"Is
is important? You bet your shorts it's important!"
30/11/2005 22:30
++ Last weekend I went home. My parents invited some people over and we had a little party for my dad, his birthday is coming up, but since people go away on christmas they had it earlier. He became 50, he's getting old, but aren't we all? I had a good weekend even though Carlin wasn't able to come. I saw her that same sunday so it wasn't bad. Now we both have to start studying for our soon to come exams.
+A velocidades que tais, o tempo se comprime enquanto o Universo se expande mais, mostra-se ilimitado mas finito; esfuma-se o tabu, esboroa-se o mito. O relógio eterno não existe mais, o tempo é você quem faz.
O
paradoxo do nosso tempo na história é que temos edifícios
mais altos,
mas pavios mais curtos; auto-estradas mais largas, mas pontos de vista
mais estreitos; gastamos mais, mas temos menos; nós compramos mais,
mas
desfrutamos menos.
Temos
casas maiores e famílias menores; mais conveniências, mas
menos
tempo; temos mais graus acadêmicos, mas menos senso; mais conhecimento
e menos poder de julgamento; mais proficiência, porém mais
problemas;
mais medicina, mas menos saúde.
Bebemos
demais, fumamos demais, gastamos de forma perdulária, rimos de
menos, dirigimos rápido demais, nos irritamos muito facilmente,
ficamos
acordados até tarde, acordamos cansados demais, raramente paramos
para
ler um livro, ficamos tempo demais diante da TV e raramente oramos.
Multiplicamos
nossas posses, mas reduzimos nossos valores. Falamos
demais, amamos raramente e odiamos com muita freqüência. Aprendemos
como ganhar a vida, mas não vivemos essa vida. Adicionamos anos
à
extensão de nossas vidas, mas não vida à extensão
de nossos anos.
Conquistamos
o espaço exterior, mas não nosso espaço interior.
Fizemos
coisas maiores, mas não coisas melhores. Limpamos o ar, mas poluimos
a
alma. Dividimos o átomo, mas não nossos preconceitos. Escrevemos
mais,
mas aprendemos menos. Planejamos mais, mas realizamos menos.
Aprendemos
a correr contra o tempo, mas não a esperar com paciência.
Temos maiores rendimentos, mas menor padrão moral. Temos mais comida,
mas menos apaziguamento.
Tivemos avanços na quantidade, mas não na qualidade.
Estes
são tempos de refeições rápidas e digestão
lenta; de homens altos
e caráter baixo; lucros expressivos, mas relacionamentos rasos.
Estes
são tempos em que se almeja paz mundial, mas perdura a guerra nos
lares; temos mais lazer, mas menos diversão; maior variedade de
tipos
de comida, mas menos nutrição. São dias de duas fontes
de renda, mas de
mais divórcios; de residências mais belas, mas de lares quebrados.
São
dias de viagens rápidas, fraldas descartáveis, moralidade
também
descartável, ficadas de uma só noite, corpos acima do peso
e pílulas
que fazem de tudo: alegrar, aquietar, matar.
É
um tempo em que há muito na vitrine e nada no estoque; um tempo
em
que a tecnologia pode levar-lhe estas palavras e você pode escolher
entre fazer alguma diferença ou simplesmente apertar a tecla Del.
"
Our room service tabs had been running somewhere between $29 and
$36 per hour, for forty-eight consecutive hours. Incredible. How could
it happen? My attorney was gone. He must have sensed trouble."
24/11/2005 20:34
++ Hey everyone, today I went to a UPSA academic seminar. Dr. Tweed spoke to us about "Adaptive control and the flow of information in the brain". Carlin went to the event as well, and I was really glad to know that she enjoyed it very much. I have to admit the lecture was really interesting. There was also great food and I got to meet some people from the council and proffesors.
++ Today I also got to finally understand something that never made sense to me about the particle in a box. I could never really picture how something that has kinetic energy but no potential energy can move around in a 1D box. I mean, how much sense does that really make? Well, not much until today. Prof. Serbanescu was saying how a standing wave is analogous to the particle in a box scenario, and a free particle is analogous to a travelling wave. Well, in a standing wave, you have a wave that moves back and forth without ever having to stop and turn. That way of transfering energy in "one dimension" is similar to the idea that the particle in the 1D box is moving constantly but never stops, even though it goes back and forth. I think thats really neat, but maybe it's because I never saw it like that before.
"Caminhos
cruzados "
21/11/2005 23:14
++ Carlin and I have been selected to be part of the UofT team for the Canadian University Science Games. So we will be going down to Windsor in January to compete with other schools on several games. I'm really excited for it, it should be a great opportunity to have a lot of fun and do something different. Today Carlin had her CHM220 test, and apparently it was pretty brutal, I still think she did fine relative to the class, but we'll see. Today I also talked to a really good friend of mine, which I hadn't talked for over 2 years probably. It was really nice to be able to see how things are going for him.
