Do obedient consonants respond to a Q queue cue?
October’s done! You know what that means:
Graph of genres
Mean song length: 5:53
The Five Star: Paradise by Coldplay
Also, I’ve decided (at least for now, haha) to dredge up a VERY old story idea for this year’s NaNo. Will it be my permanent idea this year? Probably not.
But who knows.
Also also, I think I’ve discovered my default genre of comfort: bizarro fiction.
Also also also, Mona Simpson’s eulogy for Steve Jobs (Mona’s his sister, for those who don’t know). Very touching, in my opinion.
The end.
Boring Blog is Boring
I’m working on redoing an old Flash, but I’m lazy so it didn’t get done today. So…handwriting analysis! I love these things. Properties I think to be true are in bold.
Claudia uses judgment to make decisions. She is ruled by her head, not her heart. She is a cool, collected person who is usually unexpressive emotionally. Some may see her as unemotional. She does have emotions but has no need to express them. She is withdrawn into herself and enjoys being alone.
The circumstances when Claudia does express emotions include: extreme anger, extreme passion, and tremendous stress. If someone gets her mad enough to tell her off, she will not be sorry about it later. She puts a mark in her mind when someone angers her. She keeps track of these marks and when she hits that last mark she will let them know they have gone too far. She is ruled somewhat by self-interest. All her conclusions are made without outside emotional influence. She is very level-headed and will remain calm in an emergency situation. In a situation where other people might get hysterical, she has poise.
Claudia will work more efficiently if given space and time to be alone. She would rather not be surrounded by people constantly. In a relationship, she will show her love by the things she does rather than by the things she says. Saying “I love you” is not a needed routine because she feels her mate should already know. The only exception to this is if she has logically concluded that it is best for her mate to hear her express her love verbally.
Claudia is not subject to emotional appeals. If someone is selling a product to her, they will need to present only the facts. They should present them from a standpoint of her sound judgment. She will not be taken in by an emotional story about someone else. She will meet emergencies without getting hysterical and she will always ask “Is this best for me?”
Claudia tends to write a bit smaller than the average person. When a person’s letters are small and tiny, this indicates an ability to focus and concentrate. This character trait is a huge asset in careers like math, science, race car driving, and flying planes. However, if Claudia writes tiny all of the time, she will also display characteristics of someone who is socially introverted. Claudia will often sit on the sideline and watch others get the attention at parties. she might be willing to open up and be warm, but only in small groups or a select group of people. When she is busy working on a project, it is common for all other noises and distractions to just fade away and her ability to focus is incredible. When she says “she didn’t hear you”, she really means, she didn’t hear you.
Claudia will demand respect and will expect others to treat her with honor and dignity. Claudia believes in her ideas and will expect other people to also respect them. She has a lot of pride.
Claudia will be candid and direct when expressing her opinion. She will tell them what she thinks if they ask for it, whether they like it or not. So, if they don’t really want her opinion, don’t ask for it!
In reference to Claudia’s mental abilities, she has a very investigating and creating mind. She investigates projects rapidly because she is curious about many things. She gets involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but she soon must slow down and look at all the angles. She probably gets too many things going at once. When Claudia slows down, then she becomes more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, she must slow down to do it. She then decides what projects she has time to finish. Thus she finishes at a slower pace than when she started the project.
She has the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Her mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. She can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. Claudia can then switch into her low gear. When she is in the slower mode, she can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. She is more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.
Claudia is a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth. This is typical of people with normal healthy self-esteem. She needs to visualize the end of a project before she starts. She finds joy in anticipation and planning [if I could bold this even more, I would]. Notice that I said she plans everything she is going to do, that doesn’t necessarily mean things go as planned. Claudia basically feels good about herself. She has a positive self-esteem which contributes to her success. She feels she has the ability to achieve anything she sets her mind to. However, she sets her goals using practicality– not too “out of reach”. She has enough self-confidence to leave a bad situation, yet, she will not take great risks, as they relate to her goals. A good esteem is one key to a happy life. Although there is room for improvement in the confidence category, her self-perception is better than average.
Claudia is sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect her ego when she feels hurt. She pokes people harder than she gets poked. These sarcastic remarks can be very funny. They can also be harsh, bitter, and caustic at the same time.
Claudia has difficulty trusting anyone. In fact, she trusts no one completely. This is a result of her trust being betrayed in the past. She has closed up, thus ceasing to allow close friendships. Claudia truly wants close friends and desires physical relationships, but she fears she will get hurt, again. She is lonely, yet has a crying need for close friends. This trait can cause much unhappiness. However, it can be changed.
Claudia has a healthy imagination and displays a fair amount of trust. She lets new people into her circle of friends. She uses her imagination to understand new ideas, things, and people.
30-Day Meme – Day 30: Share what you have learned, if anything, about yourself in the last 30 days.
I learned that I liked memes that I can do all at once. But that’s about it, haha.
I wish my stuff would get here soon
Job interview in a week and a half!
That was fast.
In other news, I found out that the UI is looking for a lecturer for STAT 150 and that I’m totally qualified. Given what’s currently going on with me right now, I don’t know if I could handle a semester of lecturing (or if I’d even be good at it, who knows?), but I’m super tempted to apply and see what happens. Wouldn’t that be awesome if I got the job, though?
In other other news, all my material possessions are set to arrive anytime between next Monday and the 8th of November. I propose that our little gang gets together for some sort of Rock Band + pizza + sexiness – clothes party at some point. Especially since I wasn’t able to catch you guys over the summer. Who’s with me?
30-Day Meme – Day 29: Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days.
1. Figure out what’s going on with my brain and get it under
control.
2. Develop coping skills that do not center around self-destruction.
3. Acquire money.
4. Take more classes! You know I can’t stay away.
5. Try not to die.
6. A bunch of other stuff that is contingent on point #1 (and #2, I suppose).
Partying with Primes: Part I
HI PEOPLE!
So I was doing my usual surfing the internets via StumbleUpon and came across an R-Bloggers post about using R to determine the primality of any given number. The code for doing so is somewhat long and I’d like to take more time to study it and see if I could come up with my own code for determining primality, but today I was too excited to do so and instead wanted to focus on actually using the code instead.
Perhaps those readers who dig math have heard of the Ulam spiral, a method of visualizing the prime numbers in relation to the non-primes (I’m having flashback’s to NaNoWriMo 2009’s topic and therefore keep having to backspace to not capitalize “prime” and “non-prime,” haha). Developed by Stanislaw Ulam in 1963, the spiral shows a pattern indicating that certain quadratic polynomials tend to generate prime numbers. Check out the Wiki, it’s a super fascinating thing.
Anyway, ever since I’d heard of the Ulam spiral, I’ve always thought of other possible patterns or trends that may exist with respect to the primes. Could other possible patterns arise if we just “arrange” numbers in other ways? Ulam used a spiral. What other “shapes” might produce patterns?
Thus begins Part I of my mission to make pretty number patterns and see what happens! (Though I must admit that Part I is rather boring, as it just consists of me using the code on R-Bloggers).
Anyway, let’s organize this noise:
Part I: write a new function that applies R-Bloggers IsPrime() function to any given vector of numbers, say one that contains the numbers 1 through 100 (just as a start, obviously, we can extend this to much larger vectors because math rules and R is like a mental sex toy). Make sure this new function is able to output a binary response—a 0 for any non-prime and a 1 for any prime. This will allow for easy visualization once we get to that point.
