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.

The Hunger Games: Movie/Book

So. The Hunger Games. Huge deal. The new Twilight?
I don’t doubt it.

 It appeals to more than just the romantic mush and bullcrap that Twilight contains: there’s substance that we can apply to the modern world contained within the story. A dictatorial nation has come to dominate the United States. And isn’t that a fun idea? Divide everyone up after their resistance falls, keep them in line, and bam, dictatorship. The world is surprisingly believable, and crafted well enough, though oftentimes I feel as though I’m not getting all the details. Take the Capitol, for example. A huge freaking city that sprawls and has futuristic technology just flourishing everywhere. But as a reader, we’re hardly given a glimpse of this. There is an excuse: because Katniss is always trapped by the constraints of the system. But this cannot explain the lack of resolution when there are scenes that could be extremely detailed, and incredibly beautiful.

When Katniss and Peeta are riding in their carriages, I got the idea of what was happening. All eyes were on them, there was little attention paid to anyone else. But I was simply told that. There were minor demonstrations and maneuvers to make me believe – the fact that the crowd was screaming, the nature of cameras and the comments by the overseers. To me, it still felt like there just wasn’t enough definition.

I’d like to compare this to when I’m devising a situation for my dungeons and dragons players to experience. My writing motto is, ‘show, don’t tell,’ and I do just that when I place them in a new realm. I go to any length to explain the details.

There’s a marked difference between:

“You see two prongs that extend out into the water, forming a bay filled with many ships. The docks are beaten and worn due to their age: it seems as though they could be centuries old.”

and,

“The water laps on either side of the land’s extended arms, glistening in the bright sunlight. The air clings to your skin and makes you feel like you’re half breathing, half drowning due to its saturation. As you glance out into the bay, you see what is easily identifiable as an entire fleet of imperial ships, their trademark white and red sails glistening in the sunlight, no doubt recently painted with the blood of fresh victims. The reek of death crawls up and into your being, and sends a chill down your spine.

Examining the docks, you see that they’ve been around for centuries. The older sections are made from Elderwood no doubt crafted by Elves before they set sail across the Wide Sea. The ‘newer’ sections are made of retained steel, resistant to rust but still not indestructible. They are beaten by the waves and covered in barnacles. The bustle of the bay is dying down as the sun is setting and the Imperial sailors are in the Tavern District.”

Sorry, sunk into a trance there.

Anyway, the contrast here is easy to notice in the Hunger Games as well. There are scenes where not enough is present to flesh the world out…

When the World Ends: Why Are We Obsessed?

Okay, so obsession with the end of the world and the entirety of existence is nothing new. The Mayans were, Christians still are, and many other religions and philosophies center around the world ending. So why is humanity so concerned with its own demise?

I think this originates in our already extremely anthropocentric societies. We're just obsessed with ourselves! The gods - the creators of the entire universe - are in OUR image. Most of humanity (excluding a few certain systems of belief) focus entirely on OUR progress, OUR ideals and interactions, what is moral concerning HUMANITY and nothing else.

So when we ponder the divine, we often consider the end of OUR existence. And we make light of it, too. 99.9% of the time, humans make it out alive, with a good lesson learned, or something crazy like that. It's rare that we ever truly fail when it comes to saving our own asses in our stories.
But of course this is true. Noone wants to hear the story of an epic hero that challenges the odds and fails miserably.

But this is the most likely outcome. And it won't be some crazy meteor, or aliens, or some catastrophic environmental collapse. It will be our own doing. We'll nuke each other and kill everyone off. Or just suck the environment dry until there's just nothing left, and the earth will be as barren as Mars is today.

This still doesn't answer the question: why are we so obsessed? The only real answer to that is because it makes a compelling story. We like to imagine a desolate world where we still find a way to survive, and even thrive. Because humanity has done it so many times already. We've survived ice ages, droughts, and storms beyond comparison. It's inflated our ego.

Someday, this will all come crashing down.

