Another funny paper

This is the paper that made me realize that I can be a smartass when I write. Context: this was the first paper in my AP Psych class my senior year. I went in to take the test and blanked. I could not remember a thing. I somehow managed to pull this out, and, despite getting a zero, my teacher loved it. She reads it to her classes every year. The parts in parenthesis are comments she wrote on the paper.

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Mean, four letters long, two consonants, two vowels, one syllable. It can mean a lot of things, most of which I don't care for. Median, three consonants, three vowels, three syllables. Break it down it's me-di-an, and if you put together di and an you get me-dian, or me dying, which is what I'm doing. Mode, two vowels, two consonants, one syllable. When I think of mode it turns into mold, which is what is growing on my brain at the moment. (You are at least clever when you don't know)

A skewed distribution is, well let's break it down. Skewed is something random, so completely random it looks like an explosion. Distribution, root word is distribute, which means to put out, not necessarily a good thing to do. So if we put them both together we get randomly putting out.

To relate mean, median, and mode to normal distribution is a grand feat in and of itself. People worship those who can do so as gods, and as what my friends and I call "GALFers," people with absolutely no life. (I am laughing my head off. I wish I could give you credit for creativity!)

Now, relating them to a skewed distribution is something most people can do. Mean, median, and mode are three words randomly chosen to contain meaning of incomprehensible power. Now, if somebody has a skewed distribution or is "randomly putting out," they too are being randomly powerful.

All I read on this next part is intelligence test. I don't care to write on it. If you don't know why read the four paragraphs before this.

Two normal distributions, since there is no such thing as normal this question is invalid and hurtful to a good deal of people, myself included. 

Assorted Papers

I wrote Hatredy way back in 2008. Our multimedia teacher told us if we weren't working on our project he'd give us a 2-page paper to write. I was working on my project and he handed me the writing prompt. It was bullshit, as he didn't give it to his favorite students. I was a smarmy asshole back then, and this paper is a product of that. Yes, I actually turned this in.

Hatredy


There is no multimedia project that I would be interested in, ever. To be honest I don’t even know why I am in this class. All careers and other such items to due with multimedia make me gag and want to smother a small child with a pillow.

I especially hate the aspect of video production. Why on earth would anyone want to take the time to do some filming and story boarding and lighting and end up with a crappy movie that no one likes? I’ll tell you why, they’re insane. All the producers, directors, lighting crew, etc… are insane. No one in their right mind could ever do this for a living. In fact, I hate people that do. They are the people that think they are better than everyone else cause they can move a little camera around and make a movie whoop-de-do. It’s not that hard, a 2 year old could make a movie that could sell billions of dollars, and it’s the baby one the toilet taking a dump.

Filming alone is pathetic, humans at our lowest. You get a half drunk guy to yell ‘action’ and ‘cut,’ along with several people who are probably high or on acid, with some cars and girls that are easy on the eyes and you have a blockbuster. Not only that but then the actor “accidentally” overdose’s on crack balls and everyone worships him as a martyr, when, ipso facto, there is only one martyr that should be worshiped, Jesus. These actors are taking away the Christian morals that most people consider to be their lives to this day. Back in the middle ages if you were to do such a thing then you would be hung and stoned, have you entrails pulled out, burned in front of you, then have all of your appendages removed and fed to the common people! But I digress.

Story boarding is what stupid people do to make plans. “Hm lets see I’m gonna draw a bunch of crappy stick figures doing what I want them to do and write a description of the scene below it.” All I have to say… is wow. What a waste of perfectly good time that you could be using to save the environment or write a gay essay. Now careers in multimedia are what my friends and I like to call “welfare epics.” Welfare epics are items you can get without doing any work, ergo multimedia careers. You don’t contribute from society, you take away from it, and make millions doing it, and you know who else did that? Adolf Hitler. Yes, Hitler took away the lives of people for his own personal gain, so do directors, producers, light guys, etc… But once again I digress.

Next to utter ridiculousness are producers. They are the borderline mentally retarded people that take credit for other peoples work (me!). They are the likes of Mel Gibson, Ben Stiller, and other ugly faced cool guy wannabe’s. Instead of doing real work (like recording for a video WHICH I WAS DOING!!!!!!!!) they sit around and take credit for things they didn't do.

I once met a lighting guy. He went into all this babble about flip switches on and off and how he got a degree in it. I asked him if I could do it for one scene and he laughed and told me good luck. I got his job. They fired him. I was much better than a college educated student at doing what he did for a living. Move the switch up, then down, maybe to the side, then back to the middle. This is by far a person’s dream job. It’s so easy they have monkeys doing it now, and soon they will be having ex-lab mice doing it.

