It’s Christmas Eve and many families around the world are celebrating with extravagant dinners, parties, family get- togethers and etc, but many times I believe people forget what it is all about, not just Christmas time but what the real values of life are about. Today’s world lives in an information age where technology has made the exchange of information faster then ever. Within seconds we find out about new advances in science, natural disasters, or even whether or not Elizabeth and Johnny are still dating through the internet and wireless devices. I believe that in all this exchange some people at times forget that there are values in life that can’t be seen such as love, compassion, hope, faith, and friendship. People fall in and out ‘love’, have a new best-friend-forever, and have had sex 5 times with 3 different people all in a week. With all this how can anything ever be special. How can a first kiss be special? How can love at first site be possible? Is there even a such thing as true friendship? I beleive that sometimes we should all take time to ourselves and think about all that. I know that buying the newest most expensive in-style clothing helps boost our self-image and I do the same thing, but I’ve seen that so many people lose themselves in this world of materialism and do forget those real values that make them what they are. Anyway this issue can be taken very deeply and I’m sure other people have different opinions from me. For now I just want to share the below letter with all the viewers. It was written by a young 8 year old girl named Virginia to the Editor of The New York Sun in 1897. The editor sums up so many deep thoughts into a simple letter to a girl. I believe it is a masterpiece.

- I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas.

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Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
-Francis P. Church

It connects the masses, it connects individuals who would never get to meet or even know of the others existence. A pharmacist in the States can read about the miseries and joys of a Junior Doctor in the United Kingdom. An artist can portray his life in words to us, and an everyday user can just rant on about his or her problems knowing that out of the billion people surfing the web atleast someone has read and sympathized with him. Some use blogs as an online journal, others use them as a source to output useful information, either way once the blog is online with articles ready to go it is part of “The Blog World”, an intricate online network of users and communities that go beyond just a website. It is like a Yahoo! chatroom only with a slower pacer, and instead of just chatting to the other users you know of a part of there everyday life. A part that even those who have physically know this person may not know of. When I first began to blog, around two months ago, it seemed like a pretty simple little idea to me and pretty pointless. Open a site and rant on and on about your everyday life that no one is going to read about unless you just found the cure for cancer, however, it is much more then that. A few weeks after blogging I noticed how well many bloggers knew each other. They could relate with each other on many issues and it was a virtual community. In most instances there was no online portal or forums connecting one blogger to another and unlike a website these bloggers did not compete with one another. I noticed that they would constantly link and refer to other blog throughout their posts. “The Blog World” is a online virtual world of everday people — doctors, soldiers, artists, designers, walmart clerks, and who knows whom else. Medilogy is just another new citizen of this large and complex world and I hope it can become a larger and more well-known part of “The Blog World”

And as a new blogger I must say it is pretty addicting. I don’t know if anyone even reads my posts and I’m certainly not getting any kind of capital from it, however, for some reason I still come to my blog everyday to see if there is a new comment or to think of new articles to post, and I don’t think anyone but another blogger knows of this feeling.

The youngest mother, how old could you expect her to be? Ten, Eleven, or Twelve? Those were the ages that first came across my head as I began to read about five-year-old Lina Medina, who gave birth to a 6 lb child at the Andean village of Ticrapo in 1939. It was a very phenomenal case and the likelihood of it was so rare that many individuals still believe it is not true. Most girls began to develop around the age of 12 when they hit puberty, however, doctors found that Medina had a regular cycle of periods since the age of 3. According to her doctor, Escomel, she had a hormonal disorder of the pituitary gland that became the cause for this early development. Around the age of 4 1/2 Medina’s mother began to believe she had some type of tumor in her stomach and after taking her to a local doctor was it found that the girl was pregnant. Much speculation has been made that the father of the child was Lina’s father. He was put in jail for a short period of time but later released because of a lack of evidence. After giving birth to Gerard (name of Medina’s doctor), Medina’s psychological behavior remained the same. She would prefer playing with dolls rather then her own child. Also her son Gerard believed his mother was just his sibling but around the age of 10 found out the truth as local boys teased him about it.  Both grew up to have healthy lives and Lina married at the age of 33 and had a second child.

