Barely conscious...

I have been awake for 18 hours now, that isn't really a long day (actually, that's pretty normal), but because I have been up for an entire night, for some reason, this is thrashing me. Sure, maybe it was the trip to the gym, and the huge load of laundry and all the cleaning I did, coupled with a stressful family dinner, but "meh," I say.

The all nighter serves a purpose. Since school has ceased for a little over a week now, my life has tripped over itself. For years now, I have been in school nonstop with little more than, at most, a weeks break (oh, and the Christmas breaks). I now have MONTHS free. My brain can't comprehend this, so I have maintained studying. The problem is, I don't know what to study. I've downloaded entire science, mathematics, and philosophy collections, searching for the eBook which seems about my level so that I may continue. For about a day I was reading about quantum mechanics, and tensors for general relativity. After reviewing my future UCI course load, I'm finding I don't need the tensor knowledge until graduate school. Drat, what the heck am I to study then? I realize that I had been excited about tensors and then pause to consider what the upper division courses will consist of. "Please be interesting," I beg to the ghostly concept.

A slight divergence. I'll be honest, I am a little disheartened by the fact that I won't be taking any advanced mathematics courses. A close friend of mine is a mathematics major, he is gleeful because he gets to take a topology course, and a set theory class in his first year. I flip through the course book; lower division: Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity, upper division: Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity again. What do I study in graduate school, you may wonder? Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity. I smile at this. I am a Philosophy of Science major (POS) as well, I figured it suits me well due to the fact that I sometimes can sit and stare and be blown away by my own existence. I don't want to write myself off as a nut, but I sometimes like to imagine that, while the whole of Physics (P) is not entirely wrong, it is missing out on some large part of reality, "something hidden in plain site," I imagine to myself. It's just fantastical dreaming, but, man, I wonder.

Anyways, since I am supposed to be double majoring P and POS, I was reading the POS course load as well: Quantum Mechanics, and General Relativity. Oh, and an elementary set theory class *glee*.

Internet Vagrancy

I am writing to help keep myself awake for another 5 hours. Around this time in my plan, I find that after the thrill of reading, studying, or anything constructive and playing video games have worn off.  This leaves me in a state of internet vagrancy, i.e. virtually wandering about the internet. I googled "philosophy tired," and aside from the makeup I can get for my tired little eyes, I found this article by Jeff Williams on some seemingly obnoxious site.

Jeff is a terrible thinker:

For many years I have said that being tired is a state of mind. I feel that the only way one becomes tired is if they let themselves, into that realm of thinking. If one truly believes they are not tired, then why should they be? 

Jeff continues,

According to Wisegeek.com, it is said that we as humans only use 10% of our brains; reason being, we don't use every neuron in our brains. So what about the other 90%? Imagine if we did use every neuron. The question that comes into question is what would we be capable of?

Jeff is wrong. I checked out his source.

His source didn't say that either.In fact, it specifically says

...Therefore, we’re using much more than a one tenth fraction of our brains at any given time... 

In short, Jeff seems to think that because when we feel tired we are capable of getting up and moving around to get a little extra waking up, this implies the ability to train our bodies to stay awake indefinitely by somehow using "the other 90% of neurons that are not used". He then claims that athletes have the capability of controlling the chemicals being released in their bodies. He then mentions something about narcoleptics and staying awake, and then concludes that...

...If one has enough body control to control their chemicals in one's body, then one should truly be able to say tired is a state of mind. We as humans could be capable of this if we discover a way to explore the 90% of neurons that we do not use. These neurons should give one capabilities of blocking chemical levels that put one to sleep...

Ok, Jeff.