Now for a recap, I hate multimedia. I would rather be the taint of a camel than do anything for a multimedia career. It attracts prostitutes, Jesus wannabe’s and half drunk bisexuals for career opportunities only for them. It offers some of the easiest and dumbest job options in the career out there. Multimedia is an enema, one so massive you have to use a plunger to get it out, and afterwards be sure to burn the plunger.

Effective v. Responsive

(I wrote this paper in a 2 hour sitting and on painkillers. I got 94%. I'm kind of proud of that.)

I think the main concern for establishing a government should be the effectiveness of the government, rather than responsiveness to the voters. I will first go over the arguments each side presents: why the Anti-federalists disliked any branch of government that was not directly, elected or responsible to the people, and why the Federalists liked the idea of a government that is able to keep the people in check when they attempted to do something stupid. My reasons for wanting an effective government over a responsive one is that, overall an effective government would be more intelligent. As a group people are stupid, that an effective government can protect the rights of minorities while a responsive government could lead to a tyranny of the majority, and by having a government further away from the people it will be more efficient.

The Anti-federalists were in favor of a government more responsive to the people. They viewed any branch of the government not directly put into power by the people as bad. On the Judiciary: “… those who are to be vested with it, are to be placed in a situation altogether unprecedented in a free country… No errors they may commit can be corrected by any power above them… nor can they be removed from office for making ever so many erroneous adjudications.” (121) On the President: “To whom is he responsible? To the Senate, his own council. If he makes a treaty bartering the interests of his country, by whom is he to be tried? – By the very persons [the Senate] who advised him to perpetrate the act.” (97) And on the Senate: “… is it not a monster in the political creation, which we ought to regard with horror?” (71) They also had problems with the House of Representatives, but it was due to the amount of officials, not their position in the government.

The Federalists were in favor of an effective government, one that could provide a sufficient check on the people. On the Judiciary: “In a republic it is no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws.” (136) On the President (pertaining to the veto): “The propriety of the thing does not turn upon the supposition of superior wisdom or virtue in the executive: But upon the supposition that the legislative will not be infallible: That the love of power may sometimes betray it into a disposition to encroach upon the rights of other members of the government…” (114) On the Senate: “They may restrain the profusion or errors of the house of representatives...” (78) The Federalists had worries about the experience of the members in the House of Representatives, that they would be “… more apt… to fall into the snares that may be laid for them.” (58)

As a group people are stupid. We can look to their reactions to anything bad, such as any riot. Something will trigger the public, be it a murder, police brutality, or a natural disaster, and they will begin to indiscriminately destroy anything, even if it was in no way tied to the trigger. They are equally stupid at the polls, mostly due to misinformation. Anyone can run a campaign that compares their opponent to Hitler or something equally bad, and people will buy it. Take the Birther movement for instance. It was a racially motivated campaign to paint President Obama as a non-citizen who obtained the office illegally. Sadly there was elected officials who went along with this, but not all of them. There are enough intelligent elected officials to know that it was complete bogus. If a government were to respond to even one-tenth of the allegations voters bring up it would be even more useless than it is now. They need to be able to ignore the general foolishness of the loudest part of the public and do their job. One of the issues the Anti-federalists had is how the President was to be elected. He was not to be elected through the means of a popular election, rather through electors from each state, who were elected by the people. The further removed from the people the less likely the one being elected is going to be an imbecile. Tench Coxe says (in reference to how the President is chosen), “Further, he cannot be an idiot, probably not a knave or tyrant…” (103) It is incredibly important the one being elected is elected by semi-intelligent people who can sift between misinformation and real information. People are dumb, and there needs to be a protection against their idiocy.

One of the problems that comes from a responsive government, and a democracy, is producing a gauge that can actually measure what all the public wants. As it stands elections are not an accurate measure of this. The 2012 Presidential election had a 58.2% turnout rate. (McDonald, 2013) The highest turnout rate by state goes to Minnesota, with 75.5%. (McDonald, 2013) How can a government be responsive if there isn’t even a 90% turnout rate? Another problem that comes from this is that the loudest people are generally the ones that are listened to, and if their views are more extreme it would throw off any chance that a government could be effectively responsive.

