Exxon Valdez

The biggest oil spill in history... It's what? It's Exxon Valdez! I think this oil spill was pretty detrimental to the public image of petroleum. As the industry got detrimentally hit. Extremely injured. Pictures of flightless birds with oil entangled all around their feathers is a pretty sickening picture to see if you realize the cause was because of humans. It's quite terrible, yet, somehow, scientists were able to produce a bacteria (or alter a currently existing one) that fed on hydrocarbons. I thought this was extremely amazing - they genetically modified a bacteria to feed on oil!? Then the thought hit me: what if in the future some eco-terrorist organization dumps large amounts of this bacteria into an oil well? Then that whole pool would  be contaminated. I'm sure it's not likely as they need more than just hydrocarbons to survive but it's a pretty fancy situation.

The Sat

Recently I've been distressed with the SAT. The head of the school aka Pamela has set forth a goal that I must reach. I shall divulge no further on this topic but the main point is that I must reach this score. Anyway, it's been putting enormous amounts of pressure on me. Especially the writing section. I wasn't raised being taught English - I was raised being taught with English. That is how I learned the language, through use and communication yet people here have a great advantage over me as they were taught English in analytically. I barely studied grammar when I was in school either save for an occasional work sheet or two. This is why I find it fallacious to bind my writing score (my POTENTIAL writing score) to my reading score. I might have scored high on the reading but simply for me the writing is just a total blank. Null. Just a void.

Motivation

Our actions are usually motivated by something. A mental force or anything else. It's simply divided into two types - intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation simply being stemming from the inside whilst the latter meant coming from the outside. Honestly, I feel like fear as a motivation might work well - but the long term effects of conditioning fear with the successful action is not beneficial at all. I am a critic of the ways this school motivates its kids. I'm actually quite terrified of what might happen to me if I do not fulfill the demands requested by certain individuals - but it does leave me with a drive to continue forward; regardless of whether or not it's sourcing from fear. I wish as though this undying and relentless machine that pumps out children as obedient slaves was less effective so it leaves me with more points to criticize it with... but I'm afraid not.

Arab Spring

Recently over the summer I've had to write a few papers on the Arab Spring, specifically regarding the unrest in the country of Yemen as well as the NATO mission in Libya. Across my research I stumbled across a very important and malicious ulterior motive of the NATO mission. First of all, since when did the United Nations work so proactively to oust tyrants and dictators from their own country simply for the reason of saving its oppressed citizens? Never. When Bush Junior invaded Iraq the ulterior motive was to help out Bush Junior's daddy's friends: aka the oil barons of America. This time, as you can see, the French were the first to jump the gun on attacking Libya. Oh no, the Great Gaddafi the Terrible is committing human rights violations! Well, too bad. First of all, it's interesting to note that Gaddafi's been in power for 40 years and his country's remained extremely stable for those 40 years. Why, you may ask? First of all, the current Libyan government was established following a military coup d'etat removing the king, also known as a dynastic autocratic ruler no better than Gaddafi himself, and had established a more modern government. With a country like Libya sitting in the unstable continent of Africa, pillaged by the Europeans plenty as well as plagued by the ethnic discord there, it's obvious that a transition of power would cause great turmoil. Gaddafi decided to stay in power probably for the benefit of his country. Ignore Western propaganda in this case please, as obviously they'll try to label Gaddafi as a nepotic bad guy who kills innocents. Another contributing factor that lead to his long reign was that he had brought FRESH WATER to all of his countrymen under a project that was TOTALLY SELF-SUSTAINED by the Libyan government. This meant that there was no need to hire foreign contractors that escaped with a much grander end of the bargain, this meant that Libya would create the most important piece of infrastructure it has (or had, if you time in the French bombings) to the Libyan people. Libya sits on the edge of the Sahara, with fresh water being extremely scarce (which is typical if you live in the desert too) but Gaddafi had undertaken a magnificent project that siphoned from the Nubian Sandstone, the largest aquifer system/ fossil water reserve IN THE WORLD. Ever since Libya took on this grand project back in 1984, (the project is known as the Great Manmade River) small steps have been made to expand the wealth of this water reserve and slowly had trickled across the country. Tap water was now available to the Libyan citizens. And now that we've got that out of the way, let's bring our attention back to why NATO chose to attack this country instead of the dozens of other countries suffering from "unjust rulers" and the such. Remember how the French were the first to strike Libya? An air strike, perhaps? Well, to add this into the equation France is the largest exporter of fresh water in the world. What does that say about NATO and its oh so just mission? They're phonies. That's what.

