3rd Planet from the Sun Day...

Silly, but apropo.  We're destroying our planet willingly.  I call that stupid.

Ok, that was yesterday, but I was busy yesterday so today is my Earth Day rant.  I love Earth Day.  And in the near future, I'll write about how I feel we're treating the Earth.  I know that's what the day is really about; finding out how you can help promote people friendly ecosystems and living with our environment rather than destroying it.  But today, I'm in a strange mood.  Thusly, I'm going to talk about days.  No, not another time rant, I'll have plenty of those in the future.  Yesterday was Earth Day.  A day dedicated to a small spherical body hurtling through space at an unimaginably fast rate as it spins around a massive ball of plasma that emits enough radiation to cook you in a second.  Yep, we live on a spaceship.  And we celebrate that spaceship because it's all we have.  But why stop there?  I figure soon enough we'll be sending people to the Moon and Mars.  At first it will be exploratory visits, but eventually I figure we'll be living on those planets.  So, will we have a Moon Day and a Mars Day then?  I mean, we have a day to celebrate pretty much everything else, so why not other planetary bodies in the solar system?

One's a dead ghoul of movie fame, the other a star in the
constellation Orion.

I can envision Jupiter Day, where we all celebrate Galileo for his discovery of the four major moons of Jupiter, and possibly celebrate the existence of life on other worlds.  I mean, Europa is possibly the most probably place to find life in our solar system other than here on Earth, so let's celebrate life elsewhere, too!  Then we could have Saturn Day, where we all hula hoop to celebrate the greatest set of rings in the cosmos (that we know of, and as a side note, if you haven't looked into a telescope to see Saturn's ring system, you're truly missing out, they're amazing).  Of course we could have Betelgeuse Day, and celebrate by watching Beetlejuice all day since they sound so similar.  And of course we'd have to have exoplanet Day, to celebrate all the other Earth like planets we're finding out there, and the not so Earth like planets, too.  We're finding enough so that everyone could dress up as their own planet and no one would have a duplicate costume!

There are so many planetary bodies out there.  I mean, we could all have Pluto Day, but that'd probably get renamed Dwarf Planet Day, and then we'd all have to feel the pain of demotion to a non-Federal Holiday for that one...

In the meantime until all these planetary bodies begin to be recognized with their own days, I'll have to live with plain old Earth Day, it is, after all, the only one we have.

Getting back in the habit...

Once again, I have put off writing that which I feel needs expressing.  I tell myself that my time is too valuable to waste writing meaningless words on a meaningless page to be view by only a handful of people.  And to those people, their time is too valuable to waste reading my meaningless ramblings.  Well, in an effort to make this more meaningful, perhaps I'll tackle a topic that is of some import and rather close to my heart.  And perhaps that will make this more meaningful to others as well.  Or maybe I should just write and let those who read be the judges of what is meaningful and what is gibberish.  You all decide...

These are 9 of the most intelligent legal minds in the
United states.  Let's hope they get this one right.

So, a few weeks ago there was a case before the Supreme Court involving California's same sex marriage law. This law, which was actually an amendment to California's state constitution (known as Proposition 8), barred same sex couples from being married in the eyes of the state, but that didn't stop same sex couples from forming a domestic partnership/civil union (depending on your terminology).  A domestic partnership gives same sex couples almost all of the rights associated with marriage, yet not quite everything.  So, this law effectively states that it's illegal for a man to "marry" another man or a woman to "marry" another woman.   It keeps the term marriage solely in the realm of between a man and a woman.  So let's look at why they would want to do this.

Before this guy, it was the
norm of nature to do whatever
you wanted in bed.

I'm not a big student of this topic, so I'm going to give out the first thoughts that come to my mind on the subject.  Marriage is a religious extension of what was already a common practice.  The development of Christianity was especially important in this development.  Prior to Christianity, most religions allowed for and in fact urged for polygamy.  In nature, having more than one partner is often advantageous for the species.  Passing on your genes to multiple partners allows for a greater opportunity for your genetic line to live on in future generations.  Indeed true monogamy in nature is exceedingly rare.  So, for humans to go from being polygamous to monogamous, was a creation of our own, because we were above all that and it was proper for us to only have one wife and to be faithful to that wife (or husband if you are female). So it seems to me that people that want marriage to only be between a man and a woman are doing it for religious reasons.

