to make you feel better here is a nifty thing I made in Paint

I think I'm going to concentrate more on "From the Gods" instead of the fanfic I've been doing, particularly the RPS. I've been looking over the plot, and what seemed so clever and meta and insightful now seems...kind of silly and self-indulgent. Maybe I need to rethink the whole thing. I want to get it done and posted by April 20th if I do it at all. I can be silly and self-indulgent and write about fanfic in fanfic if I like, can't I, as long as I try to do it well? I mean, I've still got another fic in the works, and it's a good fic and it's got a good premise and it's really quite serious (and probably depressing), and I do have another idea for a fic that's maybe self-indulgent but really not silly at all that I haven't told anybody about yet. And I want to get the first draft of "From the Gods" done before spring break (next week). I've been working on it in little increments and it's taking forever. Maybe I'll have time to do it over break.

We got very off-topic today in Econ. Usually, we talk about supply and demand and such, and even my prof admits that it's not a realistic model of the economy--people aren't solely motivated by profit, and prices don't automatically rise to compensate for the velleities of the American consumer, but creating an accurate model is a little complicated for a 200-level class, so we go with the simplified model. My Soc prof hates this, believing that withholding information is just another way to keep the masses uneducated. I figure it makes sense to give someone the basics and a simplified model before teaching them all the complications, but hey, what do I know, I'm just an English major.
Anyway, the discussion today was on fringe benefits, i.e. non-monetary or non-economic benefits of a choice. Prof started by talking about different reasons people chose to go to college--popular answers were "Because my parents said I had to" (in which case the fringe benefit was not getting beaten on by your parents), and "Because graduates get higher-paying jobs" (in which case the fringe benefit was getting a higher-paying job). I offered "Because you want to improve your mind" (in which case the fringe benefit was unanimously decided to be intangible).
Then he starts talking about opportunity costs, and the only thing he can think of is the fact that the college-educated are more likely to commit suicide. This is a terribly cheery piece of news, and the class murmurs over it for a few minutes before the professor announces that the two professions with the highest rate of suicide are psychiatrist (presumably also psychologist and therapist, but that's nitpicking), and dentist. I am not exactly sure why a dentist would be particularly depressed just from being a dentist. I do, however, understand exactly why a psychiatrist would be depressed from being a psychiatrist (and I can't imagine quite how much it would suck to have your psychiatrist commit suicide). We chew over this information for a little while longer before going back to supply and demand and curves drawn in different colored dry-erase markers. At last, at the end of the class, the prof sighs and delivers his closing statement: "The reason why college-educated people are more likely to commit suicide is because they know more about how the world works." This was spoken in the most matter-of-fact voice you've ever heard anyone use.

Great.

( Not interesting bit, more mind TMI )

I beg for a question

Can you go insane from cognitive dissonance?

I shouldn't have tried to take Logic and Sociology in the same semester. Trying to reconcile what I've learned in both classes is making me crazy.
One of the things that Sheptoski is trying to get us to realize is that there is no objective position on a lot of things. This idea really bugs me. I am intellectually motivated by the desire to be right. Not in a "I cannot ever be wrong, so whatever I say goes" way, but in a "OMG, am I wrong? Tell me how I'm wrong please" way. I'm trying to push my worldview ever closer to a completely objective reality, and I can't do that if there is no objective reality. I don't want to be wrong, and if there's no objective reality, then there is no way I can be right.
Unfortunately, the only thing I have applied the previous statement to is the difference between my Logic class and my Sociology class.

Logic today was pure logical process. We've started getting into the use of mathematical symbols for logical statements, and it's actually a lot of fun--I get to use my high school algebra to demonstrate my amazing knowledge of parentheses. We did truth tables today, which concentrate on assigning truth values to letters and working out the validity of a statement mathematically from matrices. Very little real-life application here (who takes the time to assign letters to statements in a debate and then make a graph out of it, besides incorrigible math nerds?), but enjoyable as a puzzle. I like Logic; everything fits into place. It's either true or it isn't, and there's no Why or How or What If, just pure, smooth conclusion.

Sociology today was a discussion of why humans aren't rational. The arguments given:

A) We don't have all the facts, or we don't have accurate information, in any given situation.
B) We don't have unlimited cognitive powers or time.

Just having come from Logic class, I was still thinking in terms of thought processes. I suggested that these in and of themselves weren't indications of humans being irrational, but rather indications of limitations on the possiblity of rational thought. One of the other things we'd been discussing was the tendency of humans to ignore information that might undermine their worldview, which is something I can't reconcile with rational thought; the desire to be rational was, to me, the desire to have a realistic and therefore objective worldview, which cannot be achieved by ignoring information.
Apparently this is incorrect, and process, in ration, means little if you don't have the right information and accurate conclusions. No points for effort. So ration is the real-life version of logic, where one must work with facts and rules about the real world, and not logic, to arrive at an accurate conclusion.
This implies that the real world is not, in fact, logical, since logic doesn't always work in it.
This is the best argument for the existence of God that I have ever heard.
My oversimplified views on religion in general: God is not logical. If the universe is logical and mechanistic, there is no need for God to keep it running. If God exists, then there is no need for the universe to be logical and mechanistic in order to keep running. Boiled down to terms which would earn me points on a quiz:

A) If God exists, the universe is not logical.
B) If the universe is logical, God does not exist.

It has been proven that the universe is not logical, since logic does not work in the universe. Therefore, God exists.

I am not happy about this conclusion. Is there a religion that believes in God but is really pissed off about God's existence?

ETA: This argument is logical but may not be rational, as I may have been misinterpreting his comment. He may have meant that the reality defined by humans is not logical, as humans are not logical beings. Since he is a sociologist and not a cosmologist, this is the most likely interpretation.
In this case, I can go on believing that the rest of the universe is perfectly logical and that it's only humans that screw everything up with their crazy emotions and beliefs.