An effective government protects the rights of minorities and a tyranny of the majority. This ties to the above point that people are stupid. We can see the suppression of minorities throughout history, anything from slavery to banning same-sex marriage. Large groups of people see anything they don’t consider normal as a threat. Take the example of same-sex marriage. People of the same sex have had relationships since the dawn of time, and other creatures do the same. But because it is seen as different the majority of people do their best to crush it. They cherry-pick the details, spreading false information that same-sex couples make worse parents, that they are destroying marriage, that they are abominations in the eyes of God. There is zero evidence to support these claims. The majority doesn’t like it because it is different. There has to be a protection for the rights of minorities, and, as stated in the previous paragraph, the further from the people the officials are they better they are at looking past prejudice and avoiding the mistakes of the majority. In Utah it wasn’t the people who voted to allow same-sex marriage (and by doing so giving equal rights to a minority), it was a Federal judge, a non-elected official that is far removed from the base voters, and it was the people who voted to keep these rights from the minority in the first place. Alexander Hamilton said, concerning the Judiciary branch, “In a republic it is a no less excellent barrier to the encroachments and oppressions of the representative body. And it is the best expedient which can be devised in any government, to secure a steady, upright and impartial administration of the laws.” (136) There must be a check to insure that all men have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   

For a government to be effective there needs to be intelligent people in control. Unfortunately intelligent people seem to make up a small portion of the population. Part of the reason for needing intelligent people in the government is their ability to know what needs to be done, regardless of what the people want. In our current form of government we have a branch that is entirely devoted to the responsiveness of the people: the Legislative branch. Originally the government was further separated from the people, with the House being the only group directly elected by the people. The senate was a degree away from the people, being elected by the state legislature; the president was similar, being elected by electors elected by the people, and the Judiciary was the furthest away, being appointed, not elected, by members of the government already a degree away from the people. The closer the elected official is to the people the more likely they are to give into the whims of their constituents, who, as a group, are idiots. For a government to be effective there must be some people in it having some level of intelligence. In the old form of the senate, “No ambitious, undeserving or unexperienced youth can acquire a seat in this house by means of the most enormous wealth or most powerful connections…” (78) A person must have wisdom in order to use their power appropriately. “It is evident that there would be greater danger of his not using his power when necessary, than of using it too often, or too much.” (115) If every election were a popular one we would only have idiots and knaves in office, people unwilling to do what is needed, fearul of upsetting the population. “These are men, who under any circumstances will have the courage to do their duty at every hazard.” (115) Duty isn’t something a politician can have if they only care about what people want, duty is what a political ought to do.

An effective government is a much better form of government than a responsive one. Anti-federalists would have a government answerable to the people in every aspect, and in doing so would cripple a government, filling it with people who only care how they look to their voters, fearful of doing anything that would alienate them and lose their office. Federalists would have an effective government, one that is able to ignore the idiocies of groups of people and do what is needed to succeed. When people are in a group they are stupid, and would demand stupid things, and the only way to combat their absurdities is to be able to ignore them. A responsive government would require a certain level of voter turnout. Majorities will disregard the rights of minorities, and the only way to destroy a tyranny of the majority is to, once again, be able to ignore the majority, something a responsive government would not be able to do. Finally, for any government to succeed, there must be intelligent people at the head, people that can view a situation and, as usual, ignore the whining of the population in order to do what needs doing.  

The Wheel of Time

I’m off by a couple of days, but what the hell, I wanted to write this. For those of you who don’t know, Robert Jordan passed away on September 16, 2007. He’s the author of an epic-fantasy series called The Wheel of Time, a series which I have been reading since I was 12. 

My first exposure to The Wheel of Time was on a trip to Mt. Rushmore with my family. My mother checked out The Eye of the World on cassette so I could listen to it during the drive. I was hooked. The problem was the version I had was only half of the book. It drove me nuts. I wanted to read more about Rand, Mat, and Perrin, learn what these Aes Sedai were, what a Trolloc was, and how a Myrdraal can cause a man to piss himself.

When we got back the first thing I did was go to the library and check out some of the books. I devoured them. I blew through the ten books that were out at the time in a few months, and then I had to wait. In the three years before book eleven came out I probably read the series three or four more times. Knife of Dreams was one of the first books I bought with my own money. Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene, Elayne, Aviendha, Lan, and all the other characters had become a part of my life. They were my friends.

Fast forward another two years. Only one other book came out in that time, New Spring. I was leaving school and a friend came up to me and said, “That author you really like died.” I didn't believe him. Robert Jordan had been diagnosed with amyloidosis, a rare form of blood cancer. I had recently read a blog post that said he was doing well, and things were looking up. I jumped on the computer and went to dragonmount.com, a fansite, and there was the news. He was dead.

