So, working with the university some more, these students organized a three day game: starting Thursday at 5 PM, and ending Sunday at 5 PM.  The students wanted to have a week-long game, but the university wanted to see how the game would work with people travelling between classes before they allowed that.  I got a Nerf gun for Christmas, and was eager for the game to get started.    I attended the necessary meeting to sign up for the game, and just had to wait until Thursday to start playing.

Now, after the game is over, I have this to say: I can’t wait for the week-long game which is planned for some time in April.  Humans vs. Zombies is not only a great excuse to run around campus with a Nerf gun, shooting people for the fun of it, but also a great way to be social and meet new people.  The teamwork and strategy involved is amazing, and I definitely met some great people I would have otherwise never said hi to.  Needless to say, I’ve been disappointed to find out that some college campuses refuse to allow the game to happen.

A lot of the arguments I’ve seen against the game from universities has been the use of Nerf guns.  Even my university has a policy against allowing Nerf guns in the dorm rooms, but most RAs here don’t seem to mind them, as long as we’re not running around in the hallways and causing a ruckus.  The people on the Humans vs. Zombies website also have some interesting advice to getting around this: never call them Nerf “guns”.  Nerf themselves refers to them as Nerf “blasters”, with foam “darts”, so use this terminology.  It may seem like small change, but I can see how it would make a big difference.

Another issue has been the use of bandannas in the game.  Players must wear a bandanna around either their arm or head to denote whether they are a human or zombie.  However, some universities worry that this can be seen as a gang symbol, and, coupled with carrying a Nerf “gun”, this would not look good to the local police.  The solution the Humans vs. Zombies website has for this is, unfortunately, costly.  The organization sells bright-orange bandannas for use in the game.  It should be clear to most cops that no gang would use bright orange bandannas that say either “HUMAN” or “ZOMBIE” as a gang sign, so there should be no trouble.  Unfortunately, these bandannas cost $5 each.  Hopefully, though, people will play the game once, buying a bandanna, and donate the bandanna to the people organizing the game when they no longer wish to take part in it.  Of course, fundraisers are also an option.

Overall, to universities who want to consider banning Humans vs. Zombies, I say this: please don’t.  The game does not promote gun violence, or shooting people, etc.  It’s a social event that’s a lot of fun for students to take part in, and makes the campus come to life.  If you want to consider banning the game for its violence, you should also ban any video game with violence in it in the dorms.  I urge universities to work with students to figure out a way to get the game going even if they have worries about one aspect of the game.  Students won’t have all the ideas on how to work around restrictions: offer suggestions that would work well for both parties.

As a final note, Humans vs. Zombies would look great to prospective students.  As a senior in high school, if I had visited a college and there were a bunch of kids running around with Nerf guns shooting each other… that would give the school huge bonus points.

Science and religion are not at odds.  Science is just to young to understand.

In preparation for going to Fermilab, my AP Physics C class has been learning about quantum physics and string theory.  I find all of this rediculously fascinating.  Yet, when I start hearing dates, it sounds like all of this was figured out so long ago.  Then, I look at the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), and realize that the greatest discoveries are yet to come, and are even within my lifetime.

For those unaware, I’ll start off with quantum physics (which we know to be true).  The scale of things in quantum physics goes like this: an object is made of atoms.  These atoms contain electrons orbiting a neucleus.  This neucleus contains protons and neutrons.  And (this is where quantum mechanics comes in), protons are made of smaller pieces called quarks.  Without going into too much detail, there are six types of quarks, but we only need two of them to make up protons and neutrons.  So, to make up everything we normally see, we only need two quarks and an electron.  This sounds nice, but it leaves some mathematical gaps.

This is where string theory comes in.  String theory says that these quarks are made up of tiny, vibrating bits of energy called strings.  Now, when I say tiny, I mean MINISCULE.  These strings are going to remain invisible to us for quite some time.  Also, there’s another problem.  In order for this to make sense, there needs to be not three or four dimensions, but eleven dimensions (one of time, three of space, and seven additional spatial dimensions).  Assuming that all of this is true, the math works out beautifully, and everything seems to make sense.

