Mmm...MIT Blogs...

Current Mood/Status: When actual people actually ask, I reflexive say, "Fine, thanks." Right now, that's pretty much a lie, and I should really get out of that automatic habit, but...well, that's the way I am, and I'm too busy right now to worry about it enough to do something. Pay no attention to how bad that last sentence sounded. /undeniable imperative
Currently Doing: essay outlining (at least two, and only one for applications), now pretty much transitioning into homework
Song of the Day: End Up Behind, Shout Out Louds

...But *man*, was Mikhail Gorbachev's speech interesting. Well...apart from my headache and the highly curious and annoying (not to mention excruciatingly bright) flash bulb far behind us that kept going off ever, say, twentyish seconds but still managed to split my skull just that little bit more every time. Oh, well. Got there about an hour and forty or so minutes before the thing was even supposed to start and we (Jane, her mom, Andrew, and I, all arriving at different times (well...except that Jane and her mom went together)) were about a hundred people back in the line already. Our seats, though, were fantastic; right towards the front middle. Bam!

Gorbachev talked about the future of the world and the environment--after all, the two are undoubtably intertwined. Mostly says that in the past, power was about destructive capability; now, it's about resources. Population (over)growth has placed a huge price tag on water and land in specific, especially in extraordinarily overpopulated countries like China, India, Japan, etc., but it's barely touched the States, Russia, etc.

Furthermore, we as a world can't possibly expect to survive for very long working as individual nations; we absolutely have to collaborate to get anywhere in coming years. 'Bout half the people alive are in poverty, and that's not about to help the few with excess get too far.

By the way, Gorbachev's translator was incredible. Know how on documentaries and whatnot, there are often people speaking in foreign languages with translators going over them? Yeah, well, that's what the speech was like today (Gorbachev, of course, in Russian). You know, in real time. The two have been working together for some twenty years, no less. It most certainly was interesting. I'm really glad that I went.

Another thing that makes me really glad is that the very points that Gorbachev brought up are the kinds of things that I discuss with you guys from time to time. Not so much recently (what with, you know, me being unbearably busy; I don't doubt that you've been being cool and talking about stuff, though), but I definitely live for just hanging out and talking about stuff, and the fact that we can makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside (see also: grammar note in previous (or so) post). I probably wouldn't really have noticed this (after all, everybody talks about stuff; how could one not?) were it not for the fact that the points with which we come up appear often in popular/respectable blogs that I read in addition to mainstream media, right out of the mouths of big faces. It's not like we're unique in our conclusions, but it's incredibly reassuring to see that people who can easily and often do make a difference see things the way we do.

Or...perhaps vice versa and I'm just being overbearing and elitist again, thinking that *they* agree with *me*. Meh. No...I think that it works both ways, because the ideas are (as I see it) pretty much the only logical ends, many people just can't follow all of the evidence (or don't want to).

Oh, and I decided that MyMIT, MIT's prospectives' page, where one can do things such as, you know, submit applications, sign up for interviews, campus visits, etc., which is also a portal to news, campus events, and, most importantly, student blogs, is extremely handy and insightful. It's doing that thing that Williams had been--more than slowly gaining points on all of the other schools. So...I actually want to go back and take a visit now. Meh. We'll see how that goes over tomorrow. It'd be totally awesome, though, and I could probably swing by and say hey to at least Chris, maybe some other old friends, too, while I'm in the area. Hopefully.

Well...that's pretty about twenty (it not more; I'm awful at estimating, as Tyler can well attest) times what I'd planned on writing just now, but I did kind of realize that I may be able to draw from this for one of my (unfortunately many) college essays. My original idea for this post? Here:

...So tea is the new coffee.

Oh, and, as an edit a few minutes later, the old new coffee was hot chocolate, but it definitely took at least twice as much of that to equal a mug of tea, and while a mug of tea is only about a third of one of coffee in terms of potency, it's a lot nicer; the only downside (I wouldn't really call having to drink a lot of it much of a downside) is that it's a bit more inconvenient to prepare real tea. Meh. Worth it, totally.