Goozack

I hate doors.  I really do.  They’re annoying, and they get in my way.  School doors may be the worst.  The double doors may have a post down the center.  Or they may not.  And they’re inconsistent, too.  So you may be walking through the center of one door, and then: Wham!  You hit the center post of the next.  The center posts also impede traffic by making people go around.  Often there’s space for a whole other column of people down the center.  And, with a rolling backpack and lots of stuff, I might have trouble opening most doors.  The doors in one of the campus buildings are very old and very heavy.

            Not that non-school double doors aren’t annoying.  I have hit my head on doors more than once.  I have hit my head on doorknobs at least twice.  One of the two doors to my room is either all the way open or latched shut.  There is no in-between.  Someone unlatches it, it slowly swings open.  The other door to my room is hard to latch.  My bathroom door doesn’t stay latched.  When our basement door is open, it’s like a whole new wall, blocking traffic.

            There is only one type of door that I like: the revolving door.  Not only is it fun, it works.  For the heavily burdened as much as those who have nothing; for the disabled as well as the strong.  It is the best type of door to possibly have.

            I don’t always like chairs, either, but that’s another blog.

Guns and Knives

Okay, the no weapons policies of schools and such are a good idea, but it can be taken a bit too far.  We have not been given plastic knives in the cafeteria since elementary school.  How are you going to hurt someone with a plastic butter knife?  You can barely hurt someone with a regular butter knife, and only if they let you saw at them for a while.  You run up to try to stab someone: “Die!” *snap* “Dang it!”

Some schools have even outlawed a gun-shaped hand motion.  You know, where you clasp your hands together, pointer fingers out and thumb up? Yeah, that.  What are you going to do, load your fingers?

I have heard tell of a girl who had to walk or get a ride to softball practice a couple miles away because the bus driver wouldn’t let her take her bat on the bus.  I guess that’s halfway reasonable, but what about suspending a Boy Scout for bringing his trusty Spork to school? Or a man in college who kept his grandfather's penknife in his car?  How did the school authorities find out about that one?

I will kill you with my plastic knife and gun hands!  “Bang!” *snap* “Darn it!”

Corn Sugar

Word is out that manufacturers are changing the name High Fructose Corn Syrup to simply Corn Sugar.  I read this in a kids’ newspaper called News for You.  The people lobbying to change the name say that “’Whether it’s corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can’t tell the difference.’”  And the article itself says that there’s “little scientific proof” for the statement that HFCS is more harmful than regular sugar.  I beg to differ!  There’s plenty of proof.  I’ve heard it.  Sure, there’s no evidence that a teaspoon of HFCS is worse than a teaspoon of table sugar (sucrose), but HFCS is everywhere.  It can only be metabolized by one organ, the liver.  Sucrose can be metabolized by any organ.  A teaspoon can be metabolized.  But it takes less to overload the liver than all the organs of the body combined.  And when something can’t be metabolized, it turns into fat.  Which is unhealthy.

            Back on the topic of renaming it – HFCS and corn sugar are the same thing.  Renaming it doesn’t make it any better.  The companies just do this so that they can keep using it.  Like when prunes were changed to dried plums.  That’s what prunes are.  It doesn’t change anything except reaction.  Corporations don’t care about people’s health unless their consumers care about people’s health. 

Here’s a thought.  If it’s in a newspaper that corn sugar is the same as HFCS, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of consumers not knowing?

The Longest Calculator Message Ever

I WILL NOW TRY

TO WRITE THE

LONGEST CALCU-

LATOR MESSAGE

EVER.  THIS IS

PROBABLY – NO,

MOST LIKELY – A

FEAT THAT HAS

BEEN ATTEMPTED

BEFORE.  BUT THE

PREVIOUS LONGEST

HAVE MORE THAN

LIKELY BEEN NO

MORE THAN NON-

SENSE.  THIS ONE

IS SAYING SOME-

THING.  THE MES-

SAGE IS CLEAR.

OR MAYBE IT ISNT

.  PERHAPS YOU,

THE MESSSAGE REA-

DER, NEED SOME

CLARIFICATION.

NO MATTER.  I

WOULD HAVE SAID

IT ANYWAY.  THE

MESSAGE IS THAT

A TEXTS LENGTH

HAS NOTHING TO

DO WITH ITS REL-

EVANCE.  WHY DID

I NOT JUST SAY

THAT IN THE FIRS

T PLACE, YOU

ASK?  BECAUSE

THIS IS MEANT TO

BE LONG.  THIS

IS MEANT TO BE

THE LONGEST

CALCULATOR MES-

SAGE EVER!  SO

I HAVE COMPILED

LETTERS INTO

WORDS, AND WORDS

INTO SENTENCES.

