The world through the eyes of mine.

It's been a while since I last wrote on here. I know that in my last post, I wrote that I would be trying to update on a daily basis based on my readings of the BoM, to be fully honest, that didn't happen. It's hard for me to find the time and the motivation to do so.

To be more realistic, I'm just going to write on here whenever I want because, well, I can. So let's get started shall we?

So last week I had the amazing opportunity to spend the whole week, including Independence Day in Washington DC with my family. I have to say, it was absolutely fantastic. DC in itself is so full of history and culture.

Now, I have been known to be called a "city boy" because every time I find my way into a city bigger than 150,000 people or so, I pretty much instantly fall in love, but believe me when I say this, DC is one hell of an awesome city. The entire East Coast in itself is such a cool place, so different from the way things are here in Utah and Idaho; it's really quite a bit of a culture shock. People were friendly if they wanted to be, and they were rude if they wanted to be, it was all genuine, unlike the false kindness that has grown to be the norm here in Mormon country. Obviously there was the normal cool stuff too, all the memorials, the museums, the normal tourist attractions, all very cool. Overall, I approve of Washington DC, this is a place I would like to return to.

On the other hand however, we also spent a day in New York City, this was quite different I must say. New York was probably the dirtiest, grungiest and must terrible place I have ever been, and I've been to many placed. People in New York are just straight up ass-holes for no reason, they have no regard for each other and no regard for their city. The city streets, buildings, subways and parks were piled with garbage. People always talk about NYC being such a busy place, this is true, but it's ridiculous, it's as if people were so lost in the commotion and the day to day stuff that they have lost their personality and humanity, it was almost scary. This is a place I wouldn't mind avoiding.

The most important thing I pulled out of this trip was something I learned about American culture and potentially the future of our country. Like I mentioned before, we checked out dozens of museums and monuments. However, the truly interesting thing was the audience these things attracted. We essentially trapped in an ethnic, multicultural, multinational sea. Everywhere we went, is seemed that English was not the predominant language. It seemed that German and Chinese were the most prevalent, with the occasional French and Indian tourists. What was really interesting though was that these were the people which seemed to care the most and display the most interest in our nation and its artifacts. Bombshell eh?

Of course, there was plenty of American citizens touring the place, but they didn't seem to care, particularly the younger people, people my age and less. We would be standing in places filled with history, like in the Lincoln Memorial, or in the Smithsonian, they would be walking around texting on their phones, looking lost, asking when they could leave, and most importantly, disrespecting the ground they were standing on.

It was truly frighting to me, that this is the future of our country. People don't really seem to give a damn about anything anymore, they care more about themselves and useless things then what's truly important.

Something needs to change with this, I'm not sure what because I'm not sure what the root problem is but it's bad, and it's what we must do if this country is to remain at the top of the world. Perhaps it's the American education system, teaching kids to lack accountability, responsibility, respect. Or maybe it's lies on the shoulders of parents, parents who lack the courage to teach their children the same qualities.

This is a damn long post, but I think their's some important things in it, that whoever reads this, if anybody, should think about.

It's summer, what to do...

Well, looks like it's about that time of year: The birds are (not) chirping, the sun is (not) out, and all the hot girls are (not) chillin around. Looks like another great summer in Logan.

Okay, it's not that bad here, I'm just hoping that maybe once it warms up, I'll be able to get my summer tan on. Get some good hikes, mountain bike rides and maybe go swimming again.

I'm sure anybody who reads this, the few, if any of you that are out there have noticed it's been months since I last posted on either this or my motorsports blog. To address that, I finally stopped caring about what other people were doing and decided that school was going to take a bigger priority than my blogs; particularly Off The Apex. Now that summer is over, I've got a few projects that I want to accomplish as well as a few things that I want to let loose via the internetz.

A lot has happened since I last posted anything anywhere: I've successfully completed another semester of college and I think I've managed to change a lot of the things about myself which had prior gone unaddressed.

