Live and Don't Learn, That's Us

Well, I'm not sure why I'm writing another blog, other than because Clem told me to. He is apparently bored. However, he didn't give me a topic to write about, so I told him I'd write about cacti.

Soo... cacti: They live in the desert. They have spikes.

Actually, to be fair, cacti are a lot more interesting than just that... for example, they are extremely well suited for their environment, living in areas that most other plants could not survive in. Wikipedia also writes about how the prickly pear was introduced in Australia to be used as an agricultural fence, but spread out of control and has since rendered 40,000 sq. km. of farmland unusable. This isn't the case in South America, where a native moth's larvae feeds on the pear, controlling its population. But when the same moth was accidently introduced north of where it's usually found, it caused havoc to the local vegetation.

Why am I writing this? Mostly because I told Clem I would, the topic of cacti was chosen randomly by myself. But also because it shows how cool life and the ecosystem is. It's so balanced that even a small change (like a moth) can cause big consequences. This is a rather literal example of the butterfly effect ><. Or as despair.com puts it, "When the winds of change blow hard enough, the most trivial of things can become deadly projectiles." I was telling Byron the other day, for those that don't know, despair.com actually has trademarked the frownie... :-(. See, I would have just broke copyright law, but I have purchased a supply of Frownies from the despair.com store. This is true, look it up. It's finally November 7, at least here. And I'm sure you all know what that means. In less than 24 hours (make that 24 days) we'll find out the results of one very important election. Either way, with the Diebold voting machines and new voting rules and restrictions, the vote and likely recount(s) could get mighty messy.

I receive my first visitor from Canada next week, my friend is doing a long tour of Southeast Asia. Unfortunately he's gonna be in Kyoto during the work week, but hopefully I'll still get to see him.

JLPT is coming up soon, 26 days. Hard to find time to study still, and last minute panic hasn't sunk in. But it doesn't really matter how I do, I took the test to motivate me to study, and it has, so victory is mine. However, I got a reasonable shot of passing. Keith and I know our Kanji quite well, and I know a fair bit of vocab and grammar. And I only need 60% to pass.

Work's a bit boring, killing time by developing AI for a programming game. As well as looking for good companies to apply for summer internships to. Anyone have any suggestions for either of these?

Well... back to studying!