Behind The Big E

Things have certainly been exciting this year so far, hence my absence from the blogosphere lately. Classes have been keeping us engineers very occupied  lately, and many hours have been spent scouring the interwebs for info on all the insane international news going on lately.

It took one week for around one thousand people to die en masse, adding the disastrous earthquake in New Zealand, and the revolution currently happening in Libia. It was pretty concerning at the time, and the fact that I’m still even paying attention to this is something in itself.

Personally, I hope that the west decides to do something soon, despite all this talk about not interfering in foreign affairs. I don’t think that very many people would deem interfering in this situation to be western “meddling”; it’s just speeding up the precess. We might as well just call toppling the Gadaffe government a humanitarian mission, as I’ve heard so many people call his actions “un-human”.

Speaking of un-human, here’s a random video I found really funny.

I’m really looking forward to having a robot friend as an adult.

But I suppose I may end up being one of the people on a project like that. I’m still planning on computer engineering. Currently just taking baby steps, but ever since I allowed my apple obsession cool a bit and got an extra PC for programing, my computer education seems to have been going a bit more smoothly. I’m teaching myself Java! Hopefully by the end of the summer I’ll have a chunk of C++, Java, and Python under my belt.

With all this ultra geekiness, I kinda have to make sure I have some social life to balance it out. Solution: play Xbox with the girls downstairs. Yes, it’s the best of both worlds, and it being an adopted member of their floor has it’s perks. LIKE LASER TAG!!!!

Girls all around could learn a lesson from them. So let out that inner nerd and DFTBA.

Has it really been a whole month? Well with all the hubub going on, you can’t blame me. I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, because it’s time to GET BACK TO WORK!

A lot of us are relieved to get back. We can get back into our routines, and hopefully work out all that holiday food. Plus, there’s so much to look forward to second semester. Many of my friends have easier course loads (which makes me very jealous), and guess what: more holidays in a month. Yay!

For now, however, we’ve all got work to do, which may prove to be more difficult to get done depending on your christmas. For example those of us who received some gift which may cause some… distraction. *cough*Cataclysm*cough* And of course don’t forget the number of new gadgets that could be sucking up your daylight hours. I guess it’s about time we develop those time management skills, which so many of us neglected to acknowledge as a valuable skill in high school.

On a more serious note, after having a very concerning argument with some random people over lunch, I went out searching for answers about moral relativity, and how cultural influence affects it, and where a line can be drawn regardless if cultural context. Fortunately I came across  a couple lectures by Sam Harris; he did a lecture at TED talks on his book The Moral Landscape, and, if you are feeling so inclined, here’s a longer presentation on the same topic. It’s pretty compelling, from a western point of view. I have not heard any educated argument against it yet, but I think it’s still worth watching.

I think that’s all I’ve got for y’all for the moment. Good thing too; I have a whole book to read my Monday.

Hooray, it’s that time of year again, and I truly have never been this happy for Christmas time. Now that I’m out at UBC, it just means so much more to me than before; I’m done term one, as opposed to coming back to another month plus exams, and I get to go home and visit my family and friends for a whole two weeks!

Notice I didn’t put “Christmas” in the title? Well, this is Canada, so you probably couldn’t care less, but it was on purpose, I swear. Recently, I’ve been following all the hubub in the US media, mostly on Fox, and it cracks me up. Like this one. Over the past couple of years, Fox has been using the holidays to claim an attack on Christmas, and by association Christianity, by the secular community because people are not recognizing Christmas as the most important winter holiday. Of course, this is such a ridiculous issue that Jon Stewart had to get in on the fun too, and did a pretty good job at making it look even sillier than it already does.

This is from a couple years ago, but still illustrates fairly well the craziness around the subject.

Of course this is only representative of the right wing Christians, who are all obsessed with tradition and whatnot. I’m pretty sure that most people, at least around here in Vancouver, really wouldn’t care and respect that other people have different traditions, and that the government should not be responsible for providing funding for any religious holiday.

Personally, given the choice to change the winter holiday I celebrate, I’d keep Christmas anyways. It’s one day, there’re presents, and I don’t feel like the odd one out. I didn’t even associate it with religion till I was probably 4 or 5. Up till then, Santa might as well have been my god. Lots of non-believers celebrate Festivus, which is pretty cool, but I don’t think I could ever do it. I never really watched Seinfeld enough to be crazy about it, and seriously, I don’t want a metal pole in my living room. Not very aesthetically pleasing.

So, if you follow the american media a bit more this month, I’m sure you’ll get a laugh or two if they bring it up again.

Happy holidays! Let’s all come back fresh for term 2.

It’s pretty hard to believe that we are almost done a whole term now. Just another week of classes. I know for us first years, it’s a huge shock, ain’t it? Usually we’d still have another two months.

Well, I’d like to think we’ve been working hard enough to be finished by now. Aha! but they have tricked us. Now we have the most epically stressful 2 weeks so far. Dun dun duh! EXAMS, NOOOOO!

At least we had something to take our minds off our inevitable doom this past weekend, here at Totem.

When I heard that we were going to have an actual winter formal, I was pretty excited. Sounded like the good ol’ days of high school. But this time with more friends. Sad but true for many of us. The dinner really caught me off guard. Surprisingly fancy, but I’m a fan of fancy… mostly because I get to get all fancied up, and show off. :P

Following up, we got to get our groove on at the dance, which I must say was not at all fancy… well except all the formal wear, but it was all good. I don’t think the turn out would have been all that great if the rave quality had been missing, and those who came to do some casual snogging got their chance anyways. And compared to Glow, it was very, er… well behaved. That is to say the people that were there were mostly sober, which is always nice. Although weird stuff still managed to happen. Stuff that shall never be spoken of ever again… ever.

So now that we are all de-stressed and such, we get to hit the books once again for the home stretch till the holidays. Oh man, I am glad to be so close! All throughout the past few years, Christmas has been less and less significant, probably for a lot of us, but now it is more than welcome. For once we can go home and relax. No projects due on the day we come back, and no exams to study for.

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ll be gaming it up all break. :D