Let's Talk About Humankind

S.S. made me a sad panda.
That video put me into a moody state for the rest of the day. The video of the reenactment of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima was sad. This is just my opinion, but I disliked Harry Truman because of his decision of not just ONE, but TWO small cities in Japan. One was enough. If you were in the vicinity of the powerful white blast when the bomb activated, you were either vaporized or turned into carbon in less than a second. One moment you could be cleaning the kitchen, the next nanosecond you were nothing. POOF. Gone. Scary. Imagine become another vaporous element in a fraction of a second. You wouldn't feel that. At least it was quick and easy. Not painful. Babies, little toddlers learning to walk, young mothers... instantaneously gone.
And the radioactivity disease. The scientists who made the bomb didn't know the side effects! All they knew was that innocent citizens were gonna be vaporized! So even if you did survive, you got cancer. Good luck with that. 
And they were gonna bomb Tokyo! But luckily then Japan surrendered and no more people had to be turned into carbon. Which would be really unnecessary. 
I was watching those houses fall, with little schoolchildren in it... and this wasn't even a fluxing NATURAL DISASTER. This was HUMANKIND'S fault. We as HUMANS could have stopped all these deaths from happening. This was something we could control, not some spastic earthquake in the Pacific. We couldn't prevent that. We could have, however, prevented civilians from being rotted from the inside out. It makes me scared for the Earth.
Which leads me to my hypothetical conclusion: the human race is a little bit too destructive.
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to be a psychopath who wants to eliminate EVERY LAST person on Earth. Humankind HAS wiped out millions of animals and caused the extinction of many more. "And my theory is, the mosquitoes and all the other bugs we squashed because of how annoying they are will come back all big and stuff and ready to kill us, saying 'The human race is too dangerous! We must eliminate them!"
But it's not everyone. Some actually DESERVE to live. Others don't. Which is weird in ecosystem-atic terms. Because they can actually make their own species hate each other.
Humankind has to be the most complex society on Earth right now. It's strange when you think about that everything that we use in our everyday life, has been thought by human minds. Mathematics, language, even science...! Like, what if our scientific knowledge was just false, concluded because our limited minds could only think of it from just observing with our limited minds! What if science was only what we could understand? Like everything else, science may be another thing humankind has established. Apparently, our minds are really really really inventive.
Other animals do perfectly fine without this stuff. They coexist peacefully with each other; predator eats prey, predator eats other predator... it's a simple and good system. Everyone has a role in their environment. "The governmental environment," as a good friend would say. If WE would see a bear in our backyard, we would be like, "Get the HECK out!" *shoot*

Unless you love nature, modern humankind wouldn't probably get along with wild animals. A person that actually coexists with nature... I've never heard of it. Who would live in the wilderness with the animals. Become part of the food web, the top predator, eat prey, be naked... it's actually really hard to imagine a person like that.
And there's a flaw in there too: Humans cook their meat. A flaw of the human diet, rendering living in the wild harder. Wouldn't that me awesome if we could just eat it raw? We don't need an additional ingredient to actually eat without dying of some bacteria from your dripping piece of raw steak. But that's not what happens to carnivores in nature! They do perfectly fine eating raw stuff. Humankind's ancestors, before they learned to use fire, seemed to also be part of the food web: they would have to eat stuff raw since there wouldn't be a way to cook it. That's also another conclusion of mine: The human race's digestive/immune systems have kind of deteriorated.
We, as modern humans, would so not be able to access this kind of stuff with coexisting with nature. I call this the modern human food web:

1) Cows grow
2) We butcher cows on a faraway farm
3) We send it to Publix (haha)
4) We buy it and cook it and eat.
5) We grow vegetables
6) We ship them to Kroger (murder Kroger)
7) We buy it and cook it and eat. Yum!

Our ability to actually live in the natural food web of an ecosystem has kind of diminished. These days, you don't go out hunting in your own personal woods for food. That's what currency is for: to retrieve your food! No more needing to struggle in the woods with a rifle! Just go to your local Publix and get something! So people with no money just have to starve and die! But of course you could to the woods- WAIT, there ARE NO woods, remember, silly? You live in the freaking CITY, where are you gonna find some wild woods that you can sneak in with your rifle, huh? (Another flaw.)
Hehe. Just imagine the digestive systems of our evolved form! They probably have to eat meat OVERCOOKED. Yet they are gonna be like way smarter than us and have no hair (maybe a bit for eyebrows, like how our ancestors started becoming more hairless from the apes to this point). Eck. They'll probably have to live in sanitized plastic bubbles because they're germophobic and their skin becomes irritated when a germ lands on their skin. But you can't escape from GERMS! Haha!

Alex L.

Write your opinions/comments on this rant!

Gadgets Causing Plane Delays

 On every flight we've been on like the ones we boarded in China required us to

"Turn off all devices with an on/off switch to avoid interfering with the plane's wireless communication."