Part II: Brainstorm possible pattern ideas for numbers. Figure out how in the hell to program R to output a number spiral, among other fun shapes. Use excel cells as a means by which to make the actual visualizations.
Part III: Try not to lose sanity while attempting to bend R’s base graphics to your will in order to plot said patterns without having to resort to Excel.
Part IV: Now that the work is done, actually take a step back and see if anything came of these fun experiments.
Part V: RED BULL!
Today was Part I, so I really don’t have anything special to show you guys. But next time will be fun, I promise!
30-Day Meme – Day 28: Say something to your 15 year old self.
Dear 15-Year-Old Claudia: your high school math teacher will be a jackass, but for the love of god, TAKE ALL THE MATH YOU CAN. You’ll love yourself later for it. Don’t be like the stupid 23-year-old version of yourself who quit after Algebra II (a class she totally rocked with a C-!). Tough it out, suffer through algebra, make it through trig, and ROCK OUT CALCULUS, YOU CAN SO TOTALLY DO CALCULUS. Then take all the math you can in college. You may not see it now (in fact you don’t, you see yourself right now as an artist with no need for college…this view won’t change until you’re like 19, by the way), but math and statistics are in your future. Remember back in elementary school when it was just you and two other super nerdy guys crammed in the janitor’s closet for the “advanced math” section? Remember that? Yeah, you know you can rock math. You just need to do it, yo. PRESS ON, WAYWARD HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN! You may feel directionless now, but that will so totally change.
See you in a few years!
OH CRAP NANOWRIMO
Haha, totally just remembered that that’s happening in like five days.
Commence pulling last-minute plot out of ass!
In the meantime THREE THINGS!
1. Adventure Time is still the greatest show on Cartoon Network and Lumpy Space Princess is freaking awesome.
I still think the art/feel of this cartoon is very similar to that of Tom Deslongchamp.
2. I’ve posted this before, but I’m linking to it again ‘cause it rules and I just rediscovered it.
3. Haha, stats jokes.
30-Day Meme – Day 27: The last thing that made you cry.
Uncertainty. I don’t like things being “up in the air” like they currently are. I don’t know how long I’ll be in Moscow, I don’t know what’s going on with the rest of my educational career (‘cause it’s most certainly not over, screw that), and most of all, I don’t know what’s going on with my head. Hopefully things will start making some sense in the coming weeks. It also doesn’t help that I’ve literally only got a suitcase’s worth of stuff here at my dad’s and the rest of my things are making their way across the continent, current location unknown. If my stats books and notes get lost, someone’s gettin’ stabbed.
Rho Rho Rho Your Boat
2401. Does love come from the brain, the heart or elsewhere?
The butt.
2402. Have you ever given a shot?
Nope.
If not, do you think you could give one to a loved one if you HAD to?
Why is the scene from Pulp Fiction the only thing popping into my mind right now?
Do you think you could give one to yourself?
Probably.
2403. Can you lick your elbow?
No.
Come on, didja try?
No.
2404. If i was going to be talking to you for 10 minutes, what would be something really interesting you know a little bit about but would like to know more??
Factor analysis!
2405. If today was a holiday, what would it be?
October Day? Haha, I dunno.
2406. If you were making a mix tape what would you HAVE to have on it?
Probably music. OH I’M FUNNY!
Sleepyhead.
2407. What do you think of the Sopranos?
I never saw it.
2408. Can you name three good things about the society you live in?
We can freely criticize the government/the President/politicians, we live in an affluent enough society to afford the necessities, and it seems like there’s a growing support system for the GLBT community.
How about three bad things?
The whole “beautiful iff skinny” bullshit, the polarization of political ideas (at least at the level of elected officials), and the fact that there exists discrimination. I know we probably won’t ever extinguish discrimination entirely, but it still bothers me.
2409. Have you ever had a crush on your teacher?
Teehee.
How about your boss?
Nope.
2410. What is the differance between acting like someone in high school and acting like an adult?
Not much, I’m learning.
2411. What is the differance between a whopper and a whopper jr?
Size, I’m assuming. I’m not well-versed in Burger King burgerology (side note: burgerology would be an AWESOME field of study).
2413. Do you like:
Moby? Sure.
Run DMC? Don’t know them well enough to say.
The Cure? Yup.
Shakira? She’s a good singer.
Blink182? Sure.
the Pet Shop Boys? Never heard them.
Weezer? Weezer rules.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers? Not really.
Nick cave? Never heard him.
The Pixies? I like Where Is My Mind?, but that’s it.
KRS-One? Never heard them.
The Juice Crew? See above.
2414. Have you ever seen a movie in 3D?
No. And what’s up with that all of a sudden? If you want 3D go outside and have an adventure with your friends.
2415. How difficult do you think it is for immigrants to come into your country?
Depends on the border we’re focusing on.
How difficult is it for them to become citizens?
I’m not sure, I don’t know much about the process.
2416. Do you have what it takes to go live in another country, maybe for years, where you don’t speak the language as your first language?
Currently, I’d be screwed ‘cause I know absolutely NO other language apart from English.
2418. have you ever died in your dreams?
I don’t think so.
2419. Do you like
Douglas Adams? Never read him, believe it or not.
Kurt Vonnegut? He’s okay.
Tom Robbins? Never read.
Philip K Dick? Never read.
Orson Scott Card? Sounds familiar…
2420. What clothing size are you?
For shirts? Small. I’m short + stubby. For pants? The last pants I tried on were size 0, but I also have a size 8 pair of pants in my closet. I have to use a binder clip to hold them up though, haha. Most of my pants don’t have a size in them.
What size do you wish you were?
NOT SHORT.
Did you know that Marilyn Monroe was a size 12(and lotsa people think she’s HOT)?
She IS hot. And yes, I knew that.
2421. Does science leave room for faith?
Sure, why not?
Does faith leave room for science?
It should. Why would a deity allow for the development of science if it led people down the wrong path?
2422. What book should our political leaders read and why?
Political and Social Responsiblity for Dummies.
2423. Why and under what circumstances are people more likely to buy brand names ragher then thier generic counterparts?
If they have brand familiarity. Or if money is not of great concern.
2424. What is your favorite glass object?
I don’t think I have one.
2425. Do you like to window shop?
Sure. If “window shopping” can include fondling merchandise.
2426. Have you ever loved someone so much it just turned to hate?
Nope.
2427. What is arrogance?
Obnoxious.
2428. Are you more liberal or conservative?
Haha, liberal.
2429. When there is a presidential election in the USA why do we never hear anything about the third party candidtes? Do you even know who they were last time?
Because the US political system is screwy.
2430. Are you more likely to buy one really nice expensive outfit or a couple of cheap outfits?
Cheap, yo. Cheap clothes are usually more awesome, anyway.
2431. If you could, would you wear everything once, throw it out and buy something new?
HELL NO! Do you know how long it’s taken me to accrue such a rainbow of clothes? I’m still wearing stuff I wore in junior high.
2432. Do you believe that people have a responsiblity to be:
good to other people? Yes.
good at their job? They have a responsibility to find a job that they CAN be good at.
helpful to the earth(not litter, recycle)? Yes.
aware consumers(not buy animal tested products, not buy products that were made in sweatshops, etc)? Yes, if possible.
non-wasteful (not spend their money frivolously when they could save it to help others)? Not really. It would be a good thing to aspire to, but I don’t think it’s a responsibility.
charitable (donatine money, volunteering)? See above.
Which of the above are you?
I try to be all of the above, but I fail pretty severely at being an aware consumer and donating/volunteering.
