If you were a dragon and had 3 heads, would you still be one person?

I once made a philosophy major cry.

I had left my head at home, and I didn't think very hard about it, and didn't think that perhaps philosophy majors get a lot of crap and thus don't like answering the repeated question: "Yes, but what will you do with it?" I was genuinely curious. I wasn't trying to give him a hard time. Really. You don't believe me, do you?

I should have asked him why he chose it instead of something else, because he had a plan, I just didn't see what philosophy had anything to do with that plan. It was more sensible to me that someone trying to go into that line of work go for a business major or some such.

But that's pretty much how I feel about philosophy. As demonstrated by this excerpt the 'engineering ethics' paper I just wrote:

Kantian ethics or deontological views entail that since we are rational beings, reason alone can be used to determine what is moral and what is not. The main argument against this view seems to be stupid people. The analogy presented here is a babysitter who spills water on the cat and in her determination to get the cat dry before the adults come home puts him in the microwave. In her capacity for reason, the microwave seemed like the best option. Her reason and intention keep her in the morally right area with deontological ethics. Perhaps Kantian ethics has a learning curve.

That's my favorite version of ethics. The one that involves reason. Sheesh. I should say that this was how the philosophy professor who guest lectured my chemical engineering controls class so non-chalantly discarded kantian ethics, which is why this paragraph is dripping with sarcasm. I was annoyed with him, but the man has years of philosophy training up on me, so I couldn't think quickly enough to argue with him. I could have argued it in the paper, but this was more fun.

I find philosophy interesting at times ... like when I'm on the toilet. Or just spacing in Kinetics class. I often think about why we're here and how in the world we got here and what I really want out of life, etc. Apparently last Thursday was 'World Philosophy Day.' My friend shared a BBC article with me that included four questions 'to make your brain hurt.' It was interesting, because I've actually thought about a few of them before. It was also interesting, because it demonstrated what kills me about philosophy. It's the so amazingly loosely based analogies they love so much. Sometimes it seems like they just say whatever they want, and it automatically applies ... just look at this bit: They get you piece by piece to admit that you are not your body, but rather your mind (ok, ok), and then out of nowhere ... Bam!

what if surgeons imprinted your mental states on two pre-wiped brains: George Bush's and Gordon Brown's? Would you be in the White House or in Downing Street? There's nothing on which to base a sensible choice. Yet one person cannot be in two places at once. In the end, then, no attempt to make sense of your continued existence over time works. You are not the person who started reading this article.

Whooaa there. There's not really any part of this I agree with anymore ... I don't even know how we got here. Obviously I am not only my mental states, but also my experiences--basically memories. And I feel as though if we had the technology to reformat brains and install new OS's on them, we would probably end up with more than one someone running around, so I do not accept that premise, either. Then all of a sudden I am not the same person who started reading the article ... maybe I've just watched too many sci fi shows or have a vivid imagination, but it just seems crazy to rule in that we can copy brains and rule out that there can't be copies of ourselves .... oi.

Don't get me wrong, I find Philosophy to be rather interesting and often useful, but this is just crazy talk ... and it's 5:30am and I'm writing this to avoid finishing my homework, so I should go. Read the rest of the article, though. It's pretty cool!

When I was a kid, I had to *walk* to school ...

I just paid $1.73 for non-ethanol gas. I can't really even remember the last time gas was that cheap. That's a lie. When I was a kid, the thing I remember about gas is that it was always around 97-99 cents/gallon. That was nice, but the times, they are a changin'. I think in high school I paid less than two dollars for gas, but I was perhaps a little spoiled back then and my parents paid for the gas, so I wasn't too concerned. The prices must have crept up while I was away at college where I was in absolutely no need of a car (3 cheers for Boston's public transportation system). I remember something about the price increasing while I was having a little too much fun on the T in Boston but again, wasn't too concerned. Now that I pay for gas and drive myself most places, I'm a little more concerned. And when the gas prices started rising I got a little nervous as I'm sure everyone did. I even went out and bought a new (used) car!!

Alright, so the reason I'm not kicking myself now that gas has gone down is actually that miles-per-gallon was really just an excuse to get rid of my 11-year-old mommy-mobile which was white. I mean, really, do I read like a person who likes the color white?? Not that I wasn't grateful to have the car at all (I was super lucky that my family seems to have so many cars on the brink of not being able to start again ... ever ... RIP, our red corolla). I'm also super lucky that my mother insists that for me to stick around as a dependent and keep their lovely insurance package they have to actually pay for a few of my things, so they absolutely cannot go without paying for my car insurance. Yay mom! Thanks! Not that I couldn't handle it ... it's just, who would want to?

