Theory of Relativity !

Strange things can happen when you move FAST...things you won't learn about in high school courses, and won't experience while driving down the road in your pick-up. But these things are still very real, and definitely WEIRD!

Light rays travel very quickly...they cover about 300,000 kilometres every SECOND. This is as fast as anything can travel; nothing can move as fast as light particles.
But if it were possible to build a very powerful vehicle that could move almost as fast as light...perhaps 200,000 km every second...then anyone observing this vehicle as it flashed past would notice some extremely peculiar things happening to it.
The vehicle would appear shorter than normal, and in fact, it would be shorter. If the vehicle were ordinarily 3 metres long, it might now be only 2 metres in length.
If you were able to weigh the vehicle, you would discover that it weighed much more than normal. Anybody riding in it would weigh many times their normal weight.. However, the people in the vehicle would not FEEL any heavier, or any thinner. They would feel and look normal to themselves...but if they looked out the window, they would see the rest of the world moving by, and IT would appear to be shrunk.


If the vehicle were to move faster and faster, getting closer and closer to the speed of light, it and the people in it would continue to get thinner and thinner, while at the same time getting heavier and heavier!
These strange occurrences, as described by Albert Einstein, can actually be observed. It is not yet possible to build a vehicle that will go this fast, of course...the fastest spacecraft only cover about 15-20 kilometres in a second. But tiny particles called 'cosmic rays' that are given off by the sun...the ones that cause the Northern Lights when they hit earth's magnetic field...move almost as fast as light, and their mass can be measured. When they move that fast, their mass IS much heavier than normal.


A much more dramatic effect of moving fast is what happens to time. It seems that the faster you move, the more slowly time runs!
At normal, every-day speeds (airplane speed, for instance), the effect of 'time slowing down' is just barely measureable. You could fly nonstop around the world in an airplane, and because of your increase in speed, time would run slower for you. Everyone on the plane, all the watches and clocks, the plane itself...all would be a small fraction of a second YOUNGER than if they had not gone anywhere!
That experiment has been done. Want to live longer? Spend lots of time on high-speed planes, and time will move more slowly for you. You might live 2 seconds longer than you would have if you'd stayed on the ground.


Things get much more interesting if you fly off in a spacecraft that can go REALLY fast...perhaps 200.000 km per second. Now time is really slowing down. Suppose you and a friend are both exactly 16 years old. He stays on earth, but you go off for a trip in our very fast spacecraft.
Fifty years go by on earth. (It's a long way to the nearest stars!) You return to find your friend is now 65 years old.
You, however, have experienced a phenomenon known as time dilation. Time has been running more slowly for you, in the fast-moving spacecraft. According to you, the trip took only TEN years...and you are just 26 years old!


This effect would seem impossible...yet it has been demonstrated to be a fact. Once again, small particles can be observed and measured. Many are radioactive, which means they disintegrate with clockwork precision. The time it takes them to disintegrate can be accurately measured.
When these particles are accelerated to high ('relativistic') speeds as in our example above, they live longer before disintegrating!

It has been almost 100 years since these theories were first put forward by Einstein and others, and since then they have become accepted as fact by scientists world-wide. More evidence of their validity is also apparent from studies of objects in far distant space.

Random Picture.

This made me giggle.

BOWSE. It is the weekend.

Friday!

The Freaks! Give me some of your other words that are so good to sense and smell, you english major, you! How did your presentations and papers go? Bestest of luck.

-Jewjubean

Whewt!

Chanukkah will fall on the Jewish year 5767 : sunset December 15, 2006 - nightfall December 23, 2006
(first candle: night of 12/15; last candle: night of 12/22)

*ish excited*

I'ma try tuh get a menorah sometime soon... Hope mah mam will let meh. XD

Not All Is Well In The Mushroom Kingdom.

~ahem.~

Oh no! Can it be? The Mario universe is not as happy-go-lucky and child-friendly as you had always thought? Has the world gone topsy-turvy? Well, no. These things have always been here; it's just that Mario is a sneaky enough bastard to have covered his tracks and managed PR such that everything is always, well, peachy.

