I am at the edge of something big. Camping in Acadia was fun this weekend.

The last post isn't correct because what if you had two small objects expanding rapidly? They would exert the same force which the massive earth exerts on you, so the gravity of any piece of mass would be the same. That's why that cannot be correct.

An idea about gravity that isn't correct but is still cool

So, our universe is expanding very quickly. Expanding not in the sense that more matter is being created and adding to the edges of the universe, but rather our universe is stretching like a piece of rubber being stretched in all directions. So, as this rubber is being stretched, each planet gets further and further away from each other planet and the distance between any two points in our galaxy (or universe) is getting larger.

Now, to slightly switch topics, when Einstein came up with the idea that gravity is the curvature of spacetime, his wonderful idea sprouted from the idea that, if a car is constantly accelerating, then the person inside it will feel a constant force from the back of the chair. This force, if the acceleration is 9.8 m/s^2, then would be the same as gravity and, in the absence of earth's gravity, would feel exactly like gravity.

So now, back to the first paragraph, if our universe is constantly expanding, then doesn't that mean that the mass in our universe is expanding, too? We would not be able to measure this- one might say that the density of an object would constantly be going down, but if it is in fact the atoms themselves that are getting larger and larger, we could not measure this and, since we would be growing at the same rate as everything around us, we would seem to be not growing at all. But let's say that the matter below us is growing very, very quickly and we ourselves are growing very, very quickly, then there would be a force exerted by the ground on us, resembling gravity.

No, wait, the expansion of mass has to be accelerating to begin with, just like the accelerating car (we wouldn't feel a force if it was just constantly expanding). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_universe

Wow, I swear I didn't read that before I made that last statement.

But, yeah. Probably wrong. Fun to think about, though.

"I have seen the others and I have discovered that this fight is not worth fighting
And I've have seen their mothers and I will no other to follow me where I'm going

So, take your shower, shine your shoes
You got no time to lose
You are young men you must be living
Take your shower, shine your shoes
Well, you got no time to lose
You are young men you must be living
Go now you are forgiven"

Why is this such a good song? Because people are avoiding human nature?

On another note, I love school, pretty much.

What's life if you're not searching for your limits?

random...I need to start my 11 page paper

No words can explain how content I am with everything right now.

Now, this will sound awkward, but I had a dream last night that something happened, my mom got a phone call, and she was freaking out saying that "this could be bigger than 9/11"...that's what stuck in my mind, the bigger than 9/11 thing (even though I didn't know what had happened). Then, in my dream, I went on cnn.com (lolz, I am a loser and check their homepage constantly) and there was like something saying that like 300 some people were dead from some virus that spread from 1 to 300 in like hours.

But, yeah, so much for the nightmare, but then today I did an eerily similar thing by going onto cnn.com just to make sure everything was chill and I saw that the freakin United States Economy is royally screwed. They're comparing it to the Great Depression. Couldn't help but compare the bill not passing to 9/11. In the end, I think the former will have a greater, more lasting impact on us.

Ah, the drama. Tis not good, not good at all. Although it is more other people being stupid and dramatic and me just watching them and telling them to stop saying mean things about their friends. And by telling them, I mean thinking.

Time to go hang with some amazingly cool kids (that aren't being dramatic)

PAHTY TIME

Girl Talk tonight. SO excited.

Woops, so apparently spontenuity is NOT good. Well, not bad, but more embarrassing for me.

I did something amazing and awesome and, best of all, SPONTANEOUS last nigbt.

I love the 80's dance. And I love my sober friends. And the drunk ones, too.

what I just sent to my physics professor (Warning; it has to do with sound waves and...science.)

"The goal of this is to find out the wavelength of one sound-wave with a fairly high accuracy by using a combination of a wave of a known wavelength and the unknown wave. From my experience, sound waves which are very close to each other in frequency and which are sounding at the same time end up creating a third pulsating noise. This pulsating noise is due to the additive property of the waves (when waves “sync up” with each other, they add to each other and increase in amplitude). Using the time of the period of the addition of the unknown wave and the known wave, one can find the wavelength of the unknown wave to some accuracy.