Ever had the cough that just never ends. It starts kicking in everyday around 8p.m and wakes you up 5x a night eventually ruining your mood, taking away vital hours of sleep, and keeping the rest of the house awake. Well if your one of those people I know exactly how you feel, and after reading a few blogs I came across an interesting article that brought upon a theory that I have always held true. That cough medicines DO NOT HELP. They bring a small period of relaxation similar to what a Halls cough drop may do, and in that time period the throat can relax from the constant irritation making it less susceptible to more coughing. Coughs are a viral infection and cure when they complete their cycle, similar to a cold, and most people including myself decide to take Buckley’s guaranteed cough medicine on the last day of the cycle and VOILA cough is gone,the credit goes to the cough medicine, and more users rush to get it. Cough medicine can at times be looked to as a placebo for many individuals.  Studies show that a sugar coated pill has the same long-term effect on a cough that a actual medicine would. Even in my two years of not taking cough medicines the cycles of my coughs remain the same and they still last as long as they did when I did take medicines. Also overtime my coughs have reduced, now I doubt this is because I have quit taking the medicines but hey if not taking them cures it then I’ll go for it. Now with all this said I’m not trying to say lets all quit on medicines, because there are still those nights when I take a teaspoon of nyquil to relieve the irritation in my throat and, of course, to get a good night’s sleep, however, I do believe that most individuals depend to heavily on medicines. A small cough hits them and they rush to their medicine cabinet.

The full article on this issue can be found here.

December 08, 2007, the last time I would ever get up at 7 AM to go take the ACT. For those of you that don’t know what the ACT is, it is a exam taken by high school students throughout the United States. The score often determines the amount of scholarship a college will give and whether they will even accept the student. A perfect score is a 36 and a 32 usually means a free ride into most colleges. Anyway this was my the final chance I had at the ACT and did I study? Absolutely not. Watched a cricket match the night before, went to sleep around 1 a.m, woke up at 6am and went to school to take on the ACT. A few minutes after getting there I realized I didn’t have a pencil, but it was pretty easy to borrow a few from people who brought like 25 (we aren’t writing the constitution here). Anyway the ACT itself went pretty well. The English grammar part had a few questions here and there that left me puzzled, reading was a fight for time, math was filled with way more questions on degrees n triangles then I could of imagined, and the science this time was much easier for me. Overall I think it went pretty smooth and I am hoping for a 29 or higher. I’ll be sure to post up the results soon as I get them.

Whether the ACT scores come out good or bad, one thing is for certain and that is the fact that I feel much more relieved. It was becoming a huge weight on my back and now its over with. With 1 more week left until midterm exams and Christmas break I feel life is getting better, and of course I should start getting time to finish up a few actual med-related articles I have sitting in my draft for the past few weeks.

P.S - Just in case your reading this ‘J’ I hope my guessing skills come out as good as yours…yea he did end up making a 29 out of 36 on the most hated science section of the ACT by reading half the question and taking a ‘educated’ guess.

The last few days…hmm…how can I describe them. Dull, uninteresting, and with so much to do that there is nothing to do. Even writing this article is taking much longer then it should. I’ve sat here the past few days thinking of the millions of things. College, the ACT, SAT, Calculus final exams, AP classes, personal life, what not? Its difficult to describe but there is just so much work to do that I can do nothing. I sit here and can make an endless list of tasks, however, start on none. I dreadfully make way through my homework everyday and 2-3 hours fly by in a matter of minutes. After that everyday chores, outside work, etc.. eat away the rest of my time, and no matter how much work I do or don’t do I never feel that the day was productive or successful. I feel bad even saying that the first few parts of this article have been sitting in the draft area of the blog for the past week, and just now I have finally begun editing and updating it. But today I’m gonna make a commitment to get on task once more, and hopefully the blog shouldn’t go through a dark age again.

Well on the brighter side my first college application went through and they accepted me with a scholarship beyond my expectations, keeping in mind it is a private college and one of the most expensive colleges in the area. My final shot at bringing a higher ACT score is also going to take place this Saturday where I am hoping to take the score to a 33 out of 36. Let’s see how it goes, also thanks everyone who has commented on the blog and for the emails.

P.S - It took me queite some time to describe the last few days, after a little help with Dictionary.com stodgy seemed to be the best match.

Stodgy - heavy, dull, or uninteresting; tediously commonplace; boring; of a thick, semisolid consistency; heavy

Update: Been around a hour since I made this post, and I’m starting to feel today has been a productive day, after the past few weeks of ‘hardship’.