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     ## ##  ###    I S S U E   # 0 7 5        0 6 - 1 0 - 0 0   ###  ####   
    ###  # ###                                                   #######    
    ####  ###   "Jason Comes to Grips With His Thinking Problem"   ###       
     #######                       by Jason                                  
      ####                                                                  

        SIGH.  What a Memorial Day weekend.  It's taken me this long just to
 recover.  A favored coworker (Ms. S) left for a new life and never even told
 us goodbye on Friday, starting the weekend off on a bad note.  Things picked
 up when I got to see all of my old college buddies including the newest
 addition to the post college group, a big fat larva named Rebecca.  The
 weekend then took a turn for the surreal when I got to see my mom sell out
 what last shreds still existed of her feeble hippy ideals by bragging about
 her new Lincoln and her facelift (the car was cool, but her face looked the
 same).  Fortunately, my dad was a stoic as ever, plodding happily into old
 age.  On the way home, a bird ran into my car and then I got a kiss-off form
 letter from a prospective employer with which I had had three interviews.

        But that's trifles.

        Today I spent a great deal of time when I was supposed to be working
 (I'm demoralized-sue me) trying to calculate how much energy people use in
 terms of fossil fuels, specifically gasoline.  Such an undertaking sprang
 from my attempt to debunk telekinesis, particularly pyrokinesis, in which
 someone increases the temperature of something by mind control.  As I
 believe I pointed out before, it would take the instant burning of about 22
 calories to heat a cup of water, which is more than most people expend for a
 minute of sprinting.  Then I got to wondering just how efficient human
 bodies are when compared to other machines, and the comparison of fuel
 calories to food calories seemed like a good place to start.

        As I worked, my coworker commented that I was a weirdo for figuring
 out such things.  I used to being thought of as strange for my sense of
 humor, my pets, my taste in film, and the fact that I often walk around
 without any pants on, but why should it be strange to create a unified
 energy consumption theory?  Heck, at worst, it's merely mental masturbation.
 At best, it can lay the groundwork for a whole new direction of science and
 technology.  No, I'm not deluded.  It's mental masturbation, but since right
 now my intellect is being used about as well as my mighty schlong, I'm
 entitled.  That's a scary parallel, isn't it?

        I think it goes deeper though.  That weekend I saw the flick "Deep
 Blue Sea", the movie about intelligent sharks.  Now I would certainly not
 encourage anyone to watch that piece of theatric feces, but it illustrates
 my point.  The main chick (Saffron Borroughs-Ahhhh) is the scientist who
 created the sharks and, predictably killed by her own creation.  My dear old
 face-lifted mother who only scored in the 13th percentile for Analytical
 skills on her GRE's said the chick was being punished because she was an
 intelligent woman.  "Ha!" said her brilliant son (ME, doofus!) who scored in
 the 98th percentile of the Analytical section of the same test.  "She's just
 a female version of Doctors Frankenstein and Moreau, who were likewise
 killed by their creations!"  My mom's cool for an old broad, but she does
 tend to be a little oversensitive in the feminist hot button area.

        How many movies can you think of where an ingenuous scientist, driven
 only by the desire to improve humanity, is destroyed by his (or her)
 creation?  As evidenced by the flourishing of superstition and schoolyard
 ridiculing of bright kids, people seem to have an innate revulsion to
 anything they cannot understand and a resentment toward those who understand
 more than they do.  By exploring such inane things, I scare normal people.
 I bet you're scared right now, aren't you?  Don't worry, I was just killing
 time, really.  Now go back to sleep and dream of cave paintings and flint
 tools.

        By the way, people use the rough equivalent of one cup of gasoline a
 day.  Math available upon request.

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 # (c)2000 aNAda e'zine                              aNAda075 .*.  by Jason #
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