++ Eu e a Carlin fomos escolhidos para participar no time da Universidade de Toronto para uma competição, Jogos de Ciência das Universidades Canadenses. Esse evento vai acontecer em janeiro, e vai ser em Windsor. A minha escola vai pagar pra gente ir pra lá e vai pagar hotel, comida e tudo mais. Hoje eu falei com um gande amigo meu, o Vião. Fazia tantos anos que eu não falava com ele. Fiquei muito feliz que agente conseguiu se falar rappa. Espero que agente possa manter contato agora que vc tá com seu comp próprio.
"Were
you on the subway last friday around 6PM?"
20/11/2005 13:50
++ Well, we were. There was a huge delay on the trains. Apparently there had been some incident on Davisville station or something. I think someone had some sort of fit. The shortly after there was an individual who pulled the emergency button on Sheppard st. So basically the trains were packed and going really slowly. I was supposed to meet Carlin at 4:45. I got there on time and waited for half an hour. Then I thought I screwed up where we were supposed to meet, cause usually Carlin doesn't show up late. So I went up to the Bloor St. and she wasn't there either. So I came back down to Wellesley St. where we were supposed to meet. So around 5:40 she comes and apparently she had been stuck on the trains for the last hour. So we got in, and started to go up to her place (@ Finch St.), So when we got to Summerhill, and the doors opened, the zipper from her knapsack got stuck in the door. She started to worry that it wouldn't be able to close, and I thought it would. Well, after a 5 minute wait, the train was ready to move, but our door wouldn't close. Her zipper did jam the door. So I started to pull her bag away from the door, but I ripped the zipper right out, which was still stuck on the door. The PA announced that we needed to stay away from the door, but there was nothing we could do. So the machinist came and some people around us tried to get it out of the door, with no luck. So he has to take apart the seat so he could maybe do something to close the door. Everyone had to leave the train, and we were stuck there, no train could move cause we were stuck. So the PA of all the stations announced, that there was a problem in Summerhill station and there would be more delay. It's just really funny to think that we were the cause of the delay of thousands of people. You would never think thats something like that can happen to you. Well it usually happens to Carlin :) There were people that even left the station to take cabs. It was a big inconvenient.
"You
just have to learn to love and to forgive"
20/11/2005 03:26
++ As I already mentioned I am going to buy a new computer soon, and for some odd reason I've been thinking that PCI Express slot was the way to go for my video card. I didn't really know how having a PCIe is any better than AGP, I only knew that they are faster, but I wasn't sure how much that really matters in terms of video. Anyway I did some research on it today. It seems that even though PCIe has a similar name to the well known PCI slots, they have very little in common. PCIe seems to have been "inspired" on the design of a LAN, in the sense that it has a "point-to-point" topology. Opposed to other technologies, PCIe has several packets of information, each with a direct path to a "switch", which allows them to only have to worry about their own discrete path. These packets are simply the broken down pieces from the whole data bundles. Another difference in the new technology is the fact that it communicates in a high-speed serial design. This is similar again to a LAN and is also seen in most current devices, such as USB and SATA. The old PCI bus, as we know use a parallel interface. The way things went in terms of design choice sounds strange because in really old computers there use to be more serial ports (COM), which were then substituted by parallel ports. The thing is, those old serial ports were really slow, and they were not able to make a single line faster, so they used parallel design instead. But now we have a different scenario, using different materials and new methods of error detection+correction, and probably most importantly is the increase in speed that both devices, sending and receiving, can operate at PCIe, which allows both to work at really high transmission rates. An x16 PCIe is able to carry 4GBps in each direction, which is huge compared to the regular AGP slots. But as I predicted, that doesn't really affect today's graphics anyway, the thing is I don't know how important this will be in the near future. Even though the prices for this technology are pretty high right now, it is still not a bad investment for later. The questions is how long from now will this technology be really important?
