Final Blog

Well, i suppose this is it then. The last entry that i will leave you guys. What should i write about? There are so many topics that are interesting to me, i wouldnt necessarily describe my fascination with these subjects as passionate. However, one subject i am very passionate about is medicine, mainly because i want to go to medical school and eventually become a doctor after i graduate from college. But medicine is too broad of a topic to cover, and as such i'll look specifically at medicine in third-world countries.
In places like Haiti, medical supplies are very hard to come by and are quite expensive because of it. Medicines like antibiotics, that american's hardly ever finish the full cycle of, are worth more than gold in these third world countries. This unfortunate fact has cost many lives after natural disasters, lives that would be saved in a country like the good old US of A. Complications from a simple cut in haiti can become life threatening, unlike here in america where we simply go to the doctors office and get a prescription for penicillin or tetracycline or a plethora of other drugs that we take for granted.
However, many people choose to help. Last year for spring break i was scheduled to head to Haiti with the haiti endowment fund, a group of medical professionals that bring much needed medical supplies and expertise into a third-world country. Unfortunately, because of the earthquake i was not able to go because of the dangerous conditions. I felt that those reasons should be why i was going, because if it is dangerous for me to visit, it must be unimaginably worse to actually be stuck there.
In addition to charities, drug companies often times will give drugs that are particularly effective against specific viruses or infections free of charge. These not only help the companies with good press but also help to save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
Medicine is an important aspect of life, but unfortunately is not available to everyone. One day, i hope it is that way.

http://www.haitiendowmentfund.org/

Science & Philosophy

When asked what i am most passionate about, the first thing that i will respond with would be the gaining of knowledge. However, if asked to get a bit deeper and really tune into what the knowledge would pertain to, it would be about our natural world. I say this in both a philosophical and scientific way.

Many people see philosophy and science as two mutually exclusive things, however they are two topics that are heavily intertwined. In Plato's "Allegory of a Cave", from Republic, he covers this scenario where truth is purposefully hidden from man, and that what we see isn't truth, but rather a shadow of truth. In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people chained inside of a cave, completely immobilized, and facing the wall of the cave. Behind them is a fire that illuminates passers-by and casts a shadow upon the wall that the prisoners of the cave are facing. Eventually the people will come to associate the shadows cast with the actual objects. If the prisoners were released from the cave, they wouldn't be able to cope with seeing the true object that was casting the shadow. At first they would only identify the objects by their shadows. Eventually however they would be able to understand that what they had understood for so long was a shadow of truth.

Plato used this allegory to show how humanity would react if the facade was removed and man was shown truth, in its most absolute and perfect form. The point was that our methods of observations are inherently flawed, and can only tell us so much about the universe, because since we are still inside "the cave" (in this case the cave being the system in which all things exist, the Universe) and not removed from it we are unable to understand and grasp absolute truth.

Modern science, especially when in the terms of quantum mechanics, particle physics, and string theory, show us that there is no such thing as objective reality. Time and space are both subjective by nature, and this throws a huge wrench into the plan to use them as an objective base to build hypotheses and theorems upon their backs. It seems the smaller we get into the atom, and we begin to branch off into quarks, muons, and bosons, the less we actually know about the universe, and the more unstable our previous theories look. Like an infinite regression of a gobstopper, each layer we peel back reveals only another layer.

"to be is to be perceived." - George Berkley

links:
Plato's "Allegory of a Cave"

• http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.html

"Allegory of a Cave" Picture Explanation

• http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/greek/philosopher/platos_cave_the_republic.jpg

Quantum Mechanics and Reality

• http://www.integralscience.org/sacredscience/SS_quantum.html

Late Nights, Bright Lights

Does anyone else feel like they think clearer the longer they have been awake?
Once the day goes by and you're pushing 14, 15 hours without sleep the world seems to become much clearer.
Everything is hilarious.
Everything is interesting.
Everything is new.
and Everything takes way longer than it should.

Weather

Does anyone else enjoy the gloominess associated with the rain?
The dark skies, the dark clouds...
Something about it makes me happy.
Plus raindrops can act as prisms to split light into its component wavelengths so thats cool.

Time

Time seems to be the one thing that I simply do not have enough of. Rather, I do have a great deal of time but the majority of my time is spent on projects, homework, or labs for classes. To be completely honest, I haven't noticed things around campus because basically going to and from classes, labs, or meals I have a lot of other things on my mind. When I'm walking to dinner I don't consider if the people I will be eating with have diversity in their likes and dislikes, their habits, their interests, hobbies, or other aspects about them. Instead, I see the system as a whole without picking up on smaller aspects of the design. This makes this project a bit problematic for me, as this type of thinking will really be something I will have to consciously do. However, it is a challenge I welcome as it will greatly increase my ways of thinking.