I'm almost done with week one....out of eight.

I'm having so much difficulty actually doing things for this humanities class. We have our first paper topics coming to us tomorrow, and I anticipate that there will be immense discussion regarding every possible technicality. A lot of people in there are apparently freaking out about these essays, but I don't feel too stressed, partially because I would leave my Civil War papers until the Saturday before they were do and just work on them non-stop until Tuesday, and look how well I did.

Plus, since I have no idea what the possible topics for the essays are, there is no sense in getting upset about them.

Anyways. Today was another physics day, and I am starting to see that we might have some time constraints. We have 13 more sessions to squeeze in 8 chapters, and while I see that it is certianly possible to get everything, plus 8 hours worth of exams included in that time, that possibility is beginning to run out. We've been continuing our fascinating (slight sarcasm here, I actually think that this is somewhat interesting) study of electricity, something I've never really had the opportunity to study. I did have the physics II lab last year, but that didn't help me learn that much. Suffice it to say, I should get more out of lecture now.

I've been thinking about reviving the possibility of a physics minor. Technically, I am supposed to have Calculus III to continue on in physics, however, UCCS does not have a good way of weeding people out of classes. I have not had much math in my physics classes so far beyond basic algebra, and I would certainly love the possibility of taking Astrophysics next fall, Modern Physics in the Spring, and finding room for one other class the following spring. It would certainly not be difficult, if I can weasel my way out of Calc. III. If equations do arise, I could always enlist the help of either of my cousins at USAFA who have already taken Calc. III.

I don't know yet. We'll see how things go.

Anyways, on the last hour of the week (so WED from 3:30-4:30), we have these scheduled movie things, and today we saw something on the magnetic field of Earth, which again was actually interesting because they said that in the last three hundred years, the magnetic field has DRASTICALLY declined. In case anyone did not know, the field helps keep out a lot of radiation and prevents the solar winds from blowing our atmosphere away. While it sounds like doom and gloom, scientists have recently discovered that these kinds of changes in earth's history have preceeded the polar shift of the magnetic field, so a lot of them are saying that we're going through one right now and it should be complete in the next 700 years. Basically, a polar shift would mean that all of our compasses would point south.

I've been kind of wondering if this shift might have something to do with the whole global warming thing going on. That would be an interesting analysis. Too bad humans didn't live long enough to see this kind of data.

So between discussing magnetic fields and how sports and religion are related, we can obviously tell where Ray's interests lie.

Going back to those papers, I have a really interesting topic that I would like to pursue if given the opportunity. Recently, environmentalism has become a big kosher thing for big-wig celebrities (even though they still manage to fly in private jets which combined produce about 5-10% of the greenhouse gases of the United States. Here's a group of people who make up less than one tenth of one percent of the population) and for religious groups (even though they spend millions of dollars sending out pamphlets made from trees and waste money on stupid stuff like lights and free bibles when people probably would rather have food, medicine, or clean water. Leave it to a Christian to give you a bible when what you need is a polio vaccine. Nothing like prayer to beat away viruses). I think that that would definitely be an interesting thing to anaylze. That or how the two have linked or fought for medical research, esp. stem cells (which I support. Not the embryonoic kind, because it's a waste of resources. They're too difficult to control, compared to the adult ones. We're wasting money looking at embryonic ones when we should be looking at a cheaper and more readily available resource for stem cells), breast cancers, heart screenings, etc.

Anyways, that's what I would like. Instead, I'll probably have to write about how Sammy Sosa crosses himself before an at-bat.