There is something really wrong with the world

There is something wrong with the world. I keep looking at how our world works today, and it really doesn't make sense. Stupid, illogical rules that are guaranteed to put people offside appear everywhere and there doesn’t seem to be anyone questioning them. There are several examples that I'd like to focus on: Money, Education and Social interaction. Money. The concept behind money is a good one: place ones worth in something tangible, and then use it the purchase someone else's worth. The problem is it is also the idea method of control. Nobody has the will to try out a different pattern, a different method or different measure because nobody can think of a better way. Well, come people have thought of other ideas, without taking into account that a majority of people are greedy, selfish and stupid. Even those who claim to be clever are just as prone to these traits, and more often than not, they are more likely to be the ones that you preserve as the above. Money has become more depressing as time has gone on. First there were loans, bribes and interest, now there is credit, overdraft and 'variables' in contracts that allow organisations that have horded money over the centuries to chase and prosecute you where ever you go. Credit is the creation of the devil, because it allows people, who in any other situation would be honest, to become vindictive and aggressive: and totally obtuse. People angrily blame the banks for issue them with credit when they should have said no, and the refuse to pay it back (although they spent it) because, again, it was the banks fault. And these same people won't feel guilt, because the bank isn't a person. Actually, allot of these people probably wouldn't feel guilt even if it was, and seem to enjoy lecturing about the moral obligations of others towards them. Education. It seems that the idea of education was born out of the upper end of society, because the more people I come in contact with, the more I am made to realise just how little value is place on someone being interested in something other sport or drinking. Indeed, the major goal of my 21 year old brother was "to have a wife, house and job." Again, this is what he wants at 21. Talking to some of the students I teach, I have realised that allot of them have exactly the same dream, even though they say they want to learn, a majority of them only want to do the degree to meet people, and to find the "one". The "one", the exactly right person for you, doesn't actually exist -- The entire concept of true love was made up to sell bras, or more accurately, to sell bra ads to bra companies (thank you Mad Men. If you haven't watched this already, I would recommend it). Everyone is convinced that their experience is absolute and that they know that there is someone out there for them; some people even cheat on the ones they "know" are for them simply because they need to feel someone else(A 에 대한 증오를 향한 당신), and really do excuse their actions due to this. Others simple don’t know what they want, and continually draw things out that should be ended, and state that they will never feel the same about anyone else again. Then there are those who proscribe to the theory that every moment is unrelated to the ones before, so you should live as if the current moment is your last. Yet this can't be true, as a truly random world would never produce the number of coincidences in such as small part of time and space as what a single person expenses in their life alone. Although I don't believe in god, I do believe that the overall chaos this reality is governed by some overarching law and this law dictates what people are going to turn out like, who they are going to connect to and the actions they take. Although I hope everything isn’t set in stone, I think that the overall world must be set in clay, which can be shaped by the chaos that surrounds life.

Social interaction, this feeds off what I was talking about before. People interact with each other on a strange level. I know that I have been spoilt in my life, as far as I have never dealt with someone I didn't want to deal with, and if someone I had liked become unlinked, I have been able to not deal with them again through simple process of non-interaction. But that has change remarkably, and it is mostly due to me being forced to come out of my shell at the ending of my last major relationship. I had a set of rules and actions that I would follow into every situation, and they had served me for all intents and purposes well until then. Once I started to really pay attention to the world around me, really started to interact with more than the people I simply had to deal with, I started to realise just how native I had been until then, and just how sheltered I had been. Dating, something that I had only really done twice before - one ended after about a month, the other went on for four years was even more of a shock. The myth that every guy really just wants sex at all times is not that true - most of the time when faced with a choice of short or long, most choose long, only because it lends self-worth. When faced with situations involving more than the single person, the left loathing comes into it in a major way - why am I not good enough to be the "one". Allot of the people I talk to think this, and allot of the apparent "playboys" are simply overcompensating for this simple reason. Again, they are driven, with a few exceptions, by the simple dream of a picket fence, and don't understand why they aren't good enough to keep. The girls that I've talked to always repeat the same line "he simply wasn't the one". Some more interesting variations are that the boy has flaws that are unworkable (so why did you go out with him in the first place?) that their family put pressure on them (most interesting being a mother of one of my friends stated that her boyfriend wasn't good enough looking for her..... then again her mother tells her that she is a sl*t, even though I think this is her first boyfriend in her 22 years.... weird). But, I suppose if something makes you happy, you should do it... not always the safest routes, but you can't take the smoothest road unless it is by chance.

I've finished my rant for today; I might put some Quantum notes on tomorrow simply to help me think. Oh, and me and the other guys in my office have reach a new level of nerdom==the printer started breaking down yesterday, so instead of calling maintenance, we all stood around trying to work out the wave function of the printed pages..... We went so far to start taking down numbers. Then our supervisor, who keeps a punch card calculator in his office because it is interesting, walked into the room and called us nerds... We sucked up stating it was his good influence that caused this.... Ah nerdom in the office. Lovely.

Trial by fire

Four exams in four days... Lucky that the weekend is in the middle!

Is this really real?

I was doing everything in my power to not study, and ended up on youtube. To my horror I found my way onto the below clip, which was enough to send me right back to my books.

The walls do talk

I feel slightly uncomfortable with some of my friends recently. More and more I realise that the people I mix with every day, indeed, with a few exceptions, everyone inside the department I work in seems to be really really sexist. I had to have words with one of my 'friends' over a snapping of a bra incident with my (then) girlfriend... I mean, since when is going up to someone and snapping the straps of her bra acceptable? Sometime I think it is me that is the weird one, I seem to be the only who is slightly uncomfortable with describing the girls we hang out with as meat, not poeple. I'm finding it harder and harder not to fall into that humer circle. And it isnt just the guys either. Several of the girls make exactly the same re-enforcing joke and comments that justify why the others do it. I really don't know. I'm jut glad that for the next five weeks I don't have to deal with it. **Hurray for rich English grandparents**

Trainspotting

Quantum Monte Carlo Methods

I've just got my second project from uni: Analysing Electronic Structures using Quantum Monte Carlo Methods. Simply put, Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) is a highly accurate computational technique for solving the Schrodinger equation for realistic electronic systems. This project could take one of two directions, depending on time constraints, as well as my own developing interests, with both projects giving experience of what is involved in the ‘real world’ application of quantum mechanics.

1.Implementation: This project involves writing a QMC program in FORTRAN90 from scratch which exactly solves the Schrodinger equation for the helium atom.

2.Application: This project involves applying an existing QMC code to investigate the properties of molecules which may have important roles to play in future hydrogen storage schemes. This will involve the use of massively parallel supercomputers.

:) Can't wait :)