That brings us to the separation of church and state. This concept (in the United States) was created with the Constitution, but also specifically from the Bill of Rights.  The founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson key amongst them, derived the separation as being vital to the growth of the United States as a place for all people, free from tyranny.  Jefferson is credited with coining the phrase in a letter he wrote in 1802.  So, why  now, after 200+ years are we back to allowing our government to dictate what is essentially a religious matter?  If marriage is a religious matter, as my argument states, then there should only be marriage in a church, with a priest or pastor or other high religious official presiding over the ceremony.  Marriages by Justices of the Peace or other court/civil official shouldn't be allowed either.  At that point, it is the right of the church to decide who can or cannot be married based on that religion's beliefs.

If we allow marriage outside of the purview of the church and make it a governmental entity, as it currently is, then the government cannot enforce religious ideology upon the title.  Therefore, if we allow marriages to exist in the eyes of the government, the government has to follow their own rules (including the separation of church and state and other Constitutional rights afforded everyone).  If the government dictates that they allow married couples to have certain rights (i.e. tax breaks, social security benefits, etc.) that unmarried individuals or couples, then it certainly appears that the government is allowing the term "marriage" to be under their purview.  So, what rules does the government need to follow?

Thurgood Marshall, who would later become
the first black Supreme Court Justice, successfully
argued the Brown v Board of Education case for
the plaintiffs. Chalk one up in the win column
for common sense and intelligence! 

Well, lets start where the Supreme Court has to start with, the Constitution.  The first amendment guarantees the rights to free speech and religion. So, they can't stop same sex couples (that what this is all about again, in case you lost the point of my ramblings) from saying they want to get married or from practicing a religion where it's ok to be married.  The 9th amendment grants the people rights not explicitly stated in the Constitution.  There is nothing in the Constitution about limiting who can or cannot get married.  So it's up to the people to decide that, and therefore they can marry whomever they want to (ok, that one's a stretch). The 14th amendment, specifically the Equal Protection Clause, guarantees everyone the rights of the Constitution, and that those rights may not be abridged by state or the federal governments. This clause has been repeatedly attacked.  The most famous of these cases were Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. the Board of Education, Kansas.  Plessy intimated that it was ok to have separate but equal facitilites for blacks, while Brown reversed that ruling stating that separate is inherently unequal.  That's how it was applied for Civil Rights fights.  For this argument, the decision of Brown also had the benefit of determining that the Equal Protection Clause established that everyone had equal rights regardless of the color of their skin, race, or gender (further codified by the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote, proving that gender should not be an issue when it comes to rights people have).  If state or federal governments state by law that "married" couples have rights that unmarried couples have, then they cannot dictate who can or cannot be married, if they do, they are discriminating against a certain set of people based on their gender.

You'll notice that for that last paragraph I removed the word "sex" and replaced it with "gender."  This was on purpose to further my argument.  Same sex couples are couples composed of two men or two women, as opposed to a couple composed of one man and one woman.  So, California, by stating that replacing one of the partners (a male or a female, genders) with a partner of a different gender, that couple can no longer become married and receive benefits and rights associated with being married, has violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment by discriminating based on gender.

Shades of segregation popping up again in California's
Proposition 8 battle.

So, what have we learned here?  That California is infringing on the separation of church and state by bringing religious ideology into the debate about same sex marriages.  California is violating the 14th amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America by discriminating against same sex couples based on gender differences.  They might as well be saying that a white man and a black woman can't get married.  Hopefully, the Supreme Court knows their own laws well enough to understand what is before them; the lower courts did by overturning the law. The Supreme Court doesn't always get it right (see Plessy), but I have no doubt that eventually, they'll get this one right.

3.14 = PIE

Nothing like math you can eat.

