eclecticism

…but a solid F for practicality and safety. At least where my commute is concerned.

According to Google Transit, the best way for me to get from my apartment to North Seattle Community College involves grabbing a bus from the closest bus stop to the transit center just south of the Northgate Mall. So far, so good.

Unfortunately, after that, I need to walk a block, scale a chain-link fence, climb a hill, play Frogger across three lanes of northbound traffic, one express lane, and three lanes of southbound traffic on I-5, go down a hill, scale another chain link fence, hike through some woods, and swim across the lake on the NSCC grounds. Oh, and according to their estimates, it should take me nine minutes to do all this.

I think that I’ll stick to the Seattle Metro Trip Planner for now.

(Yes, I’m sure Google does much better in many circumstances. This one just gave me a good laugh.)

As of a few days ago…two.

As of this moment…8,260.

Geeks are fun!

As compiled by Lake Superior State University:

• perfect storm
• Webinar
• waterboarding
• organic
• wordsmith/wordsmithing
• author/authored
• post 9/11
• surge
• give back
• ‘blank’ is the new ‘blank’
• Black Friday
• back in the day
• random
• sweet
• decimate
• emotional
• pop
• It is what it is
• under the bus

Some time within the past couple years, it seems to have become standard (whether voluntarily or by decree, I don’t know) for all new DVDs to flash the MPAA rating on screen for a few moments just before the movie begins. Additionally, for the past few years the MPAA has been including a brief description underneath the rating of why the movie in question has received its particular rating.

I’m constantly amused by these little blurbs and their attempt to rationalize, in fifteen words or less, what prompted the MPAA to assign the rating it did to each movie. So, I thought we could try a little game: every so often (whenever I get around to it, hopefully no less than once a week), I’ll post the MPAA rating and rationalization. Your goal is to try to guess the film, based solely on the MPAA’s rating and their description of its faults. I’ll post the answer either after someone guesses it correctly, or later on if it has remained a mystery.

Number one, then…any guesses?

Of the 56 geeks pictured here, I think I can lay claim to having elements of at least seven of them (obviously some are more overt than others):

All cartoons by ExtraLife, from the 56 Geeks Poster.

It’s only a top two, rather than a top ten or top three or any such thing (mostly because it’s so rare that commercials are actually fun that it’d be nearly impossible to get a list longer than two). However, here for your amusement are the top two commercials of this Christmas season, as chosen by Prairie and me.

In second place: the Staples Easy Button.

And…(the envelope, please)…in first place…(riiiiip): Verizon’s Pony!

Prairie can’t even think about the pony commercial without giggling, let alone watch it.

Cracked has a list of the top nine ‘badass’ bible verses. Just for fun, I’ll list the verse citations here. Any guesses at what stories they’re referring to (before looking at the linked article or clicking through to the linked NIV versions, of course)?

1. Exodus 2: 11-12
2. II Kings 2: 23-24
3. Ezekiel 23: 19-20
4. Judges 3: 16-23
5. Numbers 16: 23, 31-33
6. Deuteronomy 25: 11-12
7. I Kings 18: 24, 38-40
8. Judges 15: 15-16
9. I Samuel 18: 25-27

Your Score: Jordan Cochran

140 Heart, 138 Genius, 157 Cool, 144 Excitability

Jordan Cochran — (Michelle Meyrink)
Real Genius (1985)

You’re Jordan Cochran, the adorable fast-talking GIRL scientist of all things. While she may not be up there with the other super-geniuses of the ’80s, her awesome mechanical aptitude and geek-girl cuteness have made her the sweetheart of nerds for over 20 years.

“I never sleep, I don’t know why. I had a roommate and I drove her nuts, I mean really nuts, they had to take her away in an ambulance and everything. But she’s okay now, but she had to transfer to an easier school, but I don’t know if that had anything to do with being my fault. But listen, if you ever need to talk or you need help studying just let me know, ‘cause I’m just a couple doors down from you guys and I never sleep, okay?”

Other scientific possibilities: Gary Wallace, Wyatt Donnelly, Peter Venkman, Jordan Cochran, Egon Spengler, Doc Brown, Newton Crosby, Paul Stephens, Ben Crandall, Wayne Szalinkski, Winston Zeddemore, Ben Jabituya, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Ray Stantz, Buckaroo Banzai, Chris Knight

Link: The Which 80s Movie Scientist Test

Amusing side note: Jordan is one of the first movie character crushes I ever had when I was growing up.

