I had a great day today. Today was the first day of labs so I was at school from 8am to 8:30pm. I had lunch with a guy I met in lab. He was eating from Panda, but I got a veggie wrap from the food co-op. I told the wrapper to make me something he would enjoy, and he got really fired up from that. The wrap was pretty damn good. It had red sun dried peppers, olives, some toasty brown thing with tons of shredded vegetables, mayo and cheese.
He was a history major switching to Biology and was a junior just like I was. It's been a while since I had such engaging conversation. I don't meet someone who shares a lot of my interest often. We chatted about Goldman, World War II, doctors, family, etc. and then went to a meeting on Bioengineering. The two people who hosted the meeting were the geekiest people I have ever met in College Park. I don't hate nerds; I consider myself as one. But god damn, for some reason I wanted to punch them in the face and take their lunch money.

The one who seemed to be in charge had a speech impediment that could be only described as a shrill mumble. Later the real leader came with a bumbling projector which he aimed at the side wall because the slide wouldn't work. Kind of ironic that they couldn't work a slide with all their science acumen. He seemed nice and looked pretty decent, but halfway through his presentation, it was evident that he needed to get out more. He was natural with his buddies, but when addressing us, he was absolutely wooden and didn't follow a discernible trajectory. Also he kept turning to us for inputs on how he should proceed.
I had to duck out early because of O Chem lab and partly because it seemed like a waste of my time. It took a while to find the right room, and I was blown away with how nice it was. It made my general chemistry room look like the back of the bus on Cinco del Mayo. My high school science room was better equipped than the gen chem lab, and I went to the ghetto school in Columbia.
I was impressed with how we each got our own stations and hoods rather than relying on team work. I made a few mistakes during the experiment but nothing too major. There was an Asian girl who sat next to me but of all the people in the class, she seemed the most uptight towards me.
I was wondering if she were one of those Asian guy haters because of a bad relationship with their fathers. Oh, well. I seemed to hit it off with the Jewish guy and a cute girl whose name I couldn't say or remember. She had an unusual name, and I am bad with names. Probably because I spent most of my life as an anti-social retard.
Now my rant. I had run into a pro-life rally in which they had graphic signs in front of Hornbake equating abortion with genocide. That really pissed me off. It's not that I am a feminist or that I particularly care about abortion. Aside from the cultural and social politics, what they are saying is stupid. P

By equating abortion with murder, you are saying that a fetus has a life. That a fetus has a consciousness and an individual right/will aside from the mother. But if it is its own individual with their own rights, then they are infringing upon the right of the mother by stealing her nutrients she doesn't want to provide. Therefore, legally she can deprive that fetus of her nutrients and if the pro-life supporters want that fetus to live, then they should adopt those "aborted" fetuses and raise them in their own uterus.

You can see how illogical that train of thought will lead you if you assign something inanimate as a human fetus the same value as a real human baby. Let's take it further.
These same pro-life supporters want to extend the rights of the humans to not just fetuses, but rather stem cells. That's right. These cells that have barely begun meiosis and cell division. Technically they are still a sperm and an egg joined together with nothing being added or subtracted. If stem cells should be treated as humans, can you imagine how insane the world will become?
Every time a girl gets her period, she would have committed a murder because she got rid of her egg when a baby could have formed from it. I would be guilty of at least a handful of genocides when I beat my meat because each sperm had a potential to be a baby.
Pro-lifers might claim that this assertion isn't true. That they don't care about eggs or sperms alone. They only oppose it when they are together because when they are together they can create a human. But I am saying that you cannot differentiate the whole from the parts.
Just because the whole has different properties and function as the parts, doesn't mean it is greater than the parts. On the contrary, I believe that the whole is equal to the summation of its parts.
People fall into this fallacy all the time. They think that a part alone is useless. Therefore the whole must be something greater than what the parts imply. This is just failing at math, saying that 1+1=3.
The whole exhibits properties different from its parts because different interactions between many new parts will inevitably create a novel property. However, this novel property can only come from the interactions between the said parts.
If we could just create new properties and bring into existence new beings from merely assembling parts with no regard for science, we would in effect be Gods. We would not be restrained by the principles of nature if we could do that. But no, we can't. All our clever assemblies all adhere to the laws of nature. Our creations never exhibit properties that cannot be explained by the summation of the parts alone.
Finally, should women decide? I say, of course. They have been getting abortions with or without societal approval since mankind first started. For one thing, if a woman's body is feeling ill or is malnourished, the body makes the logical decision to abort the fetus. Saving the fetus at the expense of the mother is stupid because even if the kid is born, the mother won't be around to take care of the baby. The baby will automatically die so the best chance of the mother passing on her genes is saving herself. I am not saying mothers don't risk their lives to save their kid. But biologically, the body makes the decision during extreme situations.
Also women bear the biggest burden/ cost of carrying a child. They are vulnerable for 9 months straight and for the next 12 years tending for the kid. It is a huge commitment that may or may not be shared by their mate. That is why females have to be picky about who they partner with. Since they are carrying the most burden/ cost, in a partnership such as that, they should have the final say. After all, we aren't going into labor for them so why the hell should we expect them to?