Your Thoughts Exactly

So, the first leg of the most hectic traveling month in my life is over. I'm in San Diego, a beautiful city, (although I misjudged how warm 75 was because I just left 95 degree St. Louis) and I am about to go fuck this whole Microsoft conference and just spend the next couple days wandering around with Taylor James Peterson.

But not only am I in San Diego, I just had one of the most accomplished weekends of my life: On Friday, I received not one, not two, but two degrees! That's right!! And it was actually sort of fun! Then, Saturday was the trip here, and on Sunday, my team won Second Place in the national finals of the Imagine Cup! What does this mean? It means that I won 1,000 bucks and I am absolved of having to work more on this crappy application. Of course, all the team members are talking as if we should continue working, a sentiment that I initially echoed but am now recanting. Our idea is/was really good- an teaching program that adapts to how well a student is doing, challenges them if they are doing well and backs off if they are doing poorly. Is there any possibility that we could make money off this? I feel like there could be, if I knew at all what the directions we all wanted to take this.

But I am very happy that we won. Let's just say there is no way in hell we should have won; our presentation got cut short and sucked, and then our actual code sucked even more. But who's complaining? Not me.

Anyhow... should I talk about something else? I want to make this blog about science as well, and perhaps this is a little bit old news, but I read that Harvard, I think, is making their stem cells available publicly (and because they were harvested using totally-non-government money, researchers can use them without getting cut off from their funding.) When Bush refused to allow further stem cell harvesting in August 2001, there was a lot of controversy and debate, but it all got drowned out by what happened the next month. Much like every other issue that didn't have 'security' in its title. But stem cell research is really important- it could hold keys to curing a lot of diseases; or it might be another dead end. But that's what research is. Cutting it off before it develops could threaten what makes this country a powerhouse still- its technological advantage. And with biotech becoming the next big thing, it's important that an institution like Harvard shows some balls and helps get the US up to speed with countries like the UK in stem cell research.
Secondly, with Bush's plan to go to Mars and the Moon, it was soundly criticized by everyone and their mother. He has since said absolutely nothing to back up any of his 700 billion dollar plan, so I'm thinking he was just talking out of his ass. But I, for once, agreed with Bush. I mean, just for one, at least he wasn't talking about god damn homeland security and terrorists. People say that we should spend the money on education and health care, and while I agree to some extent, it isn't that hard to spend money on all three. To quote someone I don't remember, to say that we will go to space when we have resolved issues here is to say that we won't go at all. Exploration of space is a big deal to me, and although Mars doesn't have the same cachet as landing on the Moon, there are a lot of benefits to doing it down the road that we might not see now, but that will hopefully become apparent. Someone needs to get the ball rolling on manned spaceflight, and if that someone is Bush, I'll deal with it. See, I try to make two posts about science and they both have to talk about Bush.

So there's my post from San Diego. I think it's time to see some pandas.