“Reality ...is FICTIONAL” -(Rainbow Kitten Surprise)

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.

Martian Laundry Gone Wrong A window into the Martian Laundry Experience:

1. Put clothes in washer

2. Put Soap in Soap Slot & Quarters in Quarter Slot

3. Come back to mysterious puddle and open soap slot

4. Put soggy clothes in dryer and more quarters

5. Come back to soggy clothes that smell funny

6. Throw anything not absolutely vital to the week back in the laundry bag

7. Decide to hang pants

8. Discover you do not have a strong enough rope

9. Braid together several feet of plastic bag

10. Hang pants and spray with disinfectant

Alternative Method for same results:

1. Throw pants over chair, spray with disinfectant

2. Pour some water on your laundry bag

3. Throw some quarters out the window

This method is a more efficient means of achieving almost wearable pants, soggy funny smelling shirts, and losing quarters. 

Welcome to life on Mars

It doesn’t get easier…There isn’t an answer…But there is a right thing to do.

I used to believe that qualified adults were less afraid and more proficient in handling critical issues. I thought that perhaps their age, wisdom and expertise granted them skill and grace in handling human desperation. I now know it doesn’t get easier.

I know now that when someone close to me first opens up to me about self harm, suicidal thoughts or actions, etc. I will always be initially choked by fear. And every time, I will push aside my fear to talk with them. I think all who have opened up to me have been worried about causing this fear. This initial fear comes from love and an overwhelming desire to keep my friends safe. The initial tightness in my chest comes from knowing that now in context my actions and words matter. It’s terrifying, but I can’t let it petrify me.  

This initial fear is worth the knowledge.

Ignorance does not make it better.

The initial fear is mitigated by presence. To be there. To be committed to being there.

And I assure you, dear anonymous reader, that it is worth it. That this presence, commitment and closeness is worth the fear.

As life has progressed, I have spoken with and listened to presentations by several professionals, trained in helping people overcome mental health struggles. I’ve been told the same things on repeat.

I’ve come to realize that they don’t have the answer either. There isn’t an answer. It will never not be hard. There is no answer, and it will never be easy, but there is a right thing to do, and there are things that make it less hard.

The Right Thing To Is To TRY.

There are resources, some of them are good, some of them are not. Some of them make it better, some of them make it worse. You have to use your best judgement, your intuition, and do the best you can. Sometimes the best you can do is sit somewhere with someone and listen.

Roller Coasters & Higher Education: The Hardest Part

I like roller coasters, at least sometimes, but they are designed to shake you, scare you a bit, give you an adrenaline rush, an experience, before they place you back on the ground. 

For me the hardest part of any roller coaster or amusement park ride is always waiting in line. Waiting in line is when you have a choice. Every moment I have to stand there, watching the ride, listening to the screams, I am making a conscious choice to get on the ride even as this new information is presented to me. My friends will get me into line, and once I am on the ride itself I put my faith in the safeties designed by the roller coaster engineer  and let my body be thrown from side to side. Loop da’ loops or dramatic three story high dives, locked into my seat the greatest stress is over and I can relax and enjoy the ride.

College too is designed to shake you a bit, give you an experience and place you back on the ground. And here too I find anticipation and decision stifling. I find the choosing of classes, the navigation of my non-standard course map to be a horribly straining task. I would rather just go forth and do, but I feel an obligation to myself to consider my options thoroughly. Issue is, I can’t see the future, there’s no way of knowing what option is truly best in the long run. It’s like being asked to solve for a variable, but being given an indeterminate matrix and some subjective phrases or playing 20 questions with only non distinct questions.  You just have to take your best guess and move on.   

We are curvature.

If one thinks of life as a series of moments with good and bad wrapped into them, then is would life be worth living if the net sum of the good - bad was bad?

My initial gut feeling was yes, but as in mathematics we cannot just say things are so because of a gut feeling. After all, one could argue that my intuition says so, because the net sum of my moments has been positive.

Consider net happiness as being approximated by the riemann sum of the given good or bad of a set of adjacent short periods of time. Now take the limit of this as the change in time approaches 0. In short, I invite you to consider happiness as the integral of some curve. Where the curve is defined by f(t)=lifes instantaneous happy levels (positive or negative) and the area underneath which is net good/bad.

This is similar to how the integral of position with respect to time is displacement aka net change in position.

Now determining if life is worth living should be a nice integral of a function (which for most would be continuous) and a simple little apple of the fundamental theorem of calculus.

