The Waiting Game, and BREAKING THE LAW

We're still waiting to hear about the paper. *However*, we have not yet received a rejection letter, and it's been over a week! So that's good!

I've been exercising a lot, and feeling much better in general. Well actually, I had a pretty crappy day yesterday.

I was riding my bike home from orchestra and I got a ticket for not stopping at a stop sign. Some people have been surprised to hear that you can get a ticket on your bike. Well, you certainly can. And I'll admit: I broke the law. I know you're supposed to obey all traffic laws when you're on a bike. And that's why I always stop at traffic lights, stay in the bike lane (which apparently you don't have to do, given the excessive number of people who ride on the sidewalk here -- this still baffles me, especially when there is a bike lane RIGHT THERE), and put lights on my bike when I ride at night. I also don't listen to headphones while riding (which is illegal) or zoom through intersections without even slowing down (which I saw someone do last week). I also don't wander into the middle of the road and stand there and almost get hit by bikes (something I encountered literally one minute before I was "pulled over").

So I think I'm a pretty safe rider, but yes, there is one stop sign on campus that I typically *pause* at instead of stopping, particularly at night when there is hardly any traffic. Is that okay to do just because I think it is? Well, no. Am I still pissed that I have to pay $80 for a 2-second mistake? You betcha!

I don't blame the police -- there are certainly a lot of people around here who truly ride like idiots (see above), and hopefully some of them will be caught, too. Unfortunately, most of them have trust funds, so the fine probably isn't much of an incentive for them not to do it again.

I find it kind of funny that while my ticket was being written, the police pulled over another biker for doing the exact same thing -- and today I witnessed two other bikers cruising through the stop sign.

This also made me wonder where the money for traffic violation fines goes -- those guys probably made a killing last night.

I just saw Watchmen and it was awesome. From what I remember, it was pretty true to the book (which was also awesome). The story has some very deep ideas behind it. And the movie has stunning visuals and great action scenes. It's very graphic, but if you don't mind that, then you'll probably enjoy the movie. And there's my four-sentence review. Anything more than that, and I start to feel like I don't know what I'm talking about.

Speaking of not knowing what I'm talking about -- I'm taking a Philosophy of Science class. In fact, I should be reading for that class right now, but the reading isn't exactly...Harry Potter? I typically have to read every paragraph about 3 times before understanding what these old dudes are talking about. I would have been a hopeless, and I mean *hopeless* philosophy major. Where are the facts? Where's the data? I need some PICTURES, dammit!

So, considering the fact that the readings frequently contain words like "epistemology," "holism," and "ontology," all of which may as well be Chinese to me (although I've found Wikipedia to be slightly more helpful than, say the dictionary in these cases), and also the fact that I only need to get a B in the class for it to count for my astrobiology certificate, I won't be that upset if I don't quite finish the reading for tomorrow. We have a paper due in a couple weeks, which should be interesting. I haven't written an "English" paper since....2004? I don't even remember how to use quotations, since we always paraphrase in science.

Well, I may as well take another stab at Laudan. If you're lucky, I may brainstorm my thoughts on Thomas Kuhn on here before I write my paper. I'll bet you can hardly wait.