Historical side note: Jordan was based on a real Caltech student:

And, yes, Jordan of Real Genius was based, at least in part, on me. My class’s president and social organizers decided to ask me in on an interview being done by the movies producers and so there I was in one of the fanciest restaurants in Pasadena wrapped in a slightly oversized sweater that I’d knit myself one night when I was cold, talking blithly about life at Caltech without, from what folks say, a single breath. One of the most amusing things in my life was, fifteen years later, seeing that movie with a roomful of my friends from Temple Square and, the minute Jordan introduces herself in a long string of breathless sidetrains having the entire room turn to just look at me afterwards. That was most amusing. As Cera says, she has my voice.

I’ve learned about commas since. Also about breathing. And, finally, yes, I’ve also learned to finally sleep once in a while, though that took staying up 72 hours for a project while I was doing my MSEE at the University of Washington and having my body literally fall asleep on me before it shut down completely to really bring that lesson home.

Hm. I should put in here, also, that I’m the only Caltech woman that I knew was actually interviewed for source material; but I tried for a whole perspective about the female experience at the school. Not just me. It was an ME friend of mine that did the scuba gear testing in the pool, and while all the physically possible things that Jordan did were done by some Caltech woman, it wasn’t necessarily me. I’m also very sure that Dave Marvit and the other Caltech consultants for the movie all contributed some of what they knew about the females of the school to Jordan’s character as well. So I’m pretty sure she’s a composit of the others who were there at that time. Personally, I was just glad that they got her right.

Apparently, I’m a 50-something gun-toting impotent Republican.

At least, that’s sure what it seems like judging by the junk mail I get. For some reason, I’ve ended up on some hilariously odd mailing lists. I get occasional mailings from the AARP welcoming me to my retirement years, the NRA asking if I want to join or contribute money to one thing or another, and so on. Today brought the best mailing yet, though.

Prairie picked up the mail and started flipping through the envelopes. Handing one to me with a puzzled look on her face, she asked, “What mailing list are you on?” The envelope she handed me had a somewhat softcore porn-ish shot of a man and woman in bed, with the text “THE FIRST TRUE REVOLUTION IN MALE SEXUAL POWER IS HERE…NOW!” emblazoned across it.

“I’m really not sure,” I said and popped it open. Pulling the folded newsletter style paper out of the envelope, my eyebrows shot up, and I started to laugh at the headline that greeted me: “THE PROBLEM IS NOT TESTOSTERONE - The Problem Is That You Are Being Deluged with Female Hormones. You Are Being Feminized and You Don’t Even Know It.”

Feminized? Oh, no — what’s happening? Am I losing my manhood? Is my manliness being sucked away, turning me into some swishy girly-man? This can’t be true!

Reading on, I chose bits and pieces to read to Prairie aloud, until both of us had stitches in our sides and tears in our eyes. The advertised product, EstroBlaster, is yet another in a long line of herbal supplements aimed at men who have (or are being convinced that they have) a little less fuel in their rocket than they did in earlier times. I haven’t seen too many of these ads, so I don’t really have a basis for comparison, but this one’s marketed using an absolutely hilarious mix of misogyny, homophobia, and scare tactics.

A few choice quotes…

…more and more research is coming out. There is a terrible secret that you should know about.

The Secret Problem of Estrogen Dominance

You are being deluged with female hormones. That, on top of naturally falling male hormone levels, can cause a condition called estrogen dominance.

You are being turned into a woman, and you don’t even know it.

What’s happening is that large amounts of female hormones are slipping through the water treatment plants of most major cities. Even in the country the water is filled with them.

Estrogen is passing right through women and into the water supply — where it can’t be removed.

In fact, there is enough estrogen in the water right now to change male fish into females.

Recent statistics even show that more young men are getting plastic surgery to remove their “male boobs” than there are young women getting breast augmentation.

Not only that, but the rate of young boys turning into girls is frightening. One group that monitors this problem said:

No one compiles official statistics on transgender youths, but everyone agrees that their numbers are rising quickly.

…it took months to narrow down a powerful formula at a good price. We named it Estro-Blaster — after what it’s designed to do…blast the estrogen out of your system.

