TGIF I'm going to Canada

Good morning, Mutu, it's the afternoon. Or for you the evening. The kids are taking their nap, so I have some time to make this post now. Before I get to the point I just want to say a few things about your previous post. 1) boo yah, that's great! Now if it only got through. 2) I knew about the pope. He's swell. Also tumblr's new hero. I've only heard good things of him. I believe the world is on the verge of change, my friend. And I dare say of a change to the better. 3) I forgot what else you said so who cares. That was it basically. Oh yeah, the parent thing is so cool! I have also heard (from a... occasionally very reliable source) that scientists have also discovered a way to fertilize an egg cell with bone marrow. Which sounds awesome. But I have no idea if that's actually true.

Anyway, to the point. I'm going to Canada this weekend, to the family's... cottage/cabin/summer house/idfk. It's a four hour drive, so I'll be forced to read or something. Which would be great, 'cause I really want to read. Damn you Internet for being so much more stimulating! *shakes fist* But yeah.

Things are going good here. I'm already accustomed to the routines and stuff. I also just finished my third gallon of milk (which makes 11.3562 litres). It seems a lot, but in the end it's like 8 dl per day. Is that a lot? I honestly have no idea. Why am I talking about milk.

I have discovered Netflix, which is soooooo much better here in the US. I mean, in Finland you could only watch TOS, but here I have ALL the seasons! Or at least TNG, which is all I care about at the moment. But I'm not actually watching Star Trek at the moment, I started rewatching Merlin! Yaay! I have a very limited time and countless new series to watch and what do I do? I watch a show I've already seen over half of! Brilliant! Also while I will miss all the shows in Finland (like The Mentalist and NCIS and whatnot) I think I can watch most of them in Netflix. So I won't be missing a thing! Huzzah! (Yes, I like TV, sue me.) Also they upload the new seasons of most shows when the DVD is released, unlike in Finland. I mean they don't even have the second season of Sherlock up! It's been three years people! THREE YEARS! But what ever. Also the awesomeness that is The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. started this week. It seems epic.

I was supposed to talk about Canada, but it seems I have no idea what's gonna happen so I can't really say much. Besides TV is always better. Ehehehehehehe...... I should go out more...

Well that's it for today. Ciao!

Pie out.

Stuff going on with the world

Good morning.

 Though it's not morning here nor there.

I feel like a lot of cool (possibly quite big) things have been happening during the last week in the world. You seem really busy and tired and I assume you have no time to follow the news, so I figured I'd make a collection for you of the most important (well, the ones I find most interesting) ones from the last week.

164069 names
This is probably news only in Finland, but still. You know they've been collecting names to make equal marriage law happen in Finland. The time to collect names finished on Thursday, and the final number of names was 164069, 114069 more than it would have taken to get the parliament to start processing it to possibly make it happen. Of course that doesn't yet mean that the proposal will actually go through, because we have a bunch of people in the parliament who who see it as an accomplishment that they have prevented gay marriage to become legal on this term. But people are hopeful.

The pope
It was actually news to me that there is a new pope. The old  one had apparently died when I was in Australia and failed to hear about it.
Anyway, he had said some day last week, that the Catholic church has to get rid of its ridiculous obsession of thinking abortion, contraception and homosexuality are bad things. And it seems to me what the pope says the Catholics believe.

No methane on Mars
For a long time a bunch of scientists have figured that there is methane on Mars, which would indicate that there might be life, because organic life is the main source on methane at least here on Earth. Now Curiosity (which I still think is the most adorable name for a Mars rover) has analysed the atmosphere there and found no methane. Which sucks, because people were just getting excited that there might me life on Mars, and the lack of methane would indicate there isn't. It doesn't mean there isn't, but the chances just dropped a long way. So that's disappointing.

A kid with three parents
And I don't mean a kid who is taken care of by three people. Nor of uterus rental, which can be counted as having three biological parents. I'm talking about a kid having three genetic parents. There is two kinds of DNA in our system: the DNA in the nucleus and in the mitochondria of the cell. Sometimes there are some mitochondrial diseases that are passed on in the mitochondrial DNA, which very much sucks. Now scientists in Britain have figured out how to avoid passing the damaged mitochondrial DNA to own, genetic kids. Basically they take an egg cell from a healthy woman, remove the nucleus and insert the nucleus from an egg cell of the woman having trouble with the mitochondrial DNA. That means the kid will have mom's DNA, dad's DNA and another mom's mitochondrial DNA, three genetic parents.