Happy Pi Day (March 14th is 3/14 which is the truncated version of the number Pi)!  What's the big deal about this, you say?  Not much really.  It's a day that's dedicated to a mathematical number. A number that is widely used to figure out important things in science.  And science is important, obviously with applications throughout the universe, but specifically to me.  And since it's my blog, I'm celebrating Pi Day!  But I've noticed a few things.  It seems to me that there's a lot of social media talk out there about today. Most of it comes from a few pages that I've found and have come to enjoy and love seeing on Facebook.  The first is a  page called I Fucking Love Science.  Despite the use of language, which I for one, love (but others have apparently taken offense to) this site boasts daily updates on science news.  There is always new and innovative information coming out of this site.  I love getting the info into my news feed on my own Facebook page.  I also enjoy the satirical humor pictures that are often interspersed into the posts.  Most are cerebral pictures that you have to think about in order to get the humor, but some are just sillyness that you can't help but laugh at.  Two other Facebook sites that I've found that are awesome as well are Science is a Verb and Epic Lab Time. All three share their posts with each other and often repeat info, but I'm cool with that because that's how science works.  One person shares their findings with others, who in turn  document and verify the information as accurate.  There's also several great YouTube channels out there dedicated to science experiments and facts (VSauce is one of my favorites). The internet is a wonderful invention that has really helped science explode to people that otherwise wouldn't know about it.

Science is one of those subjects that you either loved or hated when you were growing up.  Your teachers either injected you with the love of the subject or drained the life out of you.  I remember my high school science classes vividly.  I loved my biology classes (I and II) because of the subject matter (the biology I teacher was pregnant and missed half the year), enjoyed my physics class because I had the coolest teacher ever (Here's to you Mr. Ragland) and hated my chemistry class because my teacher couldn't bring the subject matter to life (all I remember from it was that there's something called Avogadro's number which went with something called a mole,not the animal, I enjoyed learning about moles in biology).  But the seed was planted, maybe even long before then (I remember doing my 3rd grade science fair project on "making" dinosaur bones).  And I continued learning science after high school, as I went on to receive a bachelors degree with a major in Geology from the College of William and Mary.  There I did my senior thesis paper on the taxonomy and taphonomy of two fossil cetaceans (whales) I had the privilege to dig up in King and Queen County, Virginia.  Then I also had the privilege of working in the Paleobiology department of the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum in Washington, DC.  After that, I kind of got out of science for a while.  Although I tried using my geology degree for some time, to no avail   Finally, I became a science teacher myself and needed to relearn a lot of the information in order to disseminate it to my students.  I did so with great vigor and enthusiasm in the hopes of becoming the best science teacher I could become.   I only hope that my students find me to be more interesting than I did my chemistry teacher.

This won't be the last time.

It seems that my favorite topic so far has been to discuss time.  Time is so interesting and everyone has a certain view about time.  Therefore, my take on it is unique and I enjoy sharing my views.  Besides, I've got all the time in the world right now, and I might as well use it for something.  I certainly don't use it properly.  I waste more time than I care to admit.  But that's not what I'm here to discuss today.  I remember hearing about a phenomenon with time when I was in college.  I didn't think much of it at the time, as the only time I cared about at that time was Geologic time.  And those periods of time are so long, that it's hard to imagine the finitely small amounts of time that I'm going to be discussing right now, that it didn't really matter to me.  I'm not intimating that it matter to me now, but at least it interests me now.  The phenomenon that I heard about popped into my head when I started writing about time here.  So, I did a little digging, and found out some more info on it, that way I could competently expound upon the subject.

Whether you believe the story about
how Newton "discovered" gravity...

...he was the first one to describe the affect.
He did so in this book.  It's a fun read, you
should check it out. 

So what am I talking about.  I refer to the often overlooked and little know fact that time isn't constant.  I may have mentioned that before.  But I want to reiterate that fact. More specifically, I'm referring to the effect that gravity has on time.  Gravity, it turns out has a huge affect on time.  Well, huge if there's enough gravity.  To truly understand what I'm talking about, we have to understand gravity first.  We all know about Newton and the apple story, and his "discovery" of gravity.  I have a hard time calling it a discovery, since it's always been there.  I mean, people weren't flying off the Earth before Newton coined the term gravity.  He was just the first person to put a name to something that was always there.  Anyways, gravity is something that is inherent in all object.  Everything in the universe has gravity.  The sun, the moon, Earth, you me, this computer, the speck of dust floating by this computer, even protons, neutrons and electrons, some of the smallest known particles each have gravity.  The gravity that you, I, my computer and the atomic particles have is too small to make any difference.  But you put enough of it together, you get a force that we can feel.  That force pulls you towards the center of the object.  Not the surface, mind you, but the center.  That why when we dig a hole, we don't float back up to the surface of the Earth.  Now, how does gravity affect time?

