Outside Event #2

I only just got around to posting this. But my second outside event took place at Burke's Books. The reading was of the book "Something Is Out There" by Richard Bausch. The place was packed, there was absolutely nowhere to sit, so I got to stand like some of my classmates whom also attended. Richard's daughter played a few songs on her guitar, which I felt took a lot of courage, but that is because I have terrible stage fright. I already felt uncomfortable do to the singing and standing. The start of the readings did not go smoothly however,Mr. Bausch started talking very quietly and someone had to tell him to read louder. The reading consisted of a chapter called Immigration. The chapter was about immigrants of different ethnicity trying to gain citizenship in the United States. Richard used some funny accents in his reading which spiced it up a bit. The reading made me realize just how tough it is to completely change your surroundings. They left their land and possibly left some of their possessions to start a new life. Sadly, their new life was not all happiness. There was plenty of struggle. The writing was very thoughtful and I enjoyed it very much.

What If #15

What if you got everything you wanted? Would you ever be satisfied? My belief is that you would never truly be satisfied. As anyone gets what they want, they find that they get bored with what they have and begin to want more. This continues until death. I have caught myself wanting more many a times, after all, I'm only human. I've been reading about the world's wisest man and what he had to say about this world. He saw the world as God saw it, as a place where men toil day after day to reach a point that doesn't matter. At the same time, seeing that it all doesn't matter except for what God has planned for you lead him (and myself) to believe that one did not need to worry about the future. "For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man's misery weighs heavily upon him. Since no man knows the future, who can tell him what is to come? No man has power over the wind to contain it; so no one has power over the day of his death. As no one is discharged in time of war,so wickedness will not release those who practice it." Ecclesiastes 8:6-8. Not being able to control when you will die lets off a lot of pressure. I don't need to worry about when I am going to die because I can do nothing to prevent it. God already knows what you are going to do and has planned your life to lead up to your death. A misconception with being a Christian is that you will be safe in everything you do. God promises to never take you past your breaking point but never promises an easy life. "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." 1 Corinthians 10:13. It also promises that if you follow the word exactly, you will be persecuted by the world, "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven...."
Matthew 5:10-12
But we all have rough parts in our life, and I've had my fair share. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23
This goes back to the original thought in this blog that we all are going to die eventually. I have embraced that fact and do not fear death at the moment, but there is no telling how one will react until faced with the situation. I know I mess up and I will keep asking for forgiveness and push on. When I mess up, I always remember Alexander Pope's quote, "To err is human, to forgive divine," and how God removes our sins "as far as the east is from the west."

What if #14

What if Star Wars did really take place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far way? I loved Star Wars the minute I saw it. It is a mix of supernatural power and futuristic technology. At the same time, it also shows the many different species and ships that make up the Star Wars galaxy. George Lucas and his crew had to be geniuses to meld it all together and make it flow properly. They started with a small back story and it grew to have a rich mix of cultures, technology, supernatural power, and varied species. Not only were the species cool and interesting, but the characters were very well developed by the plot. By the end of a movie, you feel like you can sympathize with them. Almost no one knew what to think of Star Wars right as it came out, and now it is it's own world. It is almost as large of a world as the Lord of the Rings series. As something popular goes through time, it grows as many people put more and more things into it. Some of the random things that added to my love for the Star Wars world were: of course the movies (IV-VI are my favorites/the original trilogy) various videogames (Podracer, Shadows of the Empire, Jedi Knight Series, Clone Wars, the list goes on and on), and the many books made since the first movie was released. If the movies took place a long time ago, then I wonder what the technology would be like now? They had spaceships and lightsabers for crying out loud, there's no telling what kind of cool inventions they have had since then. The Star Wars world will always be a fun part of my childhood that I can look back and still feel the same excitement I did back then.

Outside Event #3

My last outside even was the reading of Asleep by Molly Crosby. She read about many case studies of encephalitis lethargica and the effects it had on many people. The book focuses on the stories behind the people in the case studies and what the disease did to their personalities. The disease eventually makes you fall "asleep" until a doctor discovered L-Dopa. The drug allows the brain to suppress the effects of the disease. The victims were allowed to walk around and learn, but sadly, only for a little while before the amount of L-Dopa needed was too much. The reading from the book made me depressed as I heard about how this disease destroyed so many lives, permanently changing the personality of those lucky enough not to fall asleep forever. Insane asylums and institutions made the book sound very dark. The doctors did not fully understand the disease so it was very hard to diagnose the diseases correctly. Many case studies went unsolved, especially after the random disappearance of the disease. Overall, the reading was very interesting from the neurological standpoint as well as emotional standpoint. If I had the time, I would read the book.