~The "Good" Old Days~

Our first introduction to Mario came in the form of Donkey Kong, when Mario was living in Brooklyn as a simple plumber. Or was he? In Donkey Kong, Mario owns a pet gorilla, who eventually..

What? Mario is living in Brooklyn in 1981. The current average salary for a plumber living in New York City ranges from $30,000 - $60,000 a year. Obviously, Mario could not have afforded a gorilla — so something funny must be going on here. He is either a thief, starving Donkey Kong to death, or a member of the Mafia just posing as a plumber. Putting aside for now the fact that Mario has obviously had his media contacts smooth over the situation for him, there's still the often-overlooked matter of the story behind Donkey Kong.

The actual story is this: Mario owns Donkey Kong as a pet, or companion, or what-have-you. Disregarding the fact that an adult male gorilla is about as intelligent and emotionally complex as a human 5-year-old (which is to say, reasonably so), Mario treats Donkey Kong extremely poorly. He makes the poor gorilla perform all manner of outrageous chores, imprisons him in a small cage (a cost-cutting measure, perhaps?) and routinely beats him (this is not invented). Donkey Kong cannot deal with this, and he lashes out in a way he thinks will greatly hurt his captor, which is to kidnap Mario's girlfriend and try to escape with her. Escaping through a city not meant for him, in a world which considers him little more than a novelty, he flees into a construction site, where Mario chases him to the top of a partially-complete building, there planning to perhaps smash Donkey Kong's head in with a hammer.

We know that Donkey Kong escapes; he lives long enough to return to the jungle and sire a family. But the emotional scarring is apparent to anybody who has played the Donkey Kong Country games: he has little left to live for other than reminisce about the old days — which he has apparently been twisted by psychic abuse into feeling fondly about — and verbally abuse his family and friends. The problem grows to the point where his family cannot live with him any more — even his own wife is never seen in the same house as him, and is driven into an early grave by the time Donkey Kong 64 is released. The original Donkey Kong's son, Donkey Kong Junior, was so hurt by having to rescue his father while still a baby that he has never spoken since, despite his family's ability to speak in well-reasoned English. This is Mario's legacy to the Kong family.

~The Super Mario Brothers?~

Around this time, we are also introduced to Mario's younger brother, Luigi. Despite being in better physical shape and slightly smarter than his brother, Luigi is constantly abused and battered in a vicious circle of a relationship. In a TV commercial* for Mario Brothers, Luigi is being savaged by all manner of monsters escaping from pipes, without any help from his brother. His last words at the end of the commercial before being dragged off by a hideous clawed monster are "Mario, where are yoooouuu?!"

And where, indeed is Mario? Why, in search of profit, of course. The point of the game is to best your brother while you kill a variety of creatures in an attempt to be paid by some sort of payment authority which sees fit to disperse salaries by dropping coins through sewer pipes. Players are given the ability to leap onto their brother's head to slow him down and smash the "POW" block, which temporarily immobilizes both enemies and siblings.

And the pattern continues — Luigi is either a clone of Mario or some other form of Mario derivative in nearly every single game that they appear in. In many games, Luigi is simply Mario wearing different colors, or a slightly distorted version of Mario. And he is nearly always relegated to the secondary player automatically instead of being presented as a choice that players should debate and consider.

When Luigi does not appear as a playable character in a game (which is inevitably the outcome in most single-player Mario games, even those with multiple playable characters), he does not serve any sort of respectable role at all. Perhaps he appears only in the instruction booklet, and provides you with a few hints before disappearing for the remainder of your experience with that game. Perhaps he shows up every now and then as comic relief, and his stories, which he eagerly relates (and which are no less interesting or ridiculous than Mario's) are fit for nothing more than a fine opportunity for Mario and his friends to doze off. We are not encouraged to respect Luigi at all.