I'm always wondering, do devices really interfere with the plane's navigation?
Flight attendants say that such a ban is in place because- well, during takeoff and landing, any device with an on/off switch must be "turned off because transmissions will interefere with the pivotal navigation of the plane".
The weird thing is that it should only be gadgets that send off transmissions, like a device using the internet or a cell phone. An e-Reader should be okay, an iPod, or even a phone in airplane mode. Which I believe so, since this rule only covers gadgets that give off transmissions?
According to Toure on Time, he once asked a flight attendant why this rule is in place. She replied, in a small voice, that there was really no chance of said devices to throw off the radar. It was "really to make sure everyone was paying attention". To me, this was a strange reply.
Studies by the Radio Technical Commission of Aeronatics found no data proving that devices could really throw off the plane's radar. I believe that this is still a bad conclusion. There are more and more devices being released yearly, and other gadgets they haven't tested. In an experiment like this, you can't have a group of gadgets to test on and call it your sample size. Every gadget is different. You have to test on the entire body, meaning that the RTCA's conclusion is not all of it.
PEDs (Portable Electronic Devices), however, that are not specifically listed as an item that's banned are determined alone by the airline if they are usable.
The RTCA's advise to turn off your gadget once you reach the altitude of 10,000 feet; any other height below this mark COULD interfere with the plane's radar as the cockpit crew tries to fulfill crtical arrival and departure times. But of course, only most gadgets follow this rule.
Which I must say that your gadget could be turned on anytime if you rode a small private jet. Even airlines in the Middle East and Asia allow you to freely turn on your gadget. And the big guy, Air Force One, reserved for presidential staff and reporters, allows you to do the same. That's also a bit weird.

Addressing Cell Phones

Cell phones are different. They give off LOTS of transmissions, far away from the user. That's how strong they are.
The FCC bans over 800 of these phones, since it's kind of obvious that these really could interfere with the plane's navigation radar. I won't talk about this much, since you really shouldn't be using these things on the plane because that would pose as a safety hazard.
Airlines may allow some phones on airplane with "airplane mode", which cuts off all transmissions from the phone so you can't connect to the Internet or make calls, rendering it just like a regular device (which of course you must apply to the rules for any non-trasmissioning gadget).

But of course I do feel a twinge of annoyance when we do have to turn off our gadgets. It's really annoying to have a person blabber all day because they really couldn't use their e-Reader. But it's only or like, ten minutes the entire flight! You can use them when you're in the air.

But here's something: Nick Bilton of the New York Times reveals that PEDs (the non-transmissing kind) send out so few microvolts that the amount of interference seems almost inconsequential, meaning it's probably impossible for interference to happen because it sends how really really small transmissions. Microvolts.

A veteran pilot once told ABC news that the electronic equipment in the cockpit are "heavily shielded. Stray signals cannot get into those systems". Score one for PEDs?

Toure (again), according to his post, refuses to turn off his gadget/phone. Dude, you really want to take that small risk? Do you really want to throw off the plane's radar just because you're so stubborn that you can't use it? A plane is like a dictatorship. You have to listen to the rules. And yet you still want to put thirty other passengers at risk because you're so insolent about not switching your phone off! Here's a quote:

"After getting molested by the TSA, making my way through a long line filled with annoyed people and snuggling into a tiny seat, the last thing I need is to be cut off from my iPhone and iPod and left alone with my thoughts. Thoughts like, I wish I’d stayed at home."- Toure

Guys, that's one message: Just obey the rules like your parents told you to.

(Write your replies on both perspectives!"

Why I Can't Sleep At Night

Have you heard of insomnia? I think I have it. A very mild condition of it, anyways.
There are very explicit reasons WHY I CAN'T SLEEP AT NIGHT. I mean, I have a regular bedtime schedule (sort of). I walk my dog every day. So why can't I sleep?
See, when people say, "Oh, just review your day. It will help you sleep!" That just doesn't work. When I think too much at night, it spirals off into an invicible force that won't let me sleep because I keep thinking.
Hmm, yeah, what did I do this morning? I remember, running up a hill and yelling at my sister, and kind of kicking her, because she left without me. In school, my lunchbox was thrown in the trash...
It just doesn't work.
And when I spiral off to thinking into the wee hours of the night (or early morning, in that matter), birds start TWEETING.
I absolutely cannot sleep with birds tweeting!
Early in my life, I've associated bird tweets with morning. And I always freak out when it becomes morning and I'm losing sleep. Because when I try to sleep, I force myself to look at the glowing red digital clock beside me. Watching that clock turn from 12 o' clock to 3 in the morning causes me to scream in frustration.
That is why, in trying to sleep, is going to sleep before 1 in the morning, because that's when the birds tweet.
There are like, millions of treatments for going to sleep besides those pills, which literally knock you unconscious. The most common ones don't work for me:

Counting Sheep


Me: One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four... AARRRGGG CRAP I'M NOT GOING TO SLEEP! One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four... I AM NOT SLEEPING HERE!

Warm Milk


Me: This milk tastes good...
(goes to bed)
Me: I need milk when I'm in bed! I can't taste it anymore! It's been ten minutes since I drank milk and I'm NOT SLEEPING!

Warm Bath


Me: This bath is amazing... its like a little cloud in the sky...
(goes to sleep, almost drowns)
Me: GLUG GLUG GLUG! I almost drowned! Think I swallowed some water...
(back in bed)
Me: Hello, this bed is not a comfortable warm bath!

Scented Eye Pads


Me: Eyepads! Awesome!
(lays down in bed)
Me: This smell of like, chickpeas, is overwhelming! I cannot sleep with this!

Meditation


Me: (sitting very quietly) Focus, focus, concentrate on nothing!
(focus on trying to get to sleep)
Me: This isn't working!

And much more. I cannot tell you how many times my parents had to buy and return items for me because I tried it, and they just didn't work. I'm just different, and I'll have to keep searching the Internet for my cure, because really, my parents are tired of my pleads for sleep.