For example, I managed to do better in school the last two semester than I have ever. To be honest, it's a great feeling: probably one of the best I've ever had. The feeling of a reward that is no greater than a simple alphabet character on some arbitrary piece of digital paper has far too much power when you have invested nothing but countless months of hard work, tears, and sleepless nights to the cause. It's far too mundane that it is all equivalent to a piece of paper that in ten, maybe even five years from now, will have practically no value. The thought that once I get my first job and prove my worth via work ethic and intelligence, these four, or five or six, or however many year I have devoted will be nothing but a smudge in my personal history.

Still, I can't say that I have ever felt better. Even more so because there have been certain classes which have been huge obstacles to me in the past which I have finally hurdled over. I'm not sure why it was: that I have performed so much better here than I ever did when I went to school down in Arizona. Perhaps it is because here, I share so much more in school pride? Maybe that I feel more comfortable here knowing that I'm not surrounded by rich, spoiled, pampered kids? Or even that I just don't feel like a dumbass here. In any case, the feeling that it is to be part of something huge, part of a awesome school which people have actually heard of and respect is something I took for granted before. The bottom is, I love this place. It's an interesting contrast going from a school where I didn't really care about who I was and what I was doing to beyond incredibly proud and confident of my school and who I am and what I'm doing. When people ask me where I go, I don't think I could get more satisfaction than from saying "Utah State Engineering". It's one of the best things ever.

Now it's summer though. So they say at least. When I look outside and it's 50 degrees, snow on the mountain outside of my window, and cloudy and overcast, I'm not exactly convinced. Seriously: it's effing June tomorrow.

Obviously I've been spending quite a bit of time now submerged in the Utah culture and the LDS religion. Nearly all of my friends are LDS, and are even strict followers. Prior to living here though, I held little respect for Mormons, this is mostly partly because of the way the Mormons I grew up around acted, partly because of my own personal beliefs, and fully due to my personal ignorance.

One thing I've always truly believed is the thought that you cannot judge a book by it's cover.I earnestly believe you can't judge or believe in something until you have good reason to via experience or research and so forth. Along those same lines, you can't claim knowledge without knowing the subject. Sadly though, I've realized that thats how I have lived when it comes to the Mormons.

With that, I've been spending a lot of time speaking with Mormons and non-Mormons alike and I've decided that I'm going to go through and read various religious testaments including but not limited to the Book of Mormon. With that, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get an "outside looking in" view without other influences: neither negative nor positive, this purely my own personal quest of understanding. Don't take this as me signing up to a different church, it's just a journey of knowledge. I'm hoping to read a little bit every night, and write about it on here. That's my daily devotion and I hope it works out. Hopefully I'll have it done by the end of the summer.

So buckle up and get ready, this should be fun.

A technical viewpoint of the Fukushima Daiichi Reactor failure

For the last couple nights, I have spent a lot of time trying to sort out this whole nuclear 'disaster' over in Japan from an engineers standpoint, that is, without all the media distortion. So this will be part one of a multiple part series. All of the material has either been gathered via my own personal research or from first hand resources: primarily my Grandfather who is a nuclear engineer and knows way more about these things then the media will ever. He also worked at the Power Burst Facility which sought to test what would happen to a reactor in a situation exactly like this.

So to start it out, I'll try to give a basic explanation of who a nuclear reactor in layman's terms. Here goes:

The nuclear fuel is usually in the form of uranium oxide pellets. The pellets are placed in metal tubes (usually zirconium, sometimes aluminum, and much less frequently, stainless steel) that are sealed at both ends.  These are called fuel rods.  The metal wall of the rod is usually referred to as the "fuel cladding," and is the first of many engineered barriers between fuel and public.  In most reactor designs, the fuel rods are assembled into 'fuel bundles,' which are arrays of tens to possibly hundreds of individual rods.  As well as fuel rods, the bundles may contain spacer rods that only have structural material in them (no fuel), or possibly rods that are loaded with a 'nuclear poison' instead of fuel.  In this case, 'poison' does not necessarily mean the material loaded in the rod is toxic to human health, but that it has the ability to 'poison' the fission chain reaction by absorbing neutrons without an accompanying nuclear fission.  Typically used nuclear poisons are halfnium, cadmium, and boron.  The spacer rods and poison rods are used to shape the neutron flux profile across and to equalize the amount of heat production across the cross section of the reactor.  