But, this isn’t really science unless we can test it.  Since we already ruled out seeing these strings, what do we do?  We look at what isn’t there.  But, for that, we need the LHC.  String theory says that gravity is created by particles called “gravitons”, which “escape” into the eleventh dimension, so we don’t feel much of their influence.  This is where the LHC comes in.  When we turn it on and look at a collision, if the energy we put in, and the energy we get out doesn’t match, it must have “escaped” somewhere.  This could be a graiton escaping into the eleventh dimension, beyon our reach.

If you’re still reading, and understand all of that, let me first take this time to congratulate you.  But, there’s more confusion to come.  One of the things the LHC hopes to solve is how the big bang happened.  With conventional physics, it seems that there’s just no way the big bang could have taken place so suddenly.  Well, string theory has an explaination for this.  It says that our universe exists on a “membrane” in the eleventh dimension.  Of course, there are other membranes “parallel” to our universe in the eleventh dimension.  If another membrane touched ours, that could have created enough energy for the big bang to have happened.

OK, now I’ve gotten past most of the mucky technical details.  On to the point.  I was explaining this to, of all people, my mother.  She was, naturally and as I am, confused and perplexed by this prospect.  String theory is a very outlandish and strange-sounding claim.  So, she responded simply:

I have an explaination for you.  God.

Which reminded me that I truly don’t believe that science is “at odds” or “against” religion.  In fact, I think science and religion go hand-in-hand.

Let’s look at the whole prospect of some greater being, and intelligent design, without getting into too many mucky details.  Intelligent design has exactly my point in its title: intelligent design.  This implies that there was some “thought” process that went into creating humans, and we are as we are for a reason.  Doesn’t that directly say that God gave us brains so we can use them?

God didn’t mean for us to be wandering blindly in an unknown world.  He lets us learn about how the world around us works, and lets us explore.  He gave us brains so that we could be hit in the head with an apple and go “Hmm… gravity!”  He gave us brains so that we could build machines like Fermilab and the LHC, in order to further our understanding of what’s actually going on around us.

And, maybe, God fits right into string theory.  Of course, we have to go a bit away from religious norms, but that’s why I’m not Catholic.  What if there were eleven dimensions?  We know that any action in a higher dimension directly affects the lower dimensions.  Who’s to say that God isn’t an eleventh-dimensional being that is able to orchestrate the membrane that our universe sits on in the eleventh dimension?  Please, take this claim at face value.  I am not a religious scholar, just a person with thoughts.

The Catholic church has long been against science.  They have just recently made a formal apology to Galeleio, saying that he wasn’t crazy and that their actions were inappropriate.  It’s time for a more radical change in the way science and religion interact.  We need religion that supports science (no, not scientology), and science that supports religion.  The crazy thing is, that while we don’t see the former, we are starting to see the latter.

Our universe is amazing.  Really, just ful of beautiful… stuff.  If we look at the mathematical equations for how we can describe different events in our universe, we find about twenty different constants that are required to make these calculations.  Among these are a number that describes the strength of gravity, the mass and charge of an electron, etc.  Here’s where it gets crazy again.  If we change, even very slightly, one of these twenty constants… the universe falls apart.  It just doesn’t seem to work.

Doesn’t this seem to require some higher being.  The odds of these numbers being in perfect harmony with each other by pure chance, the odds of planets and galaxies existing, and the odds of life exisiting on Earth are enormously against us.  If everything were just random, I wouldn’t be here right now, writing this blog post.  So, it seems that science requires religion.

But, religion keeps saying that they don’t need science.  ”How does this work?”, you ask?  ”God made it that way.  Don’t ask stupid questions,” they say.  Well, here’s what I say: there is no such thing as a stupid question, only stupid answers.  And, it seems to me that “don’t ask stupid questions” is a stupid answer.  If religion were to embrace and support science, we could still have God, we would just view him in a different way.  As Angels and Demons puts it, scripture is never wrong.  However, how we interpret scripture could be very wrong.

Ignoring all this, string theory seems to have an answer to my random perdicament.  In the eleventh dimension, there are infinitely many universe membranes, so there are infinitely many universes.  This would mean that the numbers are bound to line up somwhere or other, so, we exist.  But, this doesn’t rule out the notion of an eleventh-dimensional being.

