“Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”

– Stephen Hawking

“[God] does not play dice”

– Albert Einstein

Getting Sick

Don’t you just hate getting sick? It is such a frustrating thing. Of course in the old days, things as benign as the common cold carried a seriousness that vanished with the creation of modern medicine. But despite our progress, we still have to bear with things like the flu every year. For me at least it always seems to start the same way. First comes the dry throat, unable to be calmed with a drink of water. Then comes the sore throat, a nagging pain in a place where you cannot do anything about it. It is interesting how one’s entire body can be affected by such a small region. Following this comes the stuffy nose. It’s so difficult to breathe through, so you have to keep trying to suck in the mucus to clear a passageway for air. For someone else, especially someone trying to avoid catching a cold, that sound is one of the most revolting imaginable. On top of that, it keeps happening every five minutes!

After the mucus phase comes the coughing. A coarse hacking sound, that makes your throat sore all over again. Phlegm is a disgusting thing. Even your body knows it, and tries to get rid of it to no avail. In the end, it might even make you vomit, not a pleasant experience either. And something that always seems to present itself at the most inconvenient times.

As a student in elementary school, sickness wasn’t entirely a bad thing. In the first place, it meant not having to go to school. Not that school wasn’t enjoyable; on the contrary, school was something I liked. But once in a while you just need a break from it all. Sure we have weekends, but there are times when they simply are not sufficient. So sickness could be good. On the other hand, it got boring very quickly. After all, what can you do when you’re sick? Nausea and dizziness confine you to the couch or bed, and reading just makes your eyes tired. You need a way to pass the time without having to exercise much mental energy. Enter the television. Movies, tv shows, documentaries, all admirable ways to entertain you without you having to put in any effort. And yet, even they become irksome after a while. So you’re left on the couch in a sick unhappy heap, waiting for your white blood cells to pick up the slack.

At a boarding high school, getting sick was a whole different story. There was no staying home, no easy sick days. If you were not well enough to go to classes, you would probably end up in the school hospital. And of course, they always had to make sure you were genuinely ill enough to miss things. Especially if you just so happened to have a test that day. I remember getting sick as a freshman. I felt absolutely terrible, but had too much pride to go to the hospital. Somehow I managed to make it though all my classes, though I skipped out on sports for a few days. The second time I caught a cold that year, even the sport absences were a bit difficult to swing. Fortunately I made it through with minor fluctuation in my grades.

Now I am sick once more. It makes sense, being that time of year and all, but of course it is still a nuisance. Hopefully I can make it through with as little trouble as possible. Somehow I kind of doubt it. But at least I can still type.aofk

The Big Picture

There are certain subjects that tend to override others. Philosophy for example. Try spending an hour or so studying philosophy of any kind, and see if doing your normal activities seems worthwhile anymore. It all just seems so…pointless. Physics can do it too. When you toy with such enormous ideas in your head, all others may appear miniscule in comparison. In my case, I always feel the urge to explain my thoughts to others. Anyone, everyone. I want them to feel the heightened understanding (or perhaps lack of) that I feel, bring them in on the secret. Ha ha ha. As if that was really feasible. As a kid, the looks people gave me varied from bemusement, to exasperation. When seeing the former, I could almost hear them thinking about how here was this young over-excited child, who clearly had some type of passion that was unexplainable to anyone but him, and that perhaps it was enough for them just to appreciate that such passion still existed in the world without having to pay attention. I can tell you, it is a frustrating look to receive. The latter expression is something you might expect if you had your senses, which you temporarily don’t because you are so mesmerized at what you know. And then once you realize what you’ve done, just how far you’ve gone out on that limb, you might feel a bit foolish. How could you expect them to understand? You don’t even really understand yourself, you’re just caught up in the momentum of it all. This shouldn’t be the case. They should feel the foolish ones, because they did not care to engage. They ignored the big picture, content with their own pathetic little slice of reality. And you, you should never feel the fool because there will come that person who does understand, or at least listens. Someone who not only admires your enthusiasm, but strives to get some for themselves. These are people who make the world go round, although, ironically, a physicist could debate that.

Nature

A bee, a bird, a bat, a burr

Do take a good look at nature

The whales, the dolphins, and porpoises

A larvae’s metamorphosis

A stallion that is brave and bold

The sunset’s orange pink and gold

The very warm, the very cold

Just watch the penguin’s life unfold.

A tiny mite,

The starry night,

The sun is shining, burning bright.

From very small to very large,

The atoms of a purple barge.

Observe the owl hunt its prey

A city’s movement every day

The many colors in a play

A splendid Christmas tree’s array

Of ornaments and candy canes

While up above fly fighter planes

The patterns on your country’s flag

The sharpened pronghorns of a stag

A plastic spoon, a shiny knife

Without a doubt, nature is life.