Yup... he was smart.
I love this guy!

Time affects gravity in one specific and important way, the stronger the gravity, the slower time goes.  So let's think about this.  If you live at sea level, time goes slower for you than it would if you lived on top of Mount Everest.  We've known this since Einstein described the affect in his theory of relativity.  But those were just his theories.  Now we've proven it. Well, not me, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.  They used a pair of aluminum ion clocks to measure time so precisely, they were able to see the time dilation difference.   They found that if you moved one clock up a foot, the lower one goes 90 billionths of a second slower.  Just so you can see that, that would be 0.000000009 seconds slower.  So, if you lived at sea level instead of the top of Mt. Everest, which is 29,029 feet (plus about 2 inches every year) high, your life would go .00026 (26 ten thousandths of a second) seconds slower (you'd add that much time to your life).  And yes, that's over a 79 year lifespan, so you're really not gaining much here.  But facts are facts, so if you want to live longer, don't buy that penthouse suite with your millions.  Buy a bunker under the ground and live longer!  Oh, if the original article was too complex, here's where I first saw it. And NASA knows about this, they're pretty on the ball.  So they put this little blip up about time.  It's a fun little watch.

So what else does this apply to?  Well, for starters, if you lived on the moon, where gravity is 1/6th that of Earth's, your time would go faster.  Less gravity, faster time.  If you lived on Jupiter (not a great idea, by the way, the lack of a breathable atmosphere is troubling), you'd technically live a longer life because of the gravity is stronger, thus time goes slower (but again, you'd die instantly from any number of things that Jupiter throws out, including some serious radiation).  If you decided you wanted to go see a black hole (also not the best idea), time would slow to a crawl.  Now we're talking about some serious gravity (they're black because light can't escape their pull, and light is the fastest thing I know of).  And because of it, we're talking about some serious time slowage.  Now, I'm not mathematician and I'm certainly not an astrophysicist, but I know that the time you'd perceive as you approached the event horizon of the black hole would be slow enough that you might never actually realize you're entering the black hole.  In fact, it might go so slow, that time essentially stops and you never actually enter the black hole.  But that's just my musings and exaggerations of the idea, more than likely.

One other thing they were able to prove is what Einstein called the "twin paradox."  I've already talked about this before.  I just didn't know they gave such a cool name.  Basically, this paradox states that if you move faster, time goes slower.  So, if one twin is stationary and the other launches into space, when the astronaut twin comes back to Earth, he's younger than the stationary twin, ignoring the fact that time went faster for him because he was experiencing less gravity. Ok, let's take gravity out of the equation; if one twin is stationary on a completely flat plane and the other runs around for an hour, the one that ran around is younger than the stationary one.    So if you want to live longer, literally, live an active life and don't sit on the couch.

Urban Legends

There are many urban legends out there.  Some of these legends have their reality based in some factual event that has happened in the past.  Some are grotesque metamorphoses of science fact.  Some are just the vivid imagination of someone with too much time on their hands.  Often, these urban legends are told from person to person just like oral history used to be told.  The lines between the legend of the story and the reality of life sometimes becomes blurred.  And with today's technology, email and texting have hastened the flow of these legends, with people often believing the legends as fact because they're finding out from the internet, which is they believe is never wrong. The problem is, the internet is often wrong. Don't believe me?  Fine, I said the internet is often wrong, therefore, since you're reading this on the internet, it must be true, ergo, the internet must often be wrong because you read it on the internet.  No, not buying it?  No problem, just read this article from ABC News. That's a reputable news source that millions of Americans trust and follow every day.  Oh, and in case you're too lazy to follow the link, here's an excerpt paragraph, with a few words italicized for emphasis.  The article is about illegal drug websites on the internet:

               A study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine found that popular Internet search engines

               tend to direct users to sites that appear to promote drug use and provide incorrect and even dangerous

               information.

