Nice work

I have to admit, while sifting through junk mail this really did catch my eye:



To whomever is in charge of Case's fundraising: Well done. I haven't stopped carrying the torch of Futurism and I appreciate you appealing to that sentiment. I'm still not in a place where I can be giving money to anyone else, but someday I hope to be. Keep this up.

Decade-old decade-old trivia

My parents recently decided that they are, for some reason, uninterested in keeping the boxes of magazines and scrap paper that I left in their house when I moved out a decade ago. I suppose someone else will have to become my archivist. I assume that I should have archivist, because whenever historians are trying to understand people they look back at their personal correspondence. If I become famous, perhaps the world will be enlightened by the marginalia and doodles in my "global studies" notebook. Until then, my parents quit themselves of the boxes. Feeling that it is inappropriate to be my own historian (that would be conceited), I am throwing much of it away. But one piece of paper caught my eye.

Some background: When I was in high school I was in the Student Congress, and one year during Homecoming Week I organized a school-wide trivia contest. The questions were read during the morning announcements (by me). Each homeroom got an answer sheet, which was collected, scored, and returned to them each day (by me). The homeroom with the best score at the end of the week won some sort of prize. Or maybe it was the class with the highest total points from all the classrooms. I don't remember the logistics, but I do remember that people got really into it and I was really proud that this whole idea came together. But the best part was the topic. What kind of trivia would I ask during homecoming week? Surely it was sports trivia, you say, and I say No, I don't care about that. Maybe something about the school. Or recent movies, or history, or fun facts. No, no, no, no. Or what about super nerdy stuff that only a sliver of the high school population would know anything about? And I say, BINGO.

So I now present to you, for the first time in its entirety, "Homecoming Homeroom Trivia: Old School Cartoons." The following is copied directly from my decade-old handwritten notes when I came up with the questions. Mind you, these were in the days before Google. (Remember WebCrawler?) There was just enough internet in the world for me to find the GIF's you see below (which decorated the answer sheet), but not enough for people to cheat while sitting in homeroom. So same goes for you, gentle readers, no Wikipedia allowed. See how you do...

Day 1: Thundercats
1. What was Lionel's sword's name?
2. What was the red insignia on the sword called (pictured on the right)?


Day 2: Masters of the Universe
1. Who was He-Man's twin sister and accomplice as a Master of the Universe?
2. What was He-Man's tiger named?
3. [BONUS QUESTION] He-Man's arch nemesis was Skeletor. What was Skeletor's lair called?


Day 3: Ninja Turtles
1. Name all 4 turtles and the colors of their bandanas.
2. What substance created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?



Day 4: Gummi Bears
1. What did the Gummi Bears live in?
2. What magic potion was the source of the Gummi Bear' powers?
3. What monsters were the Gummi Bears always outsmarting?


Day 5: Transformers
1. The brave and fearless Autobots were in a constant battle with what group of evil transformers?
2. What was the name of the leader of the Autobots (pictured here)?






DELETED SCENES The following was originally scheduled for Day 3, but it was deemed too difficult by the other people who were helping me...
Day 3 (original): Voltron
1. How many lions were in the Voltron Force?
2. Name one of the Voltron Force's three arch nemeses.



This was also in the days before the 80's were nostalgic and cool, before Transformers became a (live action) movie, before the TMNT got reworked as "edgy" anime-influenced nonsense, and before Cartoon Network began rebroadcasting almost all of these shows. So if you've seen the shows since their original before/after-school or Saturday morning timeslots, that's cheating too. But I'm glad that these shows are coming back. If anything, I wish they'd bring back DinoRidersand Silverhawks. But my age group is only beginning to flex our nostalgia muscles, and everything gets brought back eventually, so here's hoping. Until then, here are the answers...

Thundercats
1. The Sword of Omens
2. Eye of Thundera ("Eye of Thundera, give me sight beyond sight!")

Masters of the Universe
1. She-ra
2. Battle-Cat ("Cringer" was also acceptable, though that was his name before Prince Adam turned into He-Man. Nobody put that though, because nobody cared about stupid Prince Adam or his scaredy-tiger.)
3. Snake Mountain (if you said Castle Greyskull you are WRONG. That was He-man's castle, and Skeletor's perennial goal.)

