldn't mind prolonging the familiarity. When did you learn that life isn't always fair? Life isn't fair. It's a fact drilled into us from birth, something we all know and hate or have hated at many points in life. I have known this in words since I could talk, but I didn't really get the meaning and accept that it was true until I was about four years old. (By the way I wish I could provide better answers to these questions but my memory sucks.) I was in preschool, and life's most simple laws became obvious. This was one of them. Again, this kind of connects back to reliability. You can't rely on everything going right, but you can rely on something always going wrong. When have you done something that you regret? What did you learn from that moment? *Sigh.* One of my most embarrassing moments ever, one that haunts me to this day, was at a... fancy, important event. (Like I said, it was one of my most embarrassing moments ever, so I really don't want to go into detail.) I was young and impressionable, and there was almost no difference between how much an adult or a person my age could impress upon me and how much a younger kid could impress upon me. So when a kid, much younger than me, ran up and hugged the person who was giving a speech and no one reacted, I took that as an OK that I could too. I copied the kid, running up and giving the person a hug, and my dad immediately started gesturing for me to sit next to him. I did, and got a short and quiet lecture about... I don't actually remember what he said. But whatever he said, I definitely didn't copy five-year-olds anymore. It turns out little kids can get away with a lot of things older kids can't. I'd actually connect this back to freedom. I don't really know why this is still such an embarrassing moment for me, but I was definitely angry that little kids got so much more freedom. When did you first learn that your family loves you? Okay, is anyone asking themselves right now: How does this connect to freedom or reliability? Yeah, I'm asking that too. Really, I'm only answering this one because all the other options I either don't agree with or don't want to talk about. For instance: When did you realize you can be anything you want to be? You can't. I don't care how many ads are played that disagree with me, but not everyone has what it takes to be an astronaut or a famous singer. Maybe you don't have the skill, or maybe you don't have the resources. Life isn't fair. Learn it and live by it, because like it or not, it's true. Now back to the topic. I learned that my family loved me as soon as I could understand the concept. Back when I was a little kid, it was a common family practice to say "I love you" every day, plus every time you say goodbye. Now it's just every time you say goodbye, but we're not talking about that. As soon as I knew what the words meant, I believed them. Repetition does wonders. And I still have no clue how this connects to my values, so.. oh well. I'm still in a ranting mood anyway, so an extension of my blog could get offensive. Sorry if I already have been. ...Yay? Here's the thing; I'm not exactly a party person. I'm an introvert, which generally means that a party or a crowd isn't really my scene. Honestly, to me, a party is scarier than a really scary horror movie. So I'm going to downgrade the party to a simple, small get together. Watch a movie, play some video games... the classic american fun.
Actually, more nerd than classic. I'm a huge D&D fan, so we'd probably play plenty of that. But since I'm not the best dungeon master, either someone else would take the lead or we'd all play the board game version, Talisman. It would probably be at my house or maybe one of my friend's houses, and it would hopefully be very small. Oh, and there would be a ton of random balloons suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Balloons are fun. Not an actual ton, though- that would be a lot of balloons. Lets just go with ten. Basically, I'd invite over three to five people and we'd all just kind of do whatever. MUCH better than a party. Right? How far are we willing to go before we aren’t human anymore? We already can genetically modify our unborn children. We grow and transplant organs that are clones of our own. And we can synthesize DNA without any “organic” origins. True, we can’t yet create an entire human being. But there’s the big question- What if we could?
I’m not suggesting that we start off now, in 2017, when we don’t even have a full understanding of how the brain works, and suddenly have a human-made… human. No, let’s say that this is happening sometime in the distant future, from anytime between in fifty years to in a thousand years, and leave it at that. When isn’t the issue here. Now let’s clarify what we mean by creating a human. This person, no matter whether they are a boy or a girl, are completely indistinguishable from a normal human being. They need to eat and drink in the same way we do, they can die the same ways we can, they reproduce in the same way, they look completely normal from all angles (including inside their body), and they even have feelings in the same way we do. Plus, to top it all off, they see the world in the same way, through touch, scents, sounds, tastes, sights, and any other senses we may have left unnoticed. But here’s the catch: they are created from completely “inorganic” material. No egg, no sperm, not even some skin cells to start it off. Everything is synthesized, built, and grown in whatever way possible without living cells to begin. Their genome is a human genome, but every gene is handpicked to make them seem normal. I know this sounds far fetched, but it’s only hypothetical, and we are talking up to a thousand years in the future. Who knows what’s possible? So here’s my question. Would this person, who is completely normal in every way but origin, be a human? Or would they be something else entirely? What if we created two, a boy and a girl, and they had a child together? Would this slightly more organic start bring their statis up to human? And finally, what if a normal human being had a child with one of these creations? Would that be enough or would the child be a hybrid? Please comment your opinion on all this below. First of all, we'd all be doomed. I don't even know all the states, let alone how to run them. Second of all, let's get back on topic. Wait. Is the phrase still back on topic if you never were?
