“He's Told Us Not To Blow It Cause He Knows It's All Worthwhile”

One step closer to becoming iron man

Even Tony Stark would be impressed with this Iron Man suit. 🔥 

Engineering at it's Finest

Engineering, is a masterful craftfull and I would argue beautiful application of knowledge to solve problems.

Last night I put my education to use.

In response to a problem I retrieved two different size bowls, the smaller one filled with half and half, allong with a cup of ice and set to work applying basic chemistry and thermodynamics to solve a crucial problem...

The lack of vanilla ice cream for accompanying the berries.

Already too much

When I was 11 years old I crashed my mountain bike. I was hauled out of the woods in an all terrain ambulance and rushed to the hospital. They stitched me up and I was fine. 

This is the point I have come to. That I know it is almost over, that the semester is almost over. Just like the doctor almost being done with the stitches. But it hurts so bad and I’ve already been through too much. I’ve got no more left in me, I can’t take any more, but there is still more to go. 

Stay Safe. 

Injustices on Mars: 200 years of Backwards Thinking

Several young women have expressed to me in the past week their frustrations with improper treatment and I would like to speak here regarding the attitudes that are unfortunately still present in the universe.

A student looking who dreams of designing hospitals and other places of healing that have a more positive affect on the mentalities of their inhabitants. 

A mechanical engineering student pursuing her education far from her family, looking to improve the world she lives in, whether that be her home country or America.

A freshman nursing student, who came looking to obtain a top tear education, that would ultimately provide a pathway to help those who need it most. 

Three intelligent young women who are both capable of and motivated to change the world for the better. All of them have overcome obstacles to ultimately leave their homes and families far behind to come study on Mars. These young women, are students deserving of our highest respects and yet I am anguished to hear of the unkindly and demeaning way in which they have been treated in this particular community. 

Our first student in seeing a freshman struggling, became somewhat of a mentor for this student. She shared with him advice she had learned on the subject he struggled with, and surviving school in general. He in turn treated her as something to be obtained, and saw it fit to text her with questions that... did not pertain to studies. 

Our second student, living in a whirlwind of learning about both engineering and other cultures and yet smiling through it all. I think we all have much to learn from her. This young woman came to me to discuss engineering. She wears a ring on her left hand, worn as a way to deter young men. She expressed that someone was speaking to her that “wanted to be more than friends” and was not deterred by her expressed lack of interest. So, having learned that a ring worn on the left ring finger is an American indication of being committed, she began wearing one. 

She is committed. Committed to her studies and herself. She is clever and I hope her promise ring keeps its promise of deterring those who don’t listen to her. That said, this is an approach I have seen used before in this community and elsewhere with mixed effectiveness. The unfortunate nature of this approach is that it only deters those who have enough sense not push unwanted attention on those who are committed to someone. The issue here is not that people are expressing romantic interest, but that they are not respectfully heading requests to discontinue certain behaviors. Another unfortunate drawback to this method is that it deters people whom one might actually be interested in getting to know.

Our third student, excited in the days approaching college, started talking via social media to another student. They talked almost every day and she was excited to have a friend at school who had been nothing but kind and respectful. Her ‘friend’ began to express interest in taking her to a school event. She hoped that her ‘friend’ would meet her in the library so they could talk. This is when he expressed that he didn’t have enough time to bother for a conversation and made implications that suggest he was only kind to her at first in hopes he would get to be with her for what many do after this particular school event. She has found other accompaniment for the school event. 

These young women have shown exceptional strength in not allowing idiots to affect their studies, but they shouldn’t have to. This kind of thing happens everywhere and time and time again these young women will have to show strength in the presence of the universe’s worst, but these attitudes are not consistent with the direction the world is headed. I have omitted from this writing things that were said that I feel more specific than needed in this context. I find this behavior particularly ridiculous as the organization approaches 200 years, pledging pretty words of honor, respect and dignity, while preserving ideas that should have died in the last 200 years. 

Additional Statement:

Other events have also elapsed in the past week that lead to me writing this particular piece. The female representing figure was removed from a gender neutral single stall restroom, leaving women to have to find an alternate restroom on the other side of said building and leaving few options for those who do not fit the binary genders. Meanwhile an individual originally dismissed for predatory behaviors was allowed to return.  

I would also like to point out that these occurrences do not only happen to women. In this sometimes stiflingly traditional culture, I have seen objectification and mistreatment of a great diversity of people in a diverse number of forms. I would like to suggest this is not the kind of diversity that we should encourage.

I would like to formally conclude with a request. Students, Mentors, Creators, Be Respectful to the best of your ability, and when the best of your ability isn’t good enough, Get Better. Most of all it is important to Try.

Please Don’t Be Ashholes. And don’t say things worthy of Vogon poetry. 

A Damn Good Friend

These days, life is stressful. Everyone needs a Damn Good Friend.

Weeks ago, this friend of mine brought me flowers partially pressed in a notebook. Upon receiving them they were pressed in textbooks. I turned to my textbook in search of clarity, thinking I would find myself a diagram. I found a different more beautiful kind of clarity.