Even when he does appear in a playable role, Luigi is given the short end of all available sticks. Perhaps he only appears if you're the Second Player. Perhaps he's identical to Mario, but Mario is the default — and why bother switching to an identical character with nothing to offer but more annoying voice samples?

~Mario and Women *Gasp!* ~

Most players can name for you Mario's girlfriend. But are they correct? In most Mario games, there's a hot `n steamy implied relationship between Mario and Princess "Peach" Toadstool. However, Mario's had more than his share of princesses waiting in castles at the end of the day.

Let's look back to Donkey Kong: in this game, we're dealing with Pauline, who must be Mario's live-in girlfriend, or at least visit often enough for Donkey Kong to get the idea of stealing her when he escapes. Pauline disappears forever once Mario makes it to the Mushroom Kingdom, and if he feels bad at all about leaving her behind him, he doesn't really show it: almost as soon as he arrives in the Mushroom Kingdom, he's off searching for Princess Toadstool. And in those games where he does manage to return to New York, does he look up Pauline, try to console her, explain that he's been out of his head on mushrooms for the past 10-20 years or so? No, of course not! She's ancient history!

By the way, even once Mario "escapes" from Pauline, he still isn't satisfied with what he's got: in Super Mario Land, Mario is hunting for Princess Daisy of Sarasaland. And he isn't just there to rescue her from evil aliens, oh no. He's there to take her as his lover. XD This is, of course, evidenced by the hearts that he starts splurging out his head whenever he thinks that he's found her. These are not the actions of a man looking for somebody to play Backgammon with. And of course, once the game is completed, Mario and Daisy bundle into Mario's rocket (oppressive phallic imagery, anyone?) and speed off into the sunset, presumably there to screw like rabbits.

And Peach! Does Mario care about her at all? Other than the fact that she's heir to lots of money, and willing to do just about anything for Mario, he seems to feel that she's worth little. After all, does Mario do anything to King Koopa about the seven half-turtle, half-human bastard children that Koopa got from the Princess? No, of course not. Once he's gotten past Koopa, he cares about nothing beyond getting Toadstool back to her castle so that he can get his hero's rewards. And about the children: I don't even want to think about how they came into this world. Were they laid as eggs? Was Toadstool imprisoned for nine whole months before Mario bothered coming around to rescue her? Why does Mario never help out the Princess by testifying in court that the kids were the result of rape and are most certainly not his? I'll give you a clue: he doesn't really give a damn.

The women of Mario games do return, but almost always as secondary, cutesy characters in side games. Outside of Mario's sports games, how many times have we seen Daisy or Toadstool as playable characters? Twice? Maybe? And when was the last time that Pauline made any sort of appearance, playable or not? I'm pretty sure that she hasn't been seen since the 1994 remake of Donkey Kong, and that outside of a gimmick of some sort, she will never appear again.

~Mario's Worst Enemy~

In Super Mario Land 2, we are introduced to the bad guy to beat all bad guys Wario. He has all of Mario's abilities, except that he's quite evil. While Mario is away chasing after Daisy, Wario has taken over Mario's castle (where did he get a castle from? extorted from a Princess, no doubt) and generally made a nuisance of himself. Mario must therefore put on his hero hat again and whoop Wario's ass. And good thing, too: Wario is evil!

Or is he? The Mario Vs. Wario comics that ran for a short time in Nintendo Power Magazine (which is Nintendo's magazine, so it must be official canon), there was another explanation posited. Mario and Wario were the best of friends as children. However, Mario had a nasty habit of treating Wario poorly. Very poorly. He made Wario be the villain in their games as children every single time except one — and used that one time as an opportunity to mock Wario's nose. Wario never really gets over this, and spends the rest of his life attempting to recover.