2433. How do you feel about the internet?
IT IS MY RELIGION; IN THE BEGINNING AL GORE CREATED HTTP://
Should there be laws and censorship on the internet?
Only to an extent.
2434. Can you think of any questions that aren’t already on this survey?
Probably.
2435. Does sleep seem like a little death to you?
Nope. Brain = still active.
2436. Have you ever seen(and if yes, what did you think of):
Joy Ride? No.
Ghost World? No.
Monsters Inc? Pixar rules!
Queen of the Damned? No.
Office Space? No.
2437. At what age did you find out that Santa Claus wasn’t real?
I can’t remember.
2438. How many pairs of shoes do have in your closet?:
My shoes are currently in transit across the continent.
Do you like to wear the same shoes everyday or do you like a variety?:
I usually wear the same shoes every day.
2439. How many lovers have you had?
Uhhh…three?
2440. Have you ever had surgery? For what?
Yes. Appendectomy.
2441. What puts you in the mood for sex?
Haha nothing.
2442. Have you ever been on alcohol or drugs while at school or work?
Prescription drugs, yes.
2443. What do you think of Martha Stewart?
Meh.
2445. What do you think of:
British people? Love the accent.
Australians? I don’t know any Australians.
Americans? Yay America!
Canadians? My Canadian friends are awesome.
Mexicans? I have no issues with them.
French people? They remind me of Quebec.
Germans? I’m German!
2446. What do you do to cure the hiccups?
Just let them run their course.
2447. What is the FIRST thing you do when you come home from school or work?
Pee. Hey, you asked.
2448. Are you a slob?
I try not to be, but when I’m stressed there are no limits to the amount of my stuff I can displace in my room.
2449. Do you have a good work ethic?
Indeed.
2450. Are you a pack-rat?
Nope.
2451. Do you roll your eyes alot?
Nope.
2452. Do you prefer b-sides or remixes?
Remixes.
2453. What makes the world go ’round?
Angular momentum!
2454. Is Blink182 punk or pop?
I have them as pop, but what do I know?
2455. Do you remember Fat Albert?
Hey, hey, hey!
2456. Do you take things slowly, as they come?
I go after what I want.
2457. Are you laid back or tense?
Hahaha. Tense.
2458. Are you insecure?
Yeah.
2459. Imagine you aare working in a soup kitchen. You are supposed to give each person on the line a half a cup of soup. When hungry people come up to you do you just end up emptying the cabinets for them?
I would make sure I had enough for everyone. If that meant each person could get more than a half cup of soup, so be it.
2460. Why can’t we give ourselves one more chance?
We don’t?
Why can’t we all just get along?
Human nature.
2461. What bands do you want to see live that you have never seen?
MUSE AND LADY GAGA WHY DID I PASS THESE UP CURSES CURSES CURSES.
2462. Do you like raunchy songs (like that lick ny neck, lick my back, lick my pussy, lick my crack song)?
I love The Bad Touch.
2463. Do you think that the Beatles are still the Beatles without John Lennon?
No.
Would you want to see the Sex Pistols without Sid Vicious?
Who?
Did you think that the members of Nirvana were smart to reform as the Foo Fighters instead of trying to stay Nirvana after Kurt’s death?
What?
2464. Do you like the band Squeeze?
Never heard them.
2465. When you are angry or upset do you know you’re being irrational but you can’t really stop?
Unfortunately.
2466. Is there room in your life for one more trip to the moon?
Ooh, can I go?
2467. Where are they now:
Your first best friend in elementary school? Married + kid, but I don’t know where.
your first crush? In Chicago.
your first boy/girlfriend? Still around here.
your first love? See above.
your first lover? God, who knows.
2468. Do you have a lot of self pity?
I try not to.
2469. have you ever had something really good come out of something really bad that happened to you?
Does my thesis count?
2470. Do you like magnetic poetry?
Haha, the memories…
2471. What is one of your secret delights?
M&Ms. Though that’s not so secret, is it?
2472. Have you ever misinterpreted song lyrics in a funny way (I used to think that ‘wake me up before you go, go’ was ‘wake me up and buy me cocoa’)?
That’s awesome. I don’t know if it’s just me or what, but I’ve always had a really hard time telling what singers said in their songs, regardless of how clear/mumbled the lyrics were. Example: Neil Diamond always sounded like he was saying “forever with blue jays” in Forever in Blue Jeans.
2473. What are the most popular/overused diary names?
Haha, “My Diary” or, on WordPress, “My WordPress Blog.”
2474. Are you under pressure?
DAVID BOWIE
2475. How well do you know yourself?
Pretty well. Though that’s changing.
2476. Is ‘soul’ such an old fashioned word?
No.
Is ‘love’?
No.
2477. Name a person you love:
Leibniz.
How do you love them? Let’s count the ways…
Do you really want to do this?
2478. Does your place have a lawn gnome?
Nope.
2479. Do you ever wonder, ‘why me’?
Haha, yeah.
When?
When I’m feeling emo.
2480. Is rap a form of poetry?
Sure.
2481. What’s the differance between a player and a baller?
No idea.
2482. What imagery do you get from the words ‘woodsmoke and herbs’?
Firewood and oregano.
2483. How many days until your birthday?
100 days. Hey, check that out!
2484. have you ever MEANT to hurt anyone?
Unfortunately.
2485. What are 3 things you don’t know?
How would I know?
2486. Do you usually feel physically well or unwell?
I’m pretty physically healthy. Rockin’ that immune system.
2487. Would you ever submit your picture to be ‘rated’ on one of those ‘hot or not’ websites?
No.
2488. Why are there hardly ever any fat people in movies?
Because society is dumb.
2489. Is there any differance between what’s real and what’s for sale?
What?
2490. Are you funky?
I’m down with da funk.
2491. Do apologies always make things all better?
No.
2492. Let’s just say that there is a huge ass bomb that can blow up the Whole Planet..it is set to blow up in 100 years. You can push the button to stop it but if you do you Will die. You only have this one chance to stop it. Do you stop it?
I die from pushing a button? How exactly does that work? Is there a needle coated in poison projected from the button’s surface that will kill me as soon as it punctures my skin? Is there the creator of the huge ass bomb waiting around the corner just waiting to snipe anyone who touches the button? Do I get to have “death by button” on my grave? SO MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS!
2493. Let’s say someone else found the button to stop it instead of you. Do you think it is their moral obligation to save humanity at the expense of their own life?
No.
2494. What’s the silliest name you can think of?
Erik Erikson.
2495. It’s the middle of the night and you are home alone. Someone knocks on the dorr and says their car breoke down and asks to use your phone. What do you do?
Let them.
2496. If a cop pulled you over and asked if he could search your car what would you say?
“When did I get a car?!”
2497. Are you meek or nasty around cops?
Haha, I remember when I was like six or seven and my mom and I got pulled over (there was something wrong with the speedometer and therefore we were speeding when we thought we weren’t, or something like that). I remember freaking out ‘cause I thought she was going to be thrown in jail. The cop gave me a sticker.
2498. If you were me and I was you then where would we be?
You’d be in Moscow. I have no idea where I’d be.
2499. What has been the greatest invention so far?
Calculus!
2500. We are at question 2500. Do you REALIZE what this MEANS??!!!
HALFWAY HOW FREAKING AWESOME
30-Day Meme – Day 26: Talk about the last “random act of kindness” you encountered.
I was walking sdown one side of the sidewalk and across the street I saw this lady’s grocery bag break and all her groceries spill out on the sidewalk. A pair of dudes walking the other way stopped to help her out. I think one guy had his stuff double-bagged and actually gave her the extra bag.