**Get Back the Sexual Drive and Ability You Had as a Teenager… Wanting Sex Every Day - The Ability to Get Hard Every Time - And Even Spontaneous Erections! (The Kind You Used to Have to Hid in School When You Got Up to Change Classes…You’d Have to Carry Your Books Down in Front of Your Pants)

After years of falling sexual ability, I was amazed one day, when out and about, that I was getting a “spontaneous” erection.

I didn’t even have to touch my penis. It just began swelling to an erect state.

You can imagine my surprise — and pleasure. This hadn’t happened to me since I was in my twenties. Many years ago.

I felt like a man again — a real man.

As if all this wasn’t funny enough, there were two sources listed in the flyer. At first I was surprised that there were any sources listed — this didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would be worrying about sourcing its information. Then I noticed that one of the sources was a forum post on Free Republic, one of the most notorious far-right rabid conservative spaces on the ‘net today, and far from being anything that I’d even remotely consider a ‘trusted source.’ The second was a small excerpt from an article titled “Treatment of Young MTF Transsexuals” on a site called “Second Type Woman,” which (at least on first glance) doesn’t exactly strike me as the kind of source most people should be basing their pharmaceutical decisions on.

All in all, it made for a very entertaining evening.

And, apparently, I’m a fifty-something gun-toting impotent Republican.

Good to know!

My coworker Rachel watched as our poster printer produced three posters, all wintertime shots taken in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. “Y’know,” she said, “all the people in those shots are probably dead. That’s kind of depressing.”

I looked over from the lab. “Oh, I don’t know. I think it’d be a lot more depressing if they were alive today. Trapped in those little boxes, clawing at the top, screaming to get out….”

She paused for a moment, then shook her head. “You’re just so weird.”

Just a moment ago, I was looking over the Phi Theta Kappa website after getting an invitation to join. As I perused the eligibility requirements, one line caught my eye. “Ooh — I must ‘adhere to the moral standards of the society.’ I wonder what those are?”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” called Prairie from the other room. “I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

Corrective: Paris Hilton Story:

In a Nov. 13 story, The Associated Press incorrectly reported that Paris Hilton was praised by conservationists for highlighting the problem of binge-drinking elephants in northeastern India. Lori Berk, a publicist for Hilton, said she never made any comments about helping drunken elephants in India.

(via Swirlee)

Competing with last May’s “Skywalkers in Korea Cross Han Solo” for best headline of 2007: “Hamlet Shaken by Murder Then Suicide”.

(both via Kottke)

While as with any broad overview of a particular genus or species, there is plenty of room for small or even large variations at the individual level (I myself lean a bit more towards the social side of the scale than what’s described here, though that is in large part the product of many years of practice), this field guide to understanding the common nerd should be required reading for many, many people, especially those involved with, living with, dating, or parenting nerds (also most varieties of dork or geek).

A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.

It’s unlikely that this project is a nerd’s day job because his opinion regarding his job is, “Been there, done that”. We’ll explore the consequences of this seemingly short attention span in a bit, but for now this project is the other big thing your nerd is building and I’ve no idea what is, but you should.

At some point, you, the nerd’s companion, were the project. You were showered with the fire hose of attention because you were the bright and shiny new development in your nerd’s life. There is also a chance that you’re lucky and you are currently your nerd’s project. Congrats. Don’t get too comfortable because he’ll move on, and, when that happens, you’ll be wondering what happened to all the attention. This handbook might help.

There are no precise rules about punctuation (Fowler lays out some general advice (as best he can under the complex circumstances of English prose (he points out, for example, that we possess only four stops (the comma, the semicolon, the colon and the period (the question mark and exclamation point are not, strictly speaking, stops; they are indicators of tone (oddly enough, the Greeks employed the semicolon for their question mark (it produces a strange sensation to read a Greek sentence which is a straightforward question: Why weepest thou; (instead of Why weepest thou? (and, of course, there are parentheses (which are surely a kind of punctuation making this whole matter much more complicated by having to count up the left-handed parentheses in order to be sure of closing with the right number (but if the parentheses were left out, with nothing to work with by the stops, we would have considerably more flexibility in the deploying of layers of meaning than if we tried to separate all the clauses by physical barriers (and in the latter case, while we might have more precision and exactitude for our meaning, we would lose the essential flavor of language, which is its wonderful ambiguity)))))))))))).