With all the evidence of beauty around us, I find it impossible to believe that there isn’t a God.  If for no better reason than to give us hope and a purpose in life.  I think that if we are to continue with scientific achievement, religion will eventually be forced to embrace science, and use scripture to fill in the details. Heck, we might even find that science needs to use God for things to make sense.

Disclaimer: I am not a religious or scientific scholar.  These thoughts are purely my own, and I engourage you to post why you agree or disagree with the points that I have brought up here.  All scientific details in this post are, to the best of my knowlege, true.  However, I always welcome corrections if I’m wrong.

Curious about string theory?  I would reccomend starting with Imaginging the Tenth Dimension (watch the video).  From there, browse YouTube for other videos about string theory.  Brian Greene has a good video or two explaining more.  Still looking for more?  Look for the “Elegant Universe” NOVA series.

You know what class this is?  P.E.  You know what that stands for?  Physical Excersise.

This quote is attributed to a P.E. sub at my high school.  I’m paraphrasing, because I don’t remember the actual words, but believe me: this phrase was actually uttered by a substitute P.E. teacher.  Perhaps this wasn’t the best way to start of the blog post.  Let’s go back a bit.

A couple weeks ago, I needed a form signed so I could go on a field trip.  All of my teachers need to sign a form saying that it’s OK for me to skip out on class, and acknowleging that they realize that I’m not going to be in class that day.  Granted, most teachers just sign the form without looking at the date, but that’s beside the point.

On this form, we also have to write which class we have each hour.  So, for my seventh hour class I wrote the following: Gym.  Seemed fine to me.  I go up to my teacher and have her sign it.  She first crosses out “gym” and writes “PE”, then signs the form (all without saying anything to me).  I thought this was slightly humorous.  I didn’t think much of it because, after all, the form was signed.  However, I’ve started to think more and more of this small action.

To me, and to most of the world, PE stands for Physical Education.  Education, to me, implies that I will learn something.  It could be useless information, and it could be useful information, regardless, I should learn something.  I would attribute a class like Health to this title.  It suits all the requirements: physical — You learn about how your body functions and how to keep yourself healthy; education — did I not just use the word learn?

Let me make this a bit more clear.  Here’s how Google defines eduction:

knowledge acquired by learning and instruction

Once again, the key words here are knowlege, learning, and instruction.  These are the three important requirements in order to have the “education part.”

I would define my “P.E.” class this year as anything but that.  It consists of:

Today we’re playing tennis.  Grab a ball, racket, and partner, and start playing tennis.

No instruction, no guidance, no help while attempting to play the sport, just a: “This is what we’re doing.  Go.”  So, where, then, does the education come in?

Freshman and sophomore year was different: we actually learned about the muscles and bones in our body.  We learned about what excersises work which muscles, and we were taught easy excersises to help keep us in shape.  Once again: we learned.  This was not gym class, it truly was physical education.

So, I suggest a reform of the class.  Because Illinois is the only state that still requires four years of gym P.E. in high school, we must be true to the classes title: teach us.  It doesn’t even have to be individual attention (although that would be nice).  But, at least inform us of the rules of tennis before telling us to play.  If you want to get really crazy, try to make us play by the rules.   If we are going to take Physical Education, let’s keep the Education there.

Although, I’ve heard an alternative suggestion: make P.E. half-classroom.  This alternative would suit Illinois perfectly.  We could still have a P.E. class, but we would actually learn.  Once the program got started, the school could start offering “specialized” P.E. classes, where you can learn about one specific topic.  You could then take the P.E. class that sounded most interesting to you, instead of being stuck in a general gym class.

After all this, I have to question my school’s definition of P.E.  I was always taught that P.E. stood for Physical Education (acronym finder agrees), but it seems the crazy old gym teacher is right: PE stands for Physical Excersise.