In This Blog: Stuff from Facebook ‘Cause I’ve Got Nothing Else Today
I am passionate, calculating, witty, and nine.
30-Day Meme – Day 24: Reveal your most guilty pleasure.
Friday nights. Isolation, Red Bull, random movie, lots of internet, M&Ms, and sometimes fries. I very much look forward to my Friday nights.
I Coulda Been a Container
I’ve been up since 4 AM Eastern Time yesterday (Saturday). It is now 1:30 AM Pacific Time on Sunday. London to Chicago to Las Vegas to Seattle to Pullman to Moscow. Six hours in Las Vegas.
Party in the USA.
In other news, the Chicago O’Hare Airport has some pretty badass lighting going down in Terminal 2. Evidence:
If I ever end up with tons and tons of money? This. On every ceiling in my house. 24/7.
30-Day Meme – Day 23: What your last dream you can remember was about.
I had this really weird H. G. Wells-esque dream about a scientist who is somehow able to go into the future like 10,000 years. He finds out that a disease had destroyed a whole generation’s worth of humans’ eyesight and, for some reason, all subsequent generations’ eyesight as well. Therefore, everyone he meets is “blind” (and their eyes are bound over by these weird webs of skin and eyelashes explained loosely by crazy awesome dream science) and they become fascinated with him when he describes to them this thing called “sight.”
Not unlike the “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” adage, the scientist soon realizes that these individuals (who are living in a land that has once again become rich in resources that are scarce in the time of the scientist) can be taken advantage of because they cannot see him. He begins to pilfer from them, lightly at first, and then begins to eventually shape and alter parts of their routines and culture in order to get them to procure for him all these valuable resources. Little does the scientist know, however, these people have developed this sort of “extra sense” that allows them to “see” what the scientist is doing to them. They wait and play along with him for awhile to get him comfortable in the environment, then a bunch of them eventually capture the scientist and he is subject to quite a graphic and disturbing bit of torture involving the people injecting all these weird chemicals into the scientist’s eyes. It was…odd.
That’s all.
US-CANADIAN RELATIONS: Y U NO MORE INTUITIVE AND SIMPLE FOR SUCH FRIENDLY COUNTRIES?!
Things that are surprisingly easy to do:
– Withdraw from a Canadian university for medical reasons.
– Hire a company to pack all your apartment’s crap and haul it across the country for you.
– Love Coldplay’s new song Paradise. OH MY GOODNESS SO MUCH LOVE FIVE STARS FIVE STARS FIVE STARS.
Things that are surprisingly difficult to do:
– Cancel your Canadian credit card.
– Transfer Canadian funds to a US account.
– Terminate a Canadian cell phone contract.
– Send medical info from the US to Canada.
– Figure out how much money you’re getting for being a TA for part of a month.
– Doing all of the above in the exact appropriate order so that it all works out in the end.
Hooray stress! Perhaps today’s meme entry will alleviate anxiety.
30-Day Meme – Day 22: Your deepest fear.
Haha, nope, no stress relief. I’m afraid of failure. Failure defined on my own terms. I’d go into more detail but I’m getting really
distracted by the slot machines behind me (I’m stuck in the Las Vegas International Airport for four more hours) and I’m super tired of traveling, so I’m just going to leave things off here.
Sorry.
I’ll Get You, My Pretty, and Your Little Blog, Too!
Hello ladies and gents. There is something special about today’s blog.
Today is my 2,000th blog!
YAY!
This means it’s been 2,000 days since May 1st, 2006. That simultaneously sounds so long and yet so short.
ANYWAY!
In modest celebration (“modest” meaning “not extravagant;” all my crap’s packed up and I’m sitting in a hotel waiting to go home tomorrow and thus haven’t really had time to make a huge celebration blog), I’m going to list my top 20 blog titles and top 20 blogs. Because that’s kind of what I do.
Titles first!
Top 20 Titles (yes, most of these are stupid puns. Deal.)
- Are the bulbs of mercury at the bottom of thermometers collectively known as H.G. Wells?
- I just realized I’m illiterate and now I cacng apbtrtht kd thactgs
- Do physical comedians suffer from post-dramatic jest disorder?
- Circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works because circular reasoning works…
- Do philosophy departments have Causal Fridays?
- My new position at the PepsiCo factory isn’t the greatest job in the world, but I’m making Dew
- Waiter! There’s a tachyon in my—oh wait, there it goes, never mind.
- Is a theorem about pickles called a dill lemma?
- I am 95% confident that the population parameter ‘love’ falls between you and me
- If you want to eat an apple pie, you must first consume the universe
- Yo blog title, I’mma let you finish, but this entry holds one of the best blogs of all time
- I used to teach a failing fly-tying class until I realized my efforts were all for knot.
- I used to work at a bridal shop specializing in headdresses. My work there was to know a veil.
- Hammer Time is the fifth dimension
- How much fit would an index fit if the index indexed fit?
- Is Superman’s costume considered his strong suit?
- Silly Rabbit…Trix are for Magicians
- This just in: geophagists across the globe are biting the dust!
- Some Days I Miss My Sanity. Other Days I’m Just a Toaster.
- Waiter! There’s an infinite loop in my Waiter! There’s an infinite loop in my Waiter!…
Top 20 Blogs
- The Second Continental Chatroom – This is probably the only halfway funny thing I’ve ever written. Fueled by Chips Ahoy, baby. Fueled by Chips Ahoy.
- Claudia the Angry Blogger Presents: Yet Another Rant against Pretty Much Everything – This blog started as like three paragraphs and ballooned to a full-on “I hate change, especially on the internet” rant. It makes me happy.
- U Can’t Prove This – I’m really not sure how I managed to rewrite U Can’t Touch This while under the incredible stress of a 25-credit finals week, but here it is.
- HOT DAMN, Tukey Sandwiches! – I think the “pun to normal content” ratio is at its most ridiculous in this blog.
- Multicollinearity: The Silent Killer – If you don’t talk to your kid about near linear dependence, who will?
- A STATELY CHALLENGE – Because my first draft of the US without reference to a map is hilarious.
- My new position at the PepsiCo factory isn’t the greatest job in the world, but I’m making Dew – Philosophy of science stuff.
- Damn this infernal 95 character limit! I have witty things to say in my titles! This is crap! – Bashing Microsoft ’07: a happy pastime of mine.
- Pi vs. e – Alternate title: “R has two subsequent heart attacks.”
- Blameworthiness and the Anonymous Judge: An Analysis of FML Categories – My hypothesis was supported! WOO! I’d also like to expand this study at some point.
- If a blog falls in the forest… – Because of the Pokemon card.
- Gordon Freeman: A Case Study – Because of Gordon Freeman.
- Apple stores are goddamn scary – In terms of frightening corporate power, Apple is still < Google, but both should be watched carefully.
- An analysis of statewise uniform population density (according to Craigslist) – More stats fun.
- I’ve been waiting years for this – I remember being SO HAPPY when I opened the M&Ms package.
- Piece of Pi – More song parody! More math!
- Are the bulbs of mercury at the bottom of thermometers collectively known as H.G. Wells? – I really don’t know why I like this blog, I just do. Hippos.
- In This Blog: My Data Look like a Napkin Swan – Because of the uncanny and hilarious resemblance.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is like a bad drug trip – It is! Seriously!
- Waiter! There’s a hippo in my Taco Grande! – Ye olde rant against pants. One of my early blogs.