Vs=Speed of sound
λ1= Wavelength of the known wave
λ2= Wavelength of the unknown wave
t1+2= Period of combination of λ1 and λ2
W1= Known wave
W2= Unknown wave

First, find how many cycles of W1 happen in t1+2
(Vs)(t1+2)/( λ1)=Cycles of W1 per period of t1+2
Now, we know that (if W2 is slightly smaller thanW1) the unknown wave will be x meters smaller than the known wave. Therefore, we know that (x)(the number of cycles in wave W1 over t1+2)=(wavelength of the known wave). Therefore, (Wavelength of the known wave)/(number of cycles in wave W1 over t1+2)=x
(λ1)/[((Vs)(t1+2))/ (λ1)]
Which is equivalent to
λ12/[(Vs)(t1+2)]

This gives us the “x”, the difference between the λ of the known wave and the unknown wave. Both waves will interact the same if they are x meters larger or x meters smaller than the known wave.

(λ2) ±(λ12)/[(Vs)(t1+2)] "

So I am a loser...

College is amazing. Here are the things I will do this year:

Join the Ultimate team (done)
Hike the tallest mountain in Maine (done)
Hike the tallest mountain in Maine in the winter
Go on a back-country ski trip
learn how to telemark
Do the puddle jump (jump into a hole in a frozen pond)
win a ski race
join the downhill ski racing club (this one should go before win a ski race)
find someone who will talk to me more than I talk to them
Get an "A" in a hard class
Have more than 2 beers. (Maybe not?)
go skydiving (a longshot-although there is a skydiving club)
sled with my friends
Travel with the ski club
Join Outdoor Track
Join a sports team that I have never played on before
pull an all-nighter (not that I want to...)
HAVE FUN
and....a lot more

So, basically, although I may miss High School, college is cool. A lot of work, but cool.

BATES COLLEGE
NO PARENTS

Three Days

I'm so sad to be leaving what I am leaving, yet I am so happy to be going where I am going. In three days, I will be in the wilderness of Maine. In three days, it all starts over. In three days, it all begins.

physics stuff

So, let's say it is possible to go the speed of light in a spaceship. And one of the laws of physics states that as you speed up toward the speed of light, time time slows down and is eventually zero when you actually get to the speed of light. So let's say we are in a space ship traveling from point A to point B. If no time elapses when the ship travels from A to B, then surely the space ship must be going infinitely fast.

Hmmm...but not really. Time does elapse outside of the space ship but it does not inside of it. So we will see the ship travel from A to B, but the ship itself (from its point of view) wouldn't be traveling from point A to B but instead "jumping" between the locations-without having any time elapse in between. In this way, (although laws of physics also state that you cannot get up to the speed of light) a rocket could travel from earth to another far, far away planet and the person inside of it would not even believe they went anywhere. The only problem is how would you stop the space craft? It is going at the speed of light so even if you set a timer to slow the rocket down in .nth of a second, that tiny amount of time would be infinite if time slowed down to a halt. The only way to stop it would be with some external force, I guess. Although accelerating to the speed of light without killing somebody with the force of acceleration would be a pretty difficult feat in itself.

I've spent an amazing amount of time biking and thinking and doing nothing. I wish people would include me more often. Maybe I need to include myself more often.

So I am in Spain. It is very cool and very hot and very...very interesting. Don´t know what else to say other than the fact that my parents dropped me off at this sketchy internet cafe thing and I am surrounded by people I should be able to understand (hence the 6 or so years of learning the language) but somehow I can´t. I am off to France in about a week or so and then off to Italy then Switzerland then I don´t even know where till July 2nd. It will be fun, but I miss so many people back at home like crazy. Like CRAZY. It is kinda like the whole point of going on trips is to look at cool new things, but I have just discovered some very cool new friendships back at home which I must leave for a month. Ok, so I have about....3 seconds left in my 15 minutes on this computer...

The Horizon Effect

Imagine a beach ball full of air. The air is trapped inside the beach ball and slightly pressurized. Is the beach ball is forming a sphere around the air inside it, separating that air from the rest of the universe, or is the beach ball wrapped around the rest of the universe, separating that from the air inside it?

d-d-do you remember

I will list off things that come to my mind

The Garden State soundtrack is very high quality

I miss the ski team

I miss cross country

I don't remember if I ever posted this picture
I don't remember ever taking that picture

Why do I have such bad luck?

Comatose

So I am obsessed with this song "Comatose" by Timmy Curran. It is like...woah, this has to do with so much stuff right now. Especially the whole going off to college thing. And like the whole global warming thing. Gotta "wake up soon."

