Intelligent Falling

Hilarious Onion story.

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Spring Break

Spring Break
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

For Spring Break Kelly and I headed down to New Orleans to help with

the Disaster Relief. I think we should market it as a weight loss

program: manual labor, insulated suit, double golved, double booted

and a respirator in 70 degree weather! Sweat yourself thin.

Decisions, decisions!

FACING a big decision such as buying a car or a house?

Don't think about it too much if you want to avoid an expensive mistake.

Complex decisions are best left to the unconscious mind, because it can juggle lots of facts and figures better, a study shows.

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Dating Chain

It has never been uncommon for people to attempt to "marry up", but even within the dating world this hierachy system undermines potential relationships. Girl A likes Boy A who likes Girl B who likes Boy C... It's as though we are programmed to seek out someone just out of our reach. We want someone who is better than us as a psychological conquest where we increase our own self image of worth by being with with an individual who stands on a taller imaginary pillar. If you date 'beneath' you, a sense of settlling overcomes and these perceptions (cuz thats all they really are) damage relationships.

So ideally we would find someone on par with our own image. Furthermore, the potential mate must also deduce a false sense of equality within you.

Fortunately, I have no desire to date right now, but i'm not exactly ethused about the mating dance i'll have to perform when that feeling subsides.

Muhammad-Drawings

Have you been following the news on this? Back in September, a Danish newspaper printed political cartoons depicting several of the world religious figures less then favorably. A sketch of Muhammad included a turban in the shape of bomb. This month several other newspapers in Europe have reprinted the images stressing the freedom of the press. Since then the Islamic community has been in uproar.



"Whoever defames our prophet should be executed," said Ismail Hassan, 37, a tailor who marched through the pouring rain along with hundreds of others in the West Bank city of Ramallah.



These protests are puntuated with gunmen firing into the air and surrounding government buildings threating to take Europeans hostage. Some of the governments are apologizing, some of the newspapers fired responsible employees (out of fear I suspect) and all of this over some cartoons. Apparently i'm missing something. I honestly don't understand the situation at all. Your thoughts??

Honda creates a self driving car!

"The Adaptive Cruise Control is your regular radar variety, but the Lane Keep Assist System keeps you headed in the right direction by using a camera on the rear-view mirror to watch the white lines and turn accordingly. Honda was quick to point out that their system isn't exactly set up for you to take a nap, since the ADAS system will beep every 10 seconds to make sure you're paying attention, requiring you to touch the steering wheel to inform the car you're still in charge, but we're sure someone is going manage an accident and an ensuing lawsuit or three out of this "convenience".

Link

First stance taken by the new pope.

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI warned in his first encyclical Wednesday that sex without unconditional love risked turning men and women into merchandise.

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Chicago

i'm in Chicago right now visiting Kelly. Lindsey and I drove down last night. The drive itself was an adventure with seven inches of snow falling over a period of four or five hours. We were driving through 3-4 inches of standing snow on the interstate at 35 mph. Hence it took us almost twice as long ~11 hours to get here. Today, however, the temperatures were decently above freezing and most of the snow is already gone. Kelly and I went to the Water Tower and the Hancock building. Tonight we are attending a house party and then going to see the Sports Comedy Improv troup at midnight.

Quotes

A friend of mine sent me the following quotes (my initial thoughts in
() ):

1. Nobody is perfect, until you fall in love with them. (how true!)

2. The hardest thing to do is watch the one you love, love someone
else (?!?!)

3. Don't cry over someone who isn't crying over you. (k... easier
said then done)

4. Everything is okay in end. If it's not okay, then it's not the
end. (naively optimistic)

I wasn't sure if those were suppose to make me feel better or
worse?? I suppose, if read in that order, they offer some positive
reassurance. Cliches are a dime a dozen when the rose colored lenses
fall off.

New Years Eve

New Years Eve
Originally uploaded by jrossjr.

We watched the fireworks show from a hilltop Church in a large park in Stockholm. Click on the picture to see a movie clip!

New Years Resolutions

To my knowledge, this is my first New Year's resolution of my life. So, I will make it nice and easy:

I 'resolve' to make 2006 better than 2005

What are your resolutions?

Sweden

Today is our last full day in Sweden (Adam, Scott, James and I), and the first time that we've had internet access. In checking my email, I found that I missed a credit card payment, have a million ebay questions/complaints to address, and have a pile of work waiting for me up at Tech. Instantly, all of the daily burdens that i've shed since break started landed back on my shoulders. I forgot how nice it was to be without worries. Oh well, for the next two days, I will do my best to ignore all of my problems since I can't possibly do anything about them right now anyway :)

New Years Eve here was amazing. Easily the best of my life. We were standing high in the air at a Church perched on the top of a hill in a park in central Stockholm. Fireworks were going off all around us on the church grounds as well as over the whole horizon. 360 degrees of lights and explosion for almost an hour with champaign to boot. Not a bad night overall. Pictures to come. Tonight we are going out on the town. Our first chance to experience the night life in Stockholm through local bars and dance clubs.

