So I have nearly completed my work for the first year of graduate school. It was intense, immersive, and fascinating. It has been without a doubt one of the most positive experiences of my life, which is such a nice change after the last two years. I will put all that into a different post though as I want to talk about recent research before I ( Read more... )

Do you believe in destiny? Or is destiny what we create? Are we alone in this universe or is there life waiting for us to be ready to accept it? How do you know if the choices you make are the right ones? Do you feel a sense of wonder and awe when you look into the night sky and think of how far away the twinkling star is...and how ( Read more... )

Three quotes by Carl Sagan stood out to me today: "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception." "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring." "If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do ( Read more... )

  As September 11th passes into September 12th, all I can think about is letting go.  I tried to avoid all the images and words from such a traumatic day.  I look at the world today and I ask how far have we come since 2002...not very far.  How can we say "Never Forget" but turn a blind eye to Syria?  How can we rally behind our patriotism only to ( Read more... )

So Al Jazeera is doing a 3 part documentary called "The Caliph." It's basically the history of Islam, at least from what I can tell so far. Whether we like to admit it or not, religion has shaped much of the world's history through policies, war, and unification. I love learning about history and other cultures, but one thing that struck me ( Read more... )

I woke to the news of the Orlando shooting.  I posted the following on my facebook:

There simply aren't words...have we learned nothing from our own history? Rather than stumble over my own thoughts, I will let those whose clarity was greater than mine currently and let you take from it what you will. May humanity soon realize our greatest strength ( Read more... )

A student posted a clip of what is going on in Syria.  It was not especially graphic, but in it two brothers rushed their  younger sibling to the makeshift hospital.  A girl watched as she was treated in the hallway, without any pain medicine.  The video ended watching the boys saying goodbye to the lifeless brother and the mother arriving to take ( Read more... )

So I recently started watching a Let's Play of The Talos Principle. (Let's Plays are people recording themselves as they play a video/computer game.) I often would watch my brother play or play myself so I occasionally enjoy them if it's the right gamer. I may actually play this game however. I loved Myst and it's successors, and am very excited ( Read more... )

I saw a video of Tim Minchin presenting at a graduation in Australia. He started by saying in a round about way that we should not seek meaning in life for it is meaningless to do so. Indeed to search for something that is not intrinsically there already is pointless--and while I am not sure I agree that life is meaningless, I found several of ( Read more... )

Okay, so I read an article someone posted about racism and laughing at names. I was going to comment but realized it was a waste of breath so I refrained. In the article it claimed that when we laugh at the names of African Americans, we are racist and if we want to end racism it starts with not laughing at a person's name ( Read more... )