Daily Connotations

2007-03-02T00:56:00.000-06:00

NOT a spy supply store.

2007-02-21T17:25:00.000-06:00

whee!!!

2006-09-24T11:01:00.000-05:00

Do you suppose, when Steve Irwin died, the crocodiles cried crocodile tears?

2006-07-19T19:50:00.000-05:00

Seven Deadly Gummy Sins

2006-07-06T17:24:00.000-05:00

READ!

or the owl will eat you.

2006-06-29T19:33:00.000-05:00

I find that whenever I'm pessimistic things turn out better than I'd hoped.

2006-06-26T20:56:00.000-05:00

So I picked up a guitar today, and it was like wow, I can actually sound like I know how to play this thing. I was pretty amazed.

2006-06-19T09:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was Paul McCartney's sixty-fourth birthday.

I wonder if anyone still needs him, or still feeds him.

2006-06-11T19:18:00.000-05:00

a new favorite word:

junketing, junketings...

as a noun:
A party, banquet, or outing.
A trip or tour.

also, junket, to junket
as a verb:
To hold a party or banquet.
To go on a junket.
To fete at a party or banquet.

2006-05-23T17:44:00.000-05:00

As scientists and concerned citizens, we applaud the recent trend towards legislation which requires the prominent placing of warnings on products that present hazards to the general public. Yet we must also offer the cautionary thought that such warnings, however well-intentioned, merely scratch the surface of what is really necessary in this important area. This is especially true in light of the findings of 20th century physics.
We are therefore proposing that, as responsible scientists, we join together in an intensive push for new laws that will mandate the conspicuous placement of suitably informative warnings on the packaging of every product offered for sale in the United States of America. Our suggested list of warnings appears below:

WARNING: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
WARNING: This Product Attracts Every Other Piece of Matter in the Universe, Including the Products of Other Manufacturers, with a Force Proportional to the Product of the Masses and Inversely Proportional to the Distance Between Them.
CAUTION: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
HANDLE WITH EXTREME CARE: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles Per Hour.
CONSUMER NOTICE: Because of the "Uncertainty Principle," It Is Impossible for the Consumer to Find Out at the Same Time Both Precisely Where This Product Is and How Fast It Is Moving. (Note: This one is optional on the grounds that Heisenburg was never quite sure that his principle was correct)
ADVISORY: There is an Extremely Small but Nonzero Chance That, Through a Process Know as "Tunneling," This Product May Spontaneously Disappear from Its Present Location and Reappear at Any Random Place in the Universe, Including Your Neighbor's Domicile. The Manufacturer Will Not Be Responsible for Any Damages or Inconvenience That May Result.
READ THIS BEFORE OPENING PACKAGE: According to Certain Suggested Versions of the Grand Unified Theory, the Primary Particles Constituting this Product May Decay to Nothingness Within the Next Four Hundred Million Years.
THIS IS A 100% MATTER PRODUCT: In the Unlikely Event That This Merchandise Should Contact Antimatter in Any Form, a Catastrophic Explosion Will Result.
PUBLIC NOTICE AS REQUIRED BY LAW: Any Use of This Product, in Any Manner Whatsoever, Will Increase the Amount of Disorder in the Universe. Although No Liability Is Implied Herein, the Consumer Is Warned That This Process Will Ultimately Lead to the Heat Death of the Universe.
NOTE: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a "Gluing" Force About Which Little is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
ATTENTION: Despite Any Other Listing of Product Contents Found Hereon, the Consumer is Advised That, in Actuality, This Product Consists Of 99.9999999999% Empty Space.
NEW GRAND UNIFIED THEORY DISCLAIMER: The Manufacturer May Technically Be Entitled to Claim That This Product Is Ten-Dimensional. However, the Consumer Is Reminded That This Confers No Legal Rights Above and Beyond Those Applicable to Three-Dimensional Objects, Since the Seven New Dimensions Are "Rolled Up" into Such a Small "Area" That They Cannot Be Detected.
PLEASE NOTE: Some Quantum Physics Theories Suggest That When the Consumer Is Not Directly Observing This Product, It May Cease to Exist or Will Exist Only in a Vague and Undetermined State.
COMPONENT EQUIVALENCY NOTICE: The Subatomic Particles (Electrons, Protons, etc.) Comprising This Product Are Exactly the Same in Every Measurable Respect as Those Used in the Products of Other Manufacturers, and No Claim to the Contrary May Legitimately Be Expressed or Implied.
HEALTH WARNING: Care Should Be Taken When Lifting This Product, Since Its Mass, and Thus Its Weight, Is Dependent on Its Velocity Relative to the User.
IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PURCHASERS: The Entire Physical Universe, Including This Product, May One Day Collapse Back into an Infinitesimally Small Space. Should Another Universe Subsequently Re-emerge, the Existence of This Product in That Universe Cannot Be Guaranteed.

