Women

    Women have been at a disadvantage for all of recorded human history, in bronze age times the natural physical strength of men over ruled any sense of equality that could have been shared. Reenforced by religious dogma and cultural norms, women slipped into a subservient role that to this day they are still haunted by. While men and women are different this does not mean that we are not equals. It is insulting to humanity to hold any idea contrary to this, as women in the United States have had fight tooth and nail for equal rights. To have be against women's rights is to spit in the faces of everyone who has fought so hard to obtain the standing we do have today.
    As a man I can say with out any hesitation, that the animal in me has looked at a woman and seen just a body, a thing for pleasure, but the human being that I am knows when keep such baser instincts at bay. If we were a species that was not capable of critical thinking, that let instinct make desions for us, than I could see the objectification of women be justified in our ignorance. However, we are capable of objective thinking, and ideas are more powerful than any one person. A woman can die in the street, but what she stood for will live on with resonance, echoing to all those who would bother to listen. Unfortunately these ideas, these memes of equality are being muffled and silenced by mass media.
    A ever continuing free fall of morals and a disintegrating respect for humanity as a whole, has been inspired by the garbage force-fed to us by media outlets. Men must be strong and like cars and sports, women must be ever self conscious elevating their appearance over there thoughts. As the media heads are dominated by men, men do not suffer anywhere near the same way as women(though the entire system seems to be bent on keeping us occupied on irrelevant matters).
    I call to my women of intelligence and rational thinking, make a stand be proud of your beautiful body and use you mind to impact the world. Let us change the status quo move humanity as a whole forward. Let not gender, sexual preference, or race stand in our way, as together as one human race we are unrestrained.

Think

    Free thought is in short supply in the world I see, whether by a person’s own choosing or culturally spawned by ignorance. People will so quickly question anything, why is it that certain things are held above this scrutiny? How is it a person can just omit certain ideals from skepticism? We are all guilty, at one point or another we have rejected an idea just off of a personal preference. In fact when an idea contradicts or conflicts with an idea that we hold, we feel threatened as though ideas were capable of physically hurting us. Ideas that are thought out and house nothing but positive intent and truth will be tossed aside casually as though they had no baring at all.
    The duality of man, constantly questioning, yet unable to let go of what we feel emotionally attached to, imprisons us all. Religious beliefs seem to be at the forefront of this denial. Something about the stigma of god keeps people from using their reasoning and logic. The idea of talking to the dead through a medium is usually met with laughter, if not a healthy dose of skepticism, yet when you say two-thousand years ago a man came back from the dead, it’s taken as truth with out much, if any, hesitation.
    Children are malleable and easily moved to think as their parents do, whether by genetic predisposition or psychological need to fit in with the people around you, in a time when critical thinking has not fully developed, we are pressured and taught things we have no defense against. We don’t say the a child is republican or libertarian, because they don’t hold the resources to make such decisions. Why then, do we think that a child has the world worth of knowledge to make a decision about the creation of the entire universe?
    We have adults, blind to their own arrogance, knowing things without doubt and no evidence to back it up. Men and women mindlessly repeat verses and arguments with out caring about their validity. When these people are questioned, they become defensive, as though they themselves not their ideas were under attack, and question any and all points made. All the while the questioner becomes increasingly aggravated wondering why none of the same skepticism is applied to any statement made by the individual.
    It is unfair and inaccurate to label all religious people this way, as atheist agnostics, and skeptics can be just as stubborn and arrogant about their beliefs, and many religious people take very rational views. The ability to ask why is without a doubt the human’s greatest tool. As far as we know, humans are the only species capable of consciousness, of thought. Why would anyone be so careless with this great gift, even if it is god given? It is our right to question everything and give a proper verifiable explanation.