His first act is to take over Mario's castle, of course, but it does not end there. He has managed to become one of Nintendo's recurring heroes, but a very flawed one. He has no aspirations but to acquire money in a futile attempt to show up Mario. Nearly every one of his games has as the goal to acquire as much money as possible. In Wario Land, the ending of the game shows Wario being presented with a domicile of some sort. The one that he gets is entirely related to how much money he managed to acquire in the course of the game, leading us to think that all he wants to do is show up Mario's castle. The next Wario Land has him going to extraordinary lengths to keep his castle. The first game also features an interesting twist at the end: after beating the final boss, Wario discovers a gigantic golden statue. Rejoicing at his good fortune, he is cut short only to watch powerlessly as Mario flies by in his airplane, waves cheekily at the camera, and steals the statue using a giant magnet. Is Mario seeking revenge, or just continuing his campaign of hurting his best friend?

Wario can do almost nothing with his life except fill it with hollow attempts to improve his self-esteem. He has become an egoist of the first sort: when he managed to off the Magikoopa and become a driver in the Mario Kart Grand Prix, his arena was filled with cameras which could display him from a number of angles, as well as having his face plastered over every available surface.

This is not to mention the Wario Ware Inc. games, where Wario, upon learning that video games are selling well (a not-so-subtle tip of the hat to the popularity of Mario games), decides to make one of his own and become rich. The game is incredible: the minigames are amongst the best thought-out, most intuitive games I've seen in a long time, (Thanks to Garret for letting me play on his DS) the humor is great, the graphics are perfect for each game, and the game is obviously not to be taken seriously. I say, why not? Why shouldn't Wario get some genuine time in the spotlight for once?

~Cruelty to Animals, part II~

It seems like a good enough time now, more than ever, to talk about some of Mario's other animal friends. Let's start with Super Mario World. In this game, we're introduced to Yoshi, who implores Mario to help him rescue his friends. This Mario does. However, there is no point from then on that a Yoshi is seen without a saddle. This cannot be the result of natural selection . There is no evolutionary advantage to having a saddle in a world of dinosaurs. Yoshis are forced into this in order to serve Mario and, to a lesser extent, Luigi. And they serve willingly. Why? Because they're stupid. And Mario likes it that way.

Apparently they're so stupid that in order to get them to use their fantastic ability to eat things (and Mario doesn't care what they eat) they need to be punched in the back of the head. Take a good close look the next time you play Super Mario World: Mario punches the Yoshis in order to get them to eat things. He treats them poorly, and never helps them out when they need it. In Yoshi's Story, all of the adult Yoshis (to whom Mario owes his life: see Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island) are kidnapped. The baby Yoshis must go rescue them. Where is Mario, offering his support? Probably off chasing another Princess. >.>

Other animals are abused constantly throughout Mario games. Still in Super Mario World, dolphins are friendly and helpful. So Mario leaps from dolphin back to dolphin back in order to get where he's going. Never mind the fact that dolphins are intelligent enough to be hurt by what Mario is doing, he has a princess to impregnate!! There are dozens of other animals of all shapes and sizes throughout Mario games, just begging to be blown up, decapitated, or stolen back from their mothers and thrown off cliffs. (Mario 64! The Penguins!). It's all in a day's work for Mario. No wonder the monkeys in Super Mario World 2 try to steal and eat him.

~Concluding Thoughts~

There's not much more to say. Mario is a ravening monster who consumes everything in his path in order to get what he wants. He'll use anybody, destroy anything, and eat people out of house and home in order to accomplish whatever he currently has his eye on. He has no social graces, and is never at all grateful for what people do for him: the ending of Super Mario 64 consists of the credits rolling while Mario beats the Princess until she bakes him the cake she promised. (The beating is my speculation. But it's certainly not out of character.)

The real evil of all of this is that a happy face is put on all of it. Whenever Mario treats people badly, it's either glossed over or made to look like a silly joke. We never deal with the deep psychic trauma that Mario has caused to almost everybody with whom he comes into contact. We never see Wario crying himself to sleep, we never see the Princess finding out that she's pregnant again (and being forced to take massive amounts of medication from Dr. Mario), we never see the Yoshis struggling to remove their rib-crushingly tight saddles with thier little arms that just don't reach, and we certainly never see Luigi struggling to find a way to come out of the closet. How does Nintendo get away with this? How does nobody notice? I guess it's just a game.

the links work.