A part of my world collapsed. A man I had never met, who had affected my life in such a strong way, was gone. In a matter of minutes I didn't know what was going to happen to my friends that I had known for so long. There was so much to still be answered, so many stories to be told, and it wasn't going to happen. It was, and still is, one of the saddest days of my life.

I've always loved to read. I burned through the abridged versions of the classics around first grade, then started tackling the actual classics a few years later. Then, for some reason I cannot recall, I wanted to try fantasy. My mother brought me home a few books, they were from the Shannara series and the Legend of Drizzt. I burned through the books and fell in love with the genre. In these books authors created worlds from scratch. Original ideas, magic, and sword fights were a drug to me. These books were more in line with the Tolkien legacy; dragons, dwarves, elves, mages, etc. They were not epic fantasy.

Jordan blew the lid off of the genre. He wasn’t the first to do it, but he’s one of the best known for it. There are no dwarves, no dragons, no elves, no sorcerers; he had Aes Sedai, Aiel, Seanchan, Damane, Trollocs, Draghkar, and Myrdraal. He created unique cultures, a world with an actual history, a history that, essentially, never ended. I read snippets of the Age of Legends and the wonders they created. But there was more than that. Jordan’s world was our world. His stories were based on our own legends. Lenn flying to the moon in the belly of an eagle was Glen going to the moon in Eagle I. Artur Paendrag Tanreall was Arthur from the Excalibur legend. There were so many intricacies that you didn't pick up on the first time reading it. The more I read it the more I loved it.

And then he was gone. His world ended, despite there being no endings in the Wheel of Time. I had no idea how much these books meant to me. It made me depressed. But then hope came in the form of Brandon Sanderson. My friend Cody had been trying to get me to read his books for a few months before the announcement came that he would be finishing the series. He was a small author at the time, with only a handful of books published, but they were damn good books. I was hooked.

Then Tor announced they would select fans to help with the signings for the last three Wheel of Time novels. The Gathering Storm was due out in 2009, and I was selected to help. Out of everyone who applied I got to go. I got to have dinner with Brandon and be a part of the series I love. I was on cloud nine. He’s such a great guy, and remained humble even after being selected to finish one of the best-known fantasy series. He still, at signings, talks with fans for hours, answering questions, cracking jokes. He really is a good person.

I've only missed one of his book signings in the past seven years, and thankfully I have a great friend who went to the one I missed. Of course, I was the one who got Corky hooked on the books, so I have to take some responsibility for his actions. I was in Stockholm for the release, and I went into a bookstore and saw the staff unpacking the books. It killed me a little inside, but Corky had my back and I got the book right when I returned to the states.

Last year it finished. I camped out at BYU for two days, and those two days were cold. It was worth it. I was originally the twenty-second person in line, and I was incredibly happy with that. The series was finishing. Harriet, Jordan’s wife, even came out for it. I missed the first day of classes, but I could not have been happier. At the last second a person ahead of me asked to switch numbers, and I went from twenty-two to fifteen, the number of books in the series. When I went up to get the book personalized I could give a teary-eyed thank you.

Finishing A Memory of Light was bittersweet. The Wheel of Time had been my companion for eleven years, and I finally got the ending I needed. The great thing about the Wheel of Time is that there are no endings, and there are no beginnings.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a wind rose in the Mountains of Mist. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

Round 2

I went in for my second hip surgery, and this time it went better, slightly. I still stopped breathing for a bit, but they quickly put my lungs back to work and shipped me out to the ICU, hooray. A few notable things about this surgery: holy hell it hurts when they don't give you pain medication. I was given nothing before, nothing during, a little bit after, and then narcan, and then swearing. A whole lot of swearing, I mean I really let loose. I guess my body doesn't like the combination of anesthesia and injected narcotics. Next time I go in I'm pretty sure they'll only give me a shot of whiskey and a leather band to bite on. This pain was a 10. I think when they moved me I cried and begged them not to. It would have been very nice to have blacked out, but I didn't until we got to the hospital. I told the EMT's in the ambulance that I was going to throw up, so they held a little spittle cup in front of my mouth. After getting rid of about a gallon of fluid in my stomach they upgraded to the bowl. Fortunately I wasn't in the ICU for more than a day. It was my goal to get out of there ASAP. My doctor also told my mother that my hips were the worst he's seen. When I'm good at something I'm damn good at it.

