Conflict

Part of me feels like college is a ripoff.
I spend many thousands of dollars a year (some paid for by scholarship and loan) in order to do homework and write papers. Eventually, this money will culminate in a piece of paper signed by some deans that says I have written some papers and taken some tests.

The dorm is overpriced for the size of the room, and the quality of the provision, the food is EXPENSIVE and crappy, but at least the library and the school buildings are adequate.
At the same time, I realize that I am paying less that the average lower class income (somewhere around $27k a year) in order to be free of a job. Now sure, I have to work a little to be able to afford that, but while in college, I am provided for in every basic way, plus LOTS of unnecessary treats like internet and TV.
Plenty people who earn and pay that same wage do not live like I do.

So, while I love to complain, college really is a bubble of complacency, with a lot of hard work involved. And I do believe that every college, not just small private Christian schools, is a bubble which the students rarely ever leave.
I wonder if there's anyone who spent his entire life at college for just that reason.

Up Late Again...

Studying and writing papers is getting old.
Like fast.
But, it's always a pleasant little surprise to be scanning facebook at 2 in the morning and find something funny.
One of my friends, I won't say who, listed in her profile that her favorite type of book is Christian Romance Novels.
I am horrified by the idea of this. It sounds like the single worst idea to ever come from a Christian author.

So I googled it.
Much to my dismay, I found this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Best-Christian-Romance-Books/lm/1WKYIUWB1NZJ0

An entire category in Amazon devoted to horrible books. At least it's probably not pornographic like regular romance novels, but it's still probably unrealistic and theologically painful.
Alas, such is American Christianity.

Tag

I refuse to make my blog topics revolve around major holidays. That's cheap. I like to be more creative in my topics. No offense if you do, haha.

I think Facebook is vastly superior to Youtube. Of course I'm going to tell you why. This is a blog, duh.

Every time I look through some website that collects pictures or videos or stories by topic, I inevitably run into a video that shows some person doing something incredibly stupid that gets them hurt, whether it be a hurt pride or a very, very physical pain.

I wonder if these people know their shame is made public for all the world to see.
I am currently aware of about 3 videos that I am actually in on youtube. Most of them are inside jokes that would not entertain anyone who actually watched them without being there for the recording.

At least on facebook, you can tag people who are in video and pics, so they are made aware of this.

I wonder if the world is small enough or coincidental enough that the people who watch the videos of people being stupid ever, by some mysterious chance, see that stupid person in real life. I bet it happens.

In that case, person B, who viewed the video of person A, would already have a preconception of the character of person A, and probably not a good one.

So, just to make you paranoid, I wonder if you guys are in any youtube videos that could destroy your credibility as serious people.

Haha good luck finding them. I think youtube is up to about a billion videos or something crazy.

Running on Empty

I still want to use this thing, I promise.
I just had to take a hiatus from deep thought for a couple of weeks. It gets me into trouble sometimes.
Blog time now.

I noticed today how much my life is controlled by gauges.
Anything that measures how full or empty some item of mine is determines more of my course of action than I like.
Today alone:
-My car ran low on gas and I had to stop to get more.
-My cell phone battery died and I had to bring my charger with me to the library.
-My laptop battery died and I had to walk around campus with the screen turned off.
-My coffee maker ran out of water and had to be refilled.
-My printer cartridge ran out of ink and had to be replaced, very expensively.
-It also ran out of paper. Nothing should have more than one resource. Piece of crap.
-A McDonald's billboard on the highway told me that my "fry gauge" was low, which sadly really made me want fries.
-I know for a fact that my bike tire pressure gauge would read low if I tried to ride it.
-My Febreze bottle is empty, making me less able to combat the encroaching stench of J. Alvin into my clothing.

Every time something becomes empty, it makes me unable to do something. Emptiness takes away my power, it weakens technology, it signifies that work must be done before a device can be used again.

At the end of my day, as I thought of all the things I need to do before all of the trinkets around me would do my bidding again, I realized something that outweighs the joy all of technology could ever bring me.


I'm full inside.

Minority? Really? WARNING: THIS IS A RANT

Ok, so today I'm doing something a little different. I'm giving you homework.

Read this article

And now, I discuss.
Atheists and agnostics claim to be the poor, suffering minority in our political system.