Yay for 2,000 blogs. Here’s to 2,000 more, eh?
30-Day Meme – Day 21: A recipe.
YAY, a recipe! Cooking = win. Here’s one from the internet and one of my own.
1. Internet recipe
This makes a phenomenal breakfast/anytime bread. Super easy to make and crumbly as hell, this bread has a really good texture to it that adds to the sweet (but not overly so) taste. The only problem is that it goes moldy quite quickly if you try to stretch its life for more than five or six days.
2. Claudia recipe
You know I have to plug my Tukey sandwiches again (even though I just did), made and named in honor of the brilliant John Tukey. Because nothing says “you’re an awesome statistician” like a punny sandwich.
What’s Going On
Since I guess anyone who reads this with any seriousness might care (and apparently didn’t see my Facebook post about it this morning), I’ve made the decision to withdraw from UWO for the time being (well, technically forever, as I’d have to reapply to get back in, but that’s for another time perhaps). Without going into too much detail (or much at all…HA! Mysterious!), I’ve got some health issues going on that make going to school at the moment fairly impossible.
Why not get some form of treatment for it up here, then? Well, in order to qualify for any sort of medical coverage, I have to be enrolled in school. In order to be enrolled in school, I have to be successful in my classes, meaning I have to have the ability to concentrate on them enough to rock them. Because of said current health issues, I’m really not able to place much concentration on classes at all, and therefore “rocking them” is something that cannot be currently done. So I can’t really stay enrolled and thus can’t get healthcare (or anything else) up here.
So I’m going back to Moscow to find a doctor and hopefully will feel better soon enough to continue to go to school, ‘cause I dig school and don’t want to quit because of stupid health crap.
So judge me, call me stupid, weak, pathetic, whatever, I don’t care. Sometimes things need to be done.
30-Day Meme – Day 20: A hobby of yours.
Haha, can I say blogging? Blogging is so totally a hobby of mine. Though I guess I can say an equally prominent hobby in my life is doing statistics for fun. I really, really like running analyses on sets of data. I love to predict outcomes, I love to plot statistical results and trends, and I freaking LOVE interpreting said results and trends. Recreational stats FTW!
TWSB: The Sound of a Solar Re (and a Do, a Mi, a Fa, a So, a La, a Ti, and More Do)
The authors of the Ask a Mathematician/Ask a Physicist blog received and answered this question not too long ago: If you could hear through space as though it were filled with air, what would you hear?
The answer is as follows: the sun.
Yes, our big showy center of the universe is also the loudest thing around, at least to us. The Physicist explains: both the loudness and brightness of an object is exactly proportional to how big it is. The sun’s brightness, therefore, is a function of its temperature and size. If a small ball of the same temperature as the sun were to be held up so that it appeared to be the same size as the sun, it would feel exactly as warm and seem exactly as bright as the sun.
Taking this comparison of a small bright ball = distant, huge sun with respect to the amount of heat omitted, The Physicist states that the sun, if we could hear it, “would be exactly as loud as any other large-marble-sized nuclear explosion held at arm’s length.”
So we’d pretty much be deaf. Or dead.
Insanity! Article here.
30-Day Meme – Day 19: A talent of yours.
Rewriting song lyrics. I swear this is my single talent in life. Like I said in my “100 Things” list, I credit my mom playing a lot of Weird Al when I was a kid. It comes very naturally to me. Here are a few examples:
- Justin Timberlake’s Sexy Back rewritten as Easy Mac.
- Boston’s Peace of Mind rewritten as Piece of Pi.
- MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This rewritten as U Can’t Prove This (it’s about logic class and how long it took me to wrap my head around proofs).
Lawl, Republicans
The Republican Debate should have been broadcast on Comedy Central.
Here’s some more frivolity to round out your day.
30-Day Meme – Day 18: Tell us about your best friend.
I don’t have one! HaHA!
Short blog!
Pretty R
I love R. This is an established fact in the universe. The only thing I love more than R is revising code I’ve written for it.
For my thesis, I had to make a metric ton of plots. For each scenario I ran, I ran it for seven different fit indices. I included plots for four of these indices for every scenario. With a total of 26 scenarios, that’s a grand total of 104 plots (and one of the reasons why my thesis was 217 pages long).
Normally, once I write code for something and know it works, I like to take the time to clean up the code so that it’s short, as self-explanatory as possible, and given notations in places where it’s not self-explanatory. In the case of my thesis, however, my goal was not “make pretty code” but rather “crap out as many of these plots as fast as possible.” Thus, rather than taking the time to write code that would basically automate the plot-making process and only force me to change one or two lines for each different plot and scenario, I basically made new code for each and every single plot.
In hindsight, I realize that probably cost me way more time than just sitting down and making a “template plot” code would have. In fact, I now know that it would have taken less time, as I have made it my project over the past few days to actually go back and create such code for a template plot that I could easily extend to all plots and all scenarios.
Side note: I’m going to be sharing code here, so if you have absolutely no interest in this at all, I suggest you stop reading now and skip down to today’s meme to conclude today’s blog.
This code is old code for a plot of the comparative fit index’s (CFI’s) behavior for a 1-factor model with eight indicators for an increasingly large omitted error correlation (for six different loading sizes; those are the colored lines). As you can see in the file, there are quite a few (okay, a lot) of lines “commented out,” as indicated by the pound signs in front of the lines of code. This is because for each chunk of code, I had to write a specific line for each of the different plots. Each of these customizing lines took quite awhile to get correct, as many of them refer to plotting the “λ = some number” labels at the correct coordinates as well as making sure the axis labels are accurate.
This other code, on the other hand, is one in which I need to change only the data file and the name of the y-axis. It’s a lot cleaner in the sense that there’s not a lot of messy commented out lines, lines are annotated regarding what they do, and—best of all—this took me maybe five hours to create but would make creating 104 plots so easy. Some of the aspects of “automating” plot-making were somewhat difficult to figure out, like making it so that the y-axis would be appropriately segmented labeled in all cases, and thus the code is still kind of messy in some places, but it’s a lot better than it was. Plus, now that I know that this shortened code works, I can go back in and make it even more simplified and streamlined.
Side-by-side comparison, old vs. new, respectively:
Yeah, I know it’s not perfect, but it’s pretty freaking good considering I have to change like two lines of the code to get it to do a plot for another fit index. Huzzah!
30-Day Meme – Day 17: An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.) that is your favorite.
As much as I love Dali’s Persistence of Memory, I have to say that one of my favorite paintings is Piet Mondrian’s Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow.
It’s ridiculously simple, but that’s what I like about it. There’s quite a lot of art I don’t “get” and I think Mondrian’s work may fall into that category. However, there’s something implicitly appealing about this to me. I love stuff that just uses primary colors and I really like squares/straight lines/structure. So I guess this is just a pretty culmination of all that.
TWSB: Do the Hustle! Er, Shuffle. Do The Shuffle. iPods. This post is about iPods.
So I found this NPR transcript this afternoon discussing a listener’s question about the “shuffle” feature of iPods. Specifically, what the mathematics behind the shuffle feature are. After all, the listener notes, it sometimes seems like the same songs keep coming up while many others are never played.
Keith Devlin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford, answers the question. The shuffle, he says, is meant to be random and in fact actually behaves as a random event. Mr. Devlin explains that people have difficulty recognizing randomness because of the simple fact that one of the features of truly random selection is the repetition of patterns. He uses the example of coin tossing. If you toss a coin twenty or so times, you’re very likely, he says, to get streaks of the same side coming up, like a streak of five heads or something. We tend to see such streaks as non-randomness, though, because such patterns surprise us (after all, it does seem intuitively weird to see five heads in a row when you’re tossing a coin when you know that both sides of the coin have an equal probability of occurring. The magic of independent probability!).