As well as rods, the bundles have several structural elements, such as bundle end plates having channels to direct the flow of cooling water into and out of the bundle, spacer elements to prevent bowing of the rods, and edge posts that the various structural elements are attached to.  In some commercial reactors, the various rods are inserted individually into the core rather than being bundled.  The completed reactor core will contain thousands of individual rods that are arranged in a roughly cylindrical shape.  Along with the fuel rods, the core also contains control rods; these are 'poison rods' that can move into or out of the core to control the fission chain reaction, including entirely stopping the fission process, or "turning off" the reactor.  The core is placed into a reactor vessel, which is essentially a stainless steel tank with walls varying from six to ten inches of solid steel.  Along with the core, the reactor vessel also contains a lot of structure that routes the cooling water through the reactor.  The top of the reactor vessel consists of yet more structural components, motors that move the control rods, instrumentation clusters, and other good stuff.  Collectively, this part of the structure is referred to as the 'containment head,' 'closure head,' 'top hat,' or some other term of endearment specific to the reactor facility.

What points should one glean out of all this discription?  First, a nuclear reactor is an extremely complex device, and is carefully designed, configured, and constructed to enable it to attain a controlled nuclear chain reaction. 

Second, the nuclear fuel is only a very small fraction of the mass of material comprising the reactor. Third, the reactor is housed in a very substantial container that is the primary means of protecting the public from the nuclear fuel and its waste products; however, as substantial as it is, it has its weak points and vulnerabilities, especially in the closure head.

Now on to the meltdown.  Most of this information is directly from my Grandfather. Prior to the earthquake, at least some of the affected reactors were operating at power, fat, dumb, and happy.  The earthquake hit, and automatic protective systems shut down the reactors by rapidly inserting the control rods into the reactor cores.  Heat generation in the core dropped drastically, the turbines tripped off the line, and backup power supplies kicked in.  However, since 7 percent of the heat produced in the reactor comes from the decay of radioactive fission products and only time is going to decrease that production, core cooling is still needed.  The Coolant pumps are still operating, and cooling heat exchangers are easily handling that heat, and there is no evidence anywhere that any of the reactor containments have been damaged, all is still well with the world....a big earthquake occurred, and all the safeguards worked as designed.  

Now, several minutes later, along comes a 30 foot tall flood of seawater sweeping away everything it contacts...the transformer yard connecting the complex to the electrical power grid is submerged and shorted out by seawater.  The transmission lines are swept away.  The emergency diesel generators are shorted out and drenched in seawater.  The lights go out, and some feeble battery powered emergency lights come on.  The coolant pumps, which moved the decay heat from the reactor core to the emergency cooling heat exchangers stop running.  All plant instruments not provided with battery backups no longer work.  The plant operators start to realize that their world just turned brown and they are in a world of hurt.  Minutes now feel like hours as the operators try to determine the condition of their reactor plant. 

The first and foremost thought in the plant operators is that core temperatures are going to start going up toward a core damage event unless some cooling water flow can be started and maintained.  Here I'm just guessing, based on a general knowledge of various reactor plant design, but there is likely a stopgap reservoir of emergency cooling water available that can be moved into the core by air pressure from banks of high pressure air tanks.  This will provide cooling for a short interval of time in the absence of electrical power, but once that is gone, there is go good means of moving cool water through the reactor core. 

