rides, biology, and freedom

I just finished a post from 25 June, so have a look. It was an amazing day!
So today is dedicated to 2 things, both of them unrelated. Perhaps they might be, in some sort of convoluted way, but I am too tired to think of it.
Scratch that, 3 things. First I want to talk about my lovely bike ride this morning. Me and my dad got up at 8am to ride the old wheels around our little town. I wish I brought my camera, but I don't have a neck strap, so it would awkwardly dangle and hit the handlebars with each tire revolution. I am hoping to get a new SLR before we leave for Massachusetts since I probably want to be a National Geographic photographer, and I need to get experience with an SLR manual.
Next, I decided that since time is running out, I better get a move on. I started my free sculpture for AP 3D art, but it's nowhere near done, and I still have 2 more to do, in addition to finishing 4 books and reading 4 chapters of a textbook. Which I did today.
So I was reading the AP biology textbook today and I was reading about systems. It sounds boring. But it's interesting because it said that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. So you can have a bunch of parts, and they might be where they need to be, but something might not work. For a scientific example, take the human brain. Say you get a brain injury. All of your parts are still there, but you might not be able to think properly. And another one: you might have made all-As and have good extracurricular activities and still not make it into an Ivy.
A lot of times, we compartmentalize things. We think that taking things in steps is better for our understanding of a thing. But really, it's the whole that matters. Think of the whole. I do that more often because of art, because everything in art is looked at as a whole and not in pieces, but if we try to see the whole picture instead of pieces, we can understand the world better, ourselves better, and try to achieve contentment.
And lastly, I wanted to recognize South Sudan today. At midnight local time (Sudan local time), today, 9 July 2011, South Sudan became a country. Ever since the region was first occupied in 1956, they had been at war, the north and the south. The wars finally ended in 2005 with a peace agreement, but tensions were not settled yet.
In January there was a referendum about whether or not the south should secede. The result was 99% in favor of secession. And it happened. And today they gained their freedom and independence from the north, and became their own country.
There will be problems with the north again most likely, and there are definitely going to be social, economic, and other problems that the new country will face. But right now, they are enjoying their hard-earned freedom. Welcome to the world. Where hopefully, we can make it safe for democracy.