Happy Birthday

Today, December 25th, is a very special day; it is the birthday of a great man. A man whose revolutionary thinking influenced the world more than any other person ever to have lived has. A man whose life should be celebrated more often than simply on his birthday. A man I look up to.

I am, of course, talking about Isaac Newton.

Isaac Newton is the smartest person ever to have lived. I don't think it really can be contested, if you're looking at results, anyway. He was a detective, figuring out how the universe really worked. It is hard to put into writing how important he was, but without the things he did, math would be deficient and physics would be non-existent. Since this is an AP Comp. blog, I should try to come up with a comparison for writing, but I don't think there is a single writer that was close to being as influential as Isaac Newton. The closest is probably Shakespeare, but if he'd never existed we would only miss out on bad comedy and lame tragedies written in boring non-rhyming verse.

Isaac Newton: much better than Shakespeare. Much better than Jesus, too.

How much longer?

How much longer until we do something about gun violence?

How much longer until we pay attention to the United States' handgun homicide rate, and how it is 50 times South Korea's, 100 times Great Britain's, and 150 times Japan's? How much longer until we acknowledge the influence of those countries' strict gun control? How much longer until we are willing to concede that the Second Amendment is defective?

How much longer until we realize that saying "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is simply ignorance of the difference between intent and enablement? How much longer until we admit that guns are devastatingly more effective at killing people than other methods? How much longer until we figure out that things designed specifically to kill people should be illegal?

How much longer until we recognize that the idea that guns are for self-defense is complete bullshit? How much longer until we remember that guns don't shield you, they kill others? How much longer until we rebut the idiotic notion that more guns would help, not hurt?

How much longer until we stop encouraging murderers? How much longer until we understand that by starting news reports with flashing sirens, showing pictures of the killer, having 24-7 coverage,  making the body count the lead story, and making the killer an "antihero" we can expect to see a repeat of the tragedy within a week?

How much longer until we actually provide proper mental health care, instead of insisting sick people have to take care of themselves? How much longer until we treat the mentally ill as human beings? How much longer until we can get psychiatric help easier than buying an assault rifle?

How much longer do we need to let people die before we can get it through our head? 

Or—if we continue to act like every tragedy is unavoidable,

How much longer until the next one?

Variations on a Theme of Stupidity

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." –Albert Einstein 

Disclaimer: The content in this blog post may at times stretch the truth, modify the truth, or be entirely fictional. It might be someone else's truth, stretched truth, or modified truth. It might not be anything at all.

Narration:

I was minding my own business, mindlessly browsing the internet, hoping my parents wouldn't mind that I was opting not to do the chores that I was assigned, when I happened across something that changed my entire worldview. It was a website that collected asinine and unintelligent things people write on facebook. I was shocked and addicted. I read it for hours. At the end of my journey of discovery, I was a different person. I had become someone who was cynical and angry, all because of what became very clear that night. Humans are fricking stupid. Like, really fricking stupid.

Description:

The teacher was a slightly overweight older man who was childish in the weirdest ways. He had an abnormal speaking cadence and had a hand puppet named "Mr. Hand" with which he had conversations while teaching. He decided that he was going to start the day with some new math problems for the class. He asked them "What is 5 times 2?" and was answered by unsure silence. He encouraged the children not to be shy and to give it their best shot. A kid in a red shirt named Clyde was suddenly enthusiastic, and was called upon. "Yes Clyde?" "Twelve?" Bonus points if you recognize where this is from.

Example:

I was calmly sitting in my US History class, in the front corner seat, closest to both the window and the teacher's desk. We were taking a test on the revolutionary war, or rather, some people were still taking the test, and others, including me, had already finished. I was working on homework when one of the people still taking the test went up to the teacher's desk to ask a question about the test. The question that she was asking about was the freebie question our teacher had put at the end of the test, asking who had won the revolutionary war. And this student didn't know. She was an American that had just sat through an entire unit on the revolutionary war and she didn't know whether or not we won.