The Elegance of the Game of Chess (as well as a couple others)

After hauling some lumber today for my friend's father, I sat down and played some chess with both the father and son. Its elegance after manual labor was absolutely refreshing. Though I lost both times, it most certainly was a very gentlemanly game of wit and sport. The amount of planning ahead required really gets each player to think deeply about their actions and the possible repercussions of these actions. It's engaging and completely absorbed all of my attention, diverting my worries to the back part of my brain: my only concern was checkmating my opponent, maneuvering my warriors with elegance to eliminate those posed against them.
Playing styles reflect the personalities of the players themselves. I've met many a man who trumps with knights, maneuvering them around the battlefield with grace. Yet there are twice as many than that who employ the more powerful double-rook (castle) combination to devastate their opponents. Personally, I find rooks to be a last resort and a strong line of defense.
Metagame in chess is also important. The air a chess player gives off can make him a respected, intelligent man, or a conceited intellectual there simply to show of his prowess and the fact that he's better than you. I experienced this firsthand myself today when my friend was constantly jabbering about how one of us was going to lose or win. It was greatly distracting from the game, and made it just a little bit less fun...compare that to my experience with his father, who was completely silent, stoic, throughout the entirety of the game I played against him. When he looked me in the eyes, shook my hand, and said 'good game', I felt he truly meant it, and I came to respect him just that much more.

Foreign lands.

Man, New Zealand place is gorgeous. They shot a large majority of Lord of the Rings there, and I've been enchanted with it ever since I watched the movie again with a friend this past weekend. I simply can't draw my eyes away from scenes of nature I've found...
It would be simply lovely to live there, I believe. Especially compared to here in the center of the United States, surrounded by soybeans, corn, and cement-filled towns. Sure, those things exist in nearly every developed country nowadays, but there's more free, untouched land in New Zealand than here, and the ocean is hardly ever very far away. I'd be able to find a job, get food, and live from day to day, appreciating the air I breathe, the sky I live under, and the music in everything I heard.
I feel the same way about Japan. I've applied to live there for 6 weeks this summer on exchange. No matter where I go - whether it is rural or urban - I know it will be an entirely new experience, and get me out of this agricultural wasteland (of nearly inestimable value).
I honestly can't see myself tethered here for much longer than I need to be. Opportunities are scarce for someone with beliefs like mine: I simply need to move, to feel something new. I need different air, not just a different car or a different game to keep me complacent, which is precisely what I'll find if I continue down the prescribed path. I don't know whether this is just teenage angst or a legitimate conflict that I face, but either way, it feels like I should be somewhere different, doing and learning different things. Foreign lands, foreign thoughts and feelings and ideas beckon to me every day.

Hallucinations

Recently, I've been having musical hallucinations relatively often, especially compared to their frequency about two months ago. Nowadays, I'll space off and begin imagining a piece for solo or multiple instruments that I have never heard beforehand, and it will often become uncontrollable and gain a mind of its own, leading me to conclusions I never would have imagined myself. Though the large majority of them are relatively weak, uncontrolled bursts of sound - about a phrase or so - a few have taken minutes from my day as I imagine them, or time before I sleep as they rush through my head. One piece I was particularly taken by began playing just as I fell asleep. It sounded as though it came straight from an NES game...yet I know I had never heard it before. There was some snare and percussion playing on the offbeats, as well as chords being played every beat in a multitude of different samples, but I could not identify the key, nor had I any control over where the music was going. It developed from a relatively simple melodic theme into something I desperately wish I could reproduce now, but I simply cannot remember. Though this may be true, the very fact that I imagined something like it makes me feel incredibly happy: maybe my musical abilities are developing quite a bit more!

They began relatively recently, about one or two months ago. I learned about them just a week or so before they began: I was reading the book Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, which discusses the nature of musical hallucinations and other musical disorders or mental syndromes and symptoms. I'm rather taken with my hallucinations, as they've pleasantly interrupted my daily slog a number of times and made me rather delighted to hear my own imagination creating something without me willing it.

Music 01: Classical Addiction

Recently, I've become addicted to classical music. It's so delectable to the ear! One cannot overindulge on the strings, brass, and percussion. It all began when I tuned into my local classical station around three months ago and heard Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dance Number 5. I was enthralled! It's so exciting, and it evokes images in my mind that I never would have imagined beforehand. I've gained ideas for my Dungeons and Dragons sessions multiple times from such pieces, as well as calmer, more reverent pieces such as Pachelbel's Canon in D Major. What's simply astounding is that each and every piece draws a different image or invokes a different feeling for every person. While many may have a similar experience, not one is exactly identical. Comparing this to our media today, which often provides very uncomplicated material for one to ponder, music is a mentally stimulating playground that anyone with a taste for it can experiment and play upon.