If we don't wake up soon.
All we ever knew will be gone.

It's finally getting to be like summer again

So I may not get a varsity letter. So I may not improve like crazy. But like, I am so happy that I am improving at all. Sports are meant to make you happy, and obsessing about getting a varsity letter isn't really that much fun.

And basically, I miss some people on the ski team like a bunch. I want so much to have a group of people in my life like that right now. Luckily I have some people on the track team. Too bad the track team can't be co-ed like the ski team.

In conclusion, I love warm weather and CANNOT wait for summer. Well, actually maybe I can. I love the feeling of having something (and basically everything) to look forward to.

Finally.

And then there were two.

Bates and (I wanna say SLU just to rhyme, but that's the one I just took off my list) UVM. I'll know which one by next week. I'll know where I'm going to be for the next four (hopefully) years of my life in the next week.

Good times with my sister over the weekend. Dartmouth is a sweet school.
"Yeah, and he was basically just freaking out about life"
"I've never met any teenager who hasn't freaked out about life"

In other news, the track team is amazing. And so is Newton Faulkner, and so are the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and staying up late, and thunderstorms, and rain, and the spring, and school, and life. Just basically life is amazing.

Can anyone hear me?

Life is way too stressful right now.


And, wow, listening to the song "Waiting for my Real Life to Begin". Why am I so in love with depressing songs?

*gets out of stopped train*

"What's going on?"
"I don't know, I guess the train is lost"


"How can a train be lost, it's on rails?"

~The Darjeeling Limited


This is one of those comedies that makes you laugh so much but has so many things that make you think of such bigger issues. Maybe it's just me.

How much energy do the electrons in our body have?

KE=(1/2)(m)(v)^2 (although electrons don't have any net KE, because they are moving in circles, we won't take that into account here)

There are about 2.2320370181851 x 10^28 electrons in the human body

electrons can move up to the speed of light, but we'll say that they are about 90% there for this problem (270,000,000 m/s)

The mass of a proton is about 3.3x10^-27 Kg, and an electron is 1/1836 of this, so an electron weighs about 1.80x10^-30 Kg

So, total mass of electrons in your body is (2.232037018151x10^28)(1.8x10^-30)=.0402 Kg

So then KE=(.5)(.0402)(270,000,000)^2
So there are 1.465x10^15 Joules of energy in the atoms in your body.

To put that in perspective, lets say a 1 Kg ball was being thrown at you with this energy (square root of(1.465x10^15/.5)=54129474 m/s, which would be 54129 Km/hr and 33634.5 mph. That's quite fast.

How would you get all that energy out of the electrons in your body, though?

It feels like every time I convince myself that I in fact do have enough time to do something, I run out of time.

I want so desperately to stop and plan something with my time without having to spend time planning.

The other day, I started writing. Like, I was sitting down at a computer at the library and I just wrote...about my life...about what I was thinking about...about so much stuff. It ended up being about 7 or 8 pages, and it only took me about 20 minutes, and I was so satisfied afterward. I wasn't really sure what to do with it. I really had no use for it. So I just left it up, put in bold "Read this" at the top and left. I really hope someone read at least some of it.

So, yeah. Stressful week. Actually, stressful month. Got into college (my second) today, which is good. That makes everything better.

So apparently I am in the "identity searching" stage right now (according to Freudian psychology). I feel like I've been in that stage for the past 7 years.
I'm feeling pretty good about where I'm at right now.

Homework time.

Running on 2.5 hours of sleep.

Just came back from the ski trip, which was pretty much the best weekend that I have had so far this year. Late-night conversations with people I barely knew. Getting to know people I thought I already knew. Realizing that after they kicked me out of my bed (there were 4 of them-perfect amount for all the seniors), they are really stupid for the things they do sometimes at 3 AM? I'd rather feel my life, or at least my view of it.

But I still respect and love all of them so much even the freshmen/freshman.

"The fights you fight now will be the fights you fight for the rest of your life."

But we become desensitized to those fights over time.

Why do adults think they are so much different than teenagers?

Like, seriously. Maybe its that thing again that the artist cannot see the flaw in his own artwork. But I really don't see any differences.

Oh wow. I think I like someone. Lets hope they like me. Cause if they don't, then I'm going to have a boring Thursday night.

