Thoughts

1. Never pity yourself. Ever. There is always someone who has it worse than you, no matter how bad it seems relatively. Self pity is whiny and counter productive, and also rude for not thinking of what you are blessed with compared to some others in the world, so stop doing it. 2. Pennies add up. When birthday money pays for tolietries for the year, you learn budgeting early. You may want that 5 dollar dove shampoo now, but you better settle for Suave if you want shampoo in 7 months. 3. You are responsible for your own success or failure, nobody else. Poverty can make it tough, but it teaches you that you start determining your life trajectory with your high school grades. High school leads to college leads to your future, and without monetary support from parents, you know every step of the way is on you, no one else. 4. Poor people are the most fun. Albiet at times with crazy conspiracy theories, they know how to let loose and be crass. Sure your Uncle's knee high moccasins...

These are extracted from responses I posted on reddit. Context Question in Thread:  " To me, as someone who has no real opinions on the matter (I don't know the facts so I refuse to form an opinion), all this article tells me is that 2013, 2006, and 2003 were above average in mean temperature for the past 100 years. What it doesn't say is that the global mean temperature has been steadily increasing over the past century or so, and doesn't give a reason why we know there wasn't a trend of global cooling from, say, 1700-1900, before we were records were kept or kept reliably. I'm not saying those things aren't said elsewhere, just that this article is useless and does nothing to prove global warming is real. No one disputes that the climate changes, just some think it's supposed to, and that it goes in cycles." Cycles related to climate change, and why we should be worried  here  is a long term graph of carbon emissions over the past 800,000...

The UW Foundation handles incoming donations, and invests them into a variety of stock. The divestment campaign is asking the UW Foundation to take their money out of stock in fossil fuels.  In 2013, the UW-Madison Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee hosted forums for the students and public to participate in a discussion on whether or not the university should divest form fossil fuels. The Senate Committee will be deciding whether or not the faculty will be supporting the University in a move toward divestment. Many professors on the committee are leading climate scientists. This letter was formed from a collaborative effort from a variety of orgs on campus that participate in the Fossil Free UW Coalition, a student movement which strives for a cleaner, greener, UW.  ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Members of the Faculty Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Divestment, We are writing to you to thank you for ...

In the entire history of humankind, yours is the single most important generation. We as a species have unknowingly and steadfastly marched in the direction of our own destruction since before the dawn of the industrial age. Recent science on climate change has made that abundantly clear.  If there is any room left to right the course of human history, it will be the unique span of your lifetime which will provide that pivotal moment. How strange; how terrible and beautiful that your generation faces such a challenge, and such a special responsibility: It is as if two arcs grew up out of the roots of history and have been bending through time toward one another; preparing to cross at precisely this moment. One arc is our budding understanding of our deeply interconnected role on this planet--how we fit into this complex dance of life-- and the other is our growing awareness that if we continue as we have, our time here will soon come to an end. One has to ask, why have things ...

                                                                                                                                      November 8 th , 2013 Members of the EPA panel, During a recent summer vacation I took a trip with my youngest son William, intending to see some of this beautiful country as we made our way toward Madison, Wisconsin. We loaded our car with binoculars, backpacks and peanut-butter and jelly, and left the Oregon coast intending to camp our way back. But the forest fires in Oregon and Northern Idaho blackened the sky overhead. After watching the fire-fighting helicopters swoop down to lower their hoses and suck water from t...

I just got back from a student faculty meeting on divestment, and unfortunately I was never called on to talk, but there were so many things I wanted to ask. For those of you that don't know, divestment refers to a movement asking universities and other large bodies to take their investments out of the top 200 fossil fuel companies. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison we are asking our foundation (which is worth 2.3 billion dollars) to take their investment out of fossil fuels (the numbers are not given to the public, but nationally a 3% investment in fossil fuels is assumed. For our university that amounts to 69 million dollars). Our foundation gets a variety of donations and then invests that money into a spread of stocks (risk aversion). As mentioned 3% of those stocks are likely in fossil fuel companies. Today the faculty had a forum on the issue, and whether or not they were going to stand as a body and support divestment or not. In particular, my respected teacher G...

I am an atheist. I am a scientific thinker. I do not believe in alternate endings or second chances. I believe the life we have here on this earth is a finite one. When I first came to be atheist, this scared me. Death scared me. The meaning of life scared me. In my fear I frantically grasped for some cold rational meaning to life. Why are we here? Easy, my brain would spit back, because those species whom were motivated to reproduce are still here. But what is the point? I would ask. Easy again, to reproduce. Jesus brain, fine then, what should I find enjoyable about life here? Easy again, all of the things you are prewired to find pleasurable, like eating, sleeping, and sex. From this frustrating loop of logic I came to the melancholy response that the meaning of life was simply to be happy. And one could achieve happiness by living a life our ancestors lived which promotes an increase in serotonin, ending in, voila, feelings of happiness. Now I don't completely disagree with m...