Chris:

"Remember: you can be your own differential equation fairy. And you can see whether you're a good differential equation fairy or a bad one."


"I won't guarantee it, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I'm finished, second order linear homogeneous differential equations with constant coefficients will be your favorite."

(Concerning biology) "This frog had a heart... not anymore."

"What do you get when you cross an elephant with a mountain climber? Nothing. You can't cross a vector with a scalar."

Chris: "I could use 75, but that's like killing a butterfly with a bazooka."
DSD: "Have you never done that? It's fun."

CC:

"The age of innocence is over and physics is now a matter of life and death."

"The image is as big as the object, even if the mirror is small."

"I got sidetracked by stats in our last class."

"Statics."

"No, statistics."

"I. C. the difference."

Thanks, DSD.

Physics labs. Ich habe nichts damit zu sagen. Nichts.

Ich habe Nummern. Sind sie nicht schoen? Wollen Sie meine Nummern?

Analysis, what? What's that? What's to analyze?

To Be politics:

The situation:
Eighteen women are kidnapped from the western hemisphere by an alien race:
Dr. Lee, American MD.
Kalli, American, strip dancer
Pastor Ariel, American, clergy (Presby.?)
J. Nussbaum, American, database manager
Cpt. Crawford, American, pilot
Ophelia, Mexican, factory seamstress
S. Lewis, Canadian, massage therapist
D. Tyler, American, swim coach
Maggie, American, daughter of the Speaker of the House
J. Lewis, Canadian, daughter
Lauren Krege, American, student
Martinez, Chilean, teacher
Susan, American, deli worker
S. Dippel, German, civil engineer
P. Clark, American, USAF Journalist
Carol, US, college kid (BME, premed)
Kelly, US, college kid (CS)
Nelinda, Chinese-American, college kid (poli sci)

The last, of course, is Sarah Anderson, a student about to enter high school who blends with an alien before returning to Earth (to drop off some of the others before heading back to the alien base). All eighteen are returned to a USAF base by three officers at the base and by Vinnet, Sarah's symbiote.

What are the political ramifications? What happens? Any thoughts?

tbc. Need to work.

New picture posted on the "Und So Weiter" section of my filer site.

"Crystal Dolphin Fae" came about from me wanting to draw more to convey how I think. No, I don't think in pictures, but my thought patterns mirror my drawing style. That's why no one wants to read my code. It's not organized, but it flows. Then it comes to a sharp point. It only makes complete sense to the artist.
That and I was too sick of chemistry to devote my whole attention to the lecturer speaking about the crystal structure and formation of semiconductors.

I will not support the Day of Silence.

I recognize that it has a worthy goal: the cessation of harassment in educational environments. However, its scope is too specific for me to support.

I will not support, enable, or condone the continuation of any gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transexual activities. These behaviors are flat-out wrong according to my beliefs. While I recognize at the very least the futility of arguing that they are unnatural or learned behaviors, I will stand by my position that they are unnecessary, especially in middle and high schools. According to what I believe, no one needs to be engaging in sexual activities in these age groups, and abstinence from any sexual behavior will not harm anyone. The people who tend toward gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transexual activities could choose to abstain, and I believe that is the best course of action for them.

Regardless, I understand the Day of Silence is not about supporting those behaviors. It's about protecting the people. I believe no one can do anything to make them sub-human or to separate them from God's grace. To adhere to that grace, I am mandated to love not only those like me but also those from other cultures, with other believes, and with other habits. In the interest of loving the members of the "LGBT community," I must care for their well-being, physical, mental, and emotional, and therefore strive to end their harassment. The goal of the Day of Silence is this end. However, I believe its emphasis on the LGBT case is misplaced. By all means, include them, but include other groups as more than a side note. Does no one see the racism still active in our country? Does no one hear the stereotyping of the populations of various countries? Does no one note the slander of one political party about another? Will no one fight against the unhealthy images in our culture that lead overweight kids to be made fun of or that bring skinny girls to become anorexic or bolemic?