2006-05-07T19:53:00.000-05:00

This month marks the third anniversary of the Daily Connotations Blog.

Party!

2006-05-01T23:57:00.000-05:00

So, I heard about this weird crime ring where people break into police stations and courthouses and such and steal all the toilet seats...

As a crime it's more annoying than damaging, but it's starting to get more serious because detectives have nothing to go on.

2006-04-27T17:30:00.000-05:00

A physicist, a botonist, and a chemist go to the ocean for the first time.

The physicist comments on the beauty of the wave motions and sets about calculating them. He then drowns as he tries to back up his theories with expirementation.

The botonists says that he would like to study the marine life and also drowns while making observations.

The chemist sits on the seashore for a while and then writes his conclusion: Physicists and Botonist are soluble in ocean water.

2006-04-24T12:44:00.000-05:00

A joke!

Why did the chicken cross the moebius strip?

To get to the other....erm...um...waitaminute...

Oh. Well, you know, whatever.

2006-04-23T23:40:00.000-05:00

Ooh, pretty!

2006-04-17T19:50:00.000-05:00

Pacifist Chess Set

2006-04-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

Of course, it would only really work if they had that music playing, too...

2006-04-07T17:19:00.000-05:00

101 Greatest Screenplays, according to the Writer's Guild of America.

There is, you will note, one notable omission

2006-04-04T16:39:00.000-05:00

I especially like this article about the odd date tonight because it quotes Jack Horkheimer, Stargazer.

2006-04-04T08:51:00.000-05:00

Terence Trent d'Arby(Terence Trent of roast beef sandwich) was
on Letterman(an A&E rerun) and he was singing that Sam Cooke song,
'Wonderful World'. But I had just downed about 16 ounces of
Robitussin and I swear this is what he sang:

"Don't know much about history,
Don't know much biology,
Don't know no science book,
Don't know much about the French I took

"But I do know that I love you,
And I know that if you love me too,
What a wonderful, wonderful world this could be--"

"Don't know much about deconstruction, except of course
Derrida's famous phrase, "Il n'y a pas dehors du texte,"
which means "There is nothing outside of the text," but, and
this is important--he is not simply restating the project of
the New Critics, reducing, let's say, a poem, to the words of
the poem, and *only* that, but rather, I take it to mean that
Derrida is textualizing *everything*, history, the author's
biography, all of it, and opening the text up to the free play
of meaning.

2006-03-30T08:02:00.000-06:00

Batman Fighting Effects.

2006-03-22T11:10:00.000-06:00

For a discussion of the properties of a gas in classical physics see ideal gas.

Disambiguation statements make me happy.

Anyway, "Classical Gas" was written by Mason Williams, who was head writer for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" for a long time. Steve Martin and Rob Reiner also wrote for them.

And now Tom and Dick own and operate a vineyard.

You don't need to know any of that, and probably don't want to know any of it either. And, to be honest, I'm not sure why I'm telling you.