It isn’t about whether you should or shouldn’t excersise.  It’s about how excersise is used as a punishment throughout middle school and high school.  Today, my class went out to play tennis.  As a warmup, we had to run down to the end of the tennis court and back twice (I use run lightly here, we could have jogged and been fine).  Eager to play tennis, I was the first jogging, and quickly got the two rounds complete.  A friend of mine, and another kid in my gym class were on pace with me, and we all three were done.

However, some of the other kids in my class are lazy.  I see this all the time: they either just walk, turn around half way, or find another way to pretend that they ran what was required.  As I was coming back the second time, I heard my gym teacher yelling something to the effect that they weren’t running, so had to redo the run.  Fine, whatever.  I had done what was required, so I shouldn’t have to worry.

Here’s where the problem comes in.  As I get back to my teacher, she tells me (and the other two kids running with me) that we’ll have to do one more time there and back.  I ask her why, noting that we had already ran there and back twice, and she tells me something along the lines of this:

Yeah, I know, but some of your classmates feel they didn’t need to do the whole thing, so now everyone has to run more.

And, here’s where I find the problem.  I ran what was required of me.  I know this, I’m sure the class knows this, and the teacher knows this.  Yet, because one or two people in my class are lazy (the teacher even named who the person was), I have to run more.  So, I propose a hypothesis to everyone reading this: group punishment does not work.

Teachers seem to love it.  Why single out kids, and deal with them individually when you can just make everyone do more work?  On top of that, peer pressure should cause the others to do what’s required of them in the future, right?

Wrong.  I have zero influence on the kids in my class who are lazy.  This is due to multiple factors: they are in a different social group than I am, I try to avoid associating myself with them, and (not trying to sound conceited here… you have to trust me that this is true) they are on a lower intellectual level than me.

In most classes, I don’t have this problem.  I take honors or AP classes, so I generally am in a class of smart people who are willing to do work required so they don’t have to face the punishment.  However, I have two classes that go outside this norm: gym physical education (my commentary on this correction is saved for another post), and my lit class (again, my commentary on this will be saved for another post).  Somehow, it seems that, when scheduling classes, they ignored intellectual level, and just stuck whoever in whatever gym class.

However, here’s where it stops making sense to me: there is another gym class the same hour that I have my gym class which has at least three people that are on the same intellectual level as me.  In my gym class, I can think of one person, maybe two people, that fit this description.  It seems that they took this group of people who they knew would goof off, and stuck me in with them.

So, while group punishment hinges on the assumption that peer  pressure is the greatest form of influence, this is not always true.  So, how can punishment be implemented to be successful?  Single the person out.  My school does this often for postive accomplishments, why not do it for negative influences?  Make the person do thirty pushups while everyone else just watches.  This will cause embarassment, distress, etc., hopefully fixing the behavior.

Of course, this keeps the idea of using excersise as a punishment.  But, perhaps that’s OK for people who are going to goof off anyway.  We can let them think of excersise as a punishment, and let them grow fat and stupid as the rest of us thrive.  As my Physics teacher so often says:

We call that natural selection.

Being a computer geek, I’ve always found gym slightly useless.  A class where they make you run around for however long they feel like it, for no reason.  Usually, the teacher doesn’t even participate in the activity, or give demonstrations for activities.  Teachers in gym seem to not be teachers, but lesson planners.  They plan what the class will do each day.  Sometimes, as is the case in my high school, this isn’t even up to them.  The department chooses when each class will do each activity.  Although, it’s still up to the teachers to decide how to go about doing this activity.

Regardless, gym has always seemed to be more of a punishment than a class.  This is due to the fact that they only have two punishment options: make us fail (which doesn’t work for one-time offenses), or make us do more physical activity (running, usually).  Because physical activity is so often used as a punishment, we learn to associate it with punishment.  Let me give an example.  Let’s say that you enjoy, or can at least tolerate, doing push-ups.  You can do 30 push-ups without any problem.  Your gym teacher decides to make ten push-ups a punishment for some offense.  You don’t really mind push-ups, so you end up goofing off.  You get “punished” once, twice, three times.  However, you don’t realize that you’ve already done thirty, so keep goofing off.  Eventually, you’ve done forty, fifty, sixty push-ups in a day: way more than you’re comfortable with.  Now that you’ve been made to do the extra push-ups, you associate push-ups with punishment, and now loathe doing push-ups.