Comparison/Contrast:

Don't be stupid about stupidity. That is, don't mistake things for stupidity that are not. Ignorance is not necessarily stupidity. Even for things that everyone knows by age 30, at the current U.S. birth rate 10,000 people learn these things every day. Don't ridicule someone for being one of today's 10,000. Apathy too is not necessarily stupidity. Whether or not you choose to care is independent of your intelligence. Stupidity is where ignorance and apathy meet. All of these things can appear to stupidity, but only judge true stupidity.

Process Analysis:

There are very few people that are beyond the point of no return regarding their stupidity; it is possible to improve. When trying to improve someone who has fallen into the pit of stupidity, there are two routes. You can fight their ignorance and hope their apathy is eliminated as a result, or fight their apathy and hope their ignorance is eliminated as a result. The latter seems to be the much better method, and it is used frequently by teachers. Show somebody why they should care, and they will then learn based on their own motivation.

Division of Analysis:

Stupidity is a broad term, comprising many different aspects. As elaborated on previously, stupidity is a combination of ignorance and apathy, that is, not knowing and not caring. Besides those elements, the main part of stupidity is a lack of intelligence. A lack of intelligence can have numerous effects worthy of ridicule, including but not limited to the complete inability to reason and/or the rejection of logic entirely, a dense mind impervious to all basic knowledge, and a tendency to make bad decisions.

Classification:

There are many different types of stupidity. There is quiet stupidity, where it is not obvious that a person is stupid. This stupidity is more excusable, and it is more sad than reprehensible. It begs for intervention and rehabilitation. There is also aggressive stupidity. This is when someone either knows they are stupid, and for some reason embraces it like it is positive and as a result shows it off to whoever is unfortunate enough to be near them, or when someone is so incredibly stupid that they think they are smart. The effect is the same as the other form of aggressive stupidity, but their observers have a little more pity and a little less hope.

Cause and Effect:

The stupidity that is seen in most humans is the unfortunate effect of a number of causes. One major cause is when kids learn it from their parents or other authority figures. When a culture of stupidity is the surroundings in which children grow up, many of these children are ruined intellectually. If a kid has parents that don't see education as a high priority and see reading as a waste of time, and then goes to school and has a biology teacher that says evolution is a liberal lie from Satan, they are unlikely to be an intelligent participant in society when they are an adult (But they still get to vote).

Definition:

Stupidity is not somebody holding a different opinion than you. Unless their opinion is stupid. Stupidity is not somebody simply being annoying. Stupidity is the lack of brainpower to be a positive contributor to society intellectually. It is almost always accompanied by a lack of understanding by the stupid person about the negative effects they have, which is  shown through their hostility when challenged by smarter people or a silly sense of pride about their lack of contributions.

Argument/Persuasion:

Due to our silly obligation to be polite, stupid people have been left to hurt our society unchallenged. This has to stop. Take a stand! When you see someone rattling off some bullshit that is obtrusively false, challenge them. When someone tries to berate you for displaying some intelligence ("lol u nerd, no1 carez if its 'technically correct' or not...") then make them recognize the absurd position they are taking. Anti-intellectualism is running rampant, and it's up to us to stop it. Good luck.

THIS BLOG POST TOOK SUCH A LONG TIME. IT WAS LONGER THAN THE GUIDED CRJ, EVEN. THAT'S LONG.

Round is a shape

I've never been particularly athletically inclined. 

Every day in middle school P.E. class, we would start by running. When we were outside, we ran outside and then ran around the track once. When we were inside, we ran around the gym to music until they told us to stop. After every class, we would do it again.

I hated it.

I hated everything about running. I hated how boring it was. I hated the feeling of getting tired and out of breath. I hated not being fast or having endurance. I hated how other people were naturally good at it. As a result, I never really tried.

I would still do it, of course, there really wasn't another option, but I didn't do it. Instead of focusing on the running, I was focused on being able to stop afterward. Instead of thinking about getting better, I just thought about being good enough to not embarrass myself. Instead of embracing the benefits of running, I dwelled on the pleasures of sitting on my ass.