Simple Beauty

    There is nothing simple about the beauty that is woman. She stands like a pillar, her elegant figure holding up all that the eye needs finds appealing. She embodies countless generations of selection as the pinnacle of form, as evolution would have it at this day and age. She is a wonder in her own right simply by being who she is.
    The complexity of beauty stems from natural urges of man mixed with a healthy dose of social evolution mixed in to complicate and over extravagant it. The shape of her body hinges on the success of child baring and attracting a mate, but beauty as an idea is more than skin deep. Industry and commercial value have almost abused the idea past point of no return, yet the class and delicate body of woman holds up to even this ruthless depiction. She is stronger than we can know, and her intelligence and wit serve her well in a unrelenting world of judgment.
    The shapes and colors than can make up the female face are as fare and wide a range as the people behind them. The eyes settled in like two gems in flesh seemingly molded out of clay into near perfection, with unnecessary hair draped across this exquisite collection of carbon and water.
    What is perhaps most beautiful about beauty is choice. The choice to present herself as she sees fit, to cut/style her hair as she wants it or a tone of dress that implies so much of her character. In equal standing of the choices of woman and the way she presents herself is the choice of man. No two men are the same there for no two ideas of perfect beauty are the same. The fair skinned, petite bodied, red haired, frame of woman with desecrate and subtle curves that I find so entrancing is a far cry from the blond haired, blue eyed, ample bodied vision most have. The woman of my choice, however is not just a physical description, she craters the surface of existence that is around her with her mind, as well as body.

Numbers

    I can see it all around me. It’s unescapable now. I can see it in everything. Even what I hear, touch, and taste is governed by it. More importantly, it governs almost all that we know and has even been argued to one day rule over all. Yet, it is not something that can be held; you could never see all of it. It is an idea so basic that it is considered by some literally self-evident. It drives me, gnaws at my brain, encourages me, and leaves me in awe. What is sad is that I do not understand it in the way that I feel I must.
    Math, as boring or mundane as most think it is, I revel in it. When watching a leaf fall to the ground, this most obviously speaks of gravity and the wondrous equation which lies within. Air resistance quickly comes into play by the nature of the leaf, so now the size, weight, shape, and density of the leaf now comes into play with an equation of gravity and they begin to harmoniously work within and interdependently of each other. The fact that I could do all the equations and work out the speed of the leaf’s decent, never having even seen said leaf, but only given all information required, absolutely astounds me.   
    We are, all of us, nothing but complex and symphonic equations being carried out in the ways of chemical reactions, at absurdly advancing levels of intricacy. Our thoughts are little more than electrical impulses running through a system of cells that can be theoretically divided so far down. It falls into an unknown, an elaborate series of interconnected strings moving at different vibrations, so small that no human can ever hope to begin to understand how small. Even if a “string” could one day be photographed some how, we, as a species, lack the ability to think of something so inconceivably small.
    Again the beauty of math springs before me, both the infinitesimally small and the tremendously large can be measured by it. The atoms are in a constant flux of adding and subtracting electrons, binding with other atoms to balance a mathematical equation of positive and negative charges. This causes the chemical combinations and reactions to occur which use or expel the force of electromagnetism in some way. Wonderfully, all these things can be seen as math: symbols given abstract properties by those victim to the very things they hope to understand.
    It is my dream, goal, and life’s work to learn as much about the laws of nature as humanly possible. I am beyond lucky to live in a time when so much is there to know, and still so much to prove. Yet perhaps, unlucky to not live many years later, where any contribution I could have possibly made now is but a footnote. Here, math, the biological clock of the body breaking down, a time limit if you will, is a haunting reminder of the power of numbers or rather the power we give numbers. 
    I feel as though a simple analogy can be made to my way of thinking. Let us take the famous apple falling from the tree. Yes, the apple falls, but why? The Earth makes it heavy by gravity, but then why does gravity work? These are the things I must know and it is my secret hope that one day all the known universe will be explained by math; that some equation, or set of equations could describe anything and everything. If however, this is not true and there are things that will be forever unknowable if not even by math but by any means, I will happily accept the proven truth of any matter.