But consider this:

1. We dont know the bounds, so unless a nice little trick or assumption comes in we cant apply FTC. Also of one factors in considerations of life after life on Mars then this becomes an improper integral from 0 to infinity. If you believe that you are reborn then the bounds become negative infinity to infinity. Both very improper.

2. We don't know the function, so we cant integrate it.

3. Even if we could integrate it, we couldn't solve for C, so integrating f(t) as an indefinite integral would be pointless.

So what do we know?

We aren't very good judges of if things are getting better or worse at any given moment so we only have a very rough guess at the rate of change.

We aren't very observant, so we can only notice a few things at a time.

We really only know the moment that we are in, and not where we are going, and what's more I'd like to purpose that our lives are affected by more than one thing.

I purpose that we experience at any given moment the second derivative of the function of life, which is not simply f(t) but rather, a function of infinite (as many as necessary) variables. We know not where we are or where we are going, we dont know how the future will change us. We simply know where we are and have an idea of whether allong a particular direction we are concave up or down.

Life is a n'th dimensional hyperspace and we experience it as the curvature allong whatever path we trace allong whatever level surface we happen to have focused in on.

Aka, we experience life as the curvature (k, second partial derivative) of one level surface of it's n'th dimensional hyperspace.

So we don't know, but just the mere thought of riding allong this hyperspace brings a certain kind of satisfaction, and a unique quest for knowledge.

“The College Experience” On Being the Sober Friend

Many people seem to think that the Sober Friend, the one who doesn’t party, but will come get you and fix you up misses out on some fundamental aspects of the college experience. And yet in looking back I believe I got to experience some of the highlights of being drunk and/or high without the expense of the traditional substances. Then again, there were still the health services fees and engineering textbooks cost more than boose so...?

1. Master of Vomiting.

Yep...Noro. I can vomit while practically laying down on the toilet. The trick is to strangle the piping. I’m also quite skilled at running while nauseated and, knock on wood, haven’t missed the toilet yet. 

2. Waking up on the floor + awkward interactions with someone I barely know.

Whatever you do, don’t take a shower when you’re severely dehydrated. 

3. Inability to walk a line 

Albuterol after I had the flu

4. Memory Loss

Severe sleep deprivation will do that. 

5. Bloodshot eyes

Sleep is for people who don’t have a major statics project and circuits and a thermo exam due the same day. 

6. Anti-skunk smell procedures

The people across from me didn’t have to wash their laundry but I wasn’t about to get suspended for their lack of caution and found myself freebreeze-ing my room with the best of em’. 

7. The munchies

No excuse for this one. Three weeks four boxes of marshmallow fruit loops. 

Wasps in Engineering

This morning I awoke early, stirred from my rest by the sound of "Travel" playing at the time specified the night before to my personal device assistant. I reviewed thermodynamics in my quarters before dressing hastily and heading off a bit behind schedule, while consuming nourishment from a pre-packaged tube (Go-gurt). It was a day in the typical martian life.

Upon arriving however, I discovered a hoard of people crammed outside the room, rather than seated and chatting with as usual. Their exclamations were soon made clear. Our particular room in the Hab, was overrun by wasps. Why they were there, no one could say, perhaps the inhospitable conditions outside drove them in? Then again, whose to say why any of us were there.

Our executive Starfleet officer instructed us to not disturb them as they circled, otherwise activities continued as usual, pardoning the occasional interruption of a flying creature.

It seemed, contrary to popular belief, the redshirts were more afraid of the wasps then the wasps were of them.

Governor Sunshine: President of Mars

The happiest man I know in this region lives in between the two hubs of our small martian colony. He often sits outside where the lawn meets the sidewalk and greets anyone who passes. As I prepare to depart the martian colony in my beaten blue shuttle, I stop for protein at the hub for quality homestyle nourishment. He wanders in and chats with the group of young women in the booth behind me. Greets the young men who walk in to rush their friends for departure, then he says goodbye to the young women and leaves.

I met him once on a day last year walking back to the habit. I sat and chatted with him for a bit. He was injured when he was young in a shuttle accident, his mind and his leg will never be quite right, but he is happy. He spends his days watching sunrises and sunsets, chatting with anyone near about anything, and watching game shows. Some people call him Governor, others call him Sunshine, few call him by his real name, but he expresses pure innocent joy towards everyone and as far as I'm concerned, he's President of Mars.

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.