But, now you know. And I was amused by the disambiguation statement. Heh.

2006-03-15T11:57:00.000-06:00

Beware Caesar, beware the Ides of March.

2006-03-13T19:42:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty sure i've read this before, but I can't remember for sure.

(yes, that is a joke.)

2006-02-28T20:22:00.000-06:00

umm...

Jesus of the Week?

2006-02-25T15:50:00.000-06:00

Some how or another, I am going to go see Into the Woods.

2006-02-22T17:31:00.000-06:00

I have a problem.
It being that for the life of me, I can't find the first 10-digit prime number in consecutive digits of the constant "e."
You now know what is occupying all of my time.

2006-02-21T16:31:00.000-06:00

Some kid 2000 years ago looked up in the night sky...

"Hey, dad - it's a guy with a bow-and-arrow!"

He's been Orion ever since.

When I was little I made things out of legos.

He made things out of stars.

2006-02-19T09:43:00.000-06:00

Q. What can write underwater??

A. A ball-point penguin!!!

*groan.

2006-02-14T08:49:00.000-06:00

I never meta-humour I didn't like.

2006-02-12T19:54:00.000-06:00

Inner big grinning, Guard cremated heaving in dirt.
In dirt fuzzy thought foam envoy.
In drunk nose fuzz pawn deface off sod heap.
Ember spare rib off Guard worst mooing oder deface off key whoppers.

2006-02-10T13:08:00.000-06:00

Those with a decent internet connection and a taste for musical experimentation may enjoy Pandora.

2006-02-09T20:35:00.000-06:00

The only reason I linked this site was that it included Nehi in its list.
It's really quite pointless.

2006-02-09T11:12:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if The Literature Map is cool or not, but it's kind of fun to play with for a while. And it has potential.

2006-02-05T22:07:00.000-06:00

Oddly enough, I have nothing to say.

Oh, except that I discovered something that will be interesting for only a select few:

Richard Haydn, who played Professor Oddly (the one with the funny voice) in "Ball of Fire" also played Uncle Max in "The Sound of Music", except he turned his funny voice off.

2006-02-01T20:36:00.000-06:00

Is anybody there?

2006-01-30T19:56:00.000-06:00

I'm stunned at the silence that has followed my victory. (And very honored)(And big-headed)(And not at all humbled)

2006-01-25T16:09:00.000-06:00

Yes, today was Quiz Bowl.
I and my team mates played in rounds one, two, four, six, eight.
In case you are slow or unfamilar with this bracket, that means we didn't lose.
We are the undefeated champions.

A quick run down of the competition:
Us (score, 34) vs. Wyane (score, 6)
(19) vs. N. Valley (13)
(21) vs. E. Union (10)
(20) vs. S.E. Warren (13)
(29) vs. S.E. Warren (10)

A quick run down of our players:
(name, total correct, average each round)
A. Marcum, 61, 12.2
K. Loger, 18, 3.6
K. Watson, 11, 2.75
N. Gallagher, 13, 3.25
V. Weiss, 17, 3.4
A. Schweitzer, 2, 0.6
D. Ambrose, 1, 0.3
M, Wiederin, 0, 0

As a team we averaged 24.6 correct a round and our opposition averaged 10.4 a round.
123 total we answered correctly; 52 collectively for our competition.

We, were good.

2006-01-24T10:04:00.000-06:00

So, what did the boy scout say when he fixed the horn on his bicycle?

Beep Repaired

----

It's been much too long since I've told any bad jokes.

2006-01-22T23:12:00.000-06:00

Celebrate despotism!

2006-01-20T17:16:00.000-06:00

And, just when you thought you'd seen it all...

Yarmulkebra

Yep, that's pretty much what it is.