The moral of the story: don't have my genes. 

Review: "Stick"

Once again Sanderson proves he is above the rest, this time in the form of a deleted interlude from the amazing book Words of Radiance. I don't know why he deleted it; it would have added so much more to the story. It starts with the character, Stick, affirming its existence. I am a stick. Next, it talks about its duty in life, what it ought to be doing, rather than what it wants to do. I am a stick. It gives a brief history of its life, an extremely touching paragraph. I am a stick. Then it takes a turn for the worse, as it begins to question its existence, its duty to the world, its purpose in life. I am a stick? It is a masterfully written existential crisis in just two sentences. It throws away the doubts, it throws away the fear, reaffirming that it is, indeed, a stick. I am a stick. It speaks of the trials and tribulations to come, as a stick in a world where men fly around like gods, crushing its friends and family with no second thought. But it continues on, it perseveres, with the final three lines I was brought to tears. The sheer will of the character to triumph over all the woes of the world is a lesson to us all.

I am a stick.
I am a stick.
I am a stick.

Not only does this teach us an important lesson, but it raises questions about the Cosmere, Roshar in particular, itself. If a "thing" such as a stick is capable of such introspection, what else is going on? What about the rocks? What about the water? How will all of this play into the bigger picture? Will Hoid sweep in and save this "lower caste" of creatures from the evils of man? Could Shallan speak to this creatures and gain insight into her own troubles? We will never know. 

Sex-Ed: A joke in Utah

Here's an unpopular opinion in Utah: Sex-ed should be expanded in schools. Growing up I saw two pregnancies in my neighborhood. I've read stories about multiple people having children while still in their teens, and none of those stories are from those stupid MTV shows. This article scares me. Why? Because the majority of parents in Utah would teach abstinence only, which tells their children absolutely nothing about sex.

First I'll deal with things that bugged me about the article. I'd have loved any citation for the facts he poses, alas, not everyone is a history major (Chicago-Turabian for life!). He leaves out a key point: Condoms greatly reduce the chances of getting an STD (CDC). Information is power, and if you don't give teenagers information about sex they'll be stupid with it. I was a teenager, fortunately I wasn't stupid (at least when it came to sex).

Here's a play-by-play:

• "So as 'comprehensive sex education' has become more commonplace, and as the schools’ message about sex becomes more progressive and permissive, we can look around us and see what’s happening:" He doesn't cite any of this, so as far as I'm concerned he's pulling all of this out of his ass.
• "Out of wedlock birthrates continue to climb, now pushing 40 percent as a national average." And he'd like you to think it's only teenagers having these babies. I know a few people who aren't married and have had a couple children and they're doing fine. Give me information about the ages of the people having babies and I'll be happy.
• "110 million men and women have STDs." What he doesn't say is that it's much more likely for a homosexual man to have STD's, and while that number is going up the number of heterosexual people with STD's is going down. Source. (See what I did there? A citation!)
• "The divorce rate remains tragically high, tempered only by the increasing number of young people who have sworn off marriage entirely." This has nothing to do with sex, unless you're getting married because of a baby, which, in my opinion, is a stupid reason to get married. You get married for love, not for a mistake. Again, please give me a source! I'd accept an about.com article on it.
• "Kids turn to porn at younger and younger ages." Source! I live in the porn-viewing capital of the US, so I can assume this is true in Utah, but not everywhere else.
• "People in general are less capable of finding and maintaining healthy romantic relationships." That sounds more like a personal problem to me. My excuse for not having a "healthy romantic relationship" is that I'm a history major, and you only get married girls and grandmas in your history classes. It's bullshit and I hate it. 
• "Over 250 thousand people are raped or sexually assaulted every year." Again, a source! While it's a sad statistic, it doesn't have anything to do with sex-ed. 

He says that we keep religion out of schools and that it should be the same for sex-ed. Apples and rocks my friend. The two have nothing in common (although apples and rocks can both fall on you, it's a crappy comparison, sorry), other than religion tells you that sex is bad, the whole original sin concept. Religion is a belief, sex is not. Sex, with the exception of mythological births, is based in reality. It's the same everywhere, religion is not. I can go to Cambodia and make a few strange innuendo-filled gestures and people will understand it means sex. I can't go to Cambodia and do the same thing with religion.

In short: Sex-ed in it's current form (in Utah) is bad, and should feel bad. Teach kids how to do it safely and it will be good, and feel good. You can implement your religious beliefs about it at home.