February 2005 Archives

I've come to the conclusion that while school is superficially beneficial, it stifles free thought. It's gotten to the point where sleep deprivation is actually significantly constricting my idle thinking and pushing my thought experiments out the window. How ironic it is that I have about 100 pages of reading to do for economics this weekend. So, let me explain the dilemma in economic terms. Right now, I'm producing on the PPC (or very close to it), and it's not adequate to comfortably produce the required output. I could forego current consumption in favor of capital formation (sleep, which would improve future productivity), thereby pushing out the PPC and allowing for more comfortable production in the future. However, doing so would require not meeting the required output for a short period of time, which is unacceptable. Unfortunately, my personal sleep economy experiences what one might call PPC-shrinkage: sleep deficits accumulate and cause the PPC to be pushed inward. Thank god that real economies only have things like unemployment and recession to deal with.

Apple just restructured their pricing for iPods: the 20 GB standard model is now $299 and the 30 GB iPod Photo is now $349. I think that I might buy a 30 GB photo model. I could double the capacity with the 60 GB iPod Photo for $100 more, but that also adds some mass and volume.

You know, it may seem rather twisted, but something quite remarkable occurred to me the other day: the penis enlargement-scam industry is so prevalent on the internet that they must actually make some kind of profit--which is a very depressing reflection of the median male population.

That aside, I realized this afternoon that it has been a considerable while since my last blog entry, and many things have occurred. Take this weekend, for instance. Wilson won 2nd at the Mt. Hood Community College speech and debate tournament (losing to stupid University High School from Spokane, for the 3rd year in a row), beating our close speech rival Madison. On the whole, I did terribly though. Our performance in debate was abysmal, as we went 2-2, making this the second worst tournament on record for Colin and I. I was screwed in Radio after missing a round because of a particularly bad conflict with extemp. Even in the two rounds I went to, my previously award-winning Radio was slammed with low marks. One person wrote on my ballot: "The word 'a' is pronounced 'uh,' not 'ay'". But I will have everyone know that the Oxford Dictionary of Current English lists both /ə/ and /eı/ as acceptable pronunciations. Apparently I need more citations, which is funny because the entire basis of my Radio rests on simple economic theory, for which having citations would be silly. My impromptu scores declined for the fourth straight tournament. I think that I'm becoming less philosophic and using less pseudo-psychological analysis, while I'm more definite--apparently to my disadvantage. The only glimmer of light was extemp, in which I finaled and got fourth overall in a very tough final room. After two days of depression, I think that I'm approaching mental stability once again.

I need more sleep...

Today I returned from Seattle where we visited my grandfather who is dying. They gave him a week to live on Tuesday; he may continue a little bit longer than that, but it's unclear. He has Alzheimers, which slowly deprives a person of memory and eventually bodily functions. At the end, a person will lose the ability to swallow and die from lack of nutrition. On Tuesday he had stopped eating and drinking, so it seemed as if these were his last days--and they probably are, although he did drink some thickened juice today and yesterday.

More interesting than the mundane details of vital statistics and impending death, is the manner in which the layers of a person's personality are slowly peeled away under these circumstances. When we first arrived, he was relatively ecstatic (I say relatively because he is bedridden and has difficulty making much movement at all) to see us, and although he did not know our relation to him, he still knew my mother and he knew by my name that I was of some significance to him. Rather than being his grandson, however, he was under the impression that I was my mother's fiancee, and he gave a long, albeit slow and labored, speech about wedding arrangements and how we were his "pride and joy," which he repeated numerous times. Eventually though, this conversational facade ended, and as he became tired the true core of his personality became exposed. For the rest of our visit, whenever he said anything approaching coherency, it was dominated by a pervasive monetary worry--a worry that the business deals would not go though, a worry that the board would do something foolish, a gratefulness for having taken care of the money in the right way, etc. It seems that our environment shapes the most fundamental level of our personality, becoming a masked obsession that is only apparent when we have no other mental faculties to employ. When he was still at home (he went into a nursing home about 3 weeks ago) he would apparently hold board meetings in his room at night, discussing who should sell the stock. After a few hours of slow, light conversation, he once again become a vegetable, totally unable to do anything but mumble a few words. Although he theoretically could be kept alive for months--if not years--with various life-support measures, he's on nothing but oxygen. While the morphine is stocked and ready to be used, he's not in pain; he's merely teetering in and out of consciousness, as comfortably as possible.

While it's depressing to see him rotting away in a nursing with the alien glow of a dim florescent light, the clunk and hiss of oxygen, and the constant attention of just a few family members, his impending demise may be simultaneously sad and inspiring. Although his life will soon be over, it gives me hope that I might possibly approach his 97 years of age with as much happiness and fulfillment as him, and thankfulness that I have so much more to look forward to.

I'm applying for this internship at MIT and due to what appears to be a well-oiled conspiracy, I won't succeed in making the deadline. First, I gave Culpepper the form for the recommendation, and she procrastinated for three weeks. Last week her daughter got in a car accident and she is now gone indefinitely. As if that was not bad enough, something is wrong with the college board website, so I can't print out a copy of my SAT scores. There's absolutely no hope whatsoever. The world hates me.

I just got back from the Linfield Speech and Debate Tournament. I'm going to collapse from exhaustion soon. To sum things up, we did okay as a team taking 5th place in the tournament. I missed the extemp final by 1 point (since there were 56 entrants, 3 and 4 were the only scores that could get into finals), got 4th in radio (out of 54 entrants), and didn't do anything significant in impromtu. I debated with Ted, for whom this was his first tournament. Because of my experience, he was forced to enter in the open division. Given the circumstances, the fact that we went 2-2 was pretty good. Anyway... I can't think anymore...