It has been about a month since I last updated this. I really just haven't had much to write about. No exciting political things that I felt like expressing my opinion on, besides the fact that Osama is dead, but I think we're all in agreement that's win, no specific instances that bothered me to the point where I needed to rant and no real exciting events other than maybe my graduation. Okay I suppose graduation is a big deal, but to me it didn't feel like it because I still have to finish field school before I get my diploma, so it was more of a formality for my family to have a chance to all see that they were a good environment for a kid like me to be smart in.
Over the last month I've had a lot of time to do nothing, which has been mostly filled with video games and seeing friends. I spent a while in Logan visiting Alyssa and that was good. It wasn't necessarily the most pleasant time I've spent with her due to illness - but we had fun. I went back up a weekish later for GSA (aka geology nerds unite) and sat there for 16 hours opening and closing files while I supposedly took in information on peoples research of the past year. What a dull experience that was. Luckily my attendance fee of well over $100 was covered by the fact that I was the guy opening and closing files.
Alyssa and I hung out with Joe and Amanda a few nights ago. It was surprisingly fun. I normally hate being around married friends, but those two don't act like annoying newlyweds and I think having a female of my own around made it more acceptable to me. I went to a bar last night and realized what I realize every time I go to a bar; I don't like bars. I've also spent the last two nights playing Minecrack with my friends. Minecrack (Minecraft, but you call it crack because it's addicting like drugs) is basically this game where you build stuff... Ryan described it as "first person mining" and that's pretty accurate. You mine stuff, then you make stuff. I would basically say it's like Legos meets Doom 64 graphics meets unlimited creativity. It's probably unhealthily addicting.
I am on a vegetarian kick again. We all know this happens about once a year anymore. I got curious and clicked on an ad put out by PETA which was probably biased and targeted at the things I've posted about myself on the internet, but it was pretty gruesome. It was a video about how commercial farming is done. Now naturally I'm sure they took the worse case scenarios, but I've seen concurring information on shows I've watched on commercial farming on Discovery as well. This video just happened to be a little more graphic. It showed the living conditions of animals which are raised for food and it's just wrong. It's not really a matter of opinion or necessity or food chain. If you want to argue that route go hunt a deer, that's food chain. Commercial farming is just immoral.
Yes domestication is probably the single most important contribution to modern civilization. Without it we'd still be nomadic wanderers and human population would total in the millions. However, do we really need to eat so much meat that animals have to be raised and treated no differently than a stalk of corn which is produced for commercial farming? Humans are omnivorous. In fact grains are the thing which we digest best and our teeth are built for a mostly grain/fruit/vegetable diet. Our canine teeth are pretty weak sauce compared to most carnivores. Why then do we have bacon for breakfast, a hamburger for lunch and chicken parmigiana for dinner? I don't know, I guess our society is just accepting of that. However because of that we need so much meat that animals are raised and killed in incredibly unnatural ways that really is just wrong. This isn't even about the killing, things die other things eat them. That's natural. Sorting male chicks from female chicks for extermination because they don't grow fast enough without a chance at life, clipping the beaks off the chickens so they don't harm each other and having them live in cages no larger than the chicken itself for the entirety of its short life while it is raised to be fat and then subsequently killed for profit is evil.
By the way, compared to the pigs, cows and seafood - the chickens appeared to get the best treatment.
Anyway, for once I'll actually be doing my month long vegetarian thing not because I want to be healthy and live to be 100, but because I think those freaks over at PETA might be onto something.
Hey look at that, if I just type long enough I end up ranting about something. Anyway, goodnight. Thanks for reading.
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