Yet another reason not to be vegan: no honey.

Why? It’s a by-product of honey bees.

Oh really? Well, lots of things are by-products of honey bees. One obvious byproduct would be beeswax. But more importantly, fruit are by-products of the pollination of honey bees. Not all of them are, of course - there are other pollinators as well. But 80% of fruits are pollinated by some animal or insect. Therefore, 80% of anything that is botanically defined as fruit must be excluded from a vegan diet. I guess that means soy, too!

To declare that one is vegan is also implying complete independence from any other animal species. But seeing that we are animals as well, living with other animals as a community, I would say that being a vegan is entirely impossible. How does one survive solely on fungi, algae, gymnosperms, ferns, and bryophytes? I’d really like to know.

Pleather!? Oh please!

Pleather = plastic leather.

This stupid invention was made for vegans. I can hardly see why.

Firstly, most vegans are earth-conscious…or so I hope! Therefore, they wouldn’t even buy anything made of plastic.
Secondly, by my definition, they HAVE to.  Plastic is made from dinosaurs. Are dinosaurs no longer animals?

Oh whoa, but by THAT definition, vegans can’t drive. And they would have to get solar panels, or they’d be using dinosaurs for their energy. And hmm…vegan gadgets? I don’t think so.

Just another reason not to be vegan, eh?

I’m just going to sum it up really quick before I get to the juicy bit: it was pretty crumby. First of all, garlic does not scare a vampire away. Other vampires do. Secondly, if you’re going to face-paint vampire bites, don’t paint the cheap, cliche, two-fanged bite. Vampries are not bats - they have a full set of evenly lengthed teeth like we do. Paint the full set, you lazy artist (gee, what an oxymoron)!

Okay, so the juicy bit was the Twilight trivia. It, of course, made me feel like a fake Twilighter because I could only answer one of the questions (Edward went to med school twice), and the quizzer didn’t even call on my hand that time. I pretty much felt really bad about myself.

But this one lady there made me feel good about myself. She knew almost every question (but to be modest and not hog all the free T-shirts and Twilight stickers, she didn’t answer all of them). And she was most definitely out of college… must have been in her forties. Anyway, whenever a question was announced, I’d always mutter some random answer to myself. It would, of course, always be super wrong. Then she’d turn around, memorize my face, and give me that look - the one with half a smile and a face that said “You shouldn’t even be here.”

Why did that make me feel good? It made me see that I, indeed, have a life. I am a real person, who wears real clothes (that grown woman showed up with a black cape), who has real desires. Perhaps sometimes I slip into phases where I deeply ponder about Twilight, but only when it involves scientific concepts and real life scenarios. And of course, I don’t really want to be a vampire - or a Stephampire, for that matter. I want to die someday, and not by the hands of the Volturi or an angry pack of wolves. Perhaps wishing to be a perfect mortal would be more accurate for me than wishing to be a Stephampire.

Then again, doesn’t everybody wish for that?

If I had a hundred billion dollars, what would go through my mind? Thoughts of selfish spending in hopes of improving our economy? Would it make me ecstatic to know that I have enough money to buy anything I want? No, I would still complain, because nothing ever satisfies me. Not even a hundred billion dollars.

A hundred billion dollars is not enough to move the nation I want to move. I want to pay off our debt to China, but our debt is over three times that kind of money. Even then, how much more money will it take to apologize for the ignorance of a finger-pointing nation? Does it even take money to earn China’s complete trust? I don’t know - I’m lame when it comes to international relations. But I’m sure it takes so much money, and so much more than that.

The thing I’m concerned with is the direction in which China is growing. Its rate of industrialization is impressive. Its people know that. I doubt they’re going to slow down just because we tell them to, even though it’s quite vital that they do. That’s why I say we need China’s trust. But how could we do that if American citizens continue to blame China for everything that goes wrong? What gives us the right to advise them if we don’t understand them and don’t want to understand them? Plus, I think it’s safe to say that loyal Americans dislike China because they’re unamerican…and they’re catching up to us.

China, as everyone knows, is not just improving their economy. They’re also attempting to homogenize their country more than they’ve already done (which I have nothing against). Yet behind all that, there’s the pollution.

Oh typical Reiko: pollution pollution. When will she get over it?

When it stops. That’s when.

Anyway, the pollution per capita of China is, I’m sure, nothing compared to how much the average American pollutes. But with China’s vast numbers and growing economy, it’s going to get much worse than it already is. Those numbers alone cannot be stopped just because we snap our fingers, or just because we give them a hundred billion dollars.

But if this all were achievable…how would it affect the average American?
It would either boost his ego because his young, little country got an ancient, massive country like China to change its ways, or it would kill his ego because he’d realize that China is still going to rise to the top, just like the United States did, but this time without the pollution or self-indulgence that his country had suffered for over a century.

The answer I got from my professor (yeah, I actually asked him) was: depends on which species concept you use.

Turns out it’s far more complicated than that.

1. Vampires were originally human.
Vampires are merely “infected” human beings. So if you want to use the morphological species concept, then it’s obvious that vampires the same species as humans. They look similar.
However, there are many differences to consider. For example, vampires have a distinct smell distinguishable from a human’s. Also, a vampire’s skin has a different molecular structure than that of a human’s - it is considerably denser and more resistant, and shimmers like diamonds in the sunlight. Vampires also have a greater range of capabilities (with the exception of diet) and a greater number of abilities.
Of course, a cladist would suggest that vampires and humans are different species which have merely diverged from a common ancestor. However, that would imply evolution, and individuals cannot evolve. Vampirism is not genetic, nor are vampires human mutants. Vampires are, again, infected and venomed humans.

2. Vampires prey on humans.
Using the ecological species concept, vampires are a different species than humans. They inhabit different niches - they have different roles in their biological communities. This is evident in their diets. Humans can consume meat and vegetation, and vampires are limited to blood. To make things more complicated, vampires prey on human beings. To say this is merely cannibalism would also imply that humans prey on vampires as well. However, they do not. Humans shy away from vampires, for vampires are their natural predators.

3. Vampires cannot breed among themselves.
All vampires have unchanging and unaging bodies, which allow them to live indefinitely. Therefore, female vampires are sterile because their unchanging bodies inhibit the growth of a fetus. This creates more complications because, by definition, a species is composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species. Vampries aren’t even a species because they cannot breed among themselves.

4. Vampires can breed with humans.
Again, a species cannot breed with other species. However, vampires can still mate with humans. Since male vampires can still produce sperm, they are still fertile - unlike their female counterparts. Logically, male vampires can impregnate a female human. This process is extremely troublesome for the mother, since the hybrid baby grows to an unbearable size inside her womb and would eventually break her ribs and spine. Nevertheless, the hybrid in question grows to be a viable and, if a male, a fertile individual. By the biological species concept, vampires and humans are the same species.