The Sound of Snoring

To the tune of “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel

Hello darkness, my old friend

My sleep patterns I must amend

From across the hall it finds me here

Like roaring thunder claps so very near

Or construction, hammers pounding the ground with ease

Can’t appease

The rumbling sound of snoring

 

Through the night and without rest

A hundred decibels at best

Ear plugs never really do the job

Really makes my head begin to throb

Like a train charging quickly down the railroad right around midnight

Glaring bright

Ear splitting sound of snoring

 

Oh but I could take no more,

I stood up slow, walked through the door

Found some headphones sitting in a niche

Had a fancy new noise canceling switch

Then walked back to my room,

put the headphones right onto my head

Sat in bed

No more SOUND

of SNORING

BN: What Will We Be?

People always ask me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The first time it happened…well it must have been a long time ago because I can’t remember it. Which brings up an interesting question. How would a five year-old know the answer to something like that? And what does the question even mean? Do people asking it really want to know what you will be, or what your job will be? Although really, unless you are someone who has a planned out mission from the get go, either question is difficult to answer. Now it’s ten years later. I’m fifteen and still don’t have a response. Does that mean I have no goals, no dreams? I don’t believe that. And in any case, why can’t one be multiple things? It’s a confusing world, adulthood. Maybe it’s best just to enjoy youth as it is, instead of wishing yourself to a different era. Why should we know or care we will be? Why can’t we just be US?

“Complements may be more pleasant, but complaints make better stories.”

– Myself

I Can See It in Your Eyebrows (Or, ‘Musings on Facial Expression’)

In a great deal of literary works, there is a great deal of emphasis placed upon the eyes of characters. Supposedly, they are the windows into the inner soul of the person, betraying true emotion when the rest of their face may say otherwise. But eyes themselves actually provide little information about someone’s inner workings in comparison with an often overlooked facial feature. It is the area surrounding the eyes that usually exhibits expression.

A person’s eyebrows and mouth probably send the most emotional information of all the features on the face. Of the two, the eyebrows get more credit for doing so. The universal lowering of them into a frown, the arching of them to show surprise or incredulity, the furrowing of the inner tips to show sadness. These are just a few of the basic movements we might expect to witness on someone. And yet, there are many other signals the eyebrows might show, representing emotions more subtle and difficult to understand. And if you think about it, that may be the eyebrow’s main purpose. Why did evolution leave those two patches of hair where they can serve almost no practical purpose? Actually it is possible that the eyebrows are supposed to protect the eyes from dust and dirt. But what if they also exist to serve their more obvious purpose, to express. What if one of the many revolutionary adaptations of Homo sapiens is the ability to express a wider range of emotions through the face? What if minor adjustments in the position of an eyebrow was originally a way of communicating with moods, a code to the inner workings of individuals. What if eyebrow movement was the first human language?

And yet, it is not just the eyebrows that do the trick. To a certain extent both the eyelids and even cheek muscles can play a role. For example, when the eyelids open wider a look of surprise is accomplished. However when the eyebrows lower during the same action, the look changes from surprise to a glare. If the eyelids do not open more whist the eyebrows lower, the look becomes one of concern. An involuntary (or voluntary, it depends on the type of person you are talking to) muscle twitch from the cheek gives the impression of being overwhelmed, or even insane. Think about it. Here are minor changes that occur within a relatively small section of the face, and yet when faced (excuse the pun) with any of these signals, chances are you would know exactly what they mean. Why? Is is just something else ground into us by society? Or is it perhaps rooted much deeper, into the realm of our very instincts? Who can tell. But then think of this. Some of our facial expressions translate into the animal world, whereas others do not. A toothy smile for instance might suggest attempted intimidation to a chimpanzee. That brings up another question. Perhaps animals have their own codes, whether facial or otherwise, that they use every day much to our oblivion. If such a simple gesture as making your eyebrows raise can have such a complex meaning, what kind of signs could other animals use?

Superstitious

I am not very superstitious. Few people really are anymore I think. The world has transitioned from an era of confusion, where more faith was placed on mystic sources than science and common observations, into one where such tales bear little relevance to life anymore. If it does, we tend to focus mainly on the small and petty ones, like walking under a ladder, or having your path crossed by a black cat. But as a result, a new area is opened up in the human mind for other sorts of belief. Odd patterns for example. They may no longer bear any supernatural connotations, but they certainly can engage the mind with curiosity. Imagine you are about to face an uncomfortable confrontation, like a job interview for instance. Should you expect the worst, the best, or nothing at all? (Although, I personally find it difficult to have NO expectations whatsoever.) Some people would probably advise to stay positive; after all, a depressed or overly anxious candidate is likely not going to impress the interviewer. On the other hand, others (including Ben Franklin) would tell you to expect the worst. Then, even if it happens you will not be disappointed. And if things go better than you anticipated, you will get a happy surprise. So which works better? More people have told me to believe in myself, but I tend to do otherwise. Not because I have an unusually low amount of self-confidence, but because I’ve actually noticed that whatever happens to me will be the thing I least expect. Therefore, but expecting the worst, I should be faced with the best. On the other hand, if deep down I really think things will be fine but on the surface I claim otherwise, then the result will be somewhere in the middle. I didn’t say it made any sense. But it is an odd pattern in my life that I have noticed. Occasionally, I’ve also been known to knock on wood for extra measure.