Sunday, March 08, 2009

What are you willing to give up to have something else? We all know the phrase, “You can’t have it all.” And we all know how very true that is. But in most cases we can have what we desire, provided we give something up that we already have. Are you willing to give up smoking to live a healthier lifestyle? Are you willing to give up playing sports because your body just can’t take it anymore? These are just trivial things pertaining to ourselves and for most people the answers to these questions are, “No.” Now, are you willing to give up your free or personal time to spend time somewhere else? Probably not if it’s something you don’t want to do. But what if it is doing something that is "for the greater good?" Would you give up your time to be with someone who is dying, or with an organization reaching out to better your community? Would you give up the personal things you absolutely enjoy to be with the person you love? Would you give up your life to save another?

Sacrifice can be an extremely difficult thing to do especially when it comes to the things that we think makes us who we are. Fortunately it’s not what we give up that makes us who we are, but the fact that we do give up that makes us stand out as great individuals. Sacrifice is typically not a mandatory thing. It’s something we do because we want to be better people. Better to ourselves and better to others. Think of the great sacrifices in history that have brought us to the present we live in today. What would this world be without those sacrifices? What would the world be like tomorrow if we stopped living for others and only lived for ourselves? What would there be left to live for?

Friday, January 16, 2009

Here’s something I was thinking about the other day while I was sobbing over the pathetic winter we’ve had so far. Color. More specifically change in color. In most cases a change in color of some object isn’t really a change in color at all, but more of a color diffusion of sorts. Let me explain a little more.


Remember back in your elementary school days when you took art class and painted some black stick-house comprised of a square and an isosceles triangle with two windows and a door with your little stick-family standing in front of it? No doubt, you learned then that when you mixed the blue paint with the yellow you got green paint and when you mixed the red paint with the blue paint you got purple paint, etc. You know; the whole primary colors thing. Well I bet you never thought about what actually was happening there.


Let’s advance a few years to high school chemistry. Remember learning about a physical change vs. a chemical change? You probably melted some ice and called it a physical change and burned some paper and called it a chemical change. Well you did good there sonny, until it came to color changes. Sometimes, a color change was physical and other times it was chemical and you didn’t really know which one it was so you guessed or made sure your circle covered both physical and chemical so you could argue your case as to what you circled depending on which one was actually correct.


Now let’s combine the two lessons. Back in art class, you mixed two paints (containing the same chemical structure) of different color and got the same paint, but with a new color. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Theoretically you still have red paint and blue paint, but the paint molecules are so close together that it appears purple. Your eyes can’t tell that there are multiple colored molecules. Because the molecules are so randomly mixed and packed together, it just appears as one solid color. It’s sort of like way back in the day when you used Paint on that old 386, 32-color, IBM computer of yours. You needed different shaded of gray so you would paint with a “dark gray” that had more black dots in it than white dots, and a “light gray” that had more white dots than black dots in it. From afar it looked like different shades of gray, but really it was always just black and white dots.


When color change occurs like this, it is a purely physical change. The molecular structure of your paint isn’t changing; it is just getting scrambled around. Liquids and gases do this constantly. We just don’t notice it because it’s always the same color. Put a drop of food coloring in your water without stirring and you’ll notice there is always a continuous motion in the liquid. The food coloring isn’t bonding with water; it is just being dispersed into it. A physical change. The water isn’t actually changing in color; it is just spreading the molecules of the food coloring out to make the food coloring appear lighter in color.


So the next time you see something of color, take a closer look and see if the color is what it is, or just a mixture of other colors that are so tightly packed together, your eyes can’t tell the difference. Unless of course your object is light, in which case we have to talk about something completely different in the form of wave energy. And so begins the great contrast of particles vs. waves. Ah Max Planck would be so happy!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

What are my thoughts on this winter? Quite frankly I’d rather crap out 10 dollars in quarters than experience the likes of this winter. The main reason is because I can measure the amount of snow we’ve gotten so far this year with a soup can. Of course the other reason being I’d have an extra (although quite filthy) 10 dollars in my hand, which I could use to save up for another useless season ski-pass for next winter.

So far this winter we have gotten 3 major ice storms, multiple false alarm forecasts for heavy snow, inches of rain and precisely 2 point [insert profanity of choice here] inches of snow. That creates ski conditions at The Knob (my local ski resort) that attract only the likes of those who enjoy bruises, wipeouts, getting wet, throwing money away, and oh yeah, a really really crappy day of skiing. Of course, I have yet to venture there this season. My season pass which was purchased at the end of last season still awaits my pickup at the winterless wonderland. And quite frankly I do NOT enjoy throwing money away like that when quite frankly for half the price of a season pass I can buy a Wii Fit along with a copy of Shaun White Snowboarding and get my boarding kicks for the rest of my life (On a side note, that game really is quite awesome. If you are as put out with this winter as I am, I encourage your snow-excitement-lacking little self to head on over to your local or online tech company of choice and pick yourself up a copy. You WON’T be disappointed)!

So here’s the deal Weather. Either you bring some real snow my way by the end of the month or so help me I will personally make sure my pet spider monkey leaves you a little surprise on your front door everyday of the year (after all, that is less for me to clean up). So you think about that before leaving winter snow behind in PA altogether.