Late Night Chem Cramming Genius

So we're up cramming for chem, and Pranay and I come up with an incredible idea for a video game:

Virtua Fighter god style

While we don't quite have the graphics designer to make it into a real time fighting game, we did devise a sample text based game. Here's a snippet:

Zeus casts lightening on Buddha. Buddha blocks with Bodhi tree. It's not very effective...

Buddha casts temptation on Zeus. It's super effective! Zeus sleeps with human woman, gets beat up by Hera.

Hockey or Hackey as they say in Chicago

We got our jerseys on Tuesday! They're freaking sweet. Picture below. I'd show you my away jersey, but it smells like crap since I wore it on Tuesday. Speaking of which, I scored my first goal on Tuesday! It wasn't pretty, the goalie gave up a huge rebound and I backhanded it over him, but hey I'll take it. I also had an assist off a 2 on 1 play so that was pretty cool. I think we lost that game 13-3 or something, but we only had 5 skaters, and they were pretty good. Fortunately it was just a practice game. We have 4 games this weekend. Hopefully we can pull wins in 2 of them.


^one at a time ladies...

Awkward Observation

This is kinda awkward but warm headphones are really nice... I left my Shure headphones next to the vent for my laptop so when I grabbed them and put them in my ears I noticed how awesome warm headphones are. uh yea now I'm feeling awkward... but seriously try it sometime.

A Little Gem from Chem Class

While looking through toxicity data for a particular chemical, I found this gem (this is an exact quote):

Oral

Woman

420 UL/KG

LDLO

Remarks: Behavioral:Excitement

Full info:

Oral

Woman

420 UL/KG

LDLO

Remarks: Behavioral:Excitement. Cardiac:Pulse rate. Kidney,

Ureter, Bladder:Hematuria.

That's hydrochloric acid btw...

Depressing Reminder of Reality

We ate lunch in the Central West End today which is a pretty nice area that's got a fair number of good restaurants and the like. We were walking back from an incredibly satisfying lunch. Walking towards us was a young man in military uniform accompanied by his parents. On the side of the street was one of those random slightly crazy guys who seem to be around in big cities. As the young man passed by, the guy pointedly asked him, "how's it going soldier boy" with a mocking tone. Without pause, the young man evenly replied, "it's alright, I'm still alive." Wow. That's not something you hear everyday as a response to the question of how are you.

Near Midnight Contemplations

While I read about the fascinatingly complicated biochemical pathways involved in DNA transcription and translation, I can't help but appreciate my good fortune. There are a near infinite number of ways to be absolutely screwed over genetically. For example, one unfortunate mutation in the part of the genome that codes for the active site of the threonyl-tRNA synthetase complex would be absolute gg for your body (no I didn't make that up). There are an absolutely insane number of various enzymes that must function relatively perfectly in order for your body to function normally. If I were to type up the manner in which just one molecule is digested, it would probably be longer than this whole post. So who do we thank? Some may say God, some evolution. I'm still unresolved on the question of a higher power, but that doesn't stop me from truly appreciating my good fortune at being relatively healthy.

Some think that science destroys beauty as it reduces everything in nature (the color of fall leaves, the birth of a child, the stunning display of a meteor shower) to its most basic explanation, dissecting macro phenomena to their bare elements. I respectfully disagree. Understanding the underlying concepts and processes behind these phenomena only makes me appreciate all the more the sheer elegance of the world around me. An absolutely astounding number of processes need to work with inhuman precision for me to type this very human blogpost. I realize that this might make little sense, but the next time you're trudging through that required 100 level science course, think about it, you might just see your perspective change too.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you President Barack Obama

Here they are:

^There were at least 10,000 people there. It was crazy.

^yes I still look like a little kid. yes I was freezing.