2006-01-19T10:53:00.000-06:00

CHRISTOPHER SEED is like any other pianist; he plays the piano. However, the piano that he plays is far from the ordinary. He has built a piano with the keyboard in reverse (with the treble register beginning at the left hand side and ending with the bass register at the right). The reason - he believes (quite logically) that his left hand, and indeed the whole left side of his body, is much more expressive and agile than his right. Because most piano music is written with the melody in the right hand supported with chords in the left, if you turn this around and swap hands it makes much more sense to a left-hander. The only practical way of doing this is to build the keyboard in reverse. Chris hopes that this will set a precedent for a future generation of left-handed pianists. This new keyboard could uncover a whole new wealth of talent in the world of music.

2006-01-19T08:44:00.000-06:00

Edgar Allen Poe was a riot.

2006-01-16T22:09:00.000-06:00

Ooh...pretty socks!

They were made by the random-yarn-generator process. (You cut lots of different kinds of yarn into lots of different lengths, put them all in a sack, and draw them out one at a time - without peeking! I think the result is rather elegant, myself.)

2006-01-12T14:52:00.000-06:00

Another point for our side.
Absolutly amazing.
That's all there really is to say.
Except to pose the question...
What would you do with 120 GB?

2006-01-11T20:16:00.000-06:00

There was a young man from Peru
Whose limericks all end at line two...

-----

There was a young man from Verdun.

2006-01-10T16:48:00.000-06:00

Today I came upon the most startling of quandries. I was sitting in my Straddling Social Boundaries class. A photo of Hemmingway was on the wall (I'm thinking "This is the Honors Building....for God's sake keep it outside). Why do we have to ask the questions of gender, race, creed, and sexuality? THE QUESTIONS: Why? Why?

Our innate drive to categorize and label is appauling in this context. Why must we force explanation upon such unexplainable matters? Why are they unexplainable? Why do we feel they need be explained? The definition of race in human minds fits no appropriate (BOUNDARY ALERT) scientific basis of what race actually is. Why does morphology force classification? In all other creatures, morphologic distinctions only finishes 1/3 of the puzzle. Why then in humans does race rely on the surface (BOUNDARY ALERT) value?

Some noted psychologists cite categorization as a tool in human's ability to understand and explain.

This has nothing to do with faith (BOUNDARY ORANGE ALERT). I am not sure that it deals with morality. I wish I could type here "boundary alert" and make it all much more simple.

2006-01-10T16:23:00.000-06:00

I just realized how funny it is, in a purely linguistic sense, that Turkey is battling the bird flu.

Actually, there's nothing funny about it. Bird flu really scares me.

But Turkey.

Heh.

2006-01-05T14:50:00.000-06:00

The Quiz Bowl team is as follows:
A Marcum
K Loger
K Watson
V Weiss
N Gallagher
A Schweitzer
D Ambrose
M Weiderin

I would like to note that A Davison had a open spot on the team and would have been placed in the core group, but, to our great dissappointment, she declined to accept that position.

The competition will be held 1/25 in Creston.

2006-01-04T21:39:00.000-06:00

Entropy happened. I joined the madness. And now, I'm back to talk about it.

Crazier than Steven Colbert after his morning lug o' joe,

--Dr. Henry Parsons
Speech Judge
Proud Supporter of Dr. What's QB Team

2005-12-27T21:08:00.000-06:00

I just want to say that Apples are the BEST computers in the world.
Tiger is the BEST operating system.
The elegance and simplicity of both blow away any chance of competition from anyone.
MACS are BETTER.

2005-12-19T11:48:00.000-06:00

digital sheet music archive

Brilliant.

2005-12-12T15:20:00.001-06:00

Quiz Bowl update! Quiz Bowl update!
For all you people out there interested in my team's (I do call it my team) showing in this competition
the brackets are out.
We play in the second round against Wayne.
Although I do not know the entire team, the core consists of:
me
K. Loger
C. Watson
A. Davison.

I'll post the team and any other info as I get it.

2005-12-08T08:44:00.000-06:00

Lennon lives.