Again, I'm guessing at exact numbers, but at the start of the festivities, the water temperature in the core is probably around 600 degrees F, and the temperature at the inside of the reactor fuel is about 700 degrees F. The temperature difference between the center of the fuel and the surface of the cladding needed to remove the decay heat is less than 100 F degrees.  As long as the amount of heat being generated by the fission products can be moved from the surface of the fuel rod to somewhere/something else, there is no danger of damaging the rods or releasing fuel, since the melting point of the fuel cladding is a bit more than 3300 degrees F.  All is well (relatively) until the plant operators run out of cool water that can be moved into the core. Once that happens, the decay heat starts increasing the temperature of the water in the reactor vessel.  Even though at a temperature far above the 212 degree F boiling point of water that immediately comes to the minds of most of us, the pressure in the core is keeping it in a water state instead of steam.  Somewhere in the piping attached to the core is a steam bubble with a pressure corresponding to a 600 degree F boiling point.  

That pressure is probably somewhere around 1800 pounds per square inch (psi).  To this point, heat removal from the fuel rod has been by conduction into the water, which is a very efficient heat transfer mechanism.  The surface temperature of the cladding is only slightly (10 or 15 F degrees) greater than the water temperature.  Since heat is still being produced in the fuel by nuclear decay, the water temperature in the core now starts increasing (the heat transferred into the water has no removal route, so starts increasing the water temperature.  The hotter the water gets, the hotter the fuel temperature becomes in order to keep moving heat out to the coolant water. 

The water temperature next to the fuel rod is now higher than the boiling temperature corresponding to the water pressure, so boiling starts to occur.  This is still a very efficient mechanism for heat transfer, and the Japanese reactor plants are designed for boiling to occur in the reactor vessel (they are a class of reactors referred to as boiling water reactors).  However, since coolant is no longer being pumped through the vessel, a steam bubble now starts forming in the top of the vessel.  At this stage of the accident, core temperatures slowly increase, pressure slowly increases, and the size of the steam bubble slowly increases.  

So far they are within the systems design limits, so no serious damage is occurring...however, as the cladding temperature elevates, it starts undergoing a metal-water reaction.  In layman's terms, it starts rusting...the zirconium metal on the surface of the rod gets converted to zirconium oxide by robbing oxygen atoms from the water.  A process most of you chemistry people will recognize as oxidation. A little rust never really hurt anyone, right?  Wrong...when the oxygen is removed from the water molecule, the two hydrogen atoms left behind combine into a Hydrogen gas molecule, and start collecting in the top of the reactor vessel.  That is bad....but not as bad as events to come.

As the accident progresses, the steam bubble at the top of the core becomes large enough it starts uncovering the fuel rods..this is very bad.  The portion of the fuel rod no longer in contact with water now has convection as a heat removal mechanism, which is not very efficient.  The temperatures of the exposed region of the rods now start really ramping up.  Some of the heat produced in the exposed region is removed by conduction down the side of the fuel rod to the part of the rod still in contact with the remaining water, and some of the heat in the exposed region starts to be removed by black-body radiation.  However, as the steam bubble continues to grow, heat cannot be removed from the exposed portion of the rods as fast as it is being created, and temperature in that region continues ramping up.  The larger the steam bubble grows, the faster the temperatures increase in the exposed portions of the core.  As the exposed cladding increases in temperature, the amount of heat removed by black-body radiation increases. However, the really bad part of this is that the surface temperature needed to remove the heat being produced only by radiation is greater than the melting point of the zirconium.  As well, the hotter the clad becomes, the greater the amount of oxidation through metal-water reaction and the greater the amount of hydrogen collecting in the vapor region of the core.  Along with all this, many of the fission products in the fuel are gases.  As the fuel temperature goes up, these gasses start expanding and increasing the internal pressure of the rods.  The fuel pellets start cracking and fracturing.  The thermal stresses in the core are causing the fuel rods and structural pieces to start deforming, cracking, and otherwise turning into scrap metal.  