What If #13

What if the Earth stopped spinning? Would there no longer be any gravity? What would happen to humans and other animals? Well I have researched a little bit into this interesting topic, and this is what I have come up with. If the earth suddenly stopped spinning, the Earth's atmosphere would still be moving at a constant rate of 1100 mph. The Earth's surface would be wiped clean of everything that isn't anchored down and strong enough ti withstand over 1000 miles per hour wind. The case would be different if the Earth slowly stopped spinning. When the Earth stopped spinning as much as physics will allow, the Earth will have permanent spots of day and night in a cycle around the sun. If the rotation reached 1 revolution per 365 days, sun synchronization would take place, which is the cause of the permanent night and day in a year. The increased temperature at the equator would cause the wind systems to move away from the equator toward the poles rather than parallel as they are now. Another theory tied into all of this is the magnetic field of Earth would possibly deteriorate, leaving us with no protection from cosmic rays or high-energy particles such as UV light and radiation from other stars. This would cause many people to die if they stayed outside for any great amount of time. The Earth's gravity would be effected as well. The spin of the Earth diminishes a very slight amount of gravity. Imagine being on a carousel or any spinning ride, when the ride spins fast, the spinning tends to pull one towards the outside of the ride. This is due to centrifugal force, this force alleviates some gravity from Earth's mass as it spins. Without that spin, the Earth's mass would have a greater effect, but only just slightly. The earth's pull of gravity is equivalent to 9.78m/s(with spin figured in), without the spin, the earth's pull would be the normal constant used for gravity, 9.81m/s. This is only a difference of 0.3%, so if you weighed 200lbs now, you would be 200.6lbs if the Earth stopped spinning. An interesting fact that made me laugh, was that water would start going straight down the drain instead of swirling in a direction towards the equator. Next time you flush, watch the water go down, it spins clockwise if you are in the northern hemisphere of the Earth, and counter-clockwise for the southern hemisphere. This is due to the Coriolis Effect. The same effect also has to be taken into account in far distance sniper shots. The Earth's spin actually moves the object rooted to the Earth at about 1,000mph in relation to the object no longer moving with the Earth. Think of it this way, if we could make a ball float in the air indefinitely without any obstructions or outside effects(weather, wind), the ball would rotate around the Earth just as the moon does. The ball would end up on the other side of the world due to the spin, but this could never be experimented because of wind, atmosphere, and other outside forces. Remember that the Coriolis Effect is only an effect and not a force, it only explains what the spin does. The Coriolis Effect also determines the spin of long lasting vortices such as hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones. The spin is opposite in vortices in weather patterns due to the force of the air trying to rush towards a low pressure area. Overall, I think that the Earth no longer spinning would be terrible for all life. Save Earth, it's the only planet with chocolate!

What If #12

What if the President of the United States made a mistake by cutting funds for purchasing F-22 Raptors(last picture)? If you think that the F-22 is the best plane ever built and nothing can ever defeat it, then you are wrong. Other countries, including some enemies, are already working on new fifth generation planes. A fifth generation aircraft means that they have high-performance airframes, internally carried advanced air-to-air, and air-to-ground weapons, all aspect stealth, Low Probability of Intercept Radar (LPIR), and networks for shared situation awareness. Their advanced highly integrated avionics systems, with on and off-board sensor fusion, free pilots to focus on the task, rather than the different systems that generate the information. Some examples of fifth generation aircraft are the F-22 Raptor, F-35 Lightning II, India's Medium Combat Aircraft, China's Shenyang J-XX (first pic), Russia's Sukhoi PAK FA(second pic) and the Sukhoi/HAL FGFA (joint Russian and Indian plane). At the moment, Russia and India are considered allies, but China is a different story. At the moment, they seem to be the biggest threat to the United States when it comes to aeronautics. The new planes all have the same capabilities as the F-22 Raptor has, and if they build way more of their planes than we do, then we will become way outnumbered. At the current date, the United States has only purchased 187 Raptors, with no current plans to produce any more. The plane itself costs $142.6 million per unit with the whole program costing more than $65 billion. Obama just recently signed the new budget without procuring money to Lockheed Martin or Boeing in order to start production of the 187 aircraft. The aircraft cannot help defend the country if they aren't even built yet. The technology on the plane is pretty neat. The radar cross-section of a Raptor appears to be the size of a metal marble on a radar screen. This makes it nearly undetectable to enemy missiles and radar. The newer, but less technological, cheaper version of the F-22 is the F-35(second picture). The F-35 has a new cool Helmet Mounted Display System (HMDS) (third picture) that allows the Heads Up Display (HUD) to move with the pilot's head instead of it being static on the front of the plane. The pilot can now look towards an enemies position and gain information or even acquire missile lock and fire. This now allows pilots to fire missiles when they aren't even facing the enemy. So no more Top Gun-like dogfights where you have to line up the enemy, you just simply look at them. The technology of all nations is constantly being upgraded, are we starting to lose the race for air superiority? Obama tried his hardest to shut down the F-22 program, but only succeeded in stopping production of the 187 aircraft that will be purchased. We can only wait and see what happens.

What if #11

What if the war in Iraq had never begun. Would we still be in the other countries fighting for something that doesn't truly effect us. I understand that the best defense is a strong offense, but we are loosing more men than is needed (even though our numbers are nowhere near any other conflict in respect to time/casualty ratio). We are policing a country that will fall apart the second we leave. The job should have been finished long ago. This same situation occurred in Somalia, Vietnam, and various other conflicts. The politics hold back the military so that they cannot finish the job. What if when we entered Iraq and instead of trying to avoid killing civilians, we just carpet bombed the entire area until all resistance stopped. That's what happened in World War II. We didn't bother to avoid bombing civilians in German cities, as a matter of fact, we purposefully attacked civilians in order to demoralize the enemy. Over 14 million Russian civilians died in the continuous bombings and horrible conditions that the Nazis put them through after capture. That number puts the Soviet Union's civilian casualties at around 48 times that of the United States MILITARY casualties (416,800). The Soviet Union's total casualties (24 million) were greater than all other countries' military casualties combined. To win wars, there has to be no mercy. Do you think that Truman thought about mercy when he dropped over 21 kilotons (21,000 tons) of TNT on Nagasaki and over 18 kilotons (18,000 tons) of TNT on Hiroshima? No, I don't think so, we deemed it necessary, and in the long run, it saved many American lives when the Japanese surrendered. We no longer had to invade the Japanese mainland. Admiral "Bull" Halsey was quoted saying, "Before we're done with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell!" I don't quite agree with his statement, but it shows the way we felt about our operations, it was no-nonsense. They got the job done and moved on. I wonder what happened to our way of thinking?