2005-12-06T22:33:00.000-06:00

"If Fred is in a linguistic community of normals (people who are not victims of left-eye inversions), then Fred will disagree with his neighbors about the color of raspberries and will drive through red lights on left-eye days. These difference between Fred and his neighbors would presumably be quite manifest, and, especially in the latter case, seriously deleterious to Fred's success in the world."

-Jonathan Cohen, in "Color, Content, and Fred."

2005-12-06T15:02:00.000-06:00

It is very, very cold.
And you know what else?
I am very, very happy.

2005-12-02T17:15:00.000-06:00

The Russian philosopher, Kuzma Prutkov, once said that the moon is more useful than the sun, since it shines at night when light is needed; while the sun is of little use in the daytime since it is light anyway!

2005-11-30T17:51:00.000-06:00

We have undergarments, garments, and overgarments, but without thinking of them as forming a hierarchy...

At times the underling persists even after the ling has changed his name.

-Georges Perec.

2005-11-27T22:46:00.000-06:00

The Story Of Schrödinger's Cat: An epic poem.

2005-11-17T16:20:00.000-06:00

"Esref Armagan was born both unsighted and to an impoverished family. As a child and young adult he never received any formal schooling or training; however, he has taught himself to write and print. He draws and paints by using his hands and primarily oil paints. In this manner, Mr. Armagan has been perfecting his art for the past thirty-five years."

And by "perfecting his art", they mean drawing fish, watermelon, and, well, Bill Clinton.

The art of Seeing without Sight

The Blind Painter and the Cartesian Theatre

2005-11-17T12:43:00.000-06:00

I enjoy chaos.

2005-11-15T15:14:00.000-06:00

Why do I get mad?
Why do I get frustrated?
Why do I get discouraged?
Why do I care?
Does it really matter in the long run?

2005-11-15T15:07:00.000-06:00

Why do I get mad?
Why do I get frustrated?
Why do I get discouraged?
Why do I care?
Does any of it really matter in the long run?

2005-11-15T15:02:00.000-06:00

Why do I get mad?
Why do I get furstrated?
Why do I get discouraged?
Does it really matter in the long run?

2005-11-14T19:22:00.000-06:00

Humans are products of evolution; nervous systems have evolved in the context of competition for survival - in the struggle to succeed in the four F's: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproduction.

Patricia Smith Churchland, in Can Neurobiology Teach Us Anything About Consciousness

2005-11-11T12:51:00.000-06:00

An Iowa woman recently found a dead turtle in a two pound package of Folgers' coffee, which she claims to have been using for months.
Folgers' comment was, "It could have been worse, it could have been a snake."

2005-11-10T15:25:00.000-06:00

(Two men on stage.)
First man: You will.
Second Man: I won't.
First man: You will.
Second Man: I won't.
First man: You will!!
Second Man: I won't!!
(First man takes out gun and shoots Second man, who falls dead.)
First man: You will!

...a brief and bizarre burlesque sketch that captured all of modern history and anticipated existentialism and theater of the absurb by twenty years.

(Taken from Alan Alda's "Never Have Your Dog Stuffed")

2005-11-08T22:24:00.000-06:00

Power to do integrals as the world has never seen before

It's kind of silly how happy that makes me.

2005-10-31T19:51:00.000-06:00

A few say I exist but that I'm actually dead. As evidence they point to the old gravestone in the cemetery with my name carved on it. But I have apologized for doing that and agreed to do community service.

2005-10-31T12:54:00.000-06:00

Halloween is a great Republician holiday,
You try to scare everyone out of their wits while gobbling up as much as you can.

2005-10-29T13:46:00.000-05:00

The visual thesaurus is very cool. I'm not sure how helpful it would really be. But...very cool. I'd like to talk to whoever decided which words should be connected...that semantic network would be fun to tinker with.

2005-10-28T20:09:00.000-05:00

This is a fun game

You should play it.