Mr. Devlin concludes, “so, assuming that Apple have designed a really good randomizer in the iPod, then you are going to start getting repeats of songs and you are going to find that some songs don’t come up seemingly for a long time. That’s the way random behavior is.”
Cool, huh?
30-Day Meme – Day 15: A poem you wrote.
I wrote this poem for my grandpa the night before he died of a rare cancer. I remember reading it to him and watching him slowly fade in and out of consciousness. Everything in this poem is totally true of him. You rocked, grandpa!
A Grandpa is someone you can count on in a mess
Though with woodworking and painting he is easily obsessed
Not a job too tough
Not a place too rough
For this daring man of a ripe old age
Who has lived in the past and seen the future.
Can re-fix a shoe with a single suture.
No need to ask for directions
Full of funny imperfections
This daring man of a ripe old age.
Whether zooming to the store for his lottery ticket
Or checking the numbers—did he win it?
Doesn’t complain
Need I explain?
The daring man of a ripe old age.
The daring man of a ripe old age.
Stanleyland
2301. Who is the hottest celebrity you can think of?
I can’t think of a male celeb at the moment, but I’ve always thought Michelle Trachtenberg is freaking gorgeous.
2303. Do you ever get so nervous that you can’t even think?
Welcome to “Claudia takes math finals.” Seriously. Every damn time. 100% in the class (including other tests!), like 40% on the final. Explain.
2304. Do you sing when there is no music?
Yup.
2305. Would you rather cast a spell or say a prayer?
Can I cast a spell to make someone else pray? Can I pray that someone else casts a spell?
2306. Why does the US dollar bill have a pyramid on it?
Isn’t the pyramid related to Horus?
2307. Who was the best political leader in history and why?
Millard Fillmore. ‘Cause he was Millard Fillmore.
2308. What was the first sex toy you ever used?
Hahaha, this is so N/A for me.
2309. If you hated a book, would you burn it?
As much as I hate the one book I truly hate, I wouldn’t burn it.
2310. What are your feelings about pornography?
Eh. I don’t enjoy it, but I don’t reprimand those who do.
2311. What are your feelings about people who are against pornography?
I say let those who enjoy it enjoy it.
2312. If you could dance with anyone in the world right now, who would it be and what song would you dance to?
I suck enough at dancing that I wouldn’t want anybody I admire to be forced to dance with me.
2313. What is your favorite flavor of schnapps?
Don’t have one.
2314. Finish this sentence your own way. There are two types of people in the world…
Those who love “two types of people” jokes and those who despise them.
2315. What have you saved since elementary school?
My journals. I wrote SO MUCH in first grade.
2316. Have you ever won an award?
Yup. Writing awards. Band awards. Maybe some other stuff.
2317. Are you more:
good or evil?
Good.
wise or foolish?
Probably foolish.
safe or dangerous?
Dangerous.
satisfied or envious?
Envious.
honest or decietful?
Honest.
faithful or perfidious?
Faithful.
sane or mad?
Haha.
strong or weak?
Strong.
enigmatic or plain?
Enigmatic
aggressive or peaceful?
Peaceful.
brave or timid?
Brave.
humane or cruel?
Humane.
critical or appreciative?
Appreciative.
temperamental or calm?
Temperamental.
sad or happy?
Sad.
normal or unusual?
Unusual.
2318. How do you feel about Terri Schiavo?
I barely remember that whole mess.
2319. Do you feel more connected to the sun or the moon?
Sun.
2320. Do flaws make people interesting to you?
Sure. People are weirdos.
2321. Who is your favorite historical figure?
LEIBNIZ!
2322. White bread or wheat bread?
White.
2323. Would you rather never have sex again or have sex once with a walrus?
The former.
2324. Would you rather sky dive or deep sea dive?
I’d totally sky dive again.
2325. What is the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?
It involved cake.
2326. What is your favorite pick-up line?
I don’t have one.
2327. Do you usually do things fast or right?
I try to do both.
2328. What will the most common halloween costume be this year?
Man, who knows. Something Harry Potter related?
2329. What was it last year?
Probably something Harry Potter related.
2330. Is love a choice or something that can’t be helped?
Probably something that can’t be helped.
2331. What is your preferred method of birth control?
Um…not having a partner? Haha.
2332. Is there someone you see everyday (or sometimes) that you would like to hug and talk to but you just don’t know them well enough?
Nope.
2333. Are you or have you ever been in a band?
Hell yeah! Band rules.
2334. Here are 4 statements about me. Only one of them is true. Which one is it?
a. I lost my mind doing drugs.
b. I’ve been arrested before.
c. I have 9 cats.
d. I have a children’s book published.
I’ll say B.
2335. What do you think of the smashing pumpkins?
I don’t think I even have any Smashing Pumpkins songs.
2336. Would you wear a thong bathing suit in public?
No.
2337. Hello I love you won’t you tell me your name?
I’m Claudia! Why is this question 2,337?
2338. If you had to be surgically attached at the hip for two years to either Britney Spears, George W. Bush or an ugly creepy troublesome but nice troll, who would you pick and why?
Troll! We’d have the most fun.
2339. Let’s assume that there is a “meaning of life,” a reason for humans to be here on this planet. Would you give up both of your legs and one of your arms if it would mean everyone else would learn the meaning of life?
Only if that was my reason for being on the planet.
2340. If you could meet God and talk to him for 5 hours, -or- find out whether or not there is intelligent life on other planets and make contact with them, which would you pick and why? (Note: If you meet God, you will never find out if there is intelligent life on other planets, so you can’t ask God if aliens exist. Also, you would get no proof that you had talked to him or her. And finally, if God doesn’t exist then you don’t get to meet him or her!).
Under the assumption that god exists, I’d probably pick option A, mainly because I’m almost positive that there is intelligent life somewhere out there, and getting us in contact with them would probably be quite disastrous.
2341. Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, or the Breakfast Club?
I haven’t seen any of these.
2342. Before you read this question, pick a person from your life, any person. (You have to be thinking about someone before you continue!). Would you rather have the ability to watch that person for one hour per day, or would you rather have that person watch you for one hour per day? Who is it and why? (you pick the hour – they don’t know that they are being watched – it’s like there are invisible TV cameras following them around)?
I’d watch them. People acting without knowing they’re being observed are amazing. And this particular person = super amazing. Also, I’m a creeper.
2343. Would you rather be guaranteed to have your dream job or never be heartbroken?
Guaranteed my dream job.
2344. Have you thought about death today?
Yup.
2345. What is your favorite breakfast?
My *favorite* is cereal, like Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Waffle Crisp (why don’t they sell this anymore?!), but I usually have a banana and some peanuts.
2346. What is your favorite classic movie?
The Music Man is AWESOME.
2347. Gold or silver eyeshadow?
Gold.
2348. Are you the life of the party?
Pfft, no.
2349. Do you wish you were?
Nope.
2350. Sdrawkcab daer uoy nac?
Sey.
2351. If you realize that a student at your school or a colleague from your job has plagiarized part of their work from the internet. What do you do?
Please see this blog.
2352. What does your computer look like when you aren’t looking at it??
It comes to life and dances.
2353. If you aren’t looking at it, how do you know it’s still there when your back is turned?
Because I’m not Berkeley.
