I'll just pretend I didn't see that...

So, although hipsters roll their eyes at me when I tell them, I am indeed a member of HT +1, Hot Topic's rewards club. It doesn't really do too much for me, actually. It used to be that whenever you earned 30,000 points you get 15% off your next purchase, but now that purchase has to be made within the next 30 days, or it expires, and I don't shop there often enough for that to be useful. Really the only thing that I get out of it is an email sometimes, notifying me of a sale that only members will have access to for the first two days, or something.

Well, back to that 15% off thing. I just got an email that looked like this:


My first reaction was "wow, cool, they must have given me 15% off for Christmas, or something". Then my phone rang. It was my mom, telling me she was on the way home from the mall.

It didn't take long for me to put two and two together. I know there's a Hot Topic in the mall, and I have a few items from Hot Topic on my Christmas list.

I quickly deleted the email, but now I'm curious.

If I log onto Hot Topic, will it tell me what I bought to earn me the 15% off? Just thinking about that makes me so tempted to check.

Maybe I'll just change my password to ain;fbaev;iua. Then I'll never be able to log in again.

Or at least not until I call customer services (after Christmas) and explain to them the situation. But I'm afraid I'll get laughed at if I do that... I guess I'm just going to have to practice some self-restraint for six days...

Dark Matter Is Blowing My Mind!

I'm doing this Physics project where I research an astrological topic and then make a Wiki about it. Well my partner and I chose Dark Matter.

Oops.

Let's see if I can explain.

First, we can tell that galaxies are moving because of something called the Doppler Shift. When light moves toward you, it turns blue (because the light waves scrunch together). When light moves away from you, it turns red (because the light waves stretch out). How much the color shift to red or to blue can tell us how fast the light is moving.

When we look at galaxies, one side is blue and the other is red. That is how we know that galaxies rotate. But when we look closer, we notice something weird. The galaxies appear to be moving much faster than they should be able to given their perceived mass. See, the individual stars are moving so fast that they should be ripping the galaxy apart because they're so light.

But that's not happening.

Right now, the best explanation we have is dark matter. There's something surrounding these galaxies.

Something heavy.

Something invisible.

Something that allows them to move four hundred times faster than they should move on their own.

I don't think I'm going to fall asleep tonight.