"There
are no stupid questions, only stupid people"
17/11/2005 20:57
++ Today was just a normal day. I got up, ate a half ass breakfast and went to class. But in the afternoon I went to this lecture that kind of relate to my physics class that I'm taking this year. The lecture was on the momentum of a photon, which we've talked about in class, when we discussed "radiation pressure". The problem is when we learn about radiation pressure we always use the momentum of a photon as if it was similar to the momentum of some object with a certain mass. This seems to make sense, and some guy called Abraham supports that theory using some basic formulas for momentum and energy of a photon. But since these things cannot be really observed and measured in real life, it's all sort of speculated. So there is this other guy called Minkowski who looked at this controversy from a different side and came up with an opposite theory. Well not opposite, but he predicted that this momentum would cause an opposite displacement of an object that gets hit by light. So then experimentalists, were happy with this cause now they have two theories which pretty much predict the opposite of each other, and this is a lot easier to prove experientially. Well, it turns out it's not that easy to prove. So much that they still haven't after like 20 years, hhehehehe... Well, but I'm pretty sure I have to go with Abraham's approach on the questions about this stuff on my test. I think most physicists seem to like that one better, and honestly so do I. Just because the other guys doesn't make sense to me, it's over my head. It seems to make sense that if something hits something else (e.g.. Glass cube), it moves in the same direction that the something was going towards. So if you shine light on this glass, it makes sense that the glass will move away from the light source. Anyway, that's what I learn today.
"Apparently
filling in a scantron sheet requires the use of the brainstem postural
centers to stabilize your arm and upper body, premotor cortex to assemble
a sequence of motor cortical and brainstem activity, transcortical grasp
reflex to keep the pencil from slipping in your fingers and motoneurons
and interneurons in part of the cervical spinal cord."
16/11/2005 12:21
++ I just finished my physics assignment and found out that the answers for the PSL302 mid-term are out if anyone is interested. I downloaded a new SP episode, ginger kids, it was pretty funny and weird. But now I'm freaking starving so I'm going to go eat. I wish I had some eggs to make an omelet.
"How
does epinephrine activates a sympathetic response ?"
15/11/2005 22:26
++ Today I tried out for this Canadian University Science Games, which will happen next year in Windsor I think. If Carlin and I go it should be fun. New marks came out today, Carlin got 90% on BCH242, which makes me so proud of her. Specially cause that class is filled with keeners. I got an 87% in my spanish mid-term. Well I can't remember anything else that happened today so I'm going to go ahead and start on my Physics assignment that is due tomorrow.
"Obestatin,
a peptide encoded by the ghrelin gene, opposes ghrelin's effects on food
intake. "
14/11/2005 10:49
++ This weekend that just passed I went home. It was pretty nice, cause I don't do any work when I got home. My sister also bought this new game called The movies which is a lot of fun. Unfortunately my computer can't run it, but thats ok cause I need to study anyway. I'm also getting a new computer on xmas, well I'm buying one. Today I heard this new song from a band of friends from Brazil, their name is 4Drive and I think it's worth checking it out whoever is interested. The song is called 4DRIVE - pra voce... O som de vcs ta muito bom, eu estou muito impressionado com a qualidade, parabens Du Zabani, Viao, Guilherme, Carrara e Gabriel.
"Yo
quiero tu jewgold, passa me passa me."
08/11/2005 23:55
++ I'm so happy, test results for PSL302 came out today and I got an 85%.Only got 4 questions wrong. I can't believe, this makes me so happy, I can't believe that considering the class average was 63% and only 5 people got 100%. Even thought I did better in BCH, this class just means more to me, since I am in a Physiology Specialist. This year PSL is the class I care about the most, so doing well in it is my main goal. Well anyway, I also downloaded some of the new south park episodes. I watched 908, which was ok, it had funny parts in it. Tonight is also the last day I have to write my BIO250 essay, so that is why I have to go now, cause I shouldn't be typing a new post, I should be writing the stupid paper. Well I hope everyone else is as happy as me. As some say: "Cheers"
"Cessem
do sábio Grego e do Troiano, As navegações grandes
que fizeram; Cale-se de Alexandro e de Trajano, A fama das vitórias
que tiveram;"
06/11/2005 21:58
++ Hey everyone, it's been a little while since I last posted. Since then I've been studying a lot for my PSL mid-term that happened on friday. I also got my Biochem mark back and I got 89%, I was pretty pleased with the result and I just hope to do this well on the exam. The physiology test was pretty hard but I think I might have done pretty well on it, the thing is, that it was one of those tests that you can't really know how well you did. I mean you can kinda guess but it might be a surprise. I kind of see my mood after the test to estimate my mark, which isn't always reliable. Carlin has been doing very well on her classes as well. She got high 87 on her Astronomy class, I think. She only said it once so I don't remember if thats the exact number. Now this week she has her biochem test, I know she will do well in it, cause she's hard working and smart.
++ This weekend was pretty good, not much work done from my part but a lot of fun. Carlin came over and we relaxed on friday afternoon and saturday, she was trying to study but I think I took a lot of her time. Then today I went to her apartment and she provided us a nice dinner with Gelato for dessert, it was really good. But now I think I need to start working on my Biology essay, I did my physics assignment already today, but I still have work to be done. I hope everyone had a good weekend too.