Ninja Turtles
1. Leonardo (blue), Donatello (purple), Raphael (red), Michelangelo (orange).
• (As a colorblind kid, I was always annoyed that the blue and purple looked very similar to me. Especially because Donatello was my favorite and Leonardo was my least favorite.)
• BONUS QUESTION: What were each of their weapons? (L=katana blades, D=bo staff, R=sais, M=nunchaku)
2. Retromutagen ooze (half credit for "ooze")

Gummi Bears
1. Inside a tree (not just "in the forest")
2. Gummiberry juice
3. Ogres

Transformers
1. Decepticons
2. Optimus Prime (This was the only picture that I couldn't match to the one I used back in the day. At the time I used one that was almost identical to this, including the logo, but didn't have his big ol' gun. Columbine still was very fresh at the time and public schools were jumpy about anything related to guns. I guess that as it's gotten farther away people don't mind their cartoon characters having guns. That or school violence has become so ubiquitous that people aren't trying to blame cartoons anymore. But that's a different blog post.)

DELETED SCENES
1. Five lions (I would say that Power Rangers was a terrible rip-off, but it was made by the same people so it was more of a re-make. The main hero(s) looked almost the same, except that it was live action, set in a high school not a cool space base, and used robot dinosaurs instead of robot lions.)
2. Zarkon, Prince Lotor, Haggar the witch.

How did you do? And what do the results of this quiz tell us? Specific answers not withstanding, if this took you on a trip down memory lane, you may be a nerd. Talk to your doctor. Or treat by looking up clips on YouTube all night.

As a final note, let's face it, the Voltron theme was downright inspiring. That horn fanfare almost brings a tear to my eye!

How is Science?

“The writing process” by Jack Mack

- write 1-2 sentences
- re-read sentences
- erase most of first sentence and re-write
- think “I should find a citation for this”
- look up a citation by attempting to search through all the published literature in the discipline looking for the single most relevant example
- find an interesting article and begin to read it
- get inspired by some idea that is completely tangential to the original topic. write it down, don’t want to forget!
- get up to get a drink of water, think about new idea
- look in fridge
- “ugh, how long has this been in there?”
- put that back in there
- remember something I need to fix/buy/etc.
- write that down on a piece of paper somewhere
- think, I need to get back to work
- return to computer
- re-read sentences
- think “those are some pretty decent sentences.”
- oops, the verb tenses don’t match the rest of the paper
- change verb tenses
- think, “what was I going to write next? I had an idea.”
- check original outline
- see a topic on my original outline that I haven’t covered yet. “that’s ripe for some writing, maybe I can put that in here.”
- no, I can’t. it doesn’t make sense here
- start a new paragraph and write it down anyway. “I’ll use that later.”
- notice how much I have left to do
- “okay, let’s get down to business”
- get up to go to the bathroom
- pee, thinking “man I drink a lot of water when I write”
- realize that all the water is gone, so refill the cup
- notice dog
- scratch dog
- ask dog how his day is going
- tell dog I love him
- receive blank look from dog
- think of the perfect next sentence
- thank the dog
- return to computer
- forget perfect next sentence
- re-read sentences
- look at list of tangential ideas from “inspirations”
- none of that matters with what I’m writing
- look at outline, books, and journal articles until I see something related to what I’m writing
- in reading it, realize that some famous author has already written exactly what I’m writing, but better
- re-think entire topic/paper/career
- “whatever, I’ll just cite this and say that mine is adding something to it”
- find a relevant quote and use it as the next sentence
- write another sentence
- continue writing sentence
- continue, thinking “man, this is kind of a long sentence”
- remember something I previously read that I should cite in this sentence
- find reference I remembered
- cite it
- put a comma after the citation
- add the contradictory point to the other half of the sentence
- read sentence of extraordinary length, riddled with commas
- “this sentence is too long, I need to split it into two sentences”
- realize all my sentences are too long
- also they all use the same parallel construction
- also also they are all in the passive voice
- think “whatever, all stupid science writing is in the stupid passive voice and I like it anyway.”
- feel guilty because of Grammar
- page back through the paper and find a long sentence to split into two
- “now I have created two new sentences!”
- repeat

Brain atrophy vs. them learnin' books

I thought this was really interesting, especially for my highly-educated parents, who are approaching their 70's and trying not to be terrified of Alzheimer's or other dementias:
Higher education lowers dementia risk.