Moving on. The first issue I would try to solve is the price of college. I don't know about you, but thirty years seems like a long time to be paying off a debt. I'm hoping to go to a pretty good college, which also translates to expensive. And I would rather not owe money for the rest of my life. I'd have to raise taxes a lot, but like I said, we're doomed anyway. The second thing I would do is alter the second amendment a bit. No normal human being needs an assault rifle, right? So I would work towards only allowing simple weapons used for hunting or self-defense. There might be some exceptions, like the police having tasers or dart guns or something similarly used to incapacitate people, and the military having access to some more dangerous ones, but still. Finally, we need some HUGE changes when it comes to pollution. One big factor is the way we generate energy. Houses should have solar panels for shingles, and the country should be filled with wind turbines. And since I have no ideas for how to end this, I'm just going to be awkward and end it here. Today we finished watching Obama's farewell address in class. There were a few (a lot) of points that stood out to me in the speech, but I'll start with the one where I'm complaining about irrelevant technicalities so we can get it over with.
Obama mentioned something about change not happening on its own. But since I think scientifically and take everything literally, I NEED to correct that. I know, I know, he meant political change, but he said all change, and if we think of "on its own" as without the intervention of a living thing, then didn't Earth form on its own? And isn't that a pretty big change? Okay. Those of you who skipped over the last paragraph to avoid irrelevant technicalities, it's over now. You can relax. But I do still want to comment on what he actually meant by that (If you skipped the technicalities, it's in the first three sentences of the second paragraph.) He's right- to quote a bunch of random people in movies, "If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself." I guess in this case, it's just "If you want something done," but you get my point. The world doesn't turn on its own. Wait a minute, that's not right... Next, I just want to point out something that I just happened to hear when I was spacing off. In my defense, it was a long speech, and I listened for most of it. But right before he mentioned something about our rights being important, I was spacing off, and so I have no idea what he was really talking about, but that one-sentence point is very true. (Except for the second amendment. That should be adjusted- why do people want assault rifles so badly?) Finally, nice job with the less discrimination thing, Obama. Big improvement. And on that most likely confusing note, I'm going to stop typing. Oh wait- I almost forgot! It's Friday the thirteenth. I have to get to thirteen paragraphs. (If you didn't know, thirteen is an unlucky number.) Also, I want to cross the path of thirteen cats, step on thirteen cracks, walk under thirteen ladders, open thirteen umbrellas inside, and break thirteen mirrors. And that's thirteen. Happy bad luck day! My winter break was awesome! There were several reasons for this; No school, yes Oliver, yes Christmas and Chanukah, and yes closed off spaces no one ever finds me in.
Oliver is my thirteen year old brother. Technically he's my stepbrother, but we pretty much grew up together, and just because we don't have the same parents doesn't mean we aren't siblings. But since his parents are separated and live in different states, I only get to see him a few longish periods of time each year. Winter break is one of these periods, and we had a lot of fun while he was here. My mom's family is Christian, so I celebrate Christmas. My dad and I are both Jewish, though, so I also celebrate Chanukah, and Christmas is more of a family gathering than a religious thing for me. But I got some pretty awesome gifts- a new 3DS exel (the new version), Pokemon Moon 3DS game, a Talisman expansion pack (I already have the game), Mastermind (the game), over one hundred dollars in iTunes money, and a bunch of other awesome gift cards that I embarrassingly left at my grandmother's house (technically she's Oliver's grandmother and my stepgrandmother, but isn't that just a little confusing and complicated?). I'm not exactly the most social person in the world. I also don't like light or sound (I'm also kind of nocturnal, so I'm guessing anyone who knows me at all is probably thinking I'm some kind of real-life vampire), so I do like being in dark, hidden nooks that are separated from all sources of noise. Which is kind of perfect, because I spent half my break playing hide and seek with Oliver, my four- year- old brother Henry, and my two or three year old (step)cousin Avery. I spent a lot of time in closets during the game, because there were a lot of closets in that house, and most of them fit my perfect hiding spot description. Plus, they all went back about five feet to the left, and were to crowded with clothes to easily spot something unusual, making it also very hidden. But when I tried to hide on the right side of the closet, which seemed to be used for storage, I got stuck underneath a suitcase. And in order to get out, I had to completly empty out the area to escape. The moral of the story; if a hiding spot seems too hidden to be good, it probably is. This is a question many people have asked themselves at some point in their life. Do we see the same yellow? Red? Blue? Other colors I don't feel like listing? When I was young, my mom told me that other people don't see you the same way you do. I don't know what she meant by this or even if it really happened and wasn't just a dream, but I took it very literally. After that, I began to wonder what other people saw when they looked at me. Maybe what I see as a red shirt, my friend Fergie sees as a blue one. Who knows?
So I did the obvious. I pulled out my phone and I looked it up. I found numerous studies and articles, but I chose the first one that came up- something called livescience. According to them, we probably do see different colors, but it doesn't affect the way we think of items. If I saw a yellow hat as blue, I would still like or dislike the hat just as much as if I saw it as yellow. They did an experiment with monkeys where they infected them with a virus, changing their green cones into red cones, and the monkeys learned to see red. Before, the monkeys had been colorblind to red, but afterward they could see both green and red. This leads us to believe that human cones can be changed too, and that it is possible for us to have mismatched cones. This means that our red cones could be matched up with our perception of yellow or green, and where others saw yellow, we would see red. |
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