Not Going Away and Random Thoughts

Well, posting every day hasn't happened so far.  Still, I'm settling into the work routine, so hopefully I can find some time to post more often.  Definitely don't want this blog to disappear, so I will definitely still be updating it.  Now, the title promised some random thoughts...

Maybe it's because I just started working at a medical newspaper, but why isn't the Ebola thing a bigger deal?  How many times have we gotten all worked up about some sort of silly flu epidemic that turns out to be nothing, but this has been going under the radar?  Sure, it's getting some attention now that Americans have it, but I just don't know.  Swine flu was a joke, bird flu was a joke.  Ebola is no joke.

People driving in urban areas have the worst planning ability.  They pass people in the wrong lane, try to get back over when they run out of space, and they probably all wonder why there's so much traffic.  Hmmm...

I've been having trouble with hooks out on the golf course, so this past weekend at the driving range, my younger brother (who is very good at golf) and I tried to fix it.  Everything we tried made the ball go further left.  It was aggravating.

Work has forced me to rediscover something that I have not known in a very long time: sunrise.  I would say it's nice, but I'm still getting up before 6 AM, and nothing about that is nice.

Update on My Blogs

I've decided that trying to keep three blogs updated is just not feasible anymore.  I could barely do that with all the free time I had, and now, I've got a new job starting this Monday.  So, much less free time.  What does that mean then?  Since this was the original blog, I'm just going to do everything here.  There will be less science and less golf related news overall, but they're not going away.  I still want to blog, but I have to be realistic here, I can't do three at once.  I'm aiming to do at least one post a day, maybe two if it's not a busy day.  I think I can manage that, at least.

My Twitter

Trademarking Pi

Apparently not even mathematical constants are safe from copyright laws.  Someone got a trademark the symbol for pi followed by a period, which is silly to begin with, and is apparently very determined to keep their trademark.  Now, I don't really care about this shirt store that has a bunch of pi shirts, but this entire thing is just baffling.  How could the U.S government give a trademark for that?  Are we going to have issues using the pi symbol in mathematics now because it looks suspiciously similar to this guy's trademark? 

Honestly, this sounds like a made-up story, and it might be yet.  I hope it is.  But I trust that particular news source, and considering all the details, I don't think it is fake.  I think this is only going to apply to shirts, I don't think we'll have to find a new symbol for pi because it got trademarked, but really, that symbol should never have been trademarked in the first place, in any capacity.

On a completely unrelated note, this is 100 posts for this blog.  It may have taken 321 days to get there, but considering there was basically a four month gap of absolutely nothing, and that I've split my content into three different places, it isn't terrible.  Just thought I'd point that out.

My Other Blogs
Science Universe
Cool Golf News

My Twitter

Internet Comment Sections

Let's face facts here, internet comment sections are terrible.  They just are.  Sure, there might be the very occasional bright spot in most of them, but 99% of the posts are just not worth reading.  Youtube comments have the worst reputation, but honestly, I don't think they're the worst.  A couple of Youtube people I'm subscribed to actually have comment sections that aren't immediately terrible, but I think that's more attributable to the fact that they are channels based on a video game with a very small, devoted fanbase who in general know what they're talking about.  No, in my experience, the worst comment sections I've ever seen are on the CNN site, which I suppose I shouldn't find to surprising, but somehow it still does.  I have literally never read a single comment on any article that I felt added something to the discussion. It's awful, but I think that it's just as much the fault of journalism tending towards the sensational in order to attract the worst parts of the internet, who have absolutely no attention span and constantly pipe into discussions despite having absolutely no knowledge on the subject, or worse, incorrect knowledge.

Where am I going with all this?  I've seen a lot of internet comments over the years, I've cringed, I've beat my head against a wall at the sheer brain-melting stupidity, and it has conditioned me to never, ever comment on anything.  I know that I would definitely add something to the discussion, but I've trained myself to believe that anybody who comments on something else on the internet is a terrible person.  I don't want to be like them, so I don't say anything.  I know that's not true, but the conditioning is there, and it's difficult to surmount.  I don't even use social media that much anymore for the exact same reason, and it's the same reason doing blogs has been such a chore for me.  I convinced myself that there isn't a single voice on the internet worth listening to, not even my own, so I basically shut myself out completely.  It's slow business overcoming this, I have a Twitter, but I know I'm not using it properly, and as for the million other social media sites out there, I am completely clueless.  I do have these blogs.  It's a start, anyway.


My Other Blogs
Cool Science News
Cool Golf News

My Twitter

The Rereturn

So, I've just graduated from college, and I am currently unemployed.  Glad to be finished with school, I'm looking forward to real life.  Since I've recently acquired roughly all of the free time, I'm making a comeback here.  Hopefully.  I've said this before.  But honestly, in this case, I really don't have anything better to do than this.  And I do want to make a habit of this.  Back in August, I just wasn't quite into the routine of this yet, so when things got busy, this blog got dropped.  We'll see if I can keep this going.  Will I back tomorrow?  It's an excellent question...