First of all, they provide support for the title's preposition that higher ed does help against dementia risk, which is a compelling idea on its own. Fleshing out the topic, the second half of the press release is particularly interesting. They define dementia "risk" as the inability to cope with one's changing brain, since dementia is an experience of symptoms and not a specific physical problem of the brain. The implication is that since more educated/flexible brains cope better, it takes a higher level of physical pathology to manifest the actual impairment that would display the symptoms to be called "dementia." It sounds a bit like splitting hairs/psychobabble, but it's really very profound. Basically, education adds resiliency to the brain, so it can adapt to and endure brain changes and the person still experiences a fairly normal life. It's really cool to see some real meta-analytical evidence of this theory!

It's kind of like the recent recommendation that doctors stop screening for prostate cancer after age 75 because even if a man gets it, he'll probably die from something else first. So he'll have prostate cancer, but won't experience any symptoms, so who cares? Why worry about it or go through painful treatments if it won't change anything? Again, it sounds strange to think of that as a good thing, but since I value quality of life, I see it as great. The chances that I will have the brain pathology that could cause dementia are equal to others in my age group, I have no physical advantages. But the chances that I will actually experience dementia are much lower. And that goes for pretty much everyone in my family, particularly my dad. He has both a Ph.D. and a very sincere fear of his mind diminishing before his body. I sent him this article in the hopes that it will alleviate some of that fear. Now for the next step, I'd like to see the relationship between fear of dementia and experience of dementia. (So all you neuroscientists reading this blog, you know, get on that.)

Psychology has repeatedly shown that when it comes to brains you either "use it or lose it." So get educated earlier in your life to build your brain's coping and flexibility, then keep using your coping skills throughout your life to maintain them, and you'll end up so far ahead that as your brain starts to fail you won't notice!

And that's my musing on science for the morning.

Hoverboards

BREAKING NEWS: A Frenchman has built a functional prototype of the Back to the Future II hoverboard from this classic scene:

Now check the real deal:


No indication of whether it is stand-on-able, but it looks pretty legit, right down to the paint job.

I've been dreaming about having a hoverboard my whole life. Though the hot pink BTTF2 one is pretty rad, I prefer the design of the ones from ReBoot (see 1:00 through 1:40 of this video to see what I mean). I confess, I spent a lot of time thinking about this hoverboard when I was 12. Double confession: I still think about it, 15 years later. In the day I came up with a whole system of balance, propulsion, and storage of these things. I could still explain it all, but I'll save you the details. But seriously, if you want to talk about it I will gladly hold forth on my intuitive 360° movement system I "developed" (read: "played with in my imagination"). Using it I would look just like this, except (probably) not blue:





We will continue to track this story as it unfolds. Check back in about a decade when the next step in hoverboard technology develops.

Nerd-scientists or nerd-punks?

This video. Not sure what to make of it.

It is like mixture of the famous Milgram experiment and the game (a.k.a. the "mind virus"). If someone ever actually combines those two phenomena, we'll all be begging for Altzeimer's.

Movies, comics and family, don't you know

Today I read this installment of Dinosaur Comics and it made me think thoughts. I don't know about clapping in movies, I have no strong opinions about that at this time, but panels 4 & 5 really spoke to me.

This jumped through the author-internet-reader conduit as a conversation that my lady and I have had innumerable times. I like to stay for the credits, she likes to get on with it. Antecedently, my family always stayed for the credits and hers never did. My parents have a long tradition of looking for the "Best Boy" and the "Key Grip," which is cute and fun. What do those people do? I have no idea, but they're always listed in the credits (never a "Best Girl" though). Not knowing anything about the movie industry nor anyone in the industry, my parents have no real need to look for the BB or KG, but it's just fun. It's like a long, moving word search. I like to look at the music credits. See who performed the songs (both pop songs and the score), who composed the score, which recording company did the work and who's releasing the soundtrack, et cetera.