Space and time and quantum physics that I don't understand
Some physicists figured out an easier way to make quantum physics calculations, before it was very very difficult, and now can be done using geometry and is very much easier. But it's still quantum physics, so...
Anyway, before the calculations were based on the assumption that the existence of space and time cause particles to interact but now, with the new ways of doing the calculations, it seems the interaction between particles is what causes the space and time to exist. I wish I understood this better.

Hmm... That was somewhat less stuff that I thought it'd be. On top of this there have been some terrorist attacks somewhere, but I think the things above are more interesting. There is always people attacking someone somewhere. Also I think there have been elections in Norway and Germany. (I'm starting to think my understanding of the phrase "big news" is somehow twisted...)

Facebook tells me it is international book week. Or maybe it was last week. Anyway, the point was everyone should take the closest book, page 52, and write out the fifth sentence. So I did that.
"No, I was only fooling," said Ford, "We are going to die after all."

So that's something for you to think of for a week.

 ~matu

Just go with the flow, ya know

Good morning Mutu, it's already Saturday where you are. But it's still Friday here. So haha.

All week I had these awesome ideas about what to write here, but alas, I don't remember any of them. And frankly I am too tired to try and remember them. So this week's blog will be...

~~RANDOM SLEEPY THOUGHTS~~
in no particular order

So my first official week is coming to its end, and like most people I really look forward to the weekend. Y'know. When you have time to go out and socialize and party and drink and stuff. (read: stay in bed all day with your computer, watch youtube videos and possibly go out for a minute to buy ice tea or sth.) So yeah. I've gotten really into youtube recently. It started with the vlogbrothers, but it has spread. My current watchlist is filled with a lovely British gentleman called Dan. He's cute. Sooooo socially awkward. I would want to be his friend and we could be all awkward together. Anyway. I've also been tumblring a lot but that's nothing new. Maybe someday I'll talk more about that. There really is too much for me to go into right now.

Do you ever feel so tired that you kind of feel like you're not even actually inside yourself? Kinda like you're operating on autopilot. I'm not quite at that point yet, but it's not far. I just stopped typing for five minutes and I no longer have any idea where this was going.

Um. I have all these TV shows I want to watch but I don't really have time. What with taking care of the kids and you know. Sleeping. But now it's weekend so maybe I'll finally have some time to not do anything. Also I've been feeling really artistic lately, so someone. Give me an art prompt. Please. Previously I drew my top ten Disney heroines. That was cool. They all turned out pretty good, expect Jasmine, but I drew her like three different times in three different spots and now I can't be bothered to give a fudge.

Welp now I've gone from "tiiirreeeed but must do stuff" to full on automatic. I mean really. I don't feel anything. The next step is usually the "collapsing in on myself" weird feeling in the chest area. Is that normal? That doesn't sound normal. But as much as I'd like to go to bed and sleep for 12 hours straight, I can't really go to bed yet. Also I still wanna watch some videos. The internet is not good for my sleep schedule.... But who cares.

I'm just gonna go now. The longer I stare at this screen apathetically the longer till I actually go to sleep and the less I will get to see lovely dreams.

I had a dream last night. There was... a ghost. It did something and then we had to get rid of it. And-

NOPE.

Good night everybody!

Pie out.

WFC2013 and school

*insert something that you can start a blog post with*

So...

Now, after having established I do not know how to begin a blog post, I have two things for you today.

1. I don't think you heard the news yet.
A week ago or so I somehow ended up checking out if Patrick Rothfuss is ever in Europe. Just in case you don't know who he is, he's the writer I've been going on about for half the summer. From US, but US is far away. That's why checking if he's ever in Europe.
Turned out he'll be in Brighton, England, on the first weekend of November for World Fantasy Convention 2013. A day later I had gotten myself a ticket too. So, I guess I'm going to UK to a huge fantasy book convention. That's cool. Though I'm pretty much panicking every time I think about it.

