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There’s this pretentious, self-righteous kid who posted on the UCLA LJ community a few days asking for people’s journals. I really don’t think this is the right way to approach the situation. The general consensus was that it was a creepy request. The kid responds to my post about his creepy profile saying, “I take it you’re a perfect human being?” I laughed and also died a little inside…

Mainly because of his LJ post that followed the whole ordeal. He calls us, the people who responded, a bunch of self-absorbed, immature, shallow as a pool of piss, brainwashed conformists. Whoa, whoa there. Where did this reaction come from? Talk about overreacting. I’m willing to bet he’s a pariah, an outcast throughout all of school, who ironically claims that he’s somehow superior and more open-minded than everyone at UCLA. I don’t entirely blame him. I remember being a naive kid in college who thought my worldviews were the only right ones and that I was somehow better than a lot of other people. And I find that people who for some reason feel wronged by their peers, whether or not they’re right, seem to subscribe to this view.

One thing’s for certain: He apparently hasn’t yet gone through the humbling experience that ookla has to offer.

I’m not really offended or angry, but I do have half a mind to post an extremely snarky response to his personal LJ post. And in fact, I hope he reads this entry, so he knows that while he can put on snooty and self-righteous airs in front of his friends, he’s really just another insignificant teen who has yet to undergo life’s true rigors. He believes we’re trying to censor him, when all we would like is a little tact.

And we, the alums, are the sad ones who represent the dregs of society huh. Try being productive, not whiny. You’ll never expand your mind if you wallow in self-pity instead of being open to others. Learn it now, or learn it a much harder way later.

A pat on the back to anyone who can come up with a good gmail username for me. It needs to be professional. All variants of my name seem to be taken. Or you can direct me to another service that has as clean an interface, i.e. not Yahoo.

Btw, it’s pretty pathetic how some people double-space a six-line heading and then increase their margins to 1.5″ on papers. But these are the same people who’ll end up at the top 20. God have mercy on your souls. And it always amazes me when people think they couldn’t live on 80k salaries. This opinion and the aforementioned people are very closely related.

“”I like foreigners,” he said to a visitor, pointing out that his teacher was a white Australian. “White people can speak better English.”

Later, a dozen toddlers, some clad in Snoopy and Mickey Mouse T-shirts, crowded into a small classroom at the school. “Of course I’d rather have a foreigner” as a teacher, said Lu Mingzhen, who had taken his 3-year-old granddaughter to the class. By that, he meant a white foreigner. “Their pronunciation is more precise.”

The demand for white teachers has led some schools to hire people from France, Germany and other countries where English is not the primary language, said Maosi Yan, program director at Interlingua School, a small, privately owned center in Guizhou province, in south-central China.”

Lifted from this Los Angeles Time article.

Sometimes it seems like China’s striving to be more like North Korea.

until my fate is revealed to me. You like how I followed AP style with the ellipsis? Yeah, you know you do. Honestly though, how long does it take to run a sheet of paper through a scanner? Sorry LSAC gods, don’t punish me for saying that.

I want to re-emphasize how sad it is that people rarely update anymore - and it’s not because people have any less time. It seems to me that the intellectual atmosphere, the creative drive, the motivation have all just died down in recent years, at least in the realm of writing. When we look at the larger picture, blogging has taken off and reached a new plateau, coining new terms like the ‘blogosphere.’ But apart from these more high-profile blogs and other frankly commercially produced web publications, personal blogging has hit an all-time low. Among friends I liken these past four years to a bludgeon, maybe a cricket bat, that has beat us down to a bloody allegorical pulp. I know I felt that way for the longest time. That’s why I believe it’s time for a renaissance. Come on guys! Masturbate fives minutes less, eat a little bit quicker, refrain from refreshing those Facebook pages, and don’t read Wittgenstein that third time because you still don’t get it. Write! - The mind needs to be exercised too.

Why do we as Americans feel entitled to a better quality of life at the expense of others just because we happened to be born here? Each one of us could just as easily have been a citizen of a different state looking to the ‘better life’ that we currently lead. Some people are so scared of making even the smallest of sacrifices. Perhaps they forget that communal living and society are basically one big compromise. The basic premise of a social system is that people give up some of their liberties to benefit the community as a whole. For example, you give up your freedom to kill anyone you want, but in return you don’t (shouldn’t) have to be afraid of someone killing you and taking your property while you sleep.

Sometimes I want to scream my head off.

A deep sense of regret always floods my mind after I drink - especially when I told myself I wouldn’t until after I was done with the LSAT. I probably sound like an alcoholic now, but I assure you that’s not the case. I don’t drink often, but when I do, it’s crazy. As I made a passing reference to in my last post, I literally just down drink after drink to the point where other people would be vomiting their intestines out. This is not a good thing.

In any case, there has to be a physical consequence and I’m thoroughly convinced that I’ve picked up some major cognitive deficits over the years. (I always have trouble speaking in the days following). In short I’ve probably jeopardized a few points of my LSAT score - little details matter on those questions, and so does each point. I mean, even someone with a high GPA needs a high test score to get admitted. I’ve seriously been at the point where even getting a 180 wouldn’t guarantee me admission into any school, but I haven’t been trying as hard as I should to make that score. I lose.

And in closing, to end on a note that doesn’t make me look like a depressing alcoholic, someone start a workout regimen with me. This includes cardio, weights, just overall conditioning and some (read: a lot of) tennis.

Last night, “The Complete Wimbledon” didn’t start until 7 minutes after its projected start time. Why? To show some extra Nascar clips. It’s currently 10:06 and Wimbledon coverage should’ve started at 10:00. Tennis TV coverage gets worse every year and I don’t get how they allow it. It’s one thing to balance different sporting events, but they usually forgo tennis matches to air those commentator shows where guys just sit around arguing about whether or not they’d blow Barry Bonds. And what. the. fuck. is with all the Nascar?!?!?