For me thinking about the music is a way of reflecting back on the movie. "That movement was called 'intense dreams?' Oh that must have been during..." or "When did they play 'London Calling?' Wait, it wasn't The Clash's version? Was there a reason to use a cover version?" It's all part of the larger purpose of the creditstime: to come down from the movie experience, to reflect, to prepare myself to walk back into the lighted hallway and reintegrate with the world that has not just seen the movie. I tend to get so wrapped up in the movie experience that this processing time is important. My lady, on the other hand, consumes a movie and moves on. Not to make her sound like Galactus or something, but she just doesn't get as transported by the experience of movies, or most art for that matter. It's not for lack of attention. We have had some interesting and occasionally impassioned discussions about movies. She often catches subtleties that I missed, maybe because they didn't sink in during my end credits processing time.

She has her own way of enjoying the movie experience. She takes in the movie as it happens and, I believe, processes it best while she's doing other things. So in the dark theater she doesn't need the processing time, doesn't play the "find the Best Boy" game, nor has she any other reason to stay. (She does quite like soundtracks, and has even purchased a few, but she prefers to look them up when she gets home.) For her the movie credits are merely a signal that it's time to leave. She is not alone in this, of course, as almost everyone leaves within a minute or two of seeing the credits roll. Perhaps I'm in some weird, shrinking minority.

But apparently, T-Rex and I are members of the same minority. (I'm sure we could find other things in common, too.) My "why stay for the credits" reasoning is played out pretty accurately in this comic. T-rex's is pithier of course, as it's a six-panel comic and few of my thoughts can be so condensed anyway. But I think the heart of the argument is the same. I feel a kinship with the Terrible Lizard King. This makes the non-sequitur ending even funnier, by the way. As with the whole rest of this line of thinking, getting more deeply involved allows me a greater enjoyment of the component parts and the whole. Furthermore, writing this has made me appreciate my overall credit-watching experience, this particular comic experience, and the current writing experience, all the more! This is so freaking meta!

Does it ruin the meta-ness to point that out? Or enhance it? I don't know. Process this on your own, I've got other stuff to do.

Monkeys in Space

Many thanks to Chris Gammell for pointing me towards this:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104578202

God bless Miss Baker's little hero monkey heart!

Oh Yes And Also This

The end of the semester is a great time for Pictures For Sad Children

Cashing my spell check

Today I had to tell my web browser to "Learn Spelling" of the words "Barack" and "Obama" so that they wouldn't show up as misspelled words. Microsoft Word, however, does not mark them as unrecognized words. They must have been included in some software update. Good for you, Microsoft Word! You've done it again.

"Hussein," on the other hand, was already in the browser dictionary, but "Saddam" was not, which is curious. Once again, Word recognized both.

No time like the presents

There is no time that I want to blog more than when I have something very important to do. I mean, desperately important. This struck often when I was studying for the GRE's (especially the night before), when I was filling out grad school applications (especially ON deadline day), and when I was writing my final paper last semester (again, especially on deadline day). In less than one hour a grad school is going to call me and interview me and decide if they want to allow me to pay money to them and move to their city and attend their classes. I haven't even gotten out a copy of my resume, let alone looked up the person who's interviewing me. I'm also hoping to grab a shower so I can feel fresh and focused. But before that, I have a few things I want to get off my chest.

It's really been bothering me lately when people mispronounce words and phrases, especially things where the meaning has remained essentially the same but the phrase has been warped.

A perfect example. How do you pronounce (and/or spell-out) the abbreviation etc.? Seriously, think about it. We know what it means, we say it quickly, write the abbreviation, and don't think about what it actually IS.

Most people say excetera. It's not that. It's et cetera. Two words, Latin for "and the rest" if I'm not mistaken. And there's a T in there, not an X. Now, it doesn't change the meaning, you can write the abbreviation just as easily, but you can now speak the phrase correctly. It's so easy. It will be noticed appreciated by the people who are in the know, which now includes you.

Other good examples:
- take it for granite = take it for granted.
- for all intensive purposes = for all intents and purposes.
- (just because I work at a coffee shop) expresso = esspresso.


