Biogenesis
This will be quickish because I have to get back to biology, but I read something that reminded me how long it had been since I posted something here. I'm still alive, I promise. It's just been difficult trying to find the time to sit down and type out a proper entry for this thing, and at the same time so much has been happening that it seems daunting to even try. I'm not sure I'll ever catch up. I'll hash out the big things though as best as I can.
1. I'm taking summer school classes. The first was a 6-day mini-mester for math 100 that went from 8 AM to 4:30 PM. That one was awful. The material was relatively easy, but we learned about a month's worth of it every day, and there was a test every morning so my week was like: wake up, go to class, come back, study for test until late evening, go to bed, wake up, etc. I felt comfortable with the material and the teacher was the best I've ever had, but somehow I ended up with a C. That grade won't go into my GPA though, so I'm just glad that I passed. Now I'm taking another math course (and even if I'm not using the term lightly, the teacher is a bumbling idiot. What I know, I taught myself directly from the book). Jordie is in this class with me, so at least I'm not alone in misery. At the same time I'm taking a Biology class and lab online (a new experience, but a good one so far).
2. Somehow my single fish (Prince Albert the betta) has evolved into a hobby, and I now have a ten gallon aquarium with 7x tiger barbs (plus Albert, who is in a 2.5 gallon by himself because the tiger barbs would harass him otherwise). I'm not sure exactly how this happened, considering how anti-pet my parents are ("They'll distract you, and you're going to college to focus on school, not fish!"). They're even worried about me keeping cooking herbs on my back patio. Anyway, I'm now extremely interested in "aquascaping," though options are limited in a ten gallon because most live plants grow too large for one. I'm trying to get my parents to let me get a larger one and I've said I'll save up for everything myself, but they're hedging ... probably because the very inexpensive 55 gallon starter kit (with everything I could possibly need-filter, heater, thermometer, hood, lightning, water conditioner and fish food samples, fish net [I have a small one because I accidentally bought one that was meant for brine shrimp instead of fish. oops.], all for the price of a 29 gallon stand-alone tank. I couldn't believe how awesome that deal was) looks very large and intimidating to them, even though I read everywhere that larger aquariums are actually easier to maintain because they're more forgiving of mistakes and power outages and stuff. I've been trying to tell them that a larger aquarium could actually reduce my work load because I could develop a proper eco system with bottom feeders and decomposers, but they still see the size of the aquarium as more gallons to look out for. Anyway, the tiger barbs are babies and will need a bigger tank anyway. My dad has said I can get a larger one, but I think he meant "you can get a larger one a long, long time from now" ... and I can practically SEE my barbs getting bigger. They used to be very different in size and now the smaller ones are getting to be the size of the larger ones. They're almost mature enough for me to determine their genders. =D Oh, and feeding them is fun because they eat anything small enough to go in their mouths. I've been feeding them dried blood worms because they don't have to go in the freezer and aren't crazy messy, but I've had my eye on wingless fruit flies they sell at a nearby pet store. I've had these little obnoxious bugs (the size of fruit flies) that I identifies as fungus gnats invade all my plants, where they breed in the soil and feed off the roots in their larval stage. They're nearly impossible to get rid of and I've tried several methods, but one of my favorites (if not the most effective) is to wait for them to land and tap them lightly with my finger to stun them, then drop them into the fish tank. The fish LOOOOOVE them. And I figure that since they've been breeding like tiny destructive rabbits in my plants since the first semester of last year, they shouldn't carry toxins from outside anymore. xD
3. I may be visiting Canada in July. My biology text book is not invited, but I have a feeling it will be joining me anyway.
4. I've started writing again ... mostly on those days where I feel that strange, medication-induced, dream-like apathy that prevents me from caring about most everything else. Cheyenne and I met a few days ago to exchange the Christmas gifts we intended to give each other ... well ... at Christmas, and we critiqued each other's writing while we were at it. It was nice to have a critic again (other than my dad, who makes mostly editorial comments with a FEW critical suggestions and is generally a little too kind because he's my dad ... and in the natural state of dad-dom believes that everything I vomit onto the page is a work of art). I wonder what the chances are of getting a small group of CW kids to meet regularly again ...
