The difference between philosophers and scientists' minds:

I'm sure you've all felt or thought this at one point: Man, this year is passing by too quickly, where did the time go?

First grade felt like it dragged on forever. Middle school came along at a quicker pace (thank goodness those years went by quickly). High school went like a blur. I remember every year, in Chinese School (Yes, Chinese kids went to Chinese School), the principal would give her address at the end of the year. In that speech, she would always say that "the year went by in the blink of an eye". I thought she was full of utter bullshit, but I'm not so sure anymore.

But back to the point. Brian and I were having a discussion on why it feels that your life is moving so much faster now. I remember a friend of mine from a while ago telling me that scientists believe that there may be a hormone secreted by the brain that makes you think time goes faster. That's a pretty interesting thought, a hormone that alters your sense of time. That's some pretty powerful stuff; I'd believe that it is possible, there are, after all, drugs that alter your sense of time... and space... and.... whoah... dude, my hands are huge!.
Well.
Asked Bilford what he thought of that, and he said that, and he took a more philosophical approach on the matter. What a shocker. His interpretation was that time seems stretched because you haven't lived that long; when you are five years old, each additional year constitutes a large portion, in this case, a fifth, of your total memories; whereas by the time you're twenty, thirty, forty, each years' worth of memories contributes a relatively marginal amount of memories (5% as opposed to 20%) to your memory bank. Fair argument, you reflect back and say that time moves fast only after, say, a year has gone by; it's a bit trickier to say that you can feel each individual second rolling by quicker.

A Waking Life kind of moment

Not really panting nor struggling to breathe, I amassed with great ease a rather significant lead over the other competitors in the race around the building that in retrospect resembled what the Orientation counselors used to tell their kids was the marathon around the Factor Building; up the stairs, down the hall, loop around, and again and again. Hmmm, I'm getting kinda hungry. Hey! Look! How convenient, I have a croissant in my hand! I'll just tear little pieces of it off so that I can eat while running, and it won't slow me down too much.
....
Whoah, what a weird dream. I've gotta tell someone about it. Well, since I'm already amongst a group of people, I can tell them my story. "hey guys, you wouldn't believe the weird dream that I had yesterday night. I... I...." The words just don't come out of my mouth. I'm thinking everything that I'm trying to say, but I can't even form any semblance of a word.
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Whoah, that was just a dream. First time I can remember having a dream within a dream. If you've ever seen the movie Waking Life, it opens your eyes to this trippy thought. After all, if you can't tell that you're dreaming in the middle of your sleep, who's to say that you're not just caught up in a dream right now? What if this perceived existence in which we live is nothing more than a dream?

When I count back from three and snap my fingers, maybe you'll wake up .... three... two... one...

*snap*

I have leather pants =D

It scares me that the incoming freshmen for next year (that's right, next year) have all got facebooks already. I thought that you don't get your campus email address until Orientation. Even scarier, most of 'em already have around 30 friends.

This mad dash to search for apartments is kind of exciting. Looking at floorplans, imagining the way my room will look. I'm excited and scared all at the same time. No more safety net of living in the dorms. Gotta love the safety nets, but there's so much to discover in these uncharted areas. Ok, I'm being not only overdramatic, but pretty vague... Hint hint. It won't be terribly difficult living in the apartments, and I imagine that the perks will outweigh the sacrafices. The search for furniture begins...

Random picture of the day

I liked the way that the shadows fell through the windows and onto the wall.

Spurts of (Dis)Wisdom

I before E, but not after C. Except in the case of neighbor and weigh.
"How about 'Jim Nabors is way cool?'" "When's that ever going to come up?"
It's sad to think about how much I've learned about American culture from references in the Simpsons.

So judgment has no E; apparently, it never has. Judgement. Judgment. OED claims that they are variants of each other. They also seem to suggest, however, that only biblical matters can use judgement. God can have an E, why can't I? He will rain judgement on all of us...uh-oh. But little ol' me, judgment upon thee is weak without an E.

Forty has no U; never has. Suddenly letters are falling out of the Nglish Alphabt

I love elevator buttons. You exert so much power just at the push of a little yellow light. When you're in a crowd and everyone is going to the same place, only one person needs to push the button, but no. There's always this one person who insists on hitting that first floor button for himself. I'd be offended, cuz the guy is essentially telling me that he is unsatisfied by the way I push my elevator buttons, as if I had done it incorrectly. And then, he keeps on pushing the button, as if it will make the elevator go faster. Sometimes I think that people push the buttons more for a lack of anything better to do; it's a precursor to OCD. And I think I have it.

I want that map!

I look forward to going to physics lab every week. No, not that the experiments are eye-opening; they've become just a tad mundane. Nice change of pace from lectures, but no, I like going to lab for another reason. In the hallway just outside of the lab for Physics 6B, there is a gigantic map of the greater Los Angeles County and its surrounding areas. Wait no, if I know my SoCal geography (which I don't), the map encompasses a massive portion of the entire Southland. The feature that impresses me most about this map highlights each county, each city, but not only that, within each city, the detail is so fine that it plots out individual streets. All throughout the entire area of the map. If I could highlight or use a dry erase marker on the board, I'd mark up all of the places that I've heard of and all of the places I've been, just to show the relative geographic locations between them. Looking at that map makes me feel small.

Prepare yourselves for strange things

Walking through the bottom floor of Murphy, next to the counseling department, you'd wouldn't really pay too much attention to anything you see. Telephone booth, water fountain, office to your right, lactation center to your left.... what??? Of all the places on campus where this... service... may be needed, tucked away on the bottom floor of the administrative building.

Yesterday, whilst watching the Food Network, I've discovered the extent to which people eat strange things. Oh, not dirt. We've far outgrown that; our tastes have become much more sophisticated: Bugs! Jiminy Cricket? Goes great over sushi. Charlotte? Tasty dipped in batter and deep fried. Expensive too, these things need to be imported at $100 a pop. My my, these hicks have certainly dragged their feet out of the swimmin' hole and cleaned up nicely. Asked about how their buggy eats taste, in order to soften the gruesome reality of what they're sticking in their mouths, simple: everything tastes like something familiar. Exoskeleton of a cockroach? Tastes like chips. Battered and fried mealworm (jeebus they love their food battered and fried)? Just like a french fry. No no, the spider doesn't taste like spider; it tastes like chicken.