Scary Thoughts

So, I was thinking about the butterfly affect a few weeks ago. More specifically, how fast could something have an affect on something else? If a butterfly was to flap its wings, it could have an affect on the world around it, but how fast?

My first thought was the speed of light. No matter what I do on the earth, it shouldn't have any affect on what happens on the sun for 8 minutes, right? No bit of light could reflect off of me and get to the sun in less than 8 minutes. (i'm using rough numbers to prove the point, so please don't feel obligated to leave a comment that tells me the exact amount of time it would take for light to get from the sun to the earth)

Then I thought about gravity. If the way physics works like i've been the way I've been taught/been thinking it works, then what I do could, instantaneously, have an incredibally small, but still existant affect, on the path of objects millions of light years away. But that just doesn't feel right.

Fast forward two weeks.

I was bored, so I was watching Nova's "The Elegant Universe" online. Chapter 1, part 3 I think. It was talking about Einstein's view of space-time, i think. And you know what I found out? He was thinking about the exactly same thing that I was, how Newtonian physics believes gravity to be an instantaneous force, and how that doesn't make sense. He thought that you could view gravity as bends/ripples/whatever you want to call it in the fabric of space-time. The speed that gravity could affect something he said, was the speed of light. I can't really explain it too much in words, so you really should watch at least that chapter of The Elegant Universe. (Follow the link, s'il vous plait)

I scare myself sometimes.

Schedule Change Mess: Over at Last

I finally got out of theatre and got into .... well, i'll tell you later. (If you really have to know now, look at the end of this post, you idiot.) Let me tell the whole story.

Last spring, as we were signing up for classes, I wanted to get into Jazz Ensemble. I didn't audition at the time we turned in schedules, so I signed up for Jazz Ensemble with two alternates. However, I didn't audition because I couldn't figure out how to. I figured they would give me my alternates anyway, and stopped worrying about it. (To tell the ironic truth, Theatre I was my first alternate.)

Jump forward to a week before school started, when my schedule came in the mail. They didn't give me my alternates; they gave me Jazz Ensemble! My mom called the school to ask about it, and got through to the band teacher, who told us the horrible news. I couldn't be in Jazz Ensemble; I had to get a schedule change. I went to school two days before school started, and submitted a schedule change. My three choices (in order) to get into were Computer Engineering, Theatre I, and Computer Programming. (I put down theatre because I still kinda wanted it like i did in the spring, and was sure that there would be a class open that I could get into. I mean, I had to drop Jazz Ensemble.)

On the second day of homeroom, I got my first schedule change. I got out of Jazz Ensemble (*whew*), and into Theatre. I went to Theatre class that day, and hated it. The teacher was very strict (not neccesarily mean), and the class was very stressful. (Clare, that means compared to other classes, not my life in general. Sheesh.) So, on the same day, I submitted a second schedule change. The alternatives I put down were Computer Engineering and Computer Programming.

Nothing came in for a week, so I went to my guidance counselor. Apparently, there was a huge backlog of schedule change requests, and mine had not been gotten to yet. My counselor and I looked at the alternatives, first trying to find a course-for-course change and then a 3-course-switcharoo (yes, i can describe it with funny names) to try to put me into Computer Engineering. That failed. So, we looked at my alternatives for a course-for-course change. They only interesting one that I would pass (Creative Writing failing the second requirement) was Marine/Ocean Science. So I told her I would like that. She wrote down on a copy of my schedule the change that should happen, and put it in her stack to go to Ms. Jenkins to change. She told me I'd most likely have the change on the next day (Friday) or on Tuesday (Monday was Labor Day.)

And so I wait. Friday? No change. Tuesday? Still no change. Wednesday? No. My homeroom teacher started picking fun at me for asking about it so much (I stared on the 3rd day of school). Today, Thursday? Nope. I got really worried.

And so during my lunch period today (1st lunch), i went to go see my counselor again. She said she turned the paper in, and it should have gone through. It must have gotten lost between her office and Ms. Jenkins's office. (Ahh. Bureaucracy at it's finest.) She hands me the paper to hand-deliver to Ms. Jenkins. I take it to her office, via asking at the front desk for permission/where her office is. She was printing out the master schedule, and had to redo it because of my predicament. She types some stuff into her computer, and my schedule magically changes. The bell rings, and about a minute later, she hands me a the actual change on paper (my new schedule, signed by Ms. Jenkins, to take to my new teacher.)

So, I take it to my new class, Ms. Staup's, down in the Biology building. They have a different lunch period down there, so I came in midway through the class. They were just finishing some notes of some sort. Ms. Staup tells me where to sit, and I quickly jot down the notes. (No one else was writing anything, but I didn't know if they already copied it down or didn't have to.) She explains this timeline project we have to do, and then while people get started, she finds me the info papers and work for me to get signed/fill out/read/do etc., and gives me my textbook. The class seems to be Marine Biology rather than general oceanography (which is good, i guess). I then (kinda) work on the project, like the others in the class, and get my stuff in order. Bio building has 3rd lunch, so I had 2 lunch periods today, the second with Clare. (Yay!)

So, after being out of Jazz Ensemble and into Theatre I, I'm out of Theatre I and into Marine Biology. It was a mess, but it turned out okay.

Blog Spam

It hit Roshan, then it hit me.

Some spammers have figured out that they can get more people to click on their links if they spam the comments field on people's blogs on google blogger. Hence now I have the word verification to stop it.

Sorry for the inconvenince, my dear readers, but it's neccesary to keep my blog clean.

I think too much.

Remind me to blog about:

perception vs. the nature of the universe (physics vs. thought)
group dynamics
butterfly effect paradox