5. I'm trying to teach myself to astral project. I think I got very, very close once or twice, but I lost it when I started hearing my name being called (apparently "auditory hallucinations" are considered normal for the hypnogogic sleep stage, but I prefer to think of them as progress). Although "auditory hallucinations" have been happening to me more frequently, even when I'm fully awake. Once I heard bells chiming a simple tune (the high-pitched kind of bells, not the big gong-like ones) as clear as day, and I thought my dad was playing music in the other room, but he wasn't. And I've heard my name in the middle of the night when I wasn't trying to astral project. All this brought up memories of another occasion where I was told to "wake up!" in the middle of the night ... which of course definitely woke me up. I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm developing schitzophrenia or clairaudience ... though I'm hoping for clairaudience because being psychologically disturbed could ruin my chances of becoming a psychologist myself. Though I heard someone say once (and I can't remember where) that psychologists are the often the ones most in need of psych evaluation. Of course, statistically their suicide rates are some of the highest of any profession (along with ... dentists. Dentists. I know, right?). So I'm probably making a terrible career choice here, but ... well ... I like brainzzz. And if I'm secretly reading books on small business (*cough* pet store) on the side, I'm definitely not telling.
6. If I DO decide to start a pet store/reptile-fish-amphibian emporium, at least I can have a hundred million pets at a time ... even if business is terrible and I can't afford to keep them at home. (Filters=power bill). So, once again, if I can ever afford to install a set, solar panels seem the way to go. Especially on days like today where the power is sketchily going on and off and threatening to leave my fish filter in a non-functioning state ... which would kill my fish.
7. I'm about to have a word with our neighbor, who seems to be playing russian roulette with their alarm system. I don't know if this person is just technology challenged or if they routinely forget that it's on, but it always seems to be going off.
Anyway, what made me think to update today was page 297 in my biology text book, which describes an experiment done by Harold Urey and his grad student, Stanley Miller in 1953. They noticed that most of today's life is made up of compounds that were very common in the atmosphere around the time that life first appeared on Earth. So. They recreated baby Earth's atmosphere to see if life could create itself using just those compounds, which were surprisingly ordinary things like hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor suspended over warm water. They combined this with periodic electric discharges (to simulate the lightning that was crazy prevalent back then) and a condenser to simulate rain. After just a week they found "an abundance of organic molecules essential for life, including amino acids, the monomers of proteins." Since then, other scientists have replicated this experiment in more detail and they've produced all 20 amino acids in existence along with several sugars, which are the basis of DNA.
Why, I must ask (rhetorically, and as irritably as possible), am I only finding out about this in my sophomore year of college? Why do they even bother teaching creationism in school anymore if they've already more or less proven that spontaneous generation is possible? If informed of this, it must drive creationism fanatics crazy that the ancient Greeks were right in a way about their harebrained biogenesis stories.
1. I'm taking summer school classes. The first was a 6-day mini-mester for math 100 that went from 8 AM to 4:30 PM. That one was awful. The material was relatively easy, but we learned about a month's worth of it every day, and there was a test every morning so my week was like: wake up, go to class, come back, study for test until late evening, go to bed, wake up, etc. I felt comfortable with the material and the teacher was the best I've ever had, but somehow I ended up with a C. That grade won't go into my GPA though, so I'm just glad that I passed. Now I'm taking another math course (and even if I'm not using the term lightly, the teacher is a bumbling idiot. What I know, I taught myself directly from the book). Jordie is in this class with me, so at least I'm not alone in misery. At the same time I'm taking a Biology class and lab online (a new experience, but a good one so far).
2. Somehow my single fish (Prince Albert the betta) has evolved into a hobby, and I now have a ten gallon aquarium with 7x tiger barbs (plus Albert, who is in a 2.5 gallon by himself because the tiger barbs would harass him otherwise). I'm not sure exactly how this happened, considering how anti-pet my parents are ("They'll distract you, and you're going to college to focus on school, not fish!"). They're even worried about me keeping cooking herbs on my back patio. Anyway, I'm now extremely interested in "aquascaping," though options are limited in a ten gallon because most live plants grow too large for one. I'm trying to get my parents to let me get a larger one and I've said I'll save up for everything myself, but they're hedging ... probably because the very inexpensive 55 gallon starter kit (with everything I could possibly need-filter, heater, thermometer, hood, lightning, water conditioner and fish food samples, fish net [I have a small one because I accidentally bought one that was meant for brine shrimp instead of fish. oops.], all for the price of a 29 gallon stand-alone tank. I couldn't believe how awesome that deal was) looks very large and intimidating to them, even though I read everywhere that larger aquariums are actually easier to maintain because they're more forgiving of mistakes and power outages and stuff. I've been trying to tell them that a larger aquarium could actually reduce my work load because I could develop a proper eco system with bottom feeders and decomposers, but they still see the size of the aquarium as more gallons to look out for. Anyway, the tiger barbs are babies and will need a bigger tank anyway. My dad has said I can get a larger one, but I think he meant "you can get a larger one a long, long time from now" ... and I can practically SEE my barbs getting bigger. They used to be very different in size and now the smaller ones are getting to be the size of the larger ones. They're almost mature enough for me to determine their genders. =D Oh, and feeding them is fun because they eat anything small enough to go in their mouths. I've been feeding them dried blood worms because they don't have to go in the freezer and aren't crazy messy, but I've had my eye on wingless fruit flies they sell at a nearby pet store. I've had these little obnoxious bugs (the size of fruit flies) that I identifies as fungus gnats invade all my plants, where they breed in the soil and feed off the roots in their larval stage. They're nearly impossible to get rid of and I've tried several methods, but one of my favorites (if not the most effective) is to wait for them to land and tap them lightly with my finger to stun them, then drop them into the fish tank. The fish LOOOOOVE them. And I figure that since they've been breeding like tiny destructive rabbits in my plants since the first semester of last year, they shouldn't carry toxins from outside anymore. xD
3. I may be visiting Canada in July. My biology text book is not invited, but I have a feeling it will be joining me anyway.