To a Damn Good Friend, Thank You (:

How to do engineering homework: An informative guide and window into life.

1) Procrastinate while convincing yourself you're being productive

2) Find a Location to work

3) Write down the problem

4) Get halfway through and go to staple something

5) Break stapler...

Spend the next, far too long period of time disassembling and reassembling your stapler until several things occur:

- you are fully confident that in an exam situation you could, completely disassemble and reassemble your stapler in less than 5 minutes

- the components of the stapler get so worn out from disassembly and reassembly that the stapler no longer functions quite right in spite of being once more reassembled

-it occurs to you that you will not be asked to reassemble your stapler during an exam and you will be asked to turn in this homework

Addendum: After this particular event occurs, admit it to other engineering students. Upon request demonstrate your ability to disassemble and reassemble your stapler completely and pass off the stapler to another engineering student who obtains an initial 30 minutes of joy from disassembly and reassembly of the stapler. The stapler which still worked marginally after first rounds of reassembly no longer functions from wear. Gift it to the other engineering student and resolve to purchase a new stapler.

Censorship of Suicide Prevention?

The other night our dorms held a “Trick or Treat in the Halls” event for the children in our Martian settlement. Prior to this event there were prepatory events, pumpkin carving, door decorating and removal of posters and signs deemed inappropriate for youth.

Some of these things made sense to remove. But among the things that were mentioned as necessary to cover, I wonder about two.

First of which is a cartoon ghost wearing a bra on a sign explaining the risks of breast cancer. Maybe it’s bad maybe it’s not. But doesn’t breast cancer awareness include the children? Don’t they see the advertisements on television? I’m not one to advocate for something being okay just because it’s been seen or said before, but I’m unsure that this needs censorship?

I am against the censorship of the suicide prevention sign. To censor this implies that the children won’t be affected by mental health issues before they are too old for the trick or treat event. This event includes children up to 12 yrs old. I was 9 the first time I recall mental health related struggles affecting those around me, but in all honesty I may have been somewhat aware of it even before then. I wouldn’t be introduced to suicide prevention till six years later.  I don’t think this is unusual.  When I mentioned this at one of the events, the others around me in a similar age group, the same ones who’d been planning to cover the sign recalled similar occurrences. They noted that they’d definitely known about these things to some degree by 5th grade. We can’t prevent these from being things that our youth have to deal with and giving them inadequate resources makes them things that they have to deal with alone.

In my experience, the deliberate censorship of mental health made it harder to speak about it because it seemed “bad”. Censoring it in the same way that drugs, alcohol, sex and excessive violence were made it seem like something that I “wasn’t spost’ to be aware of yet”.

It’s just a couple signs and in all honesty I don’t think their removal matters in the grand scheme, but I do have to ask: Does it make sense?

Stardate 73155.1

Sol15

Earth date 9/9/2019

Today I try oat milk. Discovery: oat milk tastes very little like milk and very much like sad oatmeal.

Conclusion: I should not consume caffeine based pain killers

Sometimes I'm "that" person. I take to statics with fond memories of vectors from my trouble causing multivariate days and my appreciated too late linear days, allong with a bystanders view of euclidean geometry. This is to say: I draw a mean triangle and think I know more than I actually do.

So when the problem is posed in such a way that it forces one to make one of two conflicting assumptions, I cant help myself.

And when I find that the solution most people will be bringing in makes both of those conflicting assumptions.... something in me can't resist.

I'm 2 pages in on a 4 page detail of why said assumptions break the problem, steadily on my way to the conclusion that the problem statement is ill posed, when I realize what I've done. Ive taken caffeine based pain killers, at night, my resting heart rate shoots up to a conservative 100 beats per minute and my hands are too shakey to write clearly.

I am forced to succumb to a different conclusion: I should not consume caffeine.

That said...I have an explanation. I just hope its correct and not a caffeine + exhaustion based misinterpretation of the problem.

Technology's impact on those who pursue art or math. Good isn’t Good Enough.

First off, I would like to preface this piece of writing with a disclaimer. The ideas drafted here are just that, drafts. They are based purely on my views of the universe without external reasearch at this time.

All of that said...

Artists and Mathematicians, treated by the traditions academic structure as opposites far to often, are drawn together by some critical similarities. This piece will focus on just one of those similarities, how mathematical and artistic pursuits have changed with modern times. 

Proficiency in a set of mathematical or artistically based skills is incredibly useful and impressive to many who do not share those skills. Being able to balance a checkbook or represent something from life that someone else can recognize are both useful skills that many envy. These basic skills however, are mere tasks, that can in today’s age be completed by a computer. Many people have adopted the use of Microsoft’s Excel for keeping track of their financial transactions and generations worth of people now communicate via pictures taken on a smart phone. 

So what then, is the purpose of studying either mathematics or art, if in our day to day lives we will use some form of computer to preform many of the tasks that were once claimed as their uses by high school teachers everywhere. Years ago my teachers had already thought of that, the justification time after time being “You need to understand what the computer is doing”. I would not argue that that is an invalid explanation, especially for those who are not particularly interested in studying the subject. The real argument for either mathematics or art is advancement.