At some point in this nightmare, the temperature of the upper regions of the core are large enough to melt the cladding, and possibly even the oxide fuel pellets.  Meltdown has started.  The metal temperatures are great enough the cladding and other metals are not just rusting, but are actually burning.  The steam bubble in the top of the vessel is now collecting not just hydrogen, but radioactive gases from the fuel.  Molten cladding, structural material, and possibly even fuel starts flowing down into the bottom of the reactor vessel.  The bottom of the vessel still contains some water...the melt falls into that water and, since it is now thousands of degrees F greater than the water's boiling point, instantaneously boils away any water it contacts, boiling so rapid it actually acts like an explosion, and in fact this termed a "steam explosion.  It creates a pressure front that moves up the reactor vessel, continuing the process of converting the structure to scrap and knocking large pieces loose that fall into the bottom of the vessel.  These steam explosions act like a crankcase explosion: if it doesn't knock a hole through the block, it is damned well going to blow out the seals, which is what is happening in the reactor closure head.  The pressure spikes break down the seals between the vessel head parts and between the closure head and the reactor vessel.  The radioactive gasses and hydrogen are released from the primary containment.

At this point, someone is going to shout out "China syndrome."  For those of you unfamiliar with the "China Syndrome" it was term coined during the 1960's in fear of Nuclear meltdowns. The idea is that the core is now going to melt through the bottom of the vessel, then melt through the concrete floor, and then continue melting through the soil towards China (which for these reactors would be difficult, as that would require the melt to start going perpendicular to the force of gravity.  Please pardon my levity (sarcasm, actually) and bluntness of expression....but my reply is as my grandpa put it: a  resounding "bullshit."  The china syndrome makes a thrilling movie and a great boogieman for the anti-nuke crowd, but it cannot possibly happen.  Consider this....as the core melts, the heat producing fuel is being diluted by melted cladding and structural materials, so the specific heat production is decreasing.  At the same time, the volume of the material is increasing, so there is more area for heat removal, and, far more significant, when the blob hits the bottom of the vessel, the heat transfer mechanism reverts back to conduction, which starts removing heat from the glob far faster than it is being created by the fuel.  As well, the melt no longer looks like a sphere, but becomes a plate....the ratio of surface to volume is increased a hundredfold.  The temperature of the glob drops precipitously, and very quickly is less than the melting point of the blob...it solidifies, and heat removal is great enough (the vessel makes one hell of a big heat sink) to keep it solid.  

Three Mile Island Reactor meltdown - very similar to the meltdown @ Fukushima Daiichi

At TMI (Three Mile Island), which had a very large portion of its core melt, the slag in the vessel bottom did melt about 3/8-inch into a small area of the vessel bottom....leaving it at nearly six inches of unaffected steel to contain it.  Nothing gets out of the bottom of the reactor vessel, and hydrogen production tails off to zilch.  Hydrogen and radioactive gasses have been released from the vessel, but are still within the containment barrier that exists around the reactor system.  If that containment has been breached, those gasses escape out into the secondary containment.  In reality, hydrogen is so mobile that it is nearly impossible to contain...the best the primary containment is going to do is slow down the rate it gets released.  The hydrogen gas inevitably builds up in both the primary and the secondary containment regions.  Hydrogen burns and if it builds up to more than 10% of the air volume, it explodes.  At Three Mile Island, the hydrogen buildup in the reactor building ignited before reaching an explosive mixture.  There was a pressure pulse in the TMI building, but it was not enough to breach the building walls.  At the Japanese plants, the hydrogen reached an explosive mixture, with the result of the blown out building walls and dust plume we have been seeing over and over again.  

That is the anatomy of a core meltdown.

For several reasons, there is going to be a greater release of radioactive material from the Japanese plants than from Three Mile Island.  It will primarily be in the form of radioactive gasses with some of the lighter metals (during a fuel failure, Cesium acts more like a gas than a metal)  How much material gets released to the public is going to depend largely on how well they can maintain intactness of the primary containment barrier.  In no event will the reactors release radioactives in amounts that even begin to approach the severity of the Chrenobyl accident.  That said, the fuel in the spent fuel cooling ponds is a totally different animal, and what people should be mainly concerned over.  If they melt, it goes directly into the atmosphere.  The mitigating part is that the rods in those pools have had far more time for the fission product decay, therefore likely producing a lot less decay heat relative to the rods in the reactor vessels.   