The Environment

First off, before continuing on with this journal - I'd like to say that I'm a neoclassical thinker. A neoclassical thinker with a neoclassical view on our consumption of resources. Scrap that, maybe just a similar mindset when speaking of consumption of resources. This is because I do believe we should exploit the environment; I do believe we should use up the Earth, and I do believe, as the dominate species with all other species at the mercy and will of our figurative iron-knuckled gauntlets, we as humans, have the right to exploit the planet and the right to exploit other animals. Pardon my french, but screw conservation efforts. Screw preservation. The Earth's resources will not be able to tolerate our human needs no matter how long we try to keep it running for. The population is already at almost 7 billion and the Earth is dying. Let's just suck it dry. By that time technology will have already been so far ahead and be able to provide for us humans that it won't even matter. I've always wondered why mosquitoes even exist and the point of their existence: well, after some searching around a very wise answer stuck around my head: an organism does not need to prove its existence. That applies to us humans as well. We do not need to provide a reason for our existence. We do not need to care. We are dominant. We are superior. We are intelligent. We are incessant and ruthless. We are human..

Sopor

The strange and mesmerizing grasp of sleep deprivation had me at its claws earlier today. Having survived off of a 5 hour sleep schedule last year, I find it harder to keep myself awake without dozing off here and there at times now. Sometimes occupying my brain with thoughts will just fatigue my will to stay awake even faster: it will enervate me both ways; in terms of the physical aspect of staying awake and the mental counterpart to it. Sometimes I wish I was still a kid, a prepubescent kid, because back then in those days I didn't ever have to worry about falling asleep in class. I remember back then I used to scoff at the idea of falling asleep in class - it's just now the hours of sleep I need are much greater than before and there are so many things I'd like to get done that sometimes I wish we humans didn't need to sleep at all. I'm quite jealous of those who can live off of one sleep cycle a day - imagine how much spare time would be available.

Anxious

It's strange at times because I'm afflicted with, perhaps, anxiety? I can't sit in my chair properly. I feel like I need to do something. But I'd rather do nothing than do something because doing something is hard to concentrate on. I feel like there is a beast upon my back and I must wrestle it off. Only when I can occupy myself with something extremely distracting can I forget about this beast. I cannot even play games or enjoy myself or whatever. All I want right now is to do many things at once and get it over with. This is not unusual, sometimes it takes a cleaning of a room (one hell of a cleaning) to purge myself of this feeling. Sometimes it takes drawing out a stream of thoughts onto a journal. Sometimes I just cannot sit still and do what I am assigned. Is this the affliction of a teenage boy? Is this the affliction of an anxiety-ridden man? Or is this the affliction that I have been born with that disables me from focusing on tasks and completing the said task? I do not know, but I do know that I have just blurted out a few sentences with great impetuosity that it has relieved the feeling somewhat.

Males

Males of today are slowly losing their natural aggression and in trade for a more docile and acquiesced temperament. It's strange because this culture is slowly asking for males who can cook, males who can take care of children and change their diapers which I find ironic because isn't that the role of women? It's not right to assign certain jobs to which sex: but seriously, come on. Sexism is wrong but there is some truth in it if you trace the roles of gender back to prehistoric times. Males are the hunters and females are the gatherers. Males are the ones providing for the family and females are the ones taking care of the family. I'm not saying that all males out there right now are all changing diapers and cooking, but what I'm saying is that the slightest possibility of this is seeping through is just strange because to me it's always been an ironclad fact that males are the providers who protect and females are the tender caregivers.

Pool

So it seems that the stereotype in this country for people who play pool is, well, that they're bad kids. That might make some sense, as the environment created there might contain smoking and on occasions, drinking, but since when did smoking dictate bad kids? I found that kind of ironic because sometimes the world's most successful people partake in this activity too. I've taken up a hobby over the summer and that was to play pool. I'm not amazing at it (yet) but sometimes just by observing people usually associate pool-playing with bad kids and high school drop outs. I thought it was an absurd idea to do so. I wish they would just come to the pool hall and see for themselves: there's a wide variety of people there, from suits to workers.