4. I've started writing again ... mostly on those days where I feel that strange, medication-induced, dream-like apathy that prevents me from caring about most everything else. Cheyenne and I met a few days ago to exchange the Christmas gifts we intended to give each other ... well ... at Christmas, and we critiqued each other's writing while we were at it. It was nice to have a critic again (other than my dad, who makes mostly editorial comments with a FEW critical suggestions and is generally a little too kind because he's my dad ... and in the natural state of dad-dom believes that everything I vomit onto the page is a work of art). I wonder what the chances are of getting a small group of CW kids to meet regularly again ...
5. I'm trying to teach myself to astral project. I think I got very, very close once or twice, but I lost it when I started hearing my name being called (apparently "auditory hallucinations" are considered normal for the hypnogogic sleep stage, but I prefer to think of them as progress). Although "auditory hallucinations" have been happening to me more frequently, even when I'm fully awake. Once I heard bells chiming a simple tune (the high-pitched kind of bells, not the big gong-like ones) as clear as day, and I thought my dad was playing music in the other room, but he wasn't. And I've heard my name in the middle of the night when I wasn't trying to astral project. All this brought up memories of another occasion where I was told to "wake up!" in the middle of the night ... which of course definitely woke me up. I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm developing schitzophrenia or clairaudience ... though I'm hoping for clairaudience because being psychologically disturbed could ruin my chances of becoming a psychologist myself. Though I heard someone say once (and I can't remember where) that psychologists are the often the ones most in need of psych evaluation. Of course, statistically their suicide rates are some of the highest of any profession (along with ... dentists. Dentists. I know, right?). So I'm probably making a terrible career choice here, but ... well ... I like brainzzz. And if I'm secretly reading books on small business (*cough* pet store) on the side, I'm definitely not telling.
6. If I DO decide to start a pet store/reptile-fish-amphibian emporium, at least I can have a hundred million pets at a time ... even if business is terrible and I can't afford to keep them at home. (Filters=power bill). So, once again, if I can ever afford to install a set, solar panels seem the way to go. Especially on days like today where the power is sketchily going on and off and threatening to leave my fish filter in a non-functioning state ... which would kill my fish.
7. I'm about to have a word with our neighbor, who seems to be playing russian roulette with their alarm system. I don't know if this person is just technology challenged or if they routinely forget that it's on, but it always seems to be going off.
Anyway, what made me think to update today was page 297 in my biology text book, which describes an experiment done by Harold Urey and his grad student, Stanley Miller in 1953. They noticed that most of today's life is made up of compounds that were very common in the atmosphere around the time that life first appeared on Earth. So. They recreated baby Earth's atmosphere to see if life could create itself using just those compounds, which were surprisingly ordinary things like hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and water vapor suspended over warm water. They combined this with periodic electric discharges (to simulate the lightning that was crazy prevalent back then) and a condenser to simulate rain. After just a week they found "an abundance of organic molecules essential for life, including amino acids, the monomers of proteins." Since then, other scientists have replicated this experiment in more detail and they've produced all 20 amino acids in existence along with several sugars, which are the basis of DNA.
Why, I must ask (rhetorically, and as irritably as possible), am I only finding out about this in my sophomore year of college? Why do they even bother teaching creationism in school anymore if they've already more or less proven that spontaneous generation is possible? If informed of this, it must drive creationism fanatics crazy that the ancient Greeks were right in a way about their harebrained biogenesis stories.