2005-10-23T19:07:00.000-05:00

Control experiments were made with other projectiles, as apple cores, cabbage runts, hats, roses, pumpkins, bullets, and ketchup (Heinz, 1952).

2005-10-23T16:47:00.000-05:00

Staircases

We don't think enough about staircases.

Nothing was more beautiful in old houses than the staircases.
Nothing is uglier, colder, more hostile, meaner, in today's apartment buildings.

We should learn to live more on staircases. But how?

-Georges Perec, Species of Spaces

2005-10-18T12:35:00.000-05:00

I've been particularly uninspired as of late.

Thus the dearth of blog-posts.

aargh.

2005-10-10T21:48:00.000-05:00

From Ned Block's "On a Confusion about a Function of Consciousness"

"...we would not feel tat our concept of a zombie had been toyed with if it turned out that there is something it is like for these zombies to eat their relatives. (They say "yumm!")"

2005-10-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

Stolen from planland (cause I'm lazy):

"In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, and
amicable philosophical or psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosa.
Let your conversational communications possess a compacted conciseness, a clarified comprehensibility,
a coalescent cogency, and a concatenated consistency. Eschew obfuscation and all conglomeration of
flatulent garrulity, jejune rabblement, and asinine affectations. Let your extemporaneous descanting and
Unpremeditated expatiations have intelligibility and voracious vivacity without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.
Sedulousy avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolificacy, and vain vapid verbosity." PLO
In short what Patrick Lumumba was telling his fellow commissioners at the Constitution of Kenya Review team
is : "Be brief and don't use big words."

2005-10-07T07:34:00.000-05:00

Why did the archaeopteryx catch the worm?

Because it was an early bird!... (ha, ha)

2005-10-06T12:47:00.000-05:00

You know, I thought last night that it would be kind of funny if the Nobel Orginization got into a fist fight over who should win the Peace Prize. True it's not the Peace Prize but
still...

2005-10-02T19:52:00.000-05:00

"Outside a dog a book is a man's best friend,
Inside a dog it's too dark to read."

"I never forget a face,
but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception."

"Military justice is to justice,
what military music is to music."

"Women should be obscene and not heard."

"Go, and never darken my towels again."

Happy birthday Julius.

2005-09-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

Heres to everyones (let's see, at last count he was) 4th favorite physicist, Enrico Fermi.

2005-09-28T22:28:00.000-05:00

Book Banner

2005-09-28T22:00:00.000-05:00

"

. "

-Buster Keaton.

2005-09-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

You know what is not easy?
Sloving a virtual Rubik's Cube

2005-09-25T14:21:00.000-05:00

I have this theory that you can roughly judge someone's age by how long they take to answer their email.

And I have a bit of empirical evidence to support it.

2005-09-24T15:56:00.000-05:00

Oh, man, I never used to like drinking milk (just plain) - but the past week i've been guzzling it like crazy.

It's like my body is telling me I need to get more calcium or something.

Just have this crazy craving for beautiful, cold, white MILK!

(It does a body good)

2005-09-23T15:14:00.000-05:00

I have begun to read "Ulysses"...

2005-09-23T13:35:00.000-05:00

Today, whilst working at my job at the library, I had to fix the book "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" by David J. Griffiths.

In honor of the occasion, I present a few quotes...

"The more precise a wave's position is, the less precise its wavelength, and vice versa. That's why a piccolo player must be right on pitch, whereas a double-bass player can afford to wear garden gloves."

"If your amplitude is greater than a/2, go directly to jail."

"Compute [p]. (As Peter Lorre would say, "do it the kveek vay, Johnny!"

"I have to warn you that although everybody uses it, this is lousy notation. For [alpha] and ß are not vectors, ... they are labels - serial numbers ("F43A-96T") or names ("Charlie")."

"To the layperson, the philosopher, or the classical physicist, a statement of the form "this particle doesn't have a well-definied position" sounds vague, incompetent, or (worst of all) profound. It is none of these."

