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I saw some weird show on the History Channel, and I didn’t catch all of it, but some scientist was talking about not being able to grasp the immense amount of luck that the Earth existed, was habitable, developed life, and then managed to sustain it long enough for it to evolve into intelligent life. He said, “Imagine if you took that one step further– how incredible are the odds that you and me exist today?” How incredible are they I ask?

I have no clue what the odds of a universe forming are. I’ll leave it at 1:2, but science can’t grasp that yet since no one knows how a universe comes about after nothingness. The odds of ending up with this specific star are 1:10^20 (since that’s the number of stars in the universe). The number of star systems with planets is between 5% and 20% (as the universe ages, this number actually increases because more heavy element stars arise– but I digress) so we’ll say the odds of our solar system developing planets is 1:10. The odds of a planet forming within a habitable radius of the sun is roughly 1:10. The odds of developing life on a planet within habitual regions is given at a generous 1:100. The odds of that life developing into intelligent life is also 1:100. The odds of your parents meeting and marrying is 1:100 (again, very generous). The odds of your exact DNA resulting after meiosis is 1:10,000 x 2 for both parents. The odds of your sperm fertilizing the egg is 1:20,000,000.

From this drunken, shitty math, and completely unscientific survey (unlike when Baseball Tonight tested as to whether the disgust with Barry Bonds was race-motivated, not at all because of the cantankerous attitude and of course, the steroids– now THAT’S a scientific study), the odds of you arising assuming a clean slate and still many factors that I’m going with 1:1 (odds ancestors do exactly as planned so you are born– this has to be like 1:a really big number) are… 1 in 8 x 10^39. That’s 1:8,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Pretty long odds, huh? Out of all the things that could have happened, you ended up here, on Earth, orbiting around the sun, being born on your given birthday, in this given era, to your given parents, who have their given ancestors, with your given genes…

Ever wondered what happens when you put something in the microwave… that shouldn’t be put into the microwave. Well, odds are you haven’t followed through on those thoughts (unless you live in my apartment and think nuking a frozen can of Keystone is an effective and safe means of defrosting it). Completely ripped from David Letterman’s “Will It Float?”, I’d much rather ask the question of “Will It Melt?” anyday.

British people are fucked up. Except Tony Blair. Props to TB. But seriously, whose idea was it to come up with a game where you ride around a track in a shopping cart, avoiding traffic cones, trees, and booze (you can tell the game doesn’t originate in Ireland) while gobbling up burgers and floating clocks in this race against time? Alright, British people may be fucked up (after all, they call shopping carts, “trolleys”), but someone has created a game that’s annoyingly as time-wasting as good friend, the Kitten Cannon.

Another little internet program I’ve been using for quite a while is the Pandora music system. It’s created by some hippie art majors called the “Music Genome Project” when they realized that their sole job openings pertinent to their study was high school band teacher. But now that I’ve said that, I love ‘em, since it’s actually pretty nifty. Each song is essentially “fingerprinted” so you start by choosing a song or artist/band that you like, and Pandora will play songs that are musically similar. Lot of good songs, by a lot of artists you never heard of. Hey, whaddya know– you’re indie!

And my “kind of computer nerd, but not really on par with the rest of the Cornell community” moment of the day– Songbird. This program has the potential to be an iTunes replacement in the same way Firefox replaced IE and Thunderbird replaced Outlook. When v1.0 is finally released, it should have pretty much all the same features as Apple’s iTunes (save for the store). You can add songs, search for them, edit tags, build playlists, burn CDs, sync your iPod; all that jizzityjazz. The nifty feature should be the fact that, like Firefox, it allows for extensions. Some already ready for the launch of v1.0 are things like Audioscrobbler notifier, Wikipedia artist/song/album lookup, and countless organizing features. Others likely to come with the launch or shortly thereafter are extensions that will pull up lyrics (or even scroll them on the screen while the song is playing– so I’ll NEVER forget another word when I’m signing “and I-I-I-I-I-I, will alwayyyyyyys… love you-hu-hu-hu-I-I-I…”), code that will download the artwork for a song and actually embed it in the mp3 file (a feature that iTunes 7 sorely lacks), and countless other features that will give your run-of-the-mill Asian just a little bit of a hard-on.

Bitch.

I figured you’d drop in to see what condition my condition was in. (It was actually on iTunes)

DiffEq went poorly. I can’t believe I couldn’t remember the double-angle formula– that’ll cost me. Probably from an A to a B. Aced Bio, but only got an ‘A-’ for the class. What is this bullshit? The professor e-mailed me the grade breakdown he used– curved to B-, gave 5 out of 410 A+’s, gave another 23 A’s. So 28/410 got ‘A+’ or ‘A’. I apparently finished 31st in total points. Fuckin’ A. Synoptic went pretty well– should have a solid A in the class. LA is either A or A+ depending whether or not the professor deems my car accident to be a worthy excuse for missing a lecture, and A/A- in debate. Fuck debate.