AND I HAVE ALSO

COMPILED THESE

SENTENCES INTO

A MESSAGE THAT

CAN ONLY BE READ

BY PRESSING THE

DOWN ARROW MANY,

MANY, MANY, MANY

TIMES.  THIS IS

A POINTLESS TIME

WASTER STARTED

AFTER A MATH

TEST.

I HAVE WRITTEN

THINGS LONGER.

BUT THEY HAVE

BEEN IN VARIAT,

NOT NORMAL TYPE.

THIS MESSAGE IS

LENGTHY, BUT

“SAYS” NOTHING.

THERE IS NOTHING

OF IMPORTANCE

HERE.

I AM STARTING TO

SKIP AROUND, TO

CREATE NEW PARA-

GRAPHS TO MATCH

MY THOUGHTS.  I

AN STILL ON TOP-

IC, HOWEVER, UN-

LIKE MOST MES-

SAGES THAT HAVE

MADE IT TO THIS

LENGTH.

THIS MESSAGE IS

VERY LONG.  THERE

IS NOT MUCH MORE

I CAN SAY ON THE

TOPIC.  SO I

WILL END THIS

MESSAGE NOW, AND

LEAVE IT HERE,

ON THIS CALCULA-

TOR, UNTIL IT

HAS BEEN READ BY

OTHERS.

            END

P.S. “until it has been read by others” seems to translate to “until we need to use it.”  I’m bummed that I had to clear my message, but it had to be eventually.

P.P.S. Yes, I did type this all out on my graphing calculator.  To preserve the format, each line is only sixteen characters long and it is in all caps with only the punctuation my calculator can use.  This has come from a calculator to graph paper to a Word document to here.  I have written it out completely 3 times.
P.P.P.S. "In variat" means like this:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXX              XXXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX                  XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXX    XXXXXX   XXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Each letter is perfectly visible, as my screen is 8 characters high.

           There was a sign in my 6th grade math classroom that said "You learn..." and then a list of different ways to learn and how much you get out of each.  I liked that poster.  I don't remember much of it, but I remember two stats off that poster:  you learn more by seeing than hearing, and you learn 81% of what you teach to others.
           I find this really intriguing.  Most teachers teach visually, and some hands-on, which is even better -- but when does any teacher have us teach to each other?  
           However, I've seen the poster.  Whenever I study something, I "teach" Mom from my notes.  Usually she already knows the material, but that just means that we teach each other.  Maybe I should teach her math.  Except I don't need much help remembering math stuff.
           So next time you learn something, teach it to someone else.  You'll learn it even better, and they'll learn it too.

What?

I have heard from multiple sources that 100 people choke to death every year... on ballpoint pens.  How the h*** do you choke on a ballpoint pen?  Do they get taken apart and the individual parts swallowed?  Some of the parts are pretty small.  But then, if they were small parts, swallowing them wouldn't make you choke anyway.  Maybe it's people chewing on the end of the pen, thinking about what to write next.  But how would the pen get from your teeth all the way into your throat?  If their hand slips, I guess.  Or it somehow hits something.  I can just imagine someone committing "murder by pen" in which the pen is shoved down the throat.  But 100 people?  Every year?  Some of that has to be stupid and accidental.  Again, how the h*** does this happen?  How do you choke on a ballpoint pen?

Goals? What goals?

Today we were supposed to write down our goals in Advisory.  My goals?  Well, I'm not going to tell you.  Why? I've heard that telling people your goals often makes you less likely to complete them.  Ironic, considering that from the time we're small children, we are encouraged to tell people our goals: what we want to be/do when we grow up, etc.  Of course, people's goals change from that point of time.  When I was little, I wanted to be a paleontologist/ballerina/race car driver.  Now, of course, I have something a little more realistic in mind.
I think the goal thing we did was stupid, anyway.  We had to write 4 goals, and relate them in pairs by role (student, sibling, member of church, etc.).  I could only think of two anyway.  The paper also said to write down some long-term and some short-term; like goals for the year versus 2- or 3-month time span.  Well, guess what, person who typed the paper?  One year is short-term for me.  I don't even have a 3-month goal.  My normal short-term is "by the time I've finished high school."  Long-term is "as an adult."  I don't know about other kids, who actually do sports and stuff, but I got nothing.  Well, almost nothing.  My shortest-term goal involves the bass guitar.  Anything else is prereq to the long-term.