"I would be delinquent if I failed to mention the archaic nomenclature for atomic states, because all chemists and most physicists use it (and the people who make up the Graduate Record Exam love this kind of thing.)"

"The result is recorded as the following hieroglyph:"

2005-09-19T11:07:00.000-05:00

Ahoy there, Mateys....

2005-09-17T11:32:00.000-05:00

Did we really need a scientific study to show that preschoolers are more likely to pretend they are buying cigarettes if their parents were smokers?

2005-09-16T13:03:00.000-05:00

Oh, Grinnell..

How thou dost epitomize socially awkward situations.

2005-09-15T19:05:00.000-05:00

A logic problem:

18: If the world is a progressively realized community of intrepretation, then either quadruplicity will drink procrastination or, provided that the Nothing negates, boredom will ensue seldom more often than frequently.

Thanks a bunch, Mr. Kalish.

2005-09-15T11:54:00.000-05:00

And now for Judge John Roberts two favorite movies:
1)Dr Zhivago
2)North by Northwest
(I'm learning to like this guy)

2005-09-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

Pete?

2005-09-13T09:06:00.000-05:00

Gosh, if I ever have a career I hope it advances quickly, just like soon-to-be (perhaps) Chief Justice John Roberts.

2005-09-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

I'm going to burn up someday. And it's gonna be because I stay inside during a fire alarm and type things on the blog. And plans. Etc.

Oh, kids these days.

The New Oxyd

It's not quite the same, but it will have to do.

2005-09-09T19:22:00.000-05:00

Aargh..

This week has been short on sleep, and this weekend has been long in coming.

The academic atmosphere is intense, but exciting; the social life ("night life", if you will), is marvelous. So if Grinnell were all about the friends and the homework, I don't think that it would too stressful. But that's not the only part - there's also the politics.

All the political maneuvering that goes on around here sort of takes it out of me. It's a little bit the democrat/republican/libertarian/anarchist/etc. groups on campus, and a little bit SGA and the college adminstration and such. I'd much rather think about semiotics, or Russian literature, or, I don't know, fishing or something.

Also, today I when I was answering a first year about my major, I had to argue quite a while to convince him that computer science was in fact a valid part of cognitive science. (And not just "cognitive scientists don't study computer science" - but he actually told me that comp.sci was completely irrelevant..."I just don't think there's really a connection there.") I am used to explaining my major - and am more than happy to do so, to people that don't know and are interested. But when someone first asks for a definition and then proceeds to talk as if they know more than I do about the field, it makes me sad. I know that I'm not that far advanced, but I've invested a lot of time and energy in this "little project" - developing a list of required classes, finding advisors (both official and peripheral), researching what cog.sci programs look like at schools where they do offer undergrad degrees in the field, planning individual research projects, talking to the one other indie cog.sci major that is here, and even looking at after-graduation options (grad school? research? move to montana and raise rutabagas?).
So, dear person, what are you majoring in? Political "Science"? Sociology? ART HISTORY!?!? What background do you have to tell me everything that I don't know about MY subject?
I don't get a chance to shine any too often. Let me have this one - I think I've worked for it.

I don't know why I got so worked up over that one...
(I suppose I could switch to English. Will I need computer science for that one?)

2005-09-08T16:04:00.000-05:00

"The only thing I can say to that is, well, it's entirely irrelevant."

(I love it when professors lose their tact...)

2005-09-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

You know, a lot of stuff happened to day.
Sid Caeser was born.
The Miss America contest was first held.
The Pledge of Allegiance was first printed.
St. Augustine was etablished.
New Amsterdam became New York.

2005-09-07T10:57:00.000-05:00

I am slightly aggravated that my above-average (if i may say so myself) ability to visualise/comprehend/understand basic, fundamental, abstract mathematical concepts does not seem to be translating into an ability to get a correct answer when specifics are thrown in to the problem.

(or, in five words, math is better without numbers.)