Interview question

Hi. So I've had an interview to be a part of the BMC today, and well, okay interview, not bad but not amazing. I'd like to ask you one question in particular, which I will place at the end of this survey. Please answer the first thing that comes to your mind, and maybe it'll help explain why I said the thing that I did. Questions before the question I want to ask is there just so you don't see the final answer too too early. Please everyone who see this answer

First two letters of your first name and first letter of your last name:

A/S/L?:

S.O.?:

If you have to blame it on something, would you blame it on:

A) Ravi

B) Bush

C) The -OH

D) Global warming

If you can be any city in the world, which would you be and why?:

This post contains seaman jokes.

I had a traipse (I almost spelled tryptase) through the longboat participant list, and wanted to share some of the names with everyone

"Noah's longboat", "Harden Seamen", "I'm on a boat", "Yellow submarine", "Shlongboat", "Long Hard Stroke", "Suckulent Seamen", "The Wet Dream team", "Stroke, stroke my boat", "Long and still hard", "Been there, stroke that", "Strokin' It hard", and all the other combinations you can come up with.

It seems hilarious that REC, who are "really strict" with making sure teams in league sports like volleyball and ultimate have "tasteful" names, lets longboat, a thing with so many built-in jokes, have these team names. I mean, I can't even remember all the things we said "The harder we stroke, the faster we come","The yellow paddles are longer than the white paddles", and so on and so forth.

Despite that (or maybe because of that, who knows), yesterday was a fun day. The big gale force wind causing the waves, the freezing cold conditions, the actual common cold, having 3 females on an all men's team, all of that just made for fun day out.

And now I'm majorly behind for math studying and english writing, and apparently Vista is giving all its students a big middle finger.

Oh, and I think Liz confused Peyton Way-White with Peyton Mannings or something.

Justin's Tweets for the day.

There are days where I'll say to myself, if I had a twitter, I'd update much more frequently, but since I will not succumb to another time-sucker, here's my tweets for the day so far.

06:20am - Why would anyone make pb+j using the same spoon?

06:50am - You can tell that half of the bus turned and thought at the same time "It's Peyton Way-White"

07:15am - I swear I'm not usually this clumsy (in response to hitting the same guy twice in 5 minutes)

08:40am - What happened to ferrous and ferric?

08:45am - There they are.

09:20am - I really should fill out my deposit forms.
09:55am - I controverse you. Or something.
10:25am - Telomeres. huh.
10:51am - My attention span is out, gonna jump the block on the wall.
10:54am - I swear I'm only snapping at you because my cold is making it impossible for me to vocally get your attention.
10:56am - Wasting time to talk is not wasting time at all
11:00am - Caught him!
11:10am - Success! until I looked at syllabus.
11:30am - Had a nice talk with Red Cross guy Joel.
12:00pm - Switched hands
12:08pm - Evasive maneuver to escape the consequences of noise
12:11pm - Epic fail (not on my part).

Sometimes after 8:45am I decided that twitter is not all it cracked out to be, without even having gone on it =)

How the UBC week goes

I'll be following the convention of the observers of Christ for the following post.

It starts, with Koerner. Then comes a day of rest. Following closely are the Gallery then the Pit. Another day of rest. At this point, the weekend starts, and parties rages on until Koerner again.

For some reason though, I end up with something more like days of Chem, and days of Bio and math.

Random Insertion of "I'm on a Boat"

A portion of a shade of blue.

A tan unevenly spread.

This is the story of Imagine.

The bouncing bushes were too awkward to try.

Cheerless cheers filled the air.

Guiding, guiding, guided right.

Summation in a pizza lunch.

Physical exertion ends the day.

And the memories are never more.

Wake me up When September Ends

I promised my Californian friend that when he comes back this year, we will have typical September weather unlike that crazy sunny bullshit that happened last year. The ongoing rain at the moment backs my statement.

Although, the high temperature and partly sunniness of next weekend is looked positively upon, as I do not want to raincheck a bbq.

And what seems like a recent phenomenon, lots of people washing their cars when it's raining. I don't get this.

Quote from a "find your way to god book (It's actually called 'Soul Cravings')"

"We are a culture of great lovers.
We love great movies.
We love ice cream.
We love our pets.
We love rainy days in Los Angeles.
We love sunny days in Seattle."

I love that I go against the grain, hoping not for the sun, but for the rain.
Perhaps I'm on the DS train, excited about the Seattle ferryboats.

Vonnegut vs Darwin

One of the communities that I frequent had a post about Harrison Bergeron, a short story by Vonnegut, which brought back many memories of reading it in high school. For those of you that have never read it and are of the tl;dr variety, the basis is that society is now equal. Anyone that is more superior (in intellect or physical abilities) is forced to wear handicaps to bring them down to normal level; masks to cover the beautiful, sudden noise ear piece to distract the mentally focused.

Since high school, I've had two criticisms of the story, 1- the equalizers actually make the wearer less than average (as can be seen by weights straining George's neck while Hazel's has a neck that doesn't bother her, and "She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous." which suggests that she is made uglier than someone who is slightly less beautiful), and 2- the government is most likely above the handicaps (someone who's distracted every 20 seconds could not possibly track an escaped prisoner and kill him).

Putting aside that the equality isn't quite equal (see pt 1 above), this is the kind of situation in which I am proud of myself for being anti-equality. This is why I'm okay with being a little bit racist. This is why I'm a believer in competition and doing the best you can.

Darwin's view of survival of the fittest allows the betterment of mankind (and other species). However, with the advent of medicine and technologies, some traits that are selected against become irrelevant. Have a compromised immune system? Take some antibiotics and go on your merry way. Have a sprained ankle? Take some tensor bandages and stay off it and rest for a few days (a flying bird without the power of flight would die in days if not for human intervention). Have a face too fugly to get a man? Take some trips down to the local sperm bank and start passing genes that aren't meant to be passed on. (This isn't meant to be taken as a serious biological treatment of the argument - there are good aspects to this such as wider gene pool and nurture aspects of development).

Vonnegut's dystopia reminds me of two things, Atlas Shrugged, and George Bush. Atlas Shrugged is because the Washington men are basically using the tycoons' brilliance as a way to hurt the tycoons. George Bush is because of the "no children left behind" policy, in which bred some of the worse education systems the world has seen.

George Orwell's (one of the more used writers in high school besides Shakespeare) Animal Farm has coined a well-known phrase "all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others". The phrase suggests that perhaps with equality, there will always people who will try to become a little bit more equal (see pt 2 above).

For those of you that will grow up to do great things involving policy-making, please remember that trying to implement utopia by force might end up in tragedy.