Global Warming

Stupid Word of the Day: The Copernican Principle - states, essentially, that you aren't special. Y'know, in a cosmological sense. Nothing personal.


Typically, when one of my fellow students asks me about global warming, I'll throw them off course by saying something like

"Actually, analysis of the current data concerning sunspots and the solar magnetic fields suggests that we may be entering a period of solar quiesence, similar to the one that caused the so-called 'Little Ice Age' in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which could more the offset the effects of global warming, and actually result in a net cooling of the Earth in the coming century."

They will say

"Really? Is that so?"

Or something along those lines, then walk away.

And although the above statement may be true, it is not my real view on global warming.

The truth is, the earth goes through cycles of heating and cooling. Sixty-five million years ago, the Earth was ten degrees warmer, on average, than it is today. Ten degrees! It was so warm that even places deep in the arctic circle were as temperate as the southernmost part of Alaska today, with lush forests and lovely dinosaurs running around and killing each other all over the place. To quote Biden, let me say that again; ten degrees. And Al Gore is getting all worked up about a measly .57 or whatever.

To say that man is completely responsible for all of the drastic snail-paced climate changed is arrogant in the extreme. To think that we as a species could, through the emmision of certain gasses which have been hypothesized to trap a fraction more heat than a regualar atmospheric mix, completely alter the entire biosphere, is like thinking that a kid, as a student, could throw the entire school into disarray by covering one teacher's whiteboard. We've shifted from the we humans art better than thou, animalia mindset of the middle ages, where it was thought that humans were blameless, and not animals at all, to a mindset that goes more along the lines of oh my gosh, we're destroying the environment! We're the most horrible things ever to tarnish the beautiful surface of the planet! How I wish I was a blameless cow! But really, both are equally arrogant. At first, we thought we were special enough to be perfect. Now, we think that we're special enough to be the opposite.

To take the Copernican Principal out of its lofty cosmological origins, and apply it to biology, presents a pretty accurate picture. Humans are arrogant creatures, and we always like to think that we're special - that we're in the center of the universe, that we can destroy the world without trying, that sort of thing. The Copernican principle blocks this out. We aren't special. We're just another species. We may be a particularly viscious and destructive one, but we are still just one of the crowd. No other species in the past has unintentionally destroyed the world, so why do we think that we should be able to?

A philosophical review on humanity of great profundity, and importance, to us all.

Actually, this will be the first post in which I don't include a broader look at life related to the topic. Today's topic is...



Stupid word of the day: Fatman - (Proper noun) - Like Batman, only less batty, and more fatty.



One of my friends and I came up with this one day at school, and ever since, we have been coming up with villians for Fatman to fight, all of them about one letter off from the names of the Batman villians. Included below is the most complete list, with the name of the character and a brief description.





Fatman - fat rich guy by day, fat caped crimefighter by night, his powers include immense weight and the ability to swing massive rolls of fat at people. He is almost immune to health food and other such weapons, which are often employed by the likes of....

The Poker - Fatman's arch nemisis, the Poker is utterly unpredictable; he can't even get the meaning of his name straight. Sometimes, he will make fatman engage in a high-stakes game of Texas hold'em, while at other times, the thing he seems to enjoy as a villian is poking people. Sometimes captured and used as a bargaining chip during the Poker's poker games is...

Bobbin' - Fatman's sidekick, a high-schooler who involuntarily bobs his head up and down like the guy in the Pepsi Max commercial whenever he puts on a cape. It is unclear what purpose this serves, which is why Fatman eventually hired a new sidekick named...

Bitewing - yes, that is the thing the dentist puts in your cheek to get an X-ray. He is also the lesser known of Fatman's sidekicks, but is the most powerful, possessed with X-ray vision and extreme durability against saliva. Neither of those powers, however, will save him from...

Scare 'Fro - basically a scary guy with big hair, which he uses to store all sorts of aerosol cans, some of which are harmless haircare products, and others of which have more sinister uses. These, however, would be useless if he ever came into a confrontation with...

Mr. Peas - once harmless Dr. Peaze, he enjoyed a steady job researching peas at the university, until one day, the fat-logo in the sky distracted him during the middle of a crucial part of an experiment. The equipment exploded, and Dr. Peaze found himself stuck with a condition that could only be cured by eating peas three time a day for thirty-five years, wearing a special suit. He vowed that one day, Fatman would share his veggie-induced misery, and will go to any lengths to make sure that it happened. Even more sinister, however, is...

Poo-face - a disgusting villian, with dog poop covering his face. All of his crimes are related to poop, as are those of...

Scat-woman - also a scatological villian, Scat-woman dresses up in a brown suit to steal important poop-related artifacts, such as Thomas Crapper's first indoor toilet, or the silken toilet paper of Persia. She isn't nearly as sinister, however, as...

Killer Frock - once a slightly eccentric performer who insisted on dressing up completely in period wear, now the scourge of antique gentlemen's clothing shops everwhere, Killer Frock was already on the run at the end of his acting career, after a scandal surfaced from his shadowy past. It was Fatman who gave the police the information they needed to close the case, and also Fatman who caused the explosion that grafted the Frock Coat he was wearing as he fled the theater to his body. Killer Frock has had a vendetta against fatman ever since.

The Piddler - do we really need to explain it?

Gray-face - He, uh, yeah, well, he has a gray face. I guess we didn't think that one out.

That's all for now!

Science Fair - and how it sucks any last vestiges of enthusiasm for science out of the marrow of your bones, and replaces it with tedium.

I like science, I really do. But I hate the over-legislated guts of science fair. The name itself is misleading. When you think of a fair, you think of an event consisting mainly of nauseatingly wild rides, nauseatingly unhealthy snacks, and nauseatingly grotesque teenagers, while still being fun.

