soo uhhhh....im at college. berkeley in fact. it's quite a rush.

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVEEEEEEEE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but the REAL purpose of this rare xanga entry is this:


i got music tagged by jessica lee!

directions: list five of your favorite songs and then tag five other people...

1. Fall Out Boy - Dance, Dance

2. The Afters - The Way You Are

3. Switchfoot - Adding to the Noise

4. Anberlin - Paperthin Hymn

5. Emery - Studying Politics

and now i tag...jen chen, christina lee, matt zhang, melanie chen, and victoria lee

Medicine. So many people have asked me about my seemingly strange aversion to medicine. Ok, maybe not many people. Maybe just Jen. But still, her nonstop questions have got me in a thinkin' mood. I mean, what can be so bad about medicine? Medicine is supposed to be good for you, it helps you when you're sick, it alleviates pain, and it soothes discomfort. Heck, I'm going pre-med at Berkeley with the intention of going to medical school. Medicine is good...right? Not always.

Well lemme start off by saying this. I'm not saying ALL medicine is bad, in fact, many types of medicine are both necessary and beneficial. Morphine, for example, alleviates excruciating pain and helps prevent shock. Chemotherapy, which kills both good and bad cells, is often a necessary step in treating cancer. Many antibiotics are needed to fight infections that are harmful and perhaps even fatal. I don't have an aversion to medicine itself, per say, but I do have an aversion to the misuse of medicine. The use of medicine when it is not needed is the biggest problem in the development of modern medicine.

Let’s pull out some statistics. Yea yea i know...stats are boring. But these stats are pretty incredible. The number of unnecessary antibiotics prescribed annually for viral infections is 20 million. The number of people exposed to unnecessary hospitalization annually is 8.9 million. The total number of iatrogenic (induced by medicine/physician) deaths is 783,936. In comparison, the annual heart disease death rate is 699,697. The annual cancer death rate, 553,251.

The major cause of this problem, or epidemic if you prefer, is the mindset of modern American society. We are a society that is obsessed with and addicted to the “quick fix” philosophy. If there’s a problem, we will find the quickest and simplest way to fix it and say screw the long-term consequences. Don’t want to mow your lawn? Get turf. Don’t like the food at a restaurant? Sue ‘em. Pregnant and you don‘t want the baby? Abort it. The age-old adage of “look before you leap” has been replaced with the modern maxim of “keep it simple, stupid”. This sort of degenerative mindset is the driving force behind the sensation of “quick fix” medicines like aspirin, painkillers, even opiates and steroids. In cases of minor headaches, nausea, and dizziness, many would rather immediately take an aspirin or two rather than letting the body naturally heal itself. As our immune systems gradually begin to weaken, we become more and more dependent on medicine to combat even the simplest of bacterial infections. The repetitive and misguided use of antibiotics in hospitals have not only caused thousands of deaths, but also a continuously growing number of super-infections, bacteria that are immune against all but the rarest and most powerful of antibodies, ones that cause more drastic side effects. Penicillin, the miracle medicine of World War II, has already become practically useless since nearly all modern infections are immune to it. In order to stop this destructive self-fulfilling prophecy, there’s gotta be a major paradigm shift from “quick fix” to “only when necessary”.

In “Brave New World”, Aldous Huxley paints a vision of the future where the masses are all given massive doses of soma, a psychedelic drug and aphrodisiac that sends the user into a sex-crazed stupor. This drug is the World Controller’s primary method of controlling the masses and stripping them of free action, free thought, and free will. The world hasn’t deteriorated to that point yet...but the possibility is looming. So please...don’t take medicine when you really don’t need it.

Feel free to comment or debate or whatever you like =D.

Dover Beach

        -Matthew Arnold

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the A gaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

well...crap.