Back on point, gas has dropped 2 dollars here in the past month or so, and it's starting to freak me out. I actually want it to go back up! Because, let's face it, gasoline is not nice. When the prices go up, people start to become concerned with finding energy sources that aren't gasoline, and they were for awhile. I'm still happy with my car, first because it doesn't make me look like I have a couple of 11-year-old kids, but mostly because it doesn't waste as much gas with little ol' me driving just little ol' me around. I'm still concerned with global warming and foreign dependence and all that ... is the rest of the country?

Add to that point that every time I see gas prices it reminds me that we are seemingly in the midst of a 'bagel.' If you don't get that, you should watch more West Wing. The state of the economy is surely the main reason that gas prices are so low right now. I don't think it can be that suddenly the people who have the oil are cool with us ... eh Chavez! What's up, friend?

Uh ... anyway. What I'm (nervously) saying is: Go back up, gas!! Not too high ... maybe around 2.50? Or better yet, just stand still for a little while. Just relax, chill (chillax, if you will), and be stable. That would make me happy. But if that were to happen, surely it would mean the whole economy would have to be stable, and that's a whole 'nother can of worms ... (yeah, that's right--I wrote "a whole 'nother")

Hey, at least there hasn't been anyone complaining about BPA in awhile!

Extra Fancy

You're probably wondering what I've been doing lately. "What are you thinking about, Kendall?" is what you're saying to yourselves. Well, I'll tell you what I've been thinking about, and it's not very many things, so don't be disappointed.

1) The thing I am thinking about most of the time is thermodynamics of adsorption of anionic and nonionic surfactant mixtures. Seriously. I'm in the middle of writing a paper. And it's taking much longer than I thought it would. Hopefully I'll be done with it by the end of this week, but I am writing a blog post instead of writing the paper right now, so ...

2) Failure rate data (is this mentioned only because some of the guys from work stumbled across my blog? ... perhaps, perhaps). Right now at the internship I'm collecting data from everywhere on how often pipes and valves and pressure vessels and pretty much everything fails (in tiny ways, in small ways, in very large catastrophic ways--it's pretty interesting).

3) Whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing for whatever class I'm in ...

4) The new bond movie that was friggin awesome! I love Bond.

5) What countries I'd like to visit/live in. I'll start with all of them on the list, and then stop dreaming and maybe see if I can actually pull off a few. I'm looking into Engineers without Borders as well as the Peace Corps. Anyone know any other programs like this?

6) What I'm going to eat next ... it's not that I don't have anything to eat, it's just that sometimes I forget that food is important ... yeah, it's been that kind of month.

Oh yeah, and at the grocery store today I found 2 different items that were labeled 'Extra Fancy.' Ooh la la. One of them was a bag of rice. really. white, long grain, rice. sigh. and the other item was a bag of granny smith apples, but there were no other granny smith apples in the store, so if there were other kinds that were less fancy than these, they were sold out before the 'extra fancy' which makes me wonder if there's really anything fancy about them at all ...

I think I should change the name of my blog to Extra Fancy Polymers are just a bunch of Extra Fancy mers.

I voted!

I don't know what it is about those little white stickers with the American flag on them, but I really love them. They say "Hey! Look at me! I'm a patriot!" and it's a situation where it's OK to boast! It says: I just voted, and it's cool that we can do that, and it's cool to do it! And it's completely free, and very easy. You just go to your polling place, and pull a lever or punch a card or draw a line or fill in a circle, and you did it! And you get a nice little sticker to tell everyone you did it, too . . . Only I forgot to get mine :-(. I was so psyched about the sticker, but I was so much more psyched to be actually voting that I forgot all about it. Damned sticker. I'm so disappointed, that I might have to make one all on my own. I actually sat outside in my car thinking about going back in to get a sticker ... that's how much I like this sticker.

So I voted, and then I went to Starbucks to get my free cup of coffee just for voting. Turns out you don't need the sticker to get a free cup of coffee. Just go tell them you voted and they'll give you a free cup of coffee. It's good coffee, too!

Today will be exciting. I hope everyone's ready. I should have had a party. What was I thinking? I'm a little disappointed that I can't watch election results in real-time anymore. That made it a bit more fun, but I guess this is better (better? maybe for people who trust news agencies. silly people). Anyway I hope you all have a great day, and I'll sooo be watching CNN tonight after the polls close on the East Coast.