As a final word, it should be noted that the reactors at Fukushima are of the General Electric MK-I breed. As I mentioned earlier, these are boiling water reactors. Boiling water reactor design was actually pioneered in Idaho and my grandpa had a lot to do with these as well.  There are no fewer then 27 G.E. MK-I reactors in the United States that share an exact same design. Should this be a something worth worrying about, in my opinion and also that of my Grandpa's probably not. As I am sure you can see from the above literature, the circumstances that had to occur at the Japanese reactor were very particular and it would take one hell of a sequence of events to recreate the disaster. So as I always say, don't listen to the normal media B.S. about the U.S. reactor scare. 

Post-valentines day venting

Well it's that day, or perhaps the day after; another Valentines Day has come and gone and I'm still single and could really care  less.

Okay, in honesty, maybe it's just that I'm bitter that such an arbitrary holiday even exists. Yeah that's probably it. I mean come on, lets think about this, why does a holiday celebrating a benign human emotion even exist. It's an excuse to indulge in red, heart-shaped paraphernalia and ultimately, it's purely an excuse for the gutless and spineless to grow a pair of balls once a year and do something.

Granted, I'm single, I was yesterday, I was the day before yesterday and I am today. To be honest with you though, I'm quite okay with that. I don't need to wait till February 14th to change that; I can do that any day I want to its just a matter of personal preference.

Perhaps the worst thing about V-day is going to school and seeing all the girls getting flowers from Mr. who-the-fuck-cares, and seeing all the guys at the store scratching their heads like dumb apes trying to figure out what to buy who Ms. bitchy-shit. Why are they doing it Monday? Why do they need a reason? Why not do it  on Thursday because you felt like buying flowers for someone you sincerely cared about, or taking someone to dinner on any given Saturday because you felt like it was a nice thing to do? Grow a pair of balls and ask someone on a date for no real reason aside from the fact you felt like it would be nice and fun.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that there probably are very few things worse then Valentines Day in Utah. The fact that relationshits and marriage are forced on us on a daily basis isn't bad enough, no we have to have a day where it's not just forced, it't expected. For example I opened the school paper yesterday to see if there was anything worth reading (which there never is btw) only to see sixteen articles and advertisements for Valentines Day. Sixteen! Cresus Jhist! One is too many. To be honest I don't really give a rats ass about 'Seven Dates in Seven Days" or online dating or the fact that "Some students have better grades after they're married" I don't care about any of those things 364 days out of the year and I certainly don't care about they on certain day of the year.

Maybe it doesn't help that Ryan+relationships in Utah=nill. That just coincides with the fact that I don't care too much for Utah girls. It's so clickie here. Everyone meets all their friends/relationship potentials in church and go from there. We'll here's some news for you. I'm not Mormon and I don't go to church which means I am not going to meet people like that. Girl's here are weird, thats just a fact, I can't even have a normals college-aged conversation with anyone here. It's gotta be all clean and PG-13: yawn. It's so bad that the second I find out someone isn't from Utah I am instantly interested.

Kinda along the same lines, Brandon and myself have been planning kinda a group date thing for this Saturday which I was completely thrilled about in almost every aspect, the exception being finding someone to go with.I had to flip through my contacts, my Facebook friends, my brain and I came up with, about 4 possibilities, and even all of those fell through. What gives? Okay, I may not be the hottest, most athletic, funniest guy around but I know I'm not the guy people would want to avoid for a date. It's just the Logan really sucks that much.

I mean in all honesty, I'm only a human and a young-adult (barely), male. It's in my programming to desire the company of someone of the opposite gender. Basically, I miss loving someone, I never thought I would say that out loud on a public forum but to be honest, it's a great feeling; being cared for by someone other then family, and thinking about someone all that fun stuff. I think that's really my only regret about coming here to Utah. Any other time I've been in, as Brandon would call it "Not Utah", I've been far more content in my social endeavors, but now that I'm here, man does this place suck or what?

