Category: potpourri

American Airlines Craziness

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Two major events have struck American Airlines this week. Lets recap:

Photo Credit: upload.wikimedia.org 

Today, October 5th, at 7:10 am American Airlines flight 550 landed in New York mid-flight for the last reason anyone would expect: the pilot passed away mid-flight, the name of the pilot and cause has not been announced.

During the flight, the pilot became unresponsive, at which point the co-pilot took over and was able to safely land the plane in Syracuse, its original destination was Boston.

This unfortunate event was completely unforeseen, thank goodness the co-pilot was proactive and able to get all 147 passengers to ground safely.

Next event. American Airlines flight 31 departed from Los Angeles with a full house, Hawaii bound.

Little known fact that the Airbus A321s was not certified to fly over the Pacific Ocean. This aircraft was no correctly equipped to fly over the Pacific.

Luckily, the aircraft made it safely to Hawaii. The plane was later flown back to LAX with the minimum amount of crew on board.

Thankfully both of these incidents left no passengers harmed… just a bit shaken.

I thought the insult ‘Queer’ was dead already

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I was shocked to hear it. I really thought it had stopped being ‘cool’ a long time ago.

“That’s so queer.” He said, the first time, referring to someones Instagram account. I looked him dead in the eye. “Stop. You have no right.” But he didn’t. The words ‘Fagg*t,’ ‘Queer’, and ‘Gay’ were used several more times as an insult throughout the conversation. Eventually I left, utterly disgusted.

So why is it so important to stop using these terms like this?

Well first of all you may think it’s cool, but I don’t care how many bro-points you gain, insulting someone via their sexuality. But really, that’s only the surface of this issue. Yeah, it’s mean, but it’s so much more too.

Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? So essentially, everything you do makes ripples. It goes a lot further than you thought it would, in a lot of ways.

  1. You make gay synonymous with bad. You make kids feel lesser for their feelings.
  2. You are furthering this insult, keeping the cycle going. Just stop.
  3. YOU ARE HURTING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY
  4. You are bullying. I do not care if you said it to a gay person or not. You are being a bully. End of story.
  5. 23% of gay or bisexual teens have tried to take their own lives and 56% have self harmed. You are an accomplice to these murders of young children who did nothing wrong.
  6. You are saying that it’s ok for millions upon millions of people to be degraded world-wide so you can… be cool? Grow up.
  7. You are creating a community that is unsafe
  8. Back to the statistics – More than 85% of LGBTQ+ youth have been harassed at school in the past year. You are making your school a place where kids may be afraid to attend.
  9. So, so much more.

So why would you use these descriptive terms as insults? Can you honestly not grasp the idea that there are other words out there? You want to be ‘cool?’

Buy a dictionary.

Photo Credit to: http://www.goabroad.com

A Casual Sunday Morning

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I open my eyes and find myself lying on the blanket in a very uncomfortable position. My laptop is still open, and my phone is on the floor with its screen cracked.

I pick up my phone and slowly slip under the blanket like a lazy caterpillar, and my phone drops again as I wiggle.

I turn my body toward the wall, and there’s a soft brown marmot from the Yosemite Visitor Center. I feel its fur with my face and turn my body back toward the ceiling.

Spacing out, I find a dot on the corner of the ceiling. It is so tiny, I never saw it before although it is right above where I usually place my head.

For some reason I stare at the dot for a while. Then I start seeing some lines around it. The lines are so thin they are almost invisible.

My curiosity defeats my laziness. I get up, stand on the bed, look closely at the corner of the ceiling, and suddenly sit down with horror.

The dot is not on the ceiling; it is in the air. the lines around the dot are not one-dimensional. They are all bent. The dot is a spider hanging from its web.

I silently but quickly get away from the dot and stay scared all day.

Drone Control

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Photo Credit: http://www.newsobserver.com

As the 21st century continues to barrel forward, new technology begins to come forth.

One of the newest technological advances is drones.

Yes, they have been around for a while, but usually for recreational or military use. Now, ideas of having drones become more involved in everyday life are becoming more prominent.

Amazon has expressed that they are interested in being one of the first companies to deliver packages to residential areas.

However, this brings up a large list of legalities.

How high can drones fly above someone’s private property? What if someone does not want to have packages delivered by drone? Can a homeowner shoot down the drone if it gets too close for comfort?

A couple of days ago, my mom was outside gardening in our yard. She was going about her business when she heard a loud, buzzing noise. Not knowing what it was, she walked all around our house until she found what the noise was: a drone hovering twenty feet above our roof.

She had never seen a drone in residential areas, and when she told me the story, she was furious, as someone else’s drone was being obnoxious above our property.

My mom is not easily angered, so to see her reaction was shocking. I can’t imagine how the rest of the world would feel about this.

Brain or Body?

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When we think of ourselves, we take in our bodies as a whole – physical limbs as well as thoughts. However in reality, we are just a brain.