All that the science fair is, and I know from experience, is a bunch of nerdy kids sitting around in suits that they don't want to be in, in front of large cardboard monoliths, which are pasted with large words that no-one cares about. Old people, also in suits that they generally don't want to be in, shuffle around, reading the words that they don't care about, putting little round stickers on the cardboard monoliths, and writing stuff on clipboards. This takes about fifteen minutes, and then the kids continue to sit there in suits for about three hours, for no apparent reason. After all this excitement, the event comes to a culmination with the awards ceremony, where old ladies from some high school read a bunch of names, and the nerdy, suited kids walk up to the stage, where old people who no-one ever sees shake their hands and hand them plaques.

It's about the same at the State Science Fair, only the kids have to sit around for seven hours for no apparent reason, instead of three, and the awards ceremony is twice as long.

But none of these is the reason that I don't like the science fair.

I don't like the science fair because it has too many rules! Here's a list of some of the things that you're not allowed to work with;

Alcohol
Animals, deceased
Animals, extraterrestrial
Animals, invertebrate
Animals, vertebrate
Animated tissue in any form
Bacteria
Bleach
Calculators
Chemicals of any kind
Electricity
Flame, Open
Fruit
Human Subjects
Letter 'Q', The
Light
Magic
Magic, black
Matter
Mathematical calculations whose variables could be construed as offensive if rearranged
Money
Occult, the
Oil
Rocks, very small
Software, analytical
Vegetables
Wikipedia

And so on. As a result, on can rarely do anything that even approaches something that someone, somewhere, would find remotely interesting. However, as I approach high-school, at the same time that the rules are becoming more restrictive, the expectation is that my projects will be less 'elementary'. So what's causing this strange clamp-down on anything fun? What is the root of the problem? Why, they're the same roots of most of the everyday problems facing citizens today; stupid people, and the American legal system.

You see, back when the constitution was written, either you were smart, and lived, or you were stupid, planted your crops in the same field you kept your cows, and died of starvation. So the founders, naturally, based the American legal system on the assumption that everyone in the country was smart enough to seperate your cows from your crops. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart and other stores came along and alowwed stupid people to prosper, they quickly grew to become a majority in the country, and have now discovered the legal system to have this wonderful feature called a lawsuit. Now, some of these stupid people, believe it or not, thought that if they got hurt, it wasn't because they were being stupid; it was because whichever company was involved with the making of the item that was related to them getting hurt was being stupid for not putting a label on every ladder that says "Do not use on trampoline!"

Now, as the American saga progressed, the stupid people had children, who, once they reached fifth grade, were forced to do science fair projects. If the kid got hurt while doing the science fair project, who could they sue? Not the companies who made the components for the science fair project; They had already wised up and put a hundred and seventy two warning stickers on everything. The stupid people decided to sue the Science Fair people. Thus, as another arm of the "Stupid people; ruining it for all of us" phenomenon, the Science fair people were forced to also include on hundred and seventy two warning labels on everything, this time in the form of fun-sucking restrictions like the ones listed above.

Isn't suing great?

In which I introduce te stupid word of the day.

Ok, seriously, I've got to stop titling these things with "In which..."

Today's topic is; the stupid word of the day.

I will endeavour (Did I just spell that like a Brit? I haven't read many American books that used that word lately) to include with each post a stupid word of the day, much like the area that I maintain in the top corner of the white-board in my father's classroom. It is a stupid word, generally not in the dictionary, and it's definition. For instance, a few days ago, the stupid word of the day was;

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia - (noun) - an irrational fear of long words.

This word is in some dictionaries, but is still pretty stupid, for obvious reasons.

But that's off the point. Today's actual stupid word of the day is;

Veggie Monster, the - (proper noun) - 1. A blue, fuzzy character, formerly named "Cookie Monster" on the children's show "Sesame Street". 2. An abysmal blight on humanity.

Yes, it's true. Cookie Monster, after eating cookies for longer than I have been alive, has had his name changed to.... Veggie Monster.

It all started a couple of years ago, when his song change from "C is for cookie..." to "A cookie is a sometimes treat...". With this change came the inevitable conclusion that if he thought a cookie was "a sometimes treat", which, of course, it is (not), he simply couldn't be named Cookie any more! Thus, that horrible abomination, the Veggie Monster, was born. If I was a five to seven year old, I would be scared to death of the Veggie Monster! I would think that the blue furry cretin would crawl through my window and force me to eat spinach in the middle of the night! What could be scarier than that?

I suppose that it's a 'good' thing that network television is promoting 'health initiatives', but if they want to go so far as to replace cookies with cabbage, I fear that it may destroy the show. What's next? Putting Big Bird on weight watchers until he's Little Bird? The three (sorry, four) bears only eating low-cal porridge? Rubber Ducky on a diet? Dorothy eating only one pellet of fish food instead of two? Oscar the Paunch (negative example)? Celery Street? Is nothing sacred?

Apparently not. Nothing must stand in the way of the health-food initiative. Maybe it will be Celery Street soon. But it will still have been brought to you by "Chuck-E-Cheese's".

In which I explain the nature of the blog, and its future contents

Firstly, the title to this blog is not the best I could come up with, although now I am stuck with it. It is fairly accurate to the nature of the blog; the only things that all the posts will have in common is that they will have been written by me, a gifted middle schooler. My parents teach at my middle school, as well as blogging here; they are wordpictureguy and oldnewteacher. I also have a sister who, at the time of writing, does not have a blog.

This blog will generally contain my thoughts about what's going on at my school, different trends that I see in my 'peers', anything else that comes to mind, really, and sometimes short pieces of writing. It'll be just like any other blog, I suppose, but with better punctuation. And I'll try to make it funny.