— Lewis Thomas, Notes on Punctuation

Last week sometime, Prairie and I were flopped in bed, watching some silly sitcom before we faded out for the night. During one of the commercial breaks, we heard the following:

Of course milk comes from cows, but we know that cheese comes from people…

Prairie and I looked at each other with identical horrified and amused expressions, and then spent the next few minutes laughing until our sides ached and our eyes were tearing up. Cheese comes from people? We just couldn’t get past it, and every time we started to calm down, one or the other of us would say, “cheese comes from people!” and we’d start laughing all over again.

The worst part was, we were laughing so hard that we had no idea what the rest of the commercial was about, or who it was for, so since then, we’ve just been hoping to run across the “cheese comes from people” commercial again so that we’d have some idea what they were talking about. Prairie found it last night, and apparently it’s an ad for Kraft cheese…unfortunately, a horribly written ad. This one just slipped right past the editors before it went on the air!

Thankfully, we’re not the only ones amused by this.

This voicemail came in yesterday evening. I had to share.

Read the rest of this entry »

Best YMCA… ever!, originally uploaded by dyanna.

I’m going to hell for posting this.

In my defense: they’re going to hell for doing this in the first place.

And you’re going to hell for laughing at it.

Me and Prairie, originally uploaded by djwudi.

…as seen on the Simpsons. If we were ever on the Simpsons, that is. Courtesy of the character generator in The Simpsons Movie website.

(I have no idea where this originally came from, I’ve had it bouncing around my hard drive for years. Given that I’m midway through finals week, though, it seemed appropriate…)

Instructions: Read each question carefully. Answer all questions. Time limit: 4 hours. Begin immediately.

HISTORY: Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present day, concentrating especially but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, Asia, America, and Africa. Be brief, concise, and specific.

MEDICINE: You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch. Remove your appendix. Do not suture until your work has been inspected. You have fifteen minutes.

PUBLIC SPEAKING: 2,500 riot-crazed aborigines are storming the classroom. Calm them. You may use any ancient language except Latin or Greek.

BIOLOGY: Create life. Estimate the differences in subsequent human culture if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier, with special attention to its probable effect on the English parliamentary system. Prove your thesis.

MUSIC: Write a piano concerto. Orchestrate and perform it with flute and drum. You will find a piano under your seat.

PSYCHOLOGY: Based on your knowledge of their works, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Alexander of Aphrodiseas, Ramses II, Gregory of Nicea, Hammurabi. Support your evaluation with quotations from each man’s work, making appropriate references. It is not necessary to translate.

SOCIOLOGY: Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world. Construct an experiment to test your theory.

MANAGEMENT SCIENCE: Define Management. Define Science. How do they relate? Why? Create a generalized algorithm to optimize all managerial decisions. Assuming an 1130 CPU supporting 50 terminals, each terminal to activate your algorithm; design the communications interface and all necessary control programs.

ENGINEERING: The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk. You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili. In ten minutes a hungry Bengal tiger will be admitted to the room. Take whatever action you feel appropriate. Be prepared to justify your decision.

ECONOMICS: Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt. Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Donatist controversy, the wave theory of light. Outline a method for preventing these effects. Criticize this method from all possible points of view. Point out the deficiencies in your point of view, as demonstrated in your answer to the last question.

POLITICAL SCIENCE: There is a red telephone on the desk beside you. Start World War III. Report at length on its socio-political effects, if any.

EPISTEMOLOGY: Take a position for or against truth. Prove the validity of your position.

PHYSICS: Explain the nature of matter. Include in your answer an evaluation of the impact of development of mathematics on science.

PHILOSOPHY: Sketch the development of human thought; estimate its significance. Compare with the development of any other kind of thought.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE: Describe in detail. Be objective and specific.

EXTRA CREDIT: Define the Universe; give three examples.

Slightly tangentially related:

I once knew someone (in fact, I still know him, though I hesitate to identify him for fear of recrimination — or, perhaps, incrimination) who told me that, upon meeting the new husband of an ex-girlfriend of his, had to suppress the urge to say, “I took your wife’s virginity.”

Wrong. Rude.

And — in my world — very funny.

GEP: WaMu, originally uploaded by djwudi.

Last September, I put these eyes on a small sign at the driveway in to the Northgate Washington Mutual bank.

Last night, as I was walking home from work, I noticed that eight months later, they’re still there.

This makes me rather ridiculously pleased with the universe.

I love the internet.

I’ve been working my way through reading the archives of xkcd (