But, this is about ILLEGAL drug use, so yeah, I wouldn't trust what I read on the internet about something illegal.  So what about places like Wikipedia? As a teacher, I often encourage my students to find sources outside of the mega-online-encyclopedia.  But the reality is that I often use it to get my facts straight.  It is fairly reliable, but even the moderators of Wikipedia realize and understand that their product has inherent flaws that they must regularly check for accuracy. Thus, they created a web page devoted to the topic.  Again, here's an excerpt from that page:

               The Wikipedia model allows anyone to edit, and relies on a large number of well-intentioned editors to

               overcome issues raised by a smaller number of problematic editors. It is inherent in Wikipedia's editing 

               model that misleading information can be added, but over time quality is anticipated to improve in a
               form of group learning as editors reach consensus, so that substandard edits will very rapidly be removed. 

               This assumption is still being tested, and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter.

So, I always tell my students to find another source to corroborate the information they find on the website, preferably from a book.

Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman have no problem disproving
the myth that cell phones cause gas station explosions.

What point am I trying to make here?  Something besides the fallibility of internet, of course.  Something that has become an urban legend, mostly because of the internet.  Back in the early 90's as cell phones became popular and readily available to anyone, there was a thought that went around that using your cell phone at a gas station could cause the vapors from the gas to combust causing an explosion.  This idea was spread through the use of emails and later text messages.  The idea was so popular that you often read signs at gas stations asking you to turn off your cellular device so you didn't blow up the gas station!  Well, as we progressed and learned about cell phones, we determined that this just wasn't the case.  Then, on Discovery Channel's show Mythbusters, the two men responsible for the scientifically tested myths disproved the possibility of a cell phone igniting a fire at a gas station.  This episode aired on October 3, 2003.  (Editor's note: I got that date from Wikipedia, which sourced the Discovery Channel's Mythbusters website. It was easier than looking through my DVD collection)

So, you can imagine my surprise last week, while filling up at a 7-11 gas station, I saw this sign, which I have edited to highlight my points of interest:

Point #1 (in GREEN) circles the aforementioned urban legend.  One would think that 10 years after this legend was put to bed, that rational thinking people wouldn't bother with this.  I even checked the Arco gas station that I filled up at today, to see if they had a similar sign.  Nope, no sign intimating that if they made a phone call they'd blow up in a fiery ball of gasoline.  I mean, "NO SMOKING!" I understand.  I get the "Stop Engine" argument.  The fifth point down about not re-entering your vehicle is valid as that could lead to a static electricity discharge at the nozzle, causing the nozzle to catch on fire.  That one's been proven true.  And the last five points, surrounding the "Static Sparks Can Cause a Fire" box are all important to know and follow.  But you DO NOT need to turn off your cell phone. Make a call, text away (it's safer than texting while driving!), take a picture like I did, send an email, or surf the web at your leisure.  You could even watch the video of Adam and Jamie disproving the myth of a cell phone exploding a gas station on your phone while you're filling up.

Point #2 (in BLUE) is just a scary thought.  This thought is that someone said "I have an idea.  Lets put the button that immediately stops the flow of gasoline to the pump as far away from the pump as possible.  That way, when someone does set the nozzle on fire they have to leave the burning nozzle and run inside the store and have someone hit the button, allowing the fire to burn unchecked for at least 10-20 seconds.  Great idea!"  Now I get why they do that.  They don't want anyone to accidentally/intentionally push the button when it's not needed.  But as I said, that's just a scary thought.  But it might just be scarier that urban legends that we know are not true persist in our collective consciousness.  I only hope that we can overcome those lies that invade our lives.  Now you'll have to excuse me.  I need to search the black market for my kidney.  It disappeared last week at a party.  I know because I found a note telling me to look it up on the internet after waking up in a bathtub of ice water...

Life as we know it.

There's a saying... "Life is what happens while you're making other plans."  This is normally only somewhat true.  You make plans, and then follow through with them. Your life follows the plans that you make.  Other people's lives might interact with your plans, but for the most part, the other 8 billion people on this planet don't care what your plans are.  But occasionally, your life doesn't follow through because someone else, someone you've never met, had a plan that either came to fruition, or failed completely, and the effect of that is to totally ruin your plans.