Every thought and emotion comes from, or simply is our brain. And it is our brain that controls every action and movement we do. Essentially, we are just a small hunk of cells controlling a jumble of skin and bones.

Photo Credit: /www.jdandersonlaw.com

Even more so, humans are just a bunch of atoms. Atoms are studied in school and professionally, meaning that the study of atoms is really just a bunch of atoms learning about themselves.

It’s weird to think of the human body in its individual parts, for it all works as a whole, controlled by the brain. When thought of on its own, the brain is such an odd concept, and the way it works to control the body is a crazy concept.

Relativity

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Compared to the entire universe, all life on earth is miniscule.

There are countless studies explaining this relativity, and they really put everybody’s individual problems into perspective.

Yeah, if your significant other breaks up with you or you fail a test that really sucks, but you are one of seven billion people in the world. Each and every person has problems of their own, all to varying degrees.

There are eight other planets in the solar system, and billions of solar systems in the galaxy, each with many planets. There are then over 100 billion galaxies in the universe. So really, earth, and people in particular, are quite insignificant.

Photo Credit: upload.wikimedia.org

Take a step back, and look at things from a different point of view. Immediate life is hectic and each problem seems magnified. Compared to the rest of the universe, however, what seems like the end of the world is actually an insanely small aspect of life. The universe is endless, and everybody and everything are small pieces that together, make it up.

Generation Gap

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Most children rebel against their parents as they’re growing up, which is truthfully just a part of life. These children often swear to parent their kids completely differently than the way they were parented. Whether they follow through with that is a different matter entirely.

Parents constantly argue that they are helping their children, and that their actions are actually for the child’s benefit. However true this is, their actions are actually not always the best option.

If kids are unhappy with the way they were raised, they can always go on and raise their future kids in an entirely different manner. However, because of family norms, these children do often adopt characteristics of their parents’ ways, and follow them in that aspect.

Types of parenting vary from family to family, and the way one takes after their elders is entirely subjective. Depending on family history and personal experiences/beliefs, each generation is raised with individual values.

Photo Credit: http://www.singleforareason.com

 

How Old?

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Nowadays, age means nothing. Due to the school system, children standardly grow up with friends either in the same grade, or one grade higher or lower. If one’s sibling is a few years apart, they might socialize with their sibling’s friends, but that’s the extent of it.

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Married couples are often multiple years apart, but at that age it’s not considered odd. At a younger age, however, it would be weird if people were to date even three years up. The age gap of friendships/relationships is a double standard, and it’s simply weird to reflect on how that evolves with age.

More controversially, milestones that come with age seem to be happening at younger and younger ages. Only a few years after reaching double digits, children are drinking and doing drugs. Maturing at such a young age leaves nothing for these adolescents to do at later points in their lives. This premature maturing is detrimental to the children, and it messes with cultural norms.

Color Me Crazy

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The concept of color, and what is visible to the human eye, is impossible to comprehend. For all we know, everyone could see colors completely differently. I might see a color and call it red, and someone else might see a completely different hue but still call it red, for that is the universal name.

In preschool, everyone’s teacher would repeatedly point around the classroom while the children chanted, “blue, purple, yellow.” Kids would also memorize the rainbow – R.O.Y. G.B.I.V.

However, even though everybody might see a color and call it green, they could all personally interpret it as a different color. It could even be in a different color spectrum, which is not comprehensible.

This is impossible to imagine, for people think in color, and if one has not seen a color, it is impossible to picture it. The fact that everybody might see the world in varying ways is insane within itself, along with the realization that if that’s true, it cannot be proven. Any scientists attempting to do the experiment would also interpret the colors in unknown ways, and as a result there would be nothing on which to base the experiment.

Photo Credit: http://www.willamette.edu

 

New Year New Me

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I have never been a fan of the whole “New Years resolutions” thing. Everyone always talks about losing weight or eating more vegetables. I find it kind of silly that when the New Year comes around, everyone is frantic to head to the gym and start a new lifestyle.

Until this year, I never understood why anyone would make an effort to do something they should have been doing in the first place.

In late December, I had dinner with a friend who has always been very environmentally friendly and aware. We were talking about what her New Years resolution was. She had decided to use re-usable water bottles everyday and NEVER buy water in plastic containers.

A similar thought crossed my mind as she said that, and I brought up the idea to not use plastic bags anymore. I tried to not use them in the first place, but I was guilty of carrying around a few Target bags full of miscellaneous items once in a while.

This year would be different.

I was only going to use paper bags or bring re-usable bags whenever I went shopping. So far this year, I have saved approximately fifteen plastic bags, and we’re only 26 days into the new year.

Photo Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/45176802483723630/

Plastic bags are one of the many causes for the enormous build up of trash in the oceans. This build up destroys habitats for the wildlife, and the wildlife itself. I do not want to encourage this anymore than I already have. This year, I will try my best not to aid in the harming of our environment.