I regret it to this day. I wish I had established a good habit of exercise, or at least gotten myself to a point where I was physically fit. Because I'm not now, and I'm not really in a position to start. If I had taken P.E. class seriously in middle school, I would have been able to continue on in high school on my own, as taking P.E. classes in high school is not a realistic option for the academically inclined.

So now if people ask if I'm in shape, instead of admitting, that no, I'm not, I try to play it off with a joke. "Yes, I'm in shape. Round is a shape".


I'm sorry this is so short. I had a very hard time thinking of what would fit the prompt, and just ended up going with a mediocre idea. I'm aware this is not up to snuff, but it's late, and I can't figure out what else to do. 

What's wrong with me

That's not a question.

I can't write well (still). I don't seem to be getting better, either. I don't know why I felt the need to take this class. If I had to decide again I definitely wouldn't put myself through this.

I can't handle doing things I'm bad at. I have this ingrained need to be good at things, and not in a healthy way. When I miss a point on a test, I hate myself. When someone does better than me at something I care about, I get insanely jealous. When I know I might fail at something I don't do it all. I keep myself sane by not caring. I'm no good at sports? Good, because I never cared about them anyway.

That's why I don't care about AP Comp. I can't afford to. I need to keep my sanity for more important things, like AP Physics, college applications, or anything else that will affect my life after January. If I cared, I would write my essays over a number of weeks, not a number of hours. But I can't. I can't invest that time for the B that would come regardless. It would kill me mentally. (Don't try to counter the grade speculation. I'm not and will never be a writer good enough for an A on an essay, not even If I wrote 12 hours a day. My brain does not work the way a good writer's does)

Not only can I not handle doing things I'm bad at, I can't not be the best at anything I care about. I need to feel that superiority. I know this isn't the way the world works, but it's the way I work. This is breaking me down mentally every day. It took me a couple days to get over the physics test I didn't ace. I had to stop doing math team, not because I couldn't stand that I didn't understand a few things, but because I couldn't stand that other people did understand those things. I am worried about going to a good college, because I don't know if my ego will be able to survive an environment of so many people smarter than me.

I'm also kind of an asshole. I'm bitter, aggressively sarcastic, offensive, and condescending. And I don't care. I don't like people anyway (to use vocab, I'm a misanthrope) People, overall, are overwhelmingly stupid. They're ignorant. They care about trivial things. They're overly sensitive. I'm not looking forward to having to share a country with them for the next 70 years. To be honest, 90% of them could just disappear and I'd be happier.

Maybe the last paragraph gave this away, but I'm also completely socially inept. I hate talking to people. I don't talk to new people at all if I can avoid it. I would prefer to do all the work on any project if only I could do it myself instead of in a group. I can't make phone calls. I put off sending emails because I can never think of what to say. I would much prefer to stay at home alone than to go somewhere with people.

To top it off, I have the worst work ethic there is. I try to just call myself a procrastinator, as that's a more acceptable thing to be, but it's not that I just put things off to the last moment (although I do). I'm just incredibly lazy in general. This hasn't affected me negatively until recently. I don't mean to sound cocky—wait, yes I do. Or at least I don't care if do—but I'm smart enough where I didn't have to do any hard work to be successful throughout the first 11 grades of school. Honors classes? What a joke. Easy A. 4X Math, the "hardest class in the school"? Really easy A. My GPA went over 12 with no struggle from me whatsoever. Now that's changed. I made the mistake of enrolling in this class, and made the mistake of joining National Honor Society. These two mistakes, combined with 2 other AP classes, college apps, and extensive extracurricular music activities have made my laziness bite me hard in the ass. I received my first A- in two years from this class first term, I'm probably in sketchy standing in NHS, and I'm close to a mental breakdown. Oh, and I don't have time to sleep anymore.

It's 2:00 am, but I still need to work more on more homework. Better read that essay and do the CRJ, even though they have never and will never help me on the quizzes, and even though I have never and will never be helped in any way by interrupting my reading every paragraph to write about sentence length.