The pressures degrading the people calling themselves LGBT are wrong, but they are no more or less wrong than those acting against many other people. In all honesty, who hasn't been made fun of? Who hasn't been harassed? It's wrong, but it's not limited to this one population. I applaud the general goal of the Day of Silence, but I won't support it until its emphasis broadens.

As a side note, I don't see what the spread of awareness can accomplish. If you seek an answer from school administrators, you won't accomplish what you seek. Administrators and teachers should have their jobs at stake for condoning any harassment, but they cannot possibly control the acts of other students. There are always empty hallways and unsupervised corners with no present authority. There are always bus rides and bus stops. There is always the neighborhood and the walk home. These are where harassment really occurs: where no one else can see it or stop it. Trust me. I know. You can raise awareness among the student body, among the administration, and among the parents. You can make every person in the world aware of the issue. It won't change anything until the bullies' hearts change. And the parents' hearts change. It won't change anything until you can look around at every person in sight and know that they won't hurt you. It won't change anything until attitudes as a whole change, and that's a tall order. Go, by all means. Change our culture. Teach us to be tolerant of one another. Teach us to love. While you're at it, teach us moderation. Still think it's possible? People are too varied for one approach to work, but universally, all you need to do is change hearts. I don't think the Day of Silence will do anything for that but create resentment, ultimately working against your goal.

A student's prayer before tests:

Any students, writers, or God-seekers reading this: please feel free to submit revisions/additions to this for the rest of us to reference in the future. What is our prayer as we study? For that matter, what is God's role in academics? All responses welcome.

Heavenly Father,
thank you for this work.
Thank you for everything I need to finish it.
This is good.

Please keep my heart focused on you;
keep my mind focused on my studies
so that I may praise you for all You've helped me do;
let the fruits of my studies glorify You.

Let all that is in me praise you
for all the good You give me,
work and studies included.
Please keep me focused.

Sometimes, I feel utterly useless, as though all I am amounts to nothing and as though I could never accomplish anything worthwhile.

Today, as I walked under the cloud-free blue sky, feeling the cold wind trying to sneak into the collar of my hoodie and various layers, I realized that that can't be true.

I am a student at Case Western Reserve University, not some random catch-all college that produces ho-hum alumni, but an educational institute that at times competes with MIT, the third-ranked engineering college in the world (could be wrong on the scope) and often with Carnegie Mellon, another highly-respected university. I wouldn't have been accepted into this incredibly geeky community if I hadn't any talent for it, and I wouldn't hold A's in my classes if that talent had lost its potency.

I associate as an equal with a group of very intelligent, very talented (and some very hard-working, persistent) achievers, and though I am not the best, I don't need to be.
And that's just for engineering.

I am a writer who has attended an international workshop that accepted eighteen young writers that year--with one of my worst stories. I was close to attending a similarly-sized writing group at a Governor's School of Pennsylvania, likely thwarted only by my chosen genre and open will to write any story that appeals to me, whether with my own characters or someone else's. My writing may not be perfect or comparable to Timothy Zahn's or Jim Butcher's, and definitely not to Tolkien's or Rowling's, but it is better--in style, plot, and characterization, to many published books. I have a very real chance of being published so soon as I finish something original in the genre I love--science fiction novels--rather than the one with better publishing statistics and at which I'm worse--science fiction short stories. (Alas, the harm in adoring character-oriented fiction and developing as I write: It takes me 5,000 words to show the progression of a character a short story writer would describe in a sentence. I could do it, I suppose, but only when accompanied by the groaning and tortured screaming of my inner muse.)

These things aren't what life is about, I know, so they should not matter so strongly to me. At least I don't need to be best. I just want to be good enough to have a future in them. To some small extend, they're like the assurance that God will shape me into the person he made me to be. It's not a measure of where I am now, but it is the confidence of what I will become that pushes me to do the work required to get there.