After a grammar-police missive like this I'm tempted to say "watch your p's and q's," but that's another story.

Love, Jack

doodles

I need to get a scanner, if for no other reason than scanning pictures I've drawn and posting them on this blag. (Yes, blag.)

I have been reading through my old psychology texts and notes recently. I have been doing this for two reasons:
1) To try and keep my mind somewhat scientifically oriented
2) To study for the upcoming Psychology GRE Subject Test.

One of the things I sort of forgot about was how I doodled in the margins of my notes. Some classes' notes have no doodles, indicative of fast paced note-taking (or particularly gripping lectures). The classes where we could download powerpoint slides beforehand are pretty intricately decorated. I tended towards illustrations of silly phrases that popped into my head, and occasionally abstract designs that I would then try to turn into pictures. Sometimes there is commentary on the text of the notes. Sometimes there are pictures of me stabbing my eyes out with pens because I was really bored. All around, it's made the note re-reading process interesting.

Which brings me to one doodle in particular. It is not a picture, but clearly came from the same frame of mind. And given my currently abiguous future, it's strange to see how my mind was working on the options one sleepy morning in class. It reads:

        Future jobs:
            -Rock Star
            -Work at Monkey Colony
            -Psychologist

The first is, of course, everyone's dream. The third is the current plan. The second... I don't remember this nor do I know what to say about it. I will simply point out that "Monkey Colony" is capitalized, so clearly in my mind it was some sort of proper noun. If you find one, let me know, I'd like to keep my options open.

If you're not outraged, you're probably thinking about something else that's more important to you (and maybe the world in general)

You are currently reading my blog! That puts you into the category of "people who read my blog," so I can assume that you know all about me. So of course you know that I have been working at Starbucks for a while. It's funny how adamantly some people feel about my job! I'm just trying to make a dime, work with my friends, and get some help paying for health insurance. Some people are so against me working for what they see as the "big evil corporate machine" that they try and to proselytize about it, or at least scoff at the idea that I like my job. Someone told me once that it was "like selling out" (they were in the store, mind you). Let me tell you people, first of all it's a good company to work for (it's not nearly as evil as Wal-Mart, for example). They take GREAT care of their employees and have excellent quality control to make that latte worth $4. Second of all, I don't freaking care. I'm so sick of the "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention" mentality. I work hard to make the world a better place. I'll work on what I think is important with my skills, and you work on your part with your skills, and between all of us things will get better all over. I'm a good friend, a good employee, a good student, and when I get to work in psychology I feel that I'm doing more good for the world than a million bumper stickers. Your favorite local coffee shop (or other cool indie business) doesn't give health insurance to their employees, their employees all drive to work in gas-guzzling cars, and they probably use bad grammar, so don't pretend they're perfect because they're indie and get all righteous on me.

There, I've said it, now I don't need to say it again. I really don't get upset about what other people think. I really don't care very much. I don't even drink coffee. As Andrew Bird so incisively put it, "Listen up, I just work here."

Changing gears, I had an interesting epiphany while at work the other day. When one works the register at Starbucks, one is supposed to greet the customer as he or she enters the store or approaches the till. You end up saying the same thing over and over, so you look for ways to make it a bit different. Ask them how their day is if you need an extra few seconds to finish something up. Save "greetings!" for an older or more distinguished looking customer who will enjoy it more than a casual "hey there!" And occasionally I like to bust out a rarity in this region, "howdy!" I was thinking about the etymology of that word, and I realized it is probably a very simple derivation of "how do you do?"

How do you do --> How doya do? --> Howdy do? --> Howdy!

I came home and looked it up and hell yeah I was totally right! At the time I shared my revelation with my coworkers. Nobody was impressed.

Adventure Time!

RHOMBUS!!!



That was totally math!

8-bit truth

on music!

on inevotable robot uprisings!

on national generalizations!

on indie rock snobs!

Today's blog entry brought to you by www.dieselsweeties.com in honor of my friend Kurt finishing his master's degree project of building a robotic dog! NEWS FLASH: It did not rampage and kill everyone in the room! Yet!




... or did it?