2. School
So as you know, a couple of weeks ago I returned to the university after a year and a half of just hanging out and doing nothing. (Well, actually I did a lot of stuff, just not any studying.) Every time I'm there I feel like I shouldn't. That I don't belong to the academic world. Which I don't, really. I don't want to study and I don't want to take tests. This made me feel guilty, because seriously, I live in a country where university fees are literally nonexistent and the quality of education is among the best of the world. The I realised what my real problem is.
The problem isn't the being at school itself. I'm a curious person, I really like knowing all the cool things they teach us there. The problem is the tests. The problem is the papers I will have to write. The problem is all the tasks they give me, that cause stress and seem to suck out the joy of actually knowing something. The problem is I still have to do those things is I want to be at school, and that I have to graduate. The society expects it of me, and if I don't do as the society expects me to, I will end up cleaning churches or sitting at the check out counter in a grocery store, which I really don't want. But with only papers from a high school there isn't much people will let me do.

And that, I have a feeling, is a small problem.

I value smart people, and I value educated people, and I value knowledge and understanding. But this society works in a way that just knowing things and understanding the world well and complexly isn't enough. You have to have graduated in order to be noticed. You have to have a PhD or a masters thesis written before people believe you actually know something. Knowledge is valued, but only when it comes from a person who has a title that says they know something about it. As if a title and grades tell your actual knowledge about the thing in question. I'm aware that if someone had a PhD in biology, they very likely know a lot about biology. But people shouldn't assume others don't.
 I would love it if it was possible for me to just hang out at the university, attend classes that I find interesting. Learn just to know those things, and not to pass a test.  Remember what I find interesting and important, and use that wisdom for what I want. But I can't. If I don't progress in my studies I won't get money to live (since the amount of money students get in a month are so huge...), so I'd have to get that somewhere else. I just can't get a proper job, because I'm not highly enough educated.

That's actually another point. People can do a lot even if they're not experts. Look at dad. He did a whole assessment on whether jathropa is a good plant to grow for biofuel production with the help of a group of high school students. Not only them, I admit, but people with very little (10-12 years....) education can do a lot if they're given a chance.

... Where was I?

Right. I know that grades and papers from schools are a way of finding out who has the most knowledge, who has the deepest understanding. But there should be another way of showing your capability and your wisdom without having the papers of an engineer. Like the Ridiculously Old Fraud, in the fourth season of House, that House didn't end up hiring. He wasn't a doctor, just a guy who had been a cleaner person at a university and had seen all med school lectures enough times to be just as qualified to be a doctor as any of the other applicants. Just didn't have the papers.

I'm just saying. Knowledge without papers should be more appreciated. Or rather, it should be knowledge and understanding that we value, not the titles and grades themselves. I wish I had an actual solution to how to make that work.

So, there's some thoughts of mine from the last couple of days.

I went outside the other day, and realised it's suddenly become autumn, the colors shone bright. I could smell the cold starting to slowly creep to the world again.
Winter is coming.

~matu

PS. Why don't I see a tardigrade yet?

Awesome log, star date 67167.4, apparently

Hello World, I am across the puddle.

This is Pieta today, and I bring you great news. I am finally at my host parents house in Brookline (Massachusetts) and my bag is unpacked. The family is still in the middle of moving things into this new house, and I have no idea if I should be helping out or what. Uh, a lot has happened. But I don't know what to tell you about it. I stayed in New York from Sunday to yesterday evening in a orientation thing. It was fun. The person who talked to us, Joan, was really interesting. She was fun to listen to. My room is big. Like one and a half times bigger than my room in Finland. But there's not so much stuff in it, so it seems too big. I also have my own bathroom which is kinda weird, but very normal here I assume. There is a bath tub. I think it has bubbles. <3

I don't really know what else to tell you. It's four in the afternoon here, but eleven in Finland, so I don't know if Mutu will read this until tomorrow. But hi! I'll get right on the icon thing as soon as I have time.

I really want to talk to you about something cool, but I'm too tired to come up with something right now. So, Matleena, I'll hear from you on Tuesday. Bye~

Pieta out.

Awesome log, supplemental.

 I forgot what I wanted to say. We went out for Korean food. I think it was Korean. I managed to order the one dish that I had tried before and didn't really like. Then we went to a grocery store. There was a lot of people. Apparently there's a(n indoors) swimming pool nearby that I can go to, so yay! Swimming! We also have a grand piano in the living room now. Maria is a great player. I mean, oh my god, I would pay to listen to her play. I really don't know what is was I wanted to say, the Kirk smiling on my bookshelf distracted me. I'm going to bed now. I'm tired.

Pieta out.