Everything is done. The smallest movements of all the world's possessions, if measured accurately, will tell us what will happen.

And I don't really know what I just said. I can't stop thinking about how my friends laughed at me the other day when I talked about how you're moving at the speed of light if you are moving around while time freezes. Then Ezra let me know that if the speed of light was not the maximum velocity that anything can travel - if something traveled faster - it would be everywhere at once.

That kid has a bright future.

I love track. And the world right now.

El Choque Cultural

Sometimes I feel like the artist who can't see his own flaws.

You perceive all of these things
I’d never have known.
Will you turn off the lights?
we’re already home.
-"The Artist" by "The Hush Sound"

so much metaphorical meaning.

And sometimes however much it seems evident of something else, I have absolutely no idea how I feel.

estoy perdido.

Negative thoughts.

Is it bad that I am beginning to pity myself?

I have been up way too late these past days. I went on a 7-day streak where I went to bed past 1 AM, and that didn't bode well for me.

It isn't like I am doing anything. I keep telling myself, "you have plenty of time, you don't have to finish this now, you have all night, you have all the time in the world." So not true.

But anyways, I ran for the first time in a while today with Luke. It was nice. We went up a bunch of hills, and I convinced myself several times that I needed to stop and stretch my calves, but I kept telling myself that it isn't too bad. And it wasn't.

And I don't think anything is really too bad right now. I just keep convincing myself that it is, and I don't know why.

That's all I can say for now.

Is our government protecting us or itself?

Ok, so I was going to do a full post on this, but then I realized that my thoughts right now are like really scattered, and I can't really articulate what I was going to say, so I'll let the title of this post speak for like what a whole post should be about.

But, yeah.

"There are no such things as bad days. Just good days and great days"
~Mr Price

Only the greatest Spanish teacher in the world, or one of them at least.

It is funny how we base how we are feeling here and now off of how we have always felt.

Does 18/2+7=14? Too bad.

I am friendly with way too many underclassmen. Or, rather, there are way too many underclassmen who are friendly with me. I guess I'm just that cool. But hanging out with freshmen sort of makes me less cool.

Excuse me, because I have an 8-page Spanish paper to write.

"I got a time of sub-zero!"

So I am loving the weather lately. It's not very nice for biking to school, but it's nice chilly, snowy, windy weather. Almost like a hurricane of snow.

I can't wait for track. I mean, I loved skiing, and I absolutely loved the people, and I love all the team dinners and I love all the driving people to the ski hill and the amazingness of the people who are just like me. Maybe more people are like me than I realize. I just have to get out there and meet them. But anyways, love the ski team and everything that they do and everything that they are.

I never remember ever really hating Valentine's day, but this year seems to be different. I guess it's because so many of my friends hate it too. The ski team has brought semi-mixed feelings for me on the romantic scale. I mean, I don't hate it, but I just want to punch the people who are all like "oooh, I love you" and then look over to you as if to say "isn't this an awesome day?". No, it isn't. At least not for me. Who ever said teenagers know what love is?

But anywayss...I'll stop being a negative person and start looking forward to track more. And life. And the amazingness that is the present. After all, according to the wise words of Shakespeare, "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

Please.

We need to stop fighting and start understanding why we don't need to fight. Wars are useless. If we didn't know the situations of others, and if we weren't so obsessed with things happening that we never see, then we wouldn't even have any motivation to fight.


On another note, I wonder how much money everyone would have if we divided the wealth of the whole world between every citizen of the world.

Not enough.

What if I'm not the same person as I was just two seconds ago? What if instead of living a smooth, complete life, every second I am a new person inheriting all the feeling and memory of my predecessor and constantly erasing my old self and building a new one?

Sometimes I feel like this. Like I'm changing and like I can't always remember who I am. I remember what I did yesterday, I remember what I did last week, I remember what I did last year, but that person in my memory is not me.

It's kinda like what happens to a lot of antiques nowadays. One leg on an antique stool gets replaced, and soon another, and another. Soon the whole stool will be a replacement, but somehow, we can still call it an antique.

I guess it's a good thing.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
-Maryanne Williamson

Sometimes small actions, or even inactions, can have the greatest effect.

Sometimes we just have to try something new.

"There's not something wrong with you, Michael, there's something wrong with everybody else."

The coolest person ever on the ski team.