last one

this is my last blog for utsa. I have been writing these blogs once a week for the whole entire semester and it has been a long haul. So for my last blog i am going to discuss something me and a friend of mine talked about on our last camping trip. We talked about how only the rich can afford the luxury of bieng poor. This has been extremely prevelant in my life over the last couple of months. As college nears i have not been able to decide if i want to live a life of a nomadic style or pursue my own business. I am practically stranded on the fence line for this topic. I am very strongly passionate against living for societies standards. I believe that every individual should not fall victim to judgement except to their own. Everyone should set their own standards and pursue their own goals and not what is excpected of them from others. Living for others is not a lifestyle of happiness. So one of my goals is to test myself all of the time. Yet when i say test myself i do not actually mean with a academic test or even to see how large of a salary i can make. I wan't to live a life of a nomadic style. Hitching it day by day. Kayaking day by day. Hiking the Appalachian Trial, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail. Kayaking the great whitewater rivers of this country and abroad. Yet these things cost money. Also i have grown up in a comfortable lifestyle in which would be hard to leave. Another one of my dreams is to own my own outdoor center similiar to NOC. This is a proffesion that would make a decent sum of income. I feal as though i have potential to do great things. Not very modest yet i have a different outlook on life than most. So my dilema is which to pursue. Do i owe the world my effort by becoming an enviromental engineer. Or should i pursue a life of less money. If i do this will i regret not putting my life into a "greater good." I am lost as in what to do. This is a very bad explanation of my dilema. However through this i have come to the conclusion that in order to be happily poor you must be rich. The poor always want more. Yet the rich always do too. I want to live with less but have more.

2nd to last one for UTSA

This is my second to last blog for my freshman english compisition class and i must say it was much harder to keep a blog updated than i orginally concieved it would be.
For this blog i think i will comment on the book i have been reading lately and the debate i have been watching bits and pieces of on you tube. The book i have been reading is "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. The debate i have been watching is a debate over Athiesm vs. Christianity (just youtube that there is 15 ten minute sections).
I want to start off by saying that i am a christian with strong views that will not be changed even by the most radical of circumstances. I do believe in god so my view on the situation is biased as one my suspect. However i do think that christianity is the educated route.
First off the book, Richard Dawkins is no genius. Merely, a moron making claims that focus on extremities and non factual basis. He sets up his own scale for determining the level of how strongly you believe in something. None of his views are widely accepted. He is extremely hypocritical. If asked i can explain more but for the purposes of this blog at the moment it is unneccesry. I can give quotes though. He claims that as athiest do not believe in god or better wordered to do not believe in anything they have nothing to prove yet it must be proved to them that god exist. If this is the case then why argue that no god exists when your only arguement is that no proof for god is existant when such proof is existant. Richard Dawkins is no genius.
Next is the debate i have been watching. The same arguements for athiesm are taken generally speaking only with a couple direct literal translations of the bible used as an arguement. Much of the bible is metephorical and as i human and i christian i am sure that nobody understands it all. However, just because it is dificult to comprehend does not make it false and does not mean it should be taken literally. Not all good things come easy.
I have no problem with athiest. My problem is with uninformed athiest who are hyporcrits.

UTC

I visited the University of Tennessee of Chattanooga from Tuesday to Friday of last week. I was visiting for my freshman orientation (which is rather early) as because I will be attending the university next year. I have decided to major in environmental engineering and will minor in business management. I sincerely enjoyed many aspects of the campus. The location was perfect as far as the part of the country of which it lies. Chattanooga is surrounded in an outdoor Mecca. However, the city of Chattanooga while many would considered the city small from my perspective the city is a little on the large side, but nothing that I can’t deal with. The classes are good. I am truly excited about starting studying to become an engineer. My favorite part about the whole university is the outdoor club. I cannot wait to start school for the outdoor club as the primary reason. The outdoor club is a club that is extremely active in outdoor activities from whitewater kayaking (my favorite) to skydiving to backpacking to rock climbing to camping and others. While all I will want to do while at school is kayak the Ocoee River 24/7. However, I do also extremely love backpacking but it just not in the same league as kayaking. The campus itself is aesthetically pleasing as far as I am concerned. It is an outdoor campus with extremely old buildings and big trees with the backdrop scenery as the Appalachian Mountains. While attending the university I will be employed by the universities outdoor program teaching beginner kayaking classes teaching students to roll a kayak. I will also be employed as a slow pitch softball umpire for the campus’s intramural sports. I am unbelievably excited to start school in the fall. I am so excited that until school starts in the fall everything is going to be as exciting as watching paint dry. I do not know how I will remain entertained until I can get out of Texas and into Tennessee. My excitement may be overkill though. There is an extremely slight possibility that with all my excitement I may be disappointed it what life will actually be like. However, I severely doubt that I am wrong in my presumptions of extreme enjoyment. Outside of maintaining a 3.7 GPA I really want to be running class 5 rivers within a year and a half. I also have an extremely distant goal of participating in the Green River Race my junior year and possibly trying out of the Olympic kayaking team. We’ll see.

