Quantum Mechanics and How It Relates to Everything

So my friends and I have developed a theory. Because of the fact that I can relate every single topic in any class back to quantum mechanics, we've come to realize that it is connected to everything else.

After this idiotic hypothesis, I began ruminating upon how everything is connected. It reminded me of an honor band I played in this February at a university...The conductor was a Hungarian man, well aged, and he would go on tangents for ten to twenty minutes about music theory, science, composition, anything...it was incredible, and I learned quite a bit of random trivia. But the number one thing that I learned (that I now remember) is the fact that everything is related to everything else. Though oftentimes we learn about subjects completely separated, they're more interconnected in the real world than we can imagine. Take music and history, for example. Music has developed with the times and evolved with culture, but we completely ignore this in most history classes. International relations and mathematics? Completely interconnected during the scientific revolutions of the Cold War. Name any two subjects, and I'm sure that by some distant link, they will be connected.

This reminds me of the six degres phenomenon among people. It's said that you know or are related to most (if not all) human beings by six degrees of separation. I don't have a good example on hand, but I've been provided many, and it really is interesting to consider. It's incredible that I'm most likely related to Albert Einstein by six degrees. By that same token, many of the people we fight in wars are our brothers - related in six degrees or less.

Band awards night

So tonight was band awards night-it was tons of fun just because I got to hang out with everyone there. But another great thing was the fact that many people got the recognition they deserved for all the hard work they put in during the year of band. I was more than pleasantly surprised when I won a few awards and received a gift from the outgoing seniors-the low brass toy basket.
Pretty freakin epic.
But on the other hand, there were some people that I believe deserved recognition and definitely didn’t get it. One of my friends worked as a TA for our band directors for her lunch hours, and she got tons done behind our backs. So I personally thanked her myself.
I guess this post is for all the unsung heroes of every average day that make life what it is. For all the people that take the thankless, often unwanted jobs and go the extra mile when getting them done. We love everything you do, though we don’t necessarily know who you are.
Also moms. Especially moms. And dads.
Yeah.
Anyway.
Stay adventurous!

Pre-departure Orientation

Yesterday -Saturday, May 12- my father and I traveled to a Lutheran church in the region to attend my region’s Pre-departure orientation. It was an exciting and very educational event. I learned what to expect when I travel to Japan: cultureshock, challenges, and loads of fun. Though I knew this was coming up for a very long time, this event truly made real the fact that I am going to Japan this summer. I was (briefly) able to speak with some Japanese students that actually came here on exchange for a year themselves, which forced me to realize that I must face my anxieties involving speaking to native Japanese students.
I believe (or at least hope) that as time passes in Japan, it will be much easier for me to speak with natives. I’m sure that as I become more adjusted, it’ll seem like nothing.
I’ve finally received my departure dates. I’ll be leaving June 15th to attend a 3-day Japan-specific orientation at the University of Berkeley in California (if I remember correctly).
The fact that that’s about a month away is simultaneously frightening and exciting.
So that’s my update for this week. Hopefully, I’ll get more information soon enough. Of course I’ll be posting it here.
Stay adventurous!

Morality: my stream of consciousness

After finishing off my music theory exam today, I decided to ruminate on the meaning of morality.
I decided one thing quickly: it’s very difficult to define.
I started with morals: the beliefs an individual has relating to the logic and emotion of interacting with their surroundings, especially as related to other humans.
This led me to the conclusion that it is very unlikely that less-conscious beings do not have morals or morality, as they are functions of social extensions to the brain that have synthesized with primal and intellectual feelings of right and wrong.
Following this, I pondered what morality then meant. I believe I have settled on something like: the -highly subjective- measure of how right or wrong an individual perceives a specific action.
These thoughts reminded me of a comic from a beginning Buddhist’s book about the strict and lenient ways one can follow a code of conduct. Its message delivered the idea that strict adherence can lead to negative consequences (ie, one shall not lie: what about hiding Jews from a nazi patrolman?), as can a lack of morality entirely (resulting in a highly materialistic, often careless point of view).
I’ll edit this more later; I’m off to bed. Goodnight!!

Explosion of AP Exams (rant part 1)

At my high school, we've been having AP Exams stuffed down our throats. Now that they've reared their head, I'm finding I'm pretty darned stressed. Two this week, two next week. It was my own decision to take these blasted, challenging exams, though, and I don't regret it. They're preparing me for what finals week and even normal tests will be like during college. And they really force me to focus on my classes: which exams I want to do very well on, and which I don't particularly need a 5 on.