Two days ago we woke up at 9am and went to bed at 10am the next morning (25 hours). Yesterday we woke up at 6pm and went to bed at 2am (8 hours). Much of our vacation has been in entire desregard of scedules, clocks or any other patterns that might inhibit our desired activities. It's been great, with more card playing than you could shake a stick at. Where did that phrase originate??

Which Disney Princess Are You?

Gabe, Andrea and I had an awesome turkey dinner at Mitch and Laurie's
tonight. For evening entertainment we played "Which Disney Princess
Are You?" off the second DVD of Sleeping Beauty. The selection
choices were: Jasmine, Ariel, Aurora, Snow White, Cinderalla, and
Belle. The selection process is a 10-15 multiple choice survey.
Questions included: What would you most like to have in your house:
ball room, library, 7 guest bedrooms, tiger den, view of the ocean...
etc. Gabe and I were determined to be Belle from Beauty and the
Beast and Andrea was Cinderella. I can't say that I agree with my
results though. In Belle's first musical number she expresses her
disdain for provincial life. It has always been my dream to live a
very simple, christian, family oriented, "provincial" life. In
general, it seems that you can either be career driven, or family
oriented. Choosing one inevitably compromises the other to some
extent.

Darby and I

For those of you who don't know, Darby and I broke up one month ago.
She has found someone else in her life whom she has chosen to be
with. I apologize for hiding this from my friends and family. It
has been difficult to accept, and speaking of it, forces it into
reality. I ask for your prayers for the man she is with, so that he
may find God in his life and grow to become a strong Christian.
Thank you.

Thoughts...

Did you ever have something so overwhelming that it consumed 99% of
all your thoughts? Both awake and asleep? I keep managing to follow
through with my daily routine though, which makes we wonder: When I
wasn't so stressed out, what in the world did I think about for that
99% of the time?

Software Pirating

I'm considering selling my PC and just running a MAC only operation.
Haven't decided yet, but in the deliberations I was looking at what
software I would lose. Photoshop is the only critical piece of
software that I don't have for the MAC. Ironic really, since the
program is developed foremost for Apple. Also, I realized that it is
the only piece of software that I have pirated. Everything else I
own, i have purchased legitimately. To purchase photoshop, however,
would be a $300 investment (with student discount, $600 without).
The alternative is to purchase Photoshop elements ($50), which hasn't
even come out for mac's in edition 4.0. But after using Photoshop
CS2 for so long, it would be painful to downgrade. What software
titles do you own that are in the "can't live without, can't afford
to buy" category?

Its good to be an Engineer

An engineer dies and reports to hell. Pretty soon, the engineer becomes dissatisfied with the level of comfort in hell, and starts designing and building improvements. After a while, they've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and the engineer is a pretty popular guy. 
One day God calls Satan up on the telephone and says with a sneer: "So, how's it going down there in hell?" Satan replies: Hey things are going great. We've got air conditioning and flush toilets and escalators, and there's no telling what this engineer is going to come up with next." 
God replies: "What??? You've got an engineer? That's a mistake - he should never have gotten down there; send him up here." 
Satan says: "No way. I like having an engineer on the staff, and I'm keeping him."
God says: "Send him back up here or I'll sue." Satan laughs uproariously and answers: "Yeah, right. And just where are you going to get a lawyer?"

Joint Propulsion Conference Abstract

I have to submit an abstract today for a conference taking place in
July! This means there is a fair amount of guessing what my research
will have concluded by that point. I am writing, said abstract, in
Microsoft Word. The farther I get in my education, the more faults
and flaws I realize in Microsoft's prized word processor. The most
obvious: Word has a pathetic scientific dictionary natively
installed. At some point I will see if I can't search out an
scientific dictionary add-on that will help alleviate the hundreds of
red scribbles that are littered on every document I create these
days. The second, and most annoying problem, is Word's inability to
handle figures with any sort of common sense. I spend an
unacceptable amount of time fighting with word's auto formatting.
These are serious concerns of mine since I will soon embark on a
300-400 page thesis. I have received many recommendations for Latec
(sp?). Does anyone else have any experience with latec or other
alternatives?

Red, White and Blue

Red, White and Blue.. and I don't mean the flag. I got pulled over
today just outside the yooper loop in Houghton. I didn't use my turn
signal while merging into the loop. As dangerous as that stupid loop
is, I don't blame the cop one bit for pulling me over. He also
informed me that my back window was not cleaned off (of snow) which
is illegal. I had never thought of that before. It makes sense but
I had no idea that it was a law that all of your windows must be
cleaned of snow at all times while driving. I new that you can't
having any objects obstructing your view INSIDE the car, so it only
stands to reason that the same is true on the outside. In any case,
he was nice about it and didn't ticket me.

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! I hope that everyone is able to
spend today with the people they love. Eat lots of Turkey, get tipsy
on egg nog, and watch its a Wonderful Life.