So basically what I'm getting at here is Valentines Day sucks, Logan sucks; the two combined: living hell for a guy like me who isn't Mormon and isn't disillusioned by stupid arbitrary feelings and holidays. If theres a girl out there in Logan who isn't any of these things call me; in the meantime, I'll be studying and doing something useful in my life.

A (Top Gear) tribute to probably the greatest racing driver of all time.

I've watched this video at least 5 times, but it never gets old to me. Ayrton Senna is, in my eyes, probably the greatest driver of all time, not only behind the wheel, but also as a man. When I see footage of his death or hear the announcements replayed, it still bring tears to my eyes.

I don't think I am one of those Senna fans who is a fan because of Top Gear, I've always loved Senna.

Utah as a box

As of January, I will have been living in Utah for a year; that's a hell of a long time. 

After being here for that long, I have since decided that moving here wasn't all that it was cracked up to be. Granted, its a lot better then where I was before, either AZ or ID, but its still falling short of my expectations. Those expectations being that of a improved social life.

The biggest thing is that, quite frankly the social life here sucks. Everyone here is enveloped in Logan's own subculture; go to school, go to church, be Mormon. I'm not trying to start a anti-Mormon rant here, because thats just not the way I prefer to portray myself as; but the way things appear to someone such as me, an outsider to the church, it's all pretty sucky. 

The problem is that, when your not a member of the church, you're essentially, locked out of society here; that is that your excluded from so many activities and even excluded from being a normal member of the community. It seems as though, when you're a non-member, people shun you. Now, if I were to come up with a random number, I would say 75% of the community here is LDS, and just like that 75% of all relationship opportunities, 75% of social activities, 75% of everything.

Now, this may seem like a load of unsupported bullocks, but it's true. There have been numerous instances where I have talked to girls, or even guys and we'll have a normal, healthy conversation, then the moment they pop the question of "where did you go on your mission" or things like that, the conversation heads south. Apparently that's all that is required to keep people away from you. As soon as people find out your a non-member, they don't want anything to do with you.

That bring's me to another thing; what is with girls here wanting missionaries? I'm sorry but that just seems asinine; automatically being more attracted to someone who only has a label in front of his name, and for what reason. What reason do a lot of males go on missions here. I have a lot of friends who are on mission/have been and they don't fit the stereotype of a missionary. Going on a mission doesn't really make you an angel, you're not saving children in Africa from starvation, you're not saving dogs from being eaten in China (yes, I am allowed to say that), Basically, what I am saying is that people should be realistic, don't date someone because he has the word "Elder" in front of his name, or because he is a member of PETA, or whatever bullshit people do; date someone because they are genuinely what you want, because they're a good person. There is as much potential for someone who hasn't gone on a mission to be as good of a person, if not better then someone who has.

Another thing, stop and think about what you're doing. Don't say you don't watch rated-R movies and then go and spend the night in someone of the opposite gender's room. Both are may be harmless on their individual levels but doing that is kinda a hypocritical. There are so many good things that can be experienced from rated-R movies. There are so many good thing that can be experienced from a lot of things, but don't just mindlessly follow what people tell you to do.

To summarize my very rant-like non-rant, all I am trying to say is, don't judge a book by its cover. Don't be so close-minded that you only hang out with people of the same religious following. Don't exclude people because they're not what your society has taught you to be righteous. Those goes for every religion, race, culture, sub-culture, whatever. 

I'm done non-ranting.

2010 Formula One Championship

So looks like we've got a new champion in the books, and damn, the kid can drive. All I have to say is I'm happy for him, my favorite driver, Lewis Hamilton didnt win, but still Vettel is the champion and I'm happy.

Truth is, the kid drove the fastest out of every race. He pushed his car in every race by either winning or crashing trying to win. He may be young and naive, immature, whatever; but face it, he's one hell of a driver. From when he got his first pole position and won back at Monza in '08 in a shit STR-Ferrari, I knew he had what it took to be a world class, championship winning Formula One driver. 