i'm gonna tell you anyway

I am going to be missing my freshman composition class this Thursday due to the fact that i will be in Chattanooga, TN for orientation for next year. Before my departure TB told me that the class will be discussing science and when it's necessary and when it's overkill. What a good topic to discuss. There are many ideas and views to this topic. It is very much a grey area where the perfect answer is different for everybody yet it affects everybody.
What I think is a simple yet effective answer but not solution to the problem is when we start asking ourselves if it is overkill then its overkill. The more I think about this answer the more I realize that its simplistic nature is complex in its roots.
My answer to such a controversial question is exactly what many would expect, controversial. I believe that technology has caused more corruption than it has good. It starts a repeating cycle that cannot be stopped without a massive die out of the earth’s population. With all this science and/or technology good causes have come such as medicinal advances and electricity however bad things have come such as computers, television, and the internet. These are things that we all love but have caused massive corruption. If outside the spectrum looking in at the United States viewing how technology has corrupted society there are many things to take notice too. One thing to take notice to is how the United States has the most cars per household out of anywhere in the world. Consequently, the United States has become so accustomed to driving and riding everywhere they go that walking or any form of exercise has become virtually extinct and know the United States is the most obese country in the planet. This is due to the domino effect of technology.
I do not want to let my strong opinion on the subject take control of me and began to let my opinions run wild while loosing track of any factual basis. Early I stated that technology has begun a vicious circle that as far as I am concerned is the beginning of the end. This circle starts at the beginning of the earth and lets just say for visual purposes that one revolution of the circle is one year in time. Well as technology has grown over time the earths population has grown this is obvious yet extremely important to note. Technology has grown in ways known and unknown to everyday citizens but most noticeably technology has grown in medicinal advances, computers, engineering, etc. The earth’s population has gained so much numerical value due to technology such as medicinal advances. The earth’s population has grown so big that in order to sustain the earth’s population we must keep advancing technology which in turn will push population growth which in turn will push technological advances and on and on it goes, round and round. Eventually as already predicted by the discovery channel and national geographic the world will get so advanced that everything will be run by the internet to whole new extreme. Technology will be so advanced that there will be an elevator to the moon, NASA mission to mars, cars that drive themselves, hologram pets that can communicate with humans. The world will become so extremely dependent on this technology that it would only take one internet crash for the whole world to go into trauma. At this point everybody will be so dependent on the internet that the one time the internet crash everybody will panic. This crash will be the beginning the of the end for the earth. The root of all evils.

Thanks Kansas

March madness and its madness finally came to an exciting finish. With the final game between memphis and kansas going into overtime for the championship it is hard to think of a more dramatic way to end the tournament. From the beginning march madness was the stage for many upset losses for higher seeded teams to lower seeded teams. This is not abnormal. My bracket did not suffer much from these upsets because a few of them i picked. Such as sienna defeating villinova. The beginning stages of the tournament and therefore my bracket were all well and good. Yet when west virginia beat duke my chances at a perfect final four prediction were sunk. How does west virginia beat a acc contender. I had seen paulus having a magnificent game to upset ucla and go to the final four. I was wrong because they never got their shot. However the three other teams i predicted correctly for the final four. Kansas, memphis, and university of north carolina were all in the final four with ucla who i had not predicted. The memphis vs. ucla game was not one of any inparticular suprise the freshman battle of ucla's love and memphis's rose was proved to be victorious for memphis as their star player rose lead the team to the ncaa march madness finals. Then comes good old kansas vs. unc. Before i began i must mention kansas is nothing but velcro that doesn't stick, hot glue dried on your hands, bird poop in your hair, tree sap on your nipples, they just suck. Anyways, i predicted on my bracket that these teams would meet in the final four and unc would prove victorious. Well damnit i was wrong. The player of the year hansbrough proved to be useless in this game. The best team in the league showed up as a highschool jv team ready to play a wnba team named kansas. Kansas won my bracket got screwed i dropped from first to third place in one game as i predicted unc to win it all. Then kansas pulled upset number two when they beat memphis in over time when memphis's star play rose proved to be useless. This was a great tournament until the final four when my bracket got screwed over and now i have to go hibernate for 11 months until next years tournament because i shall not be seen for all the shit talking with no walking.