While I do agree that most politicians claim to be religious, this is for 2 main reasons:
1. The upper class is statistically more religious than the lower class
2. Surveys have shown that people, even atheists, typically want people with a sense of religious morality to have power in our country

Now, this is certainly not to say that the legislation of the U.S., with the exception of President Bush, in the past 10 years has been AT ALL religious.
In this article they claim that they have no say in politics, but postmodernism has made any sense of the absolute truth of morality disappear from our methods of foreign policy or our laws at home.
Abortion has political support. Weapons are a SIGNIFICANT portion of our tax burden. The education system has been forced by legislature to prohibit Christian and Mormon practices, although not Islam practices, because we don't want to be racist.

Also, almost anything scientific, which comes under the consideration of law - such as stem cell research, abortion, evolution, and many more things, are expected to be a completely different realm from the church. A scientist who is also a Christian has no authority.

And look at the author's reasoning for wanting this political power:
Because he says religious people condemn him to hell every time he meets them.

This article is not a cry out from political oppression, it is a rally for mockery of Christianity.
They say that there is a 15% group of people who are non-religious, but I say that's a lie. That's probably just the 15 ACTIVE percent. The people who intentionally propagate atheism as "realistic" and who vote for the removal of spirit from life. There are probably as few as 15% or less active religious people with political power. The rest may IDENTIFY themselves as religious, but in reality they are APATHETIC and still vote as if they were non-religious because their faith isn't real!

Even more proof is in the article itself. While attempting to say that non-religious people are legitimate voters, he proves that he does not care about that, but just wants to vindicate his own beliefs with lines such as "for the love of God, stop ignoring us" and "if God forbid, [the non-religious] should ever fight back and forcefully present their opinions, they are often considered rude and offensive." Aside from the fact that neither of those statements are true, they are sardonic and catatonic.

This just aids me in the belief that atheism is not a pattern of thought or a way of life; it is a rebellion. These are not people who care about asserting that there is no God, they care about asserting their own authority.

Man, that made me mad.

Here's a question, though. What is the Christian response to this kind of animosity?

The Work Lens

I finally finished one giant paper to find out that I have another one similar to it due in a week. It's still a ways off but man my classes give me no time to detox after a blow like that. I worked on that thing probably 20 hours in the last week.

Human abilities are often very contingent on our ability to focus and concentrate. If I spent 4 hours doing unfocused work, it's not even as good as 1 hour of focused work. I am so unfocused now that I realized that I had forgotten to submit my paper online, which I am now doing.

But focus and concentration does not necessarily mean that our mind is wholly consumed in the process.

In my Christian Education class, we recently discussed that the way to tell if you have truly learned something is to be able to do it competently and unconsciously. The example he used was playing an instrument. A master of an instrument plays music out of habit and with excellent muscle memory. He focuses by remembering what he did in the past instinctively.

So, in the same way, I focus my work by instinctively honing in on what I am doing, and then just let the work flow out.
It all sounds very kung fu, I know.

But, I think there's something to be said for it.
Where else would we come up with phrases like "He loses himself in his work," or "hatred consumed him."
Out of those habits, we develop skill (even though hatred is not a skill) and with skill we develop diligence.

All that to say that it's really hard to force myself to sit down and write a paper. But if I instead think of it as applying my focus unconsciously, it sounds a little better.

I basically have to trick myself into doing homework, but I'm good at it once I do.

The Odds Part 2

My thinking got me thinking:
Where does luck come from anyways?
The obvious answer is God, but how many of us actually operate on that belief?
I played Yahtzee with Evan and Tellie a few weeks ago, and I in no way believed that the outcome of my Yahtzee game had all that much to do with God.

But God even controls the roll of the dice. Every molecule moves under his observation.

So all of the gambling debt in the world, all of the lost Yahtzee games (I got butchered) and all of the short ends of the stick are known to God.

Did you know that the disciples believed that dice (or casting lots in their case) revealed the will of God?
They cast lots to decide who would take the place of Judas the Betrayer among the 12. (Acts 1:12-26)
They prayed about it, picked 2 candidates, and threw some old school dice.
They knew that God really could speak through that because he controls everything.
Man, that's the kind of faith I aspire to.