(no subject)

If I have to settle for a less than prestigious university starting out, then I think I will.

I'm of the opinion that, if I apply myself my first year wherever, I'll come out with a 4.0 and full scholarship thereafter.

I wasn't able to fully concentrate on my studies before - I was always with a girl who sucked the fucking life out of me.

Duquesne did send me a letter. It's not a denial. Obviously they need some more information (which costs money for me to provide, thank you fucking college board) but to be honest, I'm not really sure if I'll send it. It's been four years since I took my SATs, and I had two years of college thereafter. I don't understand why it's still necessary for universities to see those.

I also don't understand why it's necessary to have application fees. I've got to be honest - if you've got ten-twenty thousand people applying to your university, and you charge them $50 a pop, you are coming out like a bandit. Half a million to a million dollars a year? Half of which probably won't even end up enrolling?

You've got to be fucking -kidding me-.

(no subject)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1779270/

If you are a smoker, and are interested in knowing about harm reduction techniques, you may want to examine the article linked above.

This is the -only- correctly referenced article I have seen, period. I see plenty of websites scattered across the web that claim if you're going to use tobacco, you might as well smoke - it's either quit or die. This is simply not the case from an empirical standpoint, and as the article points out -even the medical community still pushes the idea that smokeless tobacco is as harmful, if not moreso, than cigarettes- even when -all of the empirical data collected over the past fifty years says otherwise-.

This is absolutely -amazing-. What else are they lying about?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the cigarette companies have been paying off the medical discipline to say this to keep people smoking.

There is a more horrifying thought; however.

Why try to really end smoking at all? From a government's standpoint, people are making a natural choice to, on average, die far younger and by proxy reduce the population -but keep the total wealth the same-.

There's a similar idea that shows up in the 007 movie Goldfinger, which suddenly made me realize just how useful mass genocide must appear to incredibly poor countries.