2354. If you hit an animal with your car would you get out to try and make sure it was okay?
Duh.
2355. If it was someone’s cat (collared with address) would you knock on their door and apologize for hitting the cat?
Absolutely.
2356. How do you feel about the people who are teased in high school suing the bullies who teased them for emotional damage?
I don’t know, I wasn’t bullied in high school (much) and can’t really determine the degree of emotional damage it causes.
2357. Do you have an interest in any of the following:
guns: I’d like to fire a gun again. The shooting range was fun.
explosives: Not really.
marilyn manson: No.
trench coats: No.
the mafia: No.
death: Meh.
satanism: No.
nazis: No.
that Doom game: Doom RULES.
2358. Do you believe that people live in their own worlds or realities or do you think we all share the same world/reality?
We’re monads!
2359. Do you believe that Nazism was a characteristically German thing, or do you think a similar type of government could spring up in any country?
Um…the Holocaust was probably not the first mass genocide.
2360. Is your diary in the internet archive wayback machine?
Nope.
2361. When do you get your most peaceful and satisfying sleep?
Whenever I feel like sleeping, haha.
2362. What thought gets you out of bed in the morning?
The thought that maybe today I’ll get things right.
2363. Do you get along better with guys or girls (as friends)?
Guys, usually.
2364. What does tx81z stand for?
Probably something dumb.
2365. How many points is the letter Z worth in Scrabble?
Ten.
2366. In poker, which hand is better: four of a kind or a straight?
Haha, I don’t know. Never played poker.
2367. What is the official language of Australia?
Canadian.
2368. On what continent would you find British Columbia?
AAHH HORRIBLE FLASHBACKS GET IT AWAY
2369. Have you been to homestarrunner.com?
Haha, yup.
2370. What promise could you never keep?
Any promise that harmed someone else by it being kept.
2372. What are you a member of?
The human race.
2373. If you and your mate were stranded at sea on a scuba diving trip like in the movie Open Water, how would you survive?
We probably wouldn’t, haha.
2374. Do you feel confident that you would know what to do under emergency circumstances?
I’m disaster-ready, baby.
2375. Have you ever been stood up?
No.
2378. Have you ever had an unusual piercing?
I don’t know if an industrial counts for this.
2379. Have you ever experianced culture shock?
Not really. Moving from Moscow to Vancouver was a big deal, but not that big of a deal.
2380. Imagine you were trapped in one of the world trade center towers on 9/11/01. Who would you call and what would you say to them in those last few minutes?
I’d call my mom and tell her how much I love her.
2381. Do you ever go to school or work when you feel like you do not look your best??
Indeed.
2382. Does doing this effect your whole day?
Meh.
2383. What was the last movie you watched and what did you learn from it?
The last movie I watched was The Perfect Storm on TV. I learned not to go fishing during perfect storms. Life-changing.
2384. Do you believe that everyone who doesn’t believe in your religion is going to hell?
Haha, no.
2385. What is the best thing about winter?
SNOW!
2386. Do you ever shovel your neighbor’s walk?
I shoveled like the whole of Almon St. when we lived
2387. How often do you hold back from saying what you are thinking?
90% of the time.
2388. Have you ever looked back at someone you loved and wondered ‘what attracted me to THEM?’
Haha, it’s like all I do during a relationship.
2389. What do you think of Drew Barrymore?
I have no issues with her.
2390. Name one thing you refuse to ever do.
Cease learning.
2391. Name one place you refuse to ever go.
Back to Vancouver.
2392. Do you think people see you more as who you are or what you are?
Who knows? I have no idea how I’m perceived.
2393. Pick 3 random letters:
C, L, and K.
Now think of the first 3 things that pops into your head that starts with each letter.
Clock, Louisiana, and kite.
2394. Do you dress more revealing or more to cover up?
I don’t really factor coverage into my outfit selection.
2395. What does it take to be a ‘real gentleman’?
Not being a jerk. Respecting ladies and dudes alike.
2396. Where would you go if you were going somewhere you don’t usually go?
Haha, what a weird question. I don’t know…church?
2397. On the first sept 11th anniversary, the new york lottery’s winning numbers were 9,1 and 1. Do you believe this is fate, coincidence or a conspiracy/plan?
I believe the universe is strange.
2398. Have you ever noticed that there is a lie in the middle of the word believe?
Yup.
2399. When (and if) people (or animals) go to heaven, do they become angels?
No heaven.
2400. What is your most important body part?
BRAIN!
30-Day Meme – Day 14: Talk about the cuteness of your pets.
My kitten Annabelle is freaking adorable. Though she was a stray when she came to our house, we think she’s almost a purebred British Shorthair. She’s like a bunny crossed with a koala.
Come on, really?
This afternoon I was bored at home and with nothing else to do, I turned on the TV and watched The Doctors. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an hour-long show featuring a team of medical professionals who respond to themed health concerns such as diabetes or flu prevention or healthy foods.
Usually these guys are pretty reasonable and accurate with their advice (at least in my opinion). But today’s show, which was focused on weight loss (“Six Ways to Weigh Less;” I’ll critique this theme in a minute), opened with an overweight young man talking about how his partner always cooked for him. This wouldn’t be a bad thing, he said, except for the fact that the foods she cooked were always high in calories and fat and she made him feel like he “had” to eat everything she prepared for him. He felt like he had pressure to finish everything she made for him and therefore felt like she was pressuring him into being overweight.
Yeah, okay, I can respect his concerns. However, I did have issues with how the doctors interpreted the situation following the clip. They basically said that the sole reason a partner/spouse would “make” or “keep” their significant other overweight is due to insecurity. Basically, they make their significant other overweight and thus decrease their desirability to others, insuring the already existing relationship against possible outside threats.
Really?
Really?
I have several problems with this statement. Actually, I have several problems with this episode. Bullet point time!
- The Doctors emphasize multiple times that the episode is focused on making people healthier, and yet it is explicitly titled and referred to as “Six Ways to Weigh Less.” Because we all know that weighing less = increased health. Always. Totally. Except it doesn’t. YES, for those people carrying about a significant amount of weight, the loss of this weight can improve overall health. But it has been shown in several studies (that just links to like a summary) that people who are slightly heavier than “average” using the BMI as a gauge (which is screwy anyway) actually live longer than those of low, average, or obesity-level weight. But since we’ve all been told that weighing less = being healthier no matter what, I guess that’s what we’ll have to believe.
- I don’t like the implication that the woman who is supposedly over-feeding her partner is doing so deliberately. Maybe she’s of a background where food = caring. Maybe she is positively reinforced when her partner finishes the large meals and therefore continues to make them large. Maybe she just likes to cook. Who knows? I think it’s pretty bad to assume she has some sort of ulterior motive here.
- Speaking of the idea of an ulterior motive, how about that idea that the motive is as sinister as keeping her partner “unattractive” to others in order to preserve their relationship? I think jumping to this conclusion puts every fat admirer (or anyone who just doesn’t have a problem with larger people) in a bad light. Most of us who like heavier people do not have this insecurity-driven reason for our preferences. If I had a partner, I wouldn’t want him to be heavy unless he wanted to be heavy or didn’t mind being heavy. Like, I’d be all on board with that if that’s what he wanted, but I certainly wouldn’t purposely try to make him fat with the intention of making him “unappealing” to others in order to preserve our relationship. I wouldn’t try to make him fat at all if that’s not what he wanted, because that’s manipulative and wrong. Saying that’s what’s going on in this case is super insulting to the woman and really just irks the hell out of me.