My appreciation for such music has also probably been significantly improved by the music theory classes that I've been taking at my high school. We've learned about pitch, key, rhythm chord structure and progression, to name but a few things among many, and it's greatly improved my playing ability, as well as my perspective on the inherent difficulty in writing beautiful music.

One particular anecdote that displays perfectly the power classical music has gained over me is what happened to me one night during a concert I was playing in for an honors band at a local college. We were playing pieces about death - Rest - and veterans in the army. As my uncle had recently passed on, I couldn't help but think of him. My thoughts trailed also to my grandfather, who was a veteran from World War Two that survived reconnaissance on D-Day at Normandy...I was so touched by the beauty of the music we were playing and the power of my memories that tears welled up in my eyes.

Music has a special kind of relation with humans in this sense: it brings out strong emotions in many of us. It truly is a shame that nowadays, the only music a large majority of the population is exposed to is what the pop and rock stations play on the radio. My father, who had never been exposed to symphonic, chamber music, or orchestral pieces before I began my interest, is in love with it just as much as I am. He's made multiple attempts at becoming musical himself, and has bought guitars and bass guitars. I admire his determination greatly and I'm very happy he's taken an interest in the performances and eloquent mode of expression I have.

Capitalism

When it comes down to things, I've found that this economic system simultaneously disgusts me and allows me to fuel everything that I love doing. I've been struggling with this conundrum for about three months now, and I've found that I can accept it, but I won't be going along the path many others are going down.
My first dilemma is: I cannot see myself going to school for (x) number of years, getting a degree in what I consider to be my 'passion', and going to work for forty hours a week, doing little else. Were I to submit to what is being planned out for me right now, I would get a degree in a stable job that makes plenty of money - work as a lawyer, a doctor, a physicist or engineer - settle down, grab a house, a cute little wife, have babies and die. The fantasies of dream vacations are just that to so many people: dreams. They never truly occur, as they feel to attached to where they live due to their job or their work or their funds. The very thought of being stuck in a suburb for the rest of my life is horrifying.

My second dilemma is: I do not desire what many others desire. Video games have almost entirely lost their appeal to me, as has television and the internet. Buying new things, aside from those related to my passion, is unappealing and frankly stupid: why would you need a new pair of shoes, a new outfit, a new phone, a new anything just because the rest of society says you do? Sure, fashion is always changing, technology is constantly becoming faster and more complicated...
But physics has stayed the same for billions upon billions of years. Nature and biology have evolved at a crawl compared to our technological advancements, yet they are still here, will always continue to be, and are far more incredible than any 'new' thing could ever come close to being.

My desires as of now are rather few:
For a decent amount of food to eat every day;
A small home far from the hustle and bustle of modern society;
To become spiritually centered, using my own ideas;
And to master the art of performing and creating music, as well as to refine my appreciation for it in all forms.

The first two are easily achievable. If I commit to living at the poverty level with very few indulgences, I can save enough money (and gain some from investments) within five or ten years to secure myself a decent home and car with one check.
The spiritual center and revelations, as well as musical experience, will come only with time, which I've got plenty of: once I've isolated myself from this cycle of consumerism, I shall be able to focus largely on those, committing only 8 hours of my 24-hour day five days a week to a simple job that earns me my bread and keeps me saving money and progressing in musical acquisition.

First Blog - New? (...also shameless self-promotion)

After failing pretty hard at committing to my video game blog, I've decided to broaden my horizons. Because I don't play video games nearly enough to ramble 1200 words about them each week, I figured that I should simply blog about life and my opinions, because I have more than enough to go around. This blog is strictly experimental, for now: if it works better than my other blog has, I'll definitely keep it. If this fails as well, I'll recommit and continue my other blog. It's highly likely that if this blog succeeds, I'll be bringing the multitudes of miniseries that I had over to this blog to continue my efforts.

Wonder why my address is unusualunit.blogger.com?
I have some music editing software, and I'm working on producing a couple of techno tracks. They've been in development for a while now. I'll probably publish two or three tracks by April First. If you're in to techno or classical, you should check them out, and follow my soundcloud and/or my twitter for updates and more random crap from me/my friend Shikimo.

Why is this called Inane Ramblings? Well, I'm just a 17-year-old guy, and I've not exactly got a sense of how the world works yet, or what goes on, or even what I want my place to be in it. This blog will likely be a recording of the ideas that fly through my head - I think at a million miles per hour - so that both I and the world can see what I like and what works.

So yeah. Here's to a new beginning.