( Smushed 'em all together! *muffled giggling* )

Monday wasn't a good day.

Some minor dissagreements.. Though I suppose I could be at fault.. and some mixed emotions.. But things seem o.k. now.. I feel like... I don't know..
I miss you Cassandra ;-; Even though you treated me like garbage, and walked out on our family.. went to live your life with your boyfriend, i still miss you.

What do I do to ignore them behind me?
Do I follow my instincts blindly?
Do I hide my pride from these bad dreams?
And give in to sad thoughts that are maddening?
Do I sit here and try to stand it?
Or do I try to catch them red-handed?
Do I trust some and get fooled by phoniness,
Or do I trust nobody and live in loneliness?
[Because I can't hold on when I'm stretched so thin
I make the right moves but I'm lost within
I put on my daily facade but then]
I just end up getting hurt again
By myself [myself]


I ask why, but in my mind
I find I can’t rely on myself

I can’t hold on
[To what I want when I’m stretched so thin]
It’s all too much to take in
I can’t hold on
[To anything watching everything spin]
With thoughts of failure sinking in

If I
Turn my back I’m defenseless
And to go blindly seems senseless
[If I hide my pride and let it all go on then they’ll
Take from me ‘till everything is gone]
If I let them go I’ll be outdone
But if I try to catch them I’ll be outrun
If I’m killed by the questions like a cancer
Then I’ll be buried in the silence of the answer
by myself [myself]

I ask why, but in my mind
I find I can’t rely on myself

I can’t hold on
[To what I want when I’m stretched so thin]
It’s all too much to take in
I can’t hold on
[To anything watching everything spin]
With thoughts of failure sinking in

How do you think [I’ve lost so much]
I'm so afraid [I'm out of touch]
How do you expect... [I will know what to do]
When all I know [Is what you tell me to]

Don’t you know
I can’t tell you how to make it go
No matter what I do, how hard I try
I can’t seem to convince myself why
I’m stuck on the outside

I can’t hold on
To what I want when I’m stretched so thin
It’s all too much to take in
I can’t hold on
To anything watching everything spin
With thoughts of failure sinking in

Hum...

Well Kitty sees that the links are not working again ^^; Or the links just hate me...

Anyways, I love the "Kitty Snow is powered by Sugar" thing.

My mom is trying to make me go shoping... I dun't want to go. She says I need new clothingfor the award thing, but I dun't.

So... ya'know, my brother was born 9 lds. 11 oz. the date of the twin tower attack and my wieght was 7 lbs. 7 oz. the day of the terrorist attack in England, was it? I forget where it was. Thats wierd...

Yeasterday was the first time in a month that I've played The Sims 2. At first it wouldn't pop up and run the game, and it scared me T~T Then it worked and it was better.

Then my computer scared me again by starting the screan saver. My screan saver is the picture slideshow and shows my whole picture file. Well yesterday it said it couldn't find any files. Scared me half to death. I found files stupid computer, they are there! It'sworking fine today.

I love it when my screan saver pops up during me watching DVD's. Funny 'cause it always shows Ai No Kusabi pictures first XD Me and j00 laughed so hard when that happened watching the last episode of Gundam Seed on my computer.