It’s interesting how opponents of anthropogenic climate change (funny, isn’t it? it’d be ridiculous to say “opponents of gravity”) constantly point to the little ice age as evidence that fluctuations in global climate are natural and inevitable. There are just a few glaring problems with this so-called evidence.

In the Little Ice Age, temperatures dropped about 1 degree Celsius from the Medieval Warm Period over a span of 600-800 years. Since the end the Little Ice Age, temperatures have accordingly gone up 1 degree Celsius and continue to rise quickly. So compare: 1 degree over 600-800 years vs. 1 degree over 150 years. There’s quite a difference there. Even conservative (not in a political sense) estimates have temperatures rising a few degrees over the next century. It’s not fair to point to a 1 degree drop over 600 years and consider it a huge event just so you can say that large changes are normal. A 1 degree change over a century and a half is not normal. In fact, there’s a reason why the temperature specifically started warming at the time it did. Mid-1800s? Industrialization, anyone?

This is not to say natural climate change does not occur. Oh yeah it does. But the little ice age shouldn’t be ammunition against the problems anthropogenic climate change brings.

Ignorance can be forgiven, for lacking knowledge is not a crime. Stupidity, on the other hand, carries the connotation it does for a reason. Stupid people have all the information in front of them and choose not to believe it or understand it. Today’s “celebrity” Yahoo! answers question is a depressing look at the widespread stupidity of people across the United States.

Nancy Pelosi asked what kind of legislation should be passed to help fight global warming. Anyone and everyone who responded with a constructive comment on reducing carbon emission and fighting urban sprawl was given overwhelmingly negative ratings, effectively hiding their answer from being shown to the public. The only answers given positive ratings are ones in which people respond with a personal agenda, saying something to the effect of, “I don’t want to change my over-consuming lifestyle and conveniently enough, I don’t believe in global warming.”

I mean first off, they are attacking people who are trying to create positive change, and instead are encouraging “answers” of the above nature, with people complaining about higher taxes and not wanting to subscribe to “fake science.” I guess they don’t realize that the idea of anthropogenic global warming is supported by a vast majority of the scientific community. Ironically enough, through their STUPIDITY, they’re rejecting the real data and believing what the oil companies want them to believe. Sure, keep consuming oil, there’s plenty of it. And all the while we’ll keep taking your money.

There are even international comments from people in countries like Korea and Germany who have already learned to live without massive amounts of waste like the U.S. does. Instead of heeding their advice, people have resorted to giving these answers extremely low ratings and angrily posting that other countries want the U.S. to adhere to the kyoto protocol and environmental standards because they’re jealous of American prosperity and want Americans to have a low standard of living like everyone else.

This is just another revealing look at people who believe they know everything there is to know about public policy and logic but fail to understand the premises upon which they’re arguing. No, you don’t know about the truth behind climate science because you’ve probably never studied it. Just because your party tells you so does’t mean it’s right. Well, maybe it’s right, but it’s not correct Even if anthropogenic global warming does somehow turn out not to be true, this doesn’t mean we should continue consuming fossil fuels at such an alarming pace. But I’m sure these same idiots will argue that peak oil is a myth - oh wait, even Bush and Cheney admit this! Maybe the stupid hordes will believe this one after all.

I’m aware that Bruin Republicans showed a propaganda film… I mean documentary “debunking” the “myth” of global warming. One of the points made in the film is that carbon dioxide doesn’t cause warming temperatures, but that it works the other way around, with rising temperatures increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Sure. Why not. Except for the fact that carbon dioxide levels rise the most in the winter when trees die and release their carbon. Nevermind that.

I do understand that people will respond in unreasonable ways when a persona with a political leaning asks a question. To respond favorably would seem like agreement. I don’t understand why science has to be politicized. I realize that science affects policy. But when it’s this big a problem, we should be able to put those differences aside. If you told the masses nowadays that we need to enact clean air policies because people are dying of lung cancer, then it wouldn’t be a controversy. Of COURSE we should act to prevent this from happening. Although I’m sure that 30-40 years ago people might have refused because of potential taxes and fines on pollution and more stringent specifications for auto production. The same is happening now with the climate change issue. How will we look upon this 100 years from now when millions in Bangladesh are dead or displaced because of rising sea levels? When New York City floods regularly? When large portions of Florida are underwater?

To make it easy for those who don’t agree with scientific opinion, even if this warming is due to natural circumstances, isn’t it our responsibility not to amplify its effects by adding more CO2 to the atmosphere? If you believe that CO2 does not raise temperatures, then you go ahead and live on a planet without an atmosphere and get back to me on that.

It’s not enough to show people the evidence. They have to want to believe the truth.

Yahoo!’s seasonal banner modifications blow Google’s out of the water. I’m a Yahoo! faithful, though I do give Google huge props for a better e-mail and video service, ha! Still, as far as Earth Day goes, I appreciate that people come out and make an effort to raise awareness about environmental issues. But it bothers me to no end that some people act like they’re so holy for making a single effort one day out of the year. I also don’t like it when advertisers pretend like they’re the saviors of the world by “making an effort to go green.” I admit I’m not perfect when it comes to being environmentally conscious. Regardless, I do try. I never throw my plastic bottles into the trash, I recycle everything I can, I don’t have a car (and when I do, will get one that gives me good mileage rather than a good image), and my vegetarianism is primarily for environmental reasons.

None of us is perfect. But we shouldn’t limit our environmental consciousness to one day or one week out of the year. Every little bit counts. Every little bit makes a difference. As much I dislike some of these commercials, one I saw today had such a simple but poignant message: This is the only planet we’ll ever have.

So let’s take care of it.