This, for me, has happened with running.  My high school gym program works like this: six times a year, we do “fitness testing.”  One item of this testing is a 12-minute run.  If you get 19 laps (for guys… 17 for girls), then you don’t have to run at all on Tuesdays between fitness testing weeks.  If you get under 19 laps… you are punished by needing to get “CV credit” (usually running) on some Tuesdays, instead of participating in an activity like volleyball or basketball.

Now, I understand that there are people that enjoy running, and really don’t mind this.  But, for those of us who didn’t really care for running, this has created the mindset that running is a punishment.  So, we loathe it in high school, but what happens later in life?  I do realize that exercise is important, but using exercise as a punishment can create adults that don’t want to exercise in their free time.

I even see evidence of this now.  Chicago is the fattest city in the nation.  How did this happen?  It seems to me that exercise being a punishment is partly to blame.  Adults who view exercise this way won’t want to go to the gym, or just walk around the block every day, to stay in shape.

So, what can we do to fix this?  For starters, we can turn gym into its official title: Physical Education.  Instead of running around every day, set apart a day or two a week to be classroom time, where we learn how different activities can keep us in shape.  Show us worst-case scenarios even.  There are plenty of health channel specials on people who are morbidly obese.  This is the same scare tactic that taught us we shouldn’t smoke, and I like to think that it worked for most of my peers.  In addition to that, teach us healthy eating habits, and show us ways to build simple exercises into our daily routine: take the stairs instead of the elevator, ride your bike to the post office if you need to mail a letter, etc.

However, the exercise as punishment issue remains.  I have no good idea of how to get rid of, or even reduce the effect of this.  My school has taken a step towards this, however.  There is no possible way to be required to run on every Tuesday between fitness testing weeks.  This insures that you will have one day in gym where you choose what you want your activity to be.

Maybe requiring four years (eight semesters) of P.E. in high school is OK.  But if that is going to continue, a change needs to be made.  Just look at the name of the class for inspiration: Physical Education.  Physical Education does not imply running around a track.  It implies learning about physical activity, and learning to use it as a tool to stay in shape.  Overall, it implies learning.  Something that I don’t see happening currently.

Every week day I get up at 6:15 in the morning (which some of my friends would say is late, even), eat breakfast, and go to school.  While my first class doesn’t start until 7:30, I get there early to have some socializing time/for the convinience of my parents, who drive me to school.  I have classes (including lunch, and five-minute passing periods) until 2:50.  This includes two AP classes, which are, luckily for me, spread out: on in the morning, one in the afternoon.  By the end of this day, I’m pretty mentally exhausted.  But that’s not all.  I participate in the theatre tech crew at my school.  I’ve been a member all four years, and am even getting an award for my work.  So, every day after school, I go to the theatre to work on whatever show we’re working on until 5:30/6:00 on normal days.  On show days, I usually just stay after school until the show, run the show, and get home around 10 PM.

By the time I get home at 6, I’m pretty mentally and physically tired.  Upon getting home, dinner is usually ready, and we eat right away.  We’ll say I take… 30 minutes for dinner (it varies… when dinner is ready, etc.).  It’s now 6:30 PM (I’ve been awake for 12 hours), and my day isn’t close to being done.  I now have to do homework for my two AP classes: AP Calculus BC, and AP Physics C.  Some of my friends have more AP classes, but this is my blog, so I’m focusing on me here .  AP Calculus has homework every single day.  Usually 25 or so very repetitive problems.  Sometimes, these problems even have various parts: a, b, c, …  The difficulty of the problem, and amount of time it takes me to do, depends on what unit we’re on.  The course syllabus said to expect to spend one to two hours on homework each night, so I’ll see 1.5 hours of math homework as a compromise.

It’s now 8:00 PM, and I’ve done my homework for ONE class.  First of all, I usually like to get to bed around 10:00, so I can get a good night’s sleep, and wake up… awake the next day.  This means I have two hours left in my day to finish the rest of my homework, and maybe have some me-time.  At this point, I have to say that I’m lucky: AP Calculus is usually my only class in which I have homework.  However, some of my peers often have more homework than this, and I can very easily see myself, on some nights, having another hour or two of homework.  Oh, yeah, and I haven’t taken a shower yet… I take a shower before I go to bed.