island

An island is one of the lonliest placest on the earth. Surrounded, trapped on all sides by water. Nothing near but waves. Only company is that of other islands in an archipelago of which the island cannot touch nor communicate with. A breeze of solitude is in the air. Yet this solitude is not comforting. Nothing more then itself does the island have. The waves act as bars, chains, and disrespect. Stuck in a situation it never intended. Always planning on growing to be a tall prestigious mountain. It becomes seculuded. Hurricanes and tsunamis drown the island with fear and pain. It is unescapable, no other friends around. As though everything has fanished. Yet, it has always been alone. From the outside the island looks aesthetically pleasing, friendly, happy. However, this is far from the truth of the matter. The island is in lust of companionship. Companionship is out of reach beyond the fiersome blows of the sea. The deep thorn of a rose the island must feal deep within its heart. Knowing its own beauty and potential with such a road block. As though a prisinor in jail. As though someone who tried so hard but fell so short and is know locked behind bars. An island must have such mental hardships walking along the sandy shore. Yet their is something so prestige about the island in its misery. Maybe it is the way it manages to portray a place of joy and excitement. Maybe its the potential it has. Maybe it is the solitude. I have a fealing that places such as the himalayas feal predominant of islands. Because they have a higher elevation from sea level. These land locked mountains appear more respectable when in fact from base to summit they are sizeably smaller than islands. These appereances of being superior is only that after all an apperance of more accurately an illusion.
The island is strong and remarkable yet blood is dripping from it. It is hard to imagine a crazy place like an island caged up.

epiphany (or however it is spelled)

Upon my family trip to Pedernales Falss State Park I had a giant epiphany. I am already some what of a modern nature freak or as i say transcendentalist. Back on topic, I realized how not only beautiful nature is but also powerfall (both metaphorically and literally). Pedernales Falls is a great place to sip a taste of nature. With a the Perdanales River running through a boulder feild in a canyon beauty is not running low. Experiencing the power of nature is not running low either with 10 foot waterfalls. The falls crashing upon the boulders after pludging the ten foot drop is only the tip of the iceberg under the aspect of power. This river running through the boulder feild in this canyon happens to be in a flash flood zone. A flash food is power among all other powers. Brown muddy water pushing 15,000 cfs through a canyon strikes you just as that of a shotgun slug would, with lots of energy and momentum, powerfull. With society after such a lust for power i would presume that nature would consequently have a super glue effect upon society due to such an unfathomable amount of power. Society is also greatly thriving upon the image of beauty. Yet the closest many get to experiencing such beauty is the computer screensaver, which hardly qualifies as the same thing. The force driving people from, or suppressing people from experiencing nature is obviously the unnecessary comforts of modern society (technology). In the book "Into the Wild" i read "it is not always important to be strong but it always important to feal strong" to test yourself in ways out of your normal lifestyle. So more should test theirselves by trekking into nature to see what their is to see. Back to Pedernales and my epiphany. I have a longing to share nature with others for the sake of love and preservation. The more people that care the more likely for preservation. I believe the best way to achieve such a goal is obviously to get people caring or intrested. How? By sparking an interest in people of all ages. Again, how? By taking those who do not have a chance for everday experience by finding a love for nature within. For example, take your friends and loved ones to places like rock climbing walls if they like it take them rock climbing. Take them kayaking, hiking, or camping. Sign up kids for boyscouts to see how they like camping. Society obviously still maintains some love with nature. This is seen through obvious signs such as computer screen savers and parks in cities to name a few. Lets put passion for nature back into society. Maybe america will loose a couple pounds at worst.