Spent all night cleaning the apartment. Everyone else left (although I was the one that told them it was OK to leave, Dan had already done a lot, Dev’s too, and his parents were there, and Shimoni had a final at 9AM) and then I realized how much more work had to be done. Rooms had to be vacuumed over again, (and the fucking vacuum broke at 3AM). Ran out of paper towels, began to use tissues and 409. Bathroom had these weird yellow (under the bathmats– I never miss, even when I’ve had one or two or twenty) marks that took a while to scrub out. Had to use some sort of soap and scum removed in the bathtub that apparently made toxic fumes when I mixed with bleach. Yeah, that was definitely my bad. Like sticking my finger in an electric socket stupid. Had to clean out the freezer, cabinets, rearrange the closet of storage, wipe down all the countertops, throw out all the crap left in all the rooms, clean underneath the cushions on the furniture… If this doesn’t sound hectic, note I had to be out by 7AM because we are turning our apartment over to the new leasees. It was a great apartment; I’ll miss it– I’ll have to make them invite me to their parties next year.

Just like that. Blink of an eye– senior year is ovah. 3/4 of college is done even faster than I ever imagined it could go by. Gonna have to enjoy myself next year– I’ll be twenty-two next summer! I’ll probably prolong the real world by getting my Masters or Doctorate, but still… This year I didn’t get out enough– too much bowling, work, and laziness. Twenty-one is a powerful number. Also a fourteen person house should provide for some entertainment.

Back in T-Town for a couple weeks before Geneva for the rest of the summer essentially. It’s going to be boring. Call me. I’ll keep you occupied. Or crash your car.

Speaking of cars, got a new car– 2001 Dodge Stratus. Gold. Huge antenna (chics dig it). Sunroof, automatic starter, purple pinstriping. Yeah, it’s as fucking hot as it sounds. Apparently it was owned by a 16 year-old girl in Harwinton. Fantastic. At least Brandon’s probably excited. About the 16 year-old, not my car.

Oh, Scrubs sucked. This season was absolutely abysmal. There were one or two good episodes (I liked My No Good Reason and My Cold Shower), but nothing that even approached the peak of seasons three and four. Not enough hospital and too much personal lives on the outside. They’re trying to turn it into Friends; but the show is funniest when it remains between the walls of Sacred Heart. And the storyline of JD continually acting like an immature five year-old dealing with this kid is pretty retarded too. Not quite as dumb as even hinting of putting JD and Elliott back together though. Colin Hay’s new album made an appearance however. Props where due.

How gay am I for having written a paragraph about the plotline of Scrubs? Seven?

I have every episode of Spin City, Arrested Development, and The Office– as well as forty-five episodes of CSI (the Las Vegas one, the spinoffs are crap) that I haven’t seen. Which to start with this summer?

This was such a shitty post. I’m dumber for having written it. Broken ramblings? I need sleep. Zero hours is just not enough. Night all, I’ll have something worth actually wasting your time reading later.

I forgot how crazy the libraries can be during finals week. I have been on-and-off studying for DiffEq for the last week or so, and with it’s impending arrival of… tomorrow morning, I trekked to Uris this morning. Arrived at around 11, and sat there for three or four hours. Apparently, the general Cornell population wakes up between 11 and 3, since I was able to readily find my own desk in the Cocktail Lounge early in the morning (if 11 is considered early)– however, while I was packing up my things, three girls (separately) eyed my seat, and when I left, I glanced over my shoulder to find all three of them making a mad dash for the now empty chair. I turned back forward and continued walking towards the exit, all the while envisioning swinging purses, pulled hair, random shrieks, and serious fingernail rakes as the logical progression of events. I’m not sure who got it– in hindsight I should have taken offers and gotten something out of the deal.

I technically won my first ever bowling triple crown this semester. High average, high game, and high series. I’ve won high average in more than a few leagues before, but I usually end up losing one or two of the others– mainly because I don’t really have a penchant for throwing up the big games. This semester I managed to throw six out of my 36 games at a 245+ clip. (My average should have been even higher, if not for the random 166’s I’d throw, like the last week). The competition wasn’t insane, and my main challenger for high average didn’t show the last week, but I’ll take what I can get…

Like I said, it wasn’t completely unexpected, but I’m pretty happy– I ended up being in the top 50 average differential-wise in the country from the X-Mas tournaments on too, and without the blemishes (blemish being an understatement) at Penn State and here, I likely would have made a little more noise on the regional/national scene than I actually did. I’ve decided we’ll spend the summer working on technique under the tutelage of one Dirk Ridley (when I’m not hangin’ in Geneva, NY), and hopefully come back refreshed next year for one last shot at sectionals and All-American. For once I think it’s my physical game holding me back, not the mental part, which has traditionally been the case.

For some, it’s all they wanted, and when they get the chance they make it seem so seamless. Others slowly evolve, and achieve it only after a somewhat lengthy transition period. While others just can’t do it. Whether that’s lacking the mental capacity, desire, or just out of fear of life, I don’t know.