So, after everything I’m required to do in a day is done, it’s somewhere between 8 PM and 10 PM.  As stated previously, I like to go to bed at 10, so this leaves no “me time”.  However, even if I’m done by 8, I’m mentally and physically wiped, and just don’t want to do anything.  I’ll usually watch some TV, or maybe play a video game.  I’d like to do some coding, but I’m usually just too physically tired to work on any programs.

But what about a day where I get in some of those 15 hours a week I work?  I go home right after school, because I usually work from 5-10, usually leave at 4:45, and usually eat something before going to work.  If I get a ride home, I get home somewhere around 3, which gives me an hour and a half (3-4:30, so I can eat something) to… do homework.  Hey! That’s just the amount of time needed for Calculus.  Go to work, get home, take a shower, and go to bed about 10:30/10:45… later than normal.  On top of this, I’ve only given myself time to do Calc homework, so any other homework I have will have to wait until either my study hall (I’m lucky to have one), or my lunch period (assuming the class is after lunch).  Also note that I don’t go to bed at my normal time, and am a bit mentally awake from work, so I’m not able to go to sleep quite at 10:45.  This causes me to lose sleep, and be tired the next day.

What about the weekends?  Lately, I’ve been working from 10 AM – 5 PM on Saturdays.  I like to sleep in a bit on Saturday, and I usually wake up in time to eat breakfast, change, check my e-mail, and go to work.  When I get home from work (about 5:15), I eat dinner, then have the night.  But, wait… I have homework to work on for the weekend, and I need to take a shower.  We’ll say I ate dinner from 5:45 to 6.  This gives half an hour to change out of work clothes, and maybe browse the web a bit.  I then take an hour and a half for homework, which brings me to 7:30.  Woo! Found some free time.  Depending on the day I had at work, I may or may not want to go out, or do… anything, really.  So, my Saturday nights sometimes consist of laying on the couch, watching a TV or a movie.  Even if I do go out, that still doesn’t give me the programming time I’ve been looking for.

On to Sunday.  Church in the morning from 10:30 to 11:30.  I usually get up in time to have breakfast, check my e-mail, and leave.  After church, I have bible study with the church youth group.  This lasts until… about 1:00 PM on average.  Get home, and if my parents don’t have anything planned for me to do, then… I’ve found more free time!  However, some Sundays, there are events with the church/youth group.  So, that takes away from some of my time.

So, what’s the point?  Why go through all this trouble of typing up my schedule in detail?  To prove a simple point that any high schooler could tell you, but parents often forget: there never seems to be enough time in the day.  I have friends that stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning doing homework.  How they manage to be awake the next day is a wonder to me.  We get days off every now and then, but they’re sometimes for holidays, and we fall victim to either work, or the schedule our parents have pre-determined for us.  We’re being overloaded, and I KNOW I don’t have it that bad compared to some of my friends.

How can we fix this? I have no idea.  Expand the weekend by one day? Year-round school (in which a two-week long break occurs every two-weeks, I believe)?  Both lead to longer school years, something which NO teenager wants, and is possibly worse than the current schedule.  XKCD has a proposal for adults: the 28-hour day.  However, this screws with the body’s internal clock, and cuts the week by one day, so would be very hard for a school to manage.  Lighter homework loads?  Teachers are usually hard-pressed to teach us everything they need to as-is, so I don’t see this as a viable option.  Cutting down on extra-curriculars?  I suppose some would say I’m hypocritical.  I participate in an activity I enjoy, then complain that I don’t have me-time.  However, most extra-curricular activities could not be considered me-time because of the extra time commitment they add to schedules.  I also don’t see cutting back on these as a viable option, because they provide the ever-important opportunity to explore new things in high school.

Perhaps, then, this isn’t a problem after all.  We have to deal with the time press in high school, so that time presses later in life don’t seem as bad.  Prepare for the worst is the goal of high school.

At worst, if it is a problem, it is one with no viable solution.  Please, comment if you have one.