Six degree of Kevin Bacon, one of my favorite games.
But the basic concept displayed here affects us all, all the time.

This affect is most common when there's an accident, say a drunk driver hitting someone's car, thus causing untold carnage.  But occasionally, it's not quite as malicious as drunk driving.  Sometimes, it's a lifetime of bad choices, or at the least, not the healthiest of choices, that cause things to go awry.  And in the end, the those choices don't just affect you.  These choices affect everyone around you, your family, most obviously.  But also your friends, and their friends, too.  It's a six degrees of separation type thing.  For example, "Bob" decides that jumping off the roof is a good idea.  In doing so, he breaks both his legs.  His family is affected because they've come to realize their son is a moron, and now have to take care of the idiot for his stupidity.  His friends are affected because they realize their friend has no concept of reality.  But they're his friend so they stick by him.  Their friends are affected because they have to have the conversations about this stupidity of the action and lose precious time in their lives to this inane act and now have to change their own plans because someone they barely know jumped off a roof and they missed the 5 o'clock matinee movie they wanted to see having a pointless conversation about the stupid action.  Now, this is a silly and completely ridiculous example, that has unfortunately been done too many times (see youtube)  But more serious examples are there to be found.

I'm currently in one of those situations.  A man whom I've never met, made a lifetime of choices.  Be they good or bad, I don't know.  As I've said, I don't know the man.  But his choices affected his children, one of whom I know.  This has caused the person I know a great deal of pain and suffering.  I don't know how to console my friend.  I don't know what to do.  And now I'm sitting here contemplating the situation when I should be doing what I had planned today.  Oh, and on the scale of irrelevant things at this point, the fact that  my plans for the ENTIRE week are now impossible because of this, is a 1 (being not relevant at all when human lives are in the balance). So I have to change my plans, big whoop.  Yet I'm put out because of it and I feel the affects.  It angers me that I have to change my plans.  This was a week I had been looking forward to for two months.  And yet, the fact that I feel anger, angers me even more.  I don't know why I feel anger.  Well, I do know why, and it's a stupid reason compared to the reason why I have to cancel my week.  There will be other opportunities to do what I had planned this week.  Yet because I had to wait for this week to get here, I don't want to wait again.  Or have to make plans again.

Julio Iglesias.  One of my
mom's favorite musical artists

I'm much more of a spontaneous person.  Making plans is not my forte.  And this is exactly why I don't.  Because when you have to change your plans at the last minute, it really puts a hurting on the rest of your life, at least in the short term.  When you make last minute plans, and they don't go through, you've wasted little in the way of time and energy making those plans, so little is lost.  But when it's a long term plan, and you have to cancel the plans, you've spent countless hours in the planning that have thusly been ruined.  I remind myself of the time when I was a kid, and I was playing street hockey.  I ended up taking a stick to the face that caused deep cuts on my forehead and nose.  This seemingly innocuous activity, then caused my dad to have to take me to the ER in order to get stitches.  He had to miss the Julio Iglesias concert he was going to with my mother that night.  I know my mom had been looking forward to that night for a long time, and she probably didn't enjoy it as much as she could have if I hadn't been stupid and hurt myself.  Although my dad probably was grateful for not having to sit through the concert.

Perhaps one day, I'll again do the same thing to someone else. It's more than likely.  My lifetime of choices will undoubtedly cause me to do something and affect my son, who in turn affects those around him, and so on. In this way, it's like a gift that keeps on giving.  Because we're human and we learn from not only our mistakes but other's mistakes as well, we can avoid these things.  But, we're also human, and invariably, we ignore those lessons and do what we want to do anyways.  Thus the cycle perpetuates itself.

Point of view

I generally think Maltin's reviews
 are spot on, but that doesn't mean I'll
 always agree with his review.