- Oh, and one last point relating to the previous one: FAT =/= UNATTRACTIVE. STOP REINFORCING THE NONSENSE ASLDFJDLGKAVEAFIFJANDFAJGHH.
Okay I’m done.
30-Day Meme – Day 13: How do you think others view you?
Haha, who knows after reading the above rant. I think other people think I’m weird, I really do. I’m short, I wear weird stuff, I’m quiet unless you get me all riled up about something (see above), I like stats, and I’m a band geek. Weirdness is my forte.
Though I could be completely wrong.
Attention Universe:
My mother is the greatest human being on this planet.
That is all.
30-Day Meme – Day 12: Explain how you got one of your scars.
Way back when the Eastside Mall had a pet store in it, my mom and I used to go check out the pretty animals after we’d go out for dinner on Thursdays. There was this white parrot in there that was pretty chill and friendly. He liked to grab fingers with his little talons.
One day, we were in the shop and my mom was in the back looking at the piranhas or something (yeah, they had piranhas, how cool?!) and I was hanging out with the white parrot. I wasn’t really paying attention to things and I think something in the shop startled him. He managed to latch his beak onto the base of my right index finger and WOULDN’T LET GO. Ask my mom, he had my finger viced for like five minutes and kept biting harder.
He finally let go and I bled for like twenty minutes. Fun times.
Old McDonald had a blog, L-M-F-A-O!
Blaaaaaaaaahldfjasgiga I hate change. Stressful week shall be stressful. Engage random frivolity!
ANORAK…Do you have a sad side?
It is unfortunately one of my prominent sides.
BODY…What physical attribute would you most like to change?
I’d like to be taller. Like even just an inch or so. I have a very short torso. I’d like to be able to put more than two fingers between my lowest rib and my hip bone.
CELEBRITY…Which one would you most like to date and why?
Do they have to be living?
DEBUT …Tell us about your first ever blog post.
Hahaha. My high school friends finally convinced me to get a MySpace, and my first blog post was basically “here, are you happy? Now that I’ve got a blog, though, why not try to blog once a day?” DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE?!
ERROR …What’s been your biggest regret?
UBC.
FUNNY…who’s making you laugh?
No one at the moment.
GRAND…If we gave you one right now what would you spend it on?
Pay off my credit card ‘cause it’s right at its limit.
HOLIDAY… What’s your favorite destination?
Antarctica, even though I’ve never been there.
IRRITATE… What’s your most annoying habit?
We’re not going to get into that.
JOKER…Whats your favorite joke {the one that makes you laugh every time you hear it}?
Brian Regan’s UPS routine, Brian Regan’s airplane routine, Brian Regan’s emergency room routine. So basically anything by Brian Regan.
KENNEL… Do you have any pets?
I have my kitten Annabelle back home. She’s totally not a kitten, she’s like 13, but she’s small and my baby.
LOVE…Are you single, married, engaged, living with a long term partner?
Single. Single, single, single.
MEAL… Whats your ultimate starter, main and dessert?
Starter: Caesar salad
Main: fries/onion rings and chicken from Cougar Country
Dessert: German chocolate cake!
NOW…If you could be anywhere right now where would you be and who with?
I’d like to be down in Arizona with my mom, ‘cause we both need each other right now.
OFF DUTY…What do you do in your spare time?
Blog, do stats, read, listen to music, try not to die of boredom.
PROUD MOMENTS …What are you most proud of?
Nothing.
QUEASY …What turns your stomach?
Not much, really. Pepto Bismol used to make me violently ill, though.
RELAX…How do you relax?
I don’t. I’m a Viking.
SONG…Whats your favorite song of all time?
SLEEPYHEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!
TIME …If you could go back in time and relive it again, when would you choose?
All the way back to the beginning.
UNKNOWN…Tell us something about yourself that no one else knows?
I dream about linear algebra freakishly often.
VOCAL…. Who is your favorite artist?
Like vocal artist? Imogen Heap rocks.
WORK….. What is your dream job, and are you doing it now?
I would LOVE to fit statistical models to internet trends, or to study the internet in some way. It’s fascinating to me. I also wouldn’t mind teaching stats. Unfortunately, I am doing neither of these things right now.
XRAY…Any broken bones?
I had a hairline fracture in my tibia thanks to playing Wombat in junior high PE. That’s the worst it’s been.
YIKES…What’s been your most embarrassing moment?
In elementary school we used to put on school-wide Christmas and Spring musicals. I was always just given a small singing solo part until fifth grade, when our music teacher finally gave me an acting part. It was small, but it was an acting part. I was super happy and determined to show her that I could take on a bigger part next year. However, because I suck at everything I do, I got my lines mixed up and accidentally caused us all to skip like a fourth of the musical. We actually had to go back and add it at the end. Needless to say, another acting part was never offered to me.
ZOO…. If you were an animal, which one would you be?
I’d probably be a hippo or something equally awesome.
Also this, though I seriously doubt its ability to accurately judge writing style. If I were half as brilliant as Nabokov I’d have like forty books published by now, anyway. Clicky-clicky on pic to analyze your own writing.
30-Day Meme – Day 11: Share a story from your childhood.
A long time ago (1995) in a galaxy far, far away (Catholic elementary school), my friends and I attended an in-school after school program in which we sat in the cafeteria from 3 PM until our parents came to pick us up after work. I guess “cafeteria” is a misleading word, as the room was more of a multi-purpose room. It had a closet that was housed beneath the stairs that led up to the upper floor of the school. In it, we stored the stands for band as well as racks of those metal auditorium chairs. One day, my friends George, Mitchell, and I got the brilliant idea to hide from the after school teacher by ducking into the closet right after school ended. We were in there for like an hour and a half before we were discovered. We had to write apology letters, either to our parents or the after school teacher (I can’t remember). That was the most defiant I ever was as a kid, haha.
Blog 1,988: Miscellany
POINT ONE!
Big changes forthcoming. Bittersweet. Details at 11.
POINT TWO!
Though I doubt anyone who reads this blog utilizes the “random post” button thingy, I’ve very slowly being going through all my old blogs and updating the format so that things are consistent across all the posts. Pretty soon everything will be beautiful and happy and I will be at peace with my archives even though no one will ever read them.
POINT THREE!
I got myself a Gmail account, does that mean I’ve lost my soul?
POINT FOUR!
2,000 blogs. Happening soon. Get ready for excitement.
POINT FIVE!
I don’t remember what Point Five was!
The end!
30-Day Meme – Day 9: A photo you took.
It’s Big Ben! I took this back in 2003 when my dad, grandma, and I went to Stockholm/Helsinki/London. In related news, apparently the giant clock is tilting—almost to the point tourists can see it with the naked eye—due to the ground shifting beneath it. Haha, The Leaning Timepiece of London.
This Week’s Science Blog: She Deafened Me with Science!
Super cool! Says a related article, “The Audio Spotlight system uses nonlinearly propagating ultrasound to create highly directional beams of sound in mid-air, which can be “shone” and “directed” much like light.”
This could be used to freak so many people out.
30-Day Meme – Day 8: Describe the style you had 10 years ago.
Haha, what is this “style” you speak of? Let’s see…ten years ago was 2001, so I was in 7th grade. I wasn’t quite as colorful as I am nowadays, but I still wore a lot more color than my peers. I remember being compared to Phoebe from Friends with respect to my clothing…though I wouldn’t really know how accurate this statement is, ‘cause I’ve never seen Friends. So I guess my style is the same as it is now, only subdued.
Eigenblogger 