This year, for example, I'm taking the AP Japanese Language exam. I've only been studying Japanese for three years, so why would I do that? Well, it's more than likely that I'll be majoring in the language, I absolutely love it, and I'm going there this summer, so why not push myself? No one else has ever gotten a 5 on the exam in our district, so my goal is to familiarize myself with the exam this year, and then take it next year to receive as high a score as possible. I've accelerated my studies extremely, and have found it to be an adequate (if not a little overwhelming) challenge. Learning 300 kanji within a matter of two months (when I decided to take the exam) is quite hard. But I've been managing.

From this kanji study, I've learned that planning for these things is no joke. I procrastinated for a while, and now have been studying like hell to get as many of them down as I can. I'm a little afraid that I won't be as prepared as I liked...

But that's why I did that this year and not next year, when the score really matters to me. Because we can afford to allow for preparation slip-ups, and even failures, I'm willing to risk a 2 or 3 on the exam this year. Though it will drop my AP exam average and prevent me from receiving National AP Scholar, that won't matter when I enter a high-level Japanese program in college because of my exceptional score.

And hey, it's a larger lesson in planning. I hadn't anticipated the size of this task, mostly because I hadn't thought about it much after I took it on; now, I'll know to look to the future when I'm taking on a project as large as this, to plan better.

Addictions: Hours into the Night

There are millions of citizens of first and second world countries that spend hours upon hours indoors, hooked up to a monitor, up for all hours of the night. Is this a new revolution in entertainment, or a detriment to natural human life? I’ve been asking myself this question for months now, as I’m one of the millions under the same spell.

We can share loads of media over this internet. I mean, just look at social sites. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, even google+ (*tch*). Thousands upon thousands of people are constantly posting information about their lives, about what’s going on around them, what interests them and what they hate. There’s so much interaction now, how could this be a bad thing?! The world is so much smaller, and ideas spread so much more quickly! We simply can’t be losing anything.

Welp, that’s just it.

What with the trend in the necessity for instant gratification that started after the World Wars (buying things on credit), we’ve been losing sight of what we actually have as opposed to what we own. Sure, you might have a huge 80-inch TV in 1080p, but what does that do for you other than expose you to mre media that promotes bigger, better TVs, and a bigger, better life?

Exactly. The material possessions we have are absolutely meaningless except when considered in their own context. We waste so much time just sitting and doing nothing – what with games, television, and the endless stream of content on the internet, that we hardly even exist in the real world anymore. Few people are outside on a beautiful day in the park, and some will even look at you weird if you just lay down by a creek and take a nap if you aren’t in a campsite. I mean, what is the world coming to, that we can’t live our lives outside of our own homes, detached from the things other people made?

I myself am attached to my instruments. I know I truly own them (or I will, once I pay my parents back). I play them every day and produce something the world has never experienced before – sound that is uniquely my style, uniquely me. Not one other person can take that away from me – my instruments are my own, and my voice will always be with me, even if I have no tuba, piano, trombone, or drums.

Music Review 01: The Black Keys

I sure am late to the party, but…

The Black Keys have been rocking my playlist recently. Their sound has something to it that other modern rock bands just don’t possess. I’d attribute it to their blues/rock fusion: in many songs , they use distortion that gives them a ‘dirty’ sound, and back this with a driving yet minimal drum line. Their blues style focuses their lyrics around the woes of life: many of their songs scream of long-lost unpleasant exes that were worth it for a week but not a year, and of losing brothers or family to death or time. This bluesyness also sets them up for tons of minor-key riffs, which just pulls me in when I’m not in the mood for anything particularly bright and fluffy.

If you’ve been listening to any radio that plays modern alternative, rock, or blues, it’s more than likely that you’ve heard one of their most popular songs: Howlin’ for You. If you haven’t give it a listen. It’s exactly what I began talking about earlier: got the driving blues sound, wailing for life.

What surprises me most is that this band was originally composed of just two guys: Dan Auerback and Patrick Camey on drums and guitar/bass. These are still their primary members, but when their songs branch out into multiple different instruments, they have enough renown to hire backup instrumentalists.

I was introduced to this style of music by my brother Kyle a while ago, and didn’t particularly buy into it at first. After a while, the anger and sadness of it seeped into me, and I felt a resonance with it all, eventually coming to love this blues. Now I’ve expanded my repertoire, but I’m still looking for new bands to listen to. If anyone has any suggestions, please, post in the comments your ideas.