Everyone has a point of view.  And, usually, those points of view are different from person to person.  What is pleasing to one person is hideous to another.  What is enjoyable to one person is mundane to another.  So how do we really know what is fun, what is beautiful.  The saying goes that these things are "in the eye of the beholder."  But why isn't there a universal beautiful, why isn't there a universal fun?  It's these differences in perception that make every human unique and individual.  So why then, do we rely so heavily on the opinions and influences of others?  If I, per se, want to go see a movie, but don't know which movie to see, I might go check out Roger Ebert's website, or read one of Leonard Maltin's books on movie reviews before deciding which film to watch.  After doing so, I pick a movie that had a 5 star review, go watch it, and end up disappointed.  I didn't enjoy the movie, for whatever reason.  So why did the critic's perception of this "great" movie vary so greatly from my perception of the movie as a "snooze fest."  Again, it's the intricacies of the human mind and what each and every one of us enjoys or finds pleasurable.  And again, we all spend a lot of time looking to others for confirmation of our opinions. Why do we care what other people think?

I've spent a great deal of my life interested in other people's opinion.  Their opinion of me, my looks, my brain, my girlfriend, my house, my car, my everything.  Why?  Well, for me, it was to gain acceptance from friends and validation that my choices were good ones.  If my friends and family approved of my choice in a girlfriend, then I probably had a good looking one, at least by public perception.  If they disapproved, then probably, she wasn't all that pretty to begin with and I was just not seeing the truth.  But why did I place so much value in those opinions, I've ruined a few perfectly good relationships because I couldn't get over the thought that the girl was "conventionally" beautiful.  She was to me, or I wouldn't have been dating her.  But I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that she might not be pretty to other people and I had to have a girl that others drooled over.  But why?  What's the point.  I've had that perfect girl before, but wasn't ready for the attention that it brought and screwed it up.  I've had the "unconventional" girl, too; the one I thought was beautiful and enjoyed being with immensely.  That one was better for me emotionally, and I had more fun in it.  There's an old song called "If you want to be happy" by Jimmy Soul.  The chorus to the song goes:

          If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life
             Never make a pretty woman your wife
             So from my personal point of view
             Get an ugly girl to marry you
And while I thought that was a funny song growing up, there's a small bit of truth to the song.  "Ugly" girls are more likely to stay with you and try to please you because they don't want to lose what they have.  This is versus the "pretty" girls who know they can get any guy they want and don't hesitate to point that out and reduce your pleasure because of it.  Now, that doesn't mean I want an ugly girl, just that I am no longer going to care what society thinks of my choices.  I choose what I find to be beautiful. I don't need a "trophy" wife.  I need happiness and all that a relationship that gives me that comes with.

But what about my family and friends.  I'm still trying to gain their respect.  My parents don't live my life and my friends don't pay my bills.  I do.  So why should I care?  Society wants us to conform to their standards and many of us do.  I find myself always trying to conform to others standards.  Standards of dress and etiquette. Standards of behavior.  Standards of business.  I've slowly, through the years, grown tired of the standards.  I'm ready to break out of the standard cycle and find my own path.  I don't care what people think of me anymore.  That was my first choice.  I didn't care that they couldn't get my name right or that they thought I dressed like a homeless man.  I don't care that I dress up well and can look like a prince when I shave. I hate shaving.  So why do I?  Only for work, because standard business practices say you have to present a certain image to the public of that business.  For others, it might be hair style or color, or tattoo or piercings that are visible.  While I'm not getting a Mike Tyson full facial tattoo anytime soon, I no longer think of his choice of appearance to be stupid, but rightly of his choice to express himself in whatever

way he chooses. Now, the tricky part to this is that I still want to earn the respect of people I know, especially my family, but I'm no longer going to conform to their way of thinking.  I'm going to hope that they understand that decision and respect me for my choices, just as I respect Mr. Tyson's.  The rest of the standards are going to be hard for me to shake.  I still feel the need to conform to business standards, in that I shave for work, at least those that I present myself as the image of that company.  When I'm behind the scenes, I don't shave.  And often get chided for looking like Grizzly Adams with a crappier looking beard.  But I'm starting to feel like people are using me to their own gain, and not really helping me reach my goals.  So, I'm quickly coming to the conclusion of if I want some help, I need to help myself.  And I encourage everyone else out there to do just that.  If you feel like you do more than expected, put yourself in a better position to be recognized for that work.  Don't expect the boss to see you do it, or reward you for it.  Make it known.  The squeaky wheel gets the oil.  No more hanging back in the shadows, no more tip toeing around people's feelings.  It's my life, and I'm tired of conforming to other's standards.