Untitled

    It is odd how a viewpoint can change so much. In my eyes, learning and expanding my understanding of the natural universe is the most important thing to me besides my family and friends. Yet as I walk around in this world, I am saddened by what I see people value and the ideas they have. It is as though some material possession will make their lives have meaning, or that some level of social status makes them better than other people. While I think and ponder on the very nature of the difference in cellular and molecular structure of the wood and steel around me, other people who have been given power over me, tell me that particular objects need to be in a certain way or else. I slowly begin to see the pointlessness of my job, or rather myself in that job. What difference does it make if I move this cut piece of a tree from one place to another, or even if anybody does my job in this small town in one the most undereducated states. Why is such stress and importance placed on such mundane things when there are people dying, people with out access to even basic education, or clean water. The amount of human despair is almost unending.
    It seems that, as a people, we let ourselves slip into a self-made system of control to keep ourselves busy and content. A system so embedded most can’t conceive of questioning it. Why is my government willing to pay me to learn to kill and destroy, but not to learn how to create and and bring peace? A person has to pay to get a higher education, when in my eyes we should pay people to learn how to become important world changing and life saving people. There seems to be a complete falling out of learning and thinking, and it is being replaced with ignorance that is reinforced by a dumbing down of every element of our culture. This can and has left me in such a depressed state that I don’t know how to push forward to my goal.
    Then I lose that second of my life to doubt and sorrow. While perhaps those feelings were necessary or unavoidable, it is a second I will never get back. Then I ask was this whole day wasted because I spent it in sorrow, in hatred of my job, as it hinders my academic progress, was it meaningless? I know that it did hold meaning, there is not a day that goes by that my very existence does not help another human being in someway. To me, that is the point of anyone’s life, what they have done for others. If I spend an entire day in self-loathing, perplexed at the unimportance of my work, if I can mange to even put a smile on one person’s face, then my life had meaning. I am no more than the good I leave to those still here when I’m gone, because if I do nothing but for myself then it really is just dust to dust.

What to do

    One thing that had always held me back from starting school was the fact I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I have many interests, and even still I am unsure of exactly what I will be doing with my life. I have always seen myself as capable, and as long as I applied myself nothing ever seemed out of reach. After getting the initial inspiration to start school, I found myself thinking about how I could leave a legacy that would benefit mankind. At first, teaching young and hungry minds seemed to be the best thing I could do. Having recently lost my faith, so to speak,  I though theology or philosophy would be  where I was best suited. My desire to challenge religious thinkers and “liberate” closed-minded people overwhelmed me. I also became fascinated by why the brain latched onto these ideas. Over time, my zeal died out, though my distain and disgust has only grown.
    As I soaked my self in science videos on youtube, I was entranced with hours upon hours of Sagan, Dawkins, Hawkings, Aron Ra, Michio Kaku, etc. I came to find myself lost in the vastness of the universe, and the inconceivable tininess of an atom and its components. As my concern about religion diminished, my desire of wanting to know the how and why of the universe, what is composed of, its functions, its design, its laws. I found myself lost in a world I can’t yet hope to make true sense of. Physics, this incredible and unbelievable ideology, captured my interest. Other branches of science also sparked similar interest, but not to the same extent. I have also, always had a gift for math and physics seems to be the “holy grail” of accomplishment. I know I am capable of reaching this great hight; I just need the patience. If I strive to the fullest in this undertaking, I can, as they say, “Come to know the mind of god.”

Polarity

                We a figure, a lone piece of art, against a harsh and contrasting background. The figure is a vibrant and derived from a cultural significance of a people, while its back drop is a battered and poverty ridden, slum looking shack. The artist may or may not have meant for this kind drastic change in tone from figure to its living space, but from the way it is crafted with its arms up in a yielding fashion in front of this foreboding looking building makes one think it was placed here with purpose and designed intently upon sitting in a place like that.  At the same time it looks as though a piece is missing from the left hand side but this could have been intentional.

                I speak to my very soul of finding the light in a dark place. Seeing a bright and out of place work of art in this otherwise dingy and ugly landscape provokes thought and feeling to run through  me. Stopping us from going somewhere unpleasant or maybe even dangerous, this run down building plays ay my feeling the harshness of the world and the light one individual can shine out onto a darkened landscape. It is this very nature of their difference, being part of what makes this piece, so moving. Polar opposites in color and tone he stands to tribute his heritage and his people while providing a powerful social context and to view him from.

Taking the image for face value so quickly  think gave it meaning without originally knowing what it was from made me perhaps elf impose values I would like to see in myself. It gave me inspiration and a thought flow perhaps completely an inner monologue of things I felt and placed upon a simple picture.