On the other end, good old Alonso couldnt steer his big bad Scuderia around a pieced together Renault with a rookie driver behind the wheel. 

If it hadn't have been for a few miscalculations and technical difficulties, Vettel probably would have swept this season away. Maybe the same goes for Hamilton, had he not crashed back at Singapore he would have had a much better chance at winning the championship. Though, neither of them needed a team order to win. 

That brings me to another thing, I've heard a few people talk about how Ferrari ruins drivers. That Alonso and Massa didn't put up the hardest fight.  Well.. let me qoute what I read on a certain online forum group:

"Exciting race???

 What was exciting?

 The season was over after 12 laps. Alonso and Webber just gave up.

 F&^k!!! If Enzo was still alive, I'd hate to be Alonso right now. He'd kill his whole family for that BS performance...

 Here is Alonso in his head after coming out of the pits.."oh I am fine in 11th..no biggie"

  Enzo would have been chewing his ass on the radio. "listen spanish boy...You better finish this f#@king race as the champ or wreck trying."

  That was the most weak ass end to a great season. 4 guys start with a chance..2 give up after 12 laps and coast  in? What a joke. I'd fire Massa and Alonso. What Ferrari needs is some fire...I may not be a huge Vettel fan but the guy tried every race....either won or crashed trying to win. None of this...well I couldn't pass Petrov so I guess that is that, BS. PETROV!!!...guy isn't even going to have a drive next year...he or should I say his country> bought his way into F1. You can't pass that f*cking waste of a drive? You are a 2 time WDC...show me what got you there...

 I am thinking that Ferrari just ruins drivers now. When Alonso was at Renault or McClaren he made a Meh car   better or just flat out owned shit in a solid car. He drove like a man possessed and made shit happen...Gets to  Ferrari and everything is angel wings and butterfly's. Case it point...why the f*ck do they keep re-signing  Massa...guy has had his time and if he isn't already in 1st...he isn't doing anything but burning gas. Ferrari is just  waiting for the seasons where their cars carry the driver to the champ...not drivers carrying the team to a champ. 

 I am thinking that I am going to change up my team...I am going to jump with Keith to the Koby team...Go koby..with your 3 stooges Emo Mo hair cut. WOOOT!

 OMG....the more I read about yesterday the more angry I am about it...

  Massa is being critical of the strategy to pull them into pit early...

 Well...Maybe they didn't think it would take you 26 laps to pass that broken dick STR red bull...it only took Vettel a  lap or a lap and a half to dispose of that 15th place tub of shit...

 OMG...FIRE HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Again that was all a qoute. None of it was mine. 

Part of me has to agree with this, about Ferrari maybe ruining drivers because, as he mentions, when Alonso was with McLaren and Renault, he was a totally different driver. But anyone who says Alsonso didnt try his hardest in that race, I'll have to disagree with. Ferrari just didnt build a car that was faster then the Renault which is what Alonso really needed on a track where the only passing opportunities is to bury your car into the corner. For that matter, Ferrari didnt give a car that was faster the Red Bull's either. 

Yes maybe the pit strategy really kinda gave Alonso the shaft but it still didn't seem like he was pushing as hard as he normally would have. Watching the overshot camera's, and every corner he did overshoot wasn't a optimal corner for passing. 

In any case, I hope to see Petrov return next year. At the beginning of the year, the guy seemed to prefer his car buried in a wall, but when he drove, he drove well. Same goes for Kubica. The same goes for Kobayashi. I had a mediocre-at-best chassis but he managed to stay mid-field. 

Ultimately, I think there are two kinds of racing teams/drivers; the one that rely on cars, technology and engineering to win championships, such as Ferrari. And there there are teams that rely on magnificent drivers, such as Ayrton Senna, Schumacher, Nigel Mansell etc. But every once in a while, you get a great car with a fantastic driver. Thats what happened this year.

As for Hamilton, there's always next year. 

For now though, congratulations to Sebastian Vettel.