Is this good enough for you Juhachi! >=(
~The Yaoi Princess

Brushing Up on Your Russian with Juhachi

Here are a bunch of phrases, with the typos fixed from previous writeups: XD

Common Phrases:
Thank You - Spasibo
Please/You're Welcome - Pozhalusta
Hi - Privet
Hello - Zdrastvuyte
Bye - Poka*
Goodbye - Do Svedanya (lit. till we meet)
Good Morning - Dobroyo Utro
Good Day - Dobriy Den'
Good Evening - Dobriy Vecher
Good Night - Spokoyniy Nochi

Useful/Not So Useful Phrases:
Help! My car is on fire! - Pomogite*! Moya* mashina gorit*!
Someone wants to kill me! - Kto-to hochet menya ubit'!
Do you have any vodka? - U vas est' vodka?
I am a silly American, please do not rob me. - Ya glupiy amerikanetz, pozhaluysta ne obvaruyte menya.
I hate this country! - Ya nenavizhu etu stranu!
You are all communists! - Vi vse kommunisti!
It's very cold here. - Tut ochen holodno.
Give me a sweater. - Day mne koftu.
Help! I've got dollars! - Pomogite*! U menya est' dolari!
Where is the nearest bathroom? - Gde blizhayshiy tualet?
That's really far away! - Eto ochen daleko!
How do I get there? - Kak mne tuda popast'?
Wow, vodka is cheap here! - Wow, vodka ochen deshovaya tut!
To boldy go where no man has gone before. - Idti smelo tuda kuda nekto eshe ne poshel.
Today is a good day to die. - Sevodnya horoshiy den' umeret'.
Mary had a little lamb. - U Mary bila malenkaya ovtza.
Where can I buy tickets to get out of this frozen hell? - Gde ya mogu kupit' bileti shtob vibratsa iz etovo zamerzhshovo ada?
The end. - Konetz.

* These words are often pronounced with an 'a' sound for the 'o', e.g. poka is pronounced paka, this is true in southern regions of Russia, e.g. Moscow.

Picture Post!

Yuna! I saw this beautiful picture and thought "I must share!"
The original huge image can be found here

*Template Update*

11\12\05: I finally got around to adding in my fan-modules.. ^_^; The Alice Fan one is a smidgeon off and I cant get it to centre justify.. HTML Help, Maxwell the Great.. ? I'm so tired.. lol.. *time of post* *darty eyes* *if my parents found me up they would slaughter meh. Freaks! Don't tell!* Yes, I'm crazed. Lookie! my new favouritest picture.. *pointpoint* I also finished the sixth Resident Evil book; and I absolutely MUST buy the seventh, Resident Evil: Code Veronica X [...] *lost anyone reading to a muffled "WTF?"* (lol) I think I might cave this weekend and buy a PS2 and Resident Evil 4... [!!] Whee! I'm pathetic.. *grin* **fangirlish squee** *goes to sleep with visions of Oded Fehr dancing in my head*

11\11\11

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae

NEOH!

Test!

It has come to my attention that the blog has been acting strangely. Do not be alarmed.

**Test Post**

*stretches* owch >.o

Everytime I stretch my abs hurt. I'll tell you why just cause I can! w00t!

Well, yesterday I had karate and my sensai wanted to kill me by making us run around putting our hands above our heads and opening and closing our hands. Gravity Sucks! Then we do the splits as far as we can go, then put our hands on the ground and go up on our heels... Owch x.x Then; everyone's favourite, leg raises! Not fun! It's a good workout though, and I get to complain to Pan anyways!

Also today we did aerobics in gym and the instructor, Nichol and Eva, wanted to kill me again! The cool down was the best part and Chantelle got a little sleep too :B like 1 minute! XD Anyways badmiton will be a change from the last 2 days! w00t! Chantelle and me better be on a team this time! The teacher always splits us up *cries* I dun wanna be with a sane person! I need my trouble partner Chantelle! The double trouble team will rule! Okay I'm done...

Stop bullying my brother or I'll smash you! I'll go back to public school on a extra exam day and watch you like a hawk! Do anything and I'll through a hatchet at you! ^^ Have a nice day!

~The Yaoi Princess

<((Spellchecked, grammarchecked, and reformatted into literacy by j00h4ch1/>))

Updates.

Ok, So, Here's the Earth.. Round! "Damn, that is a sweet earth", you might say.

Alright. I finally get a template working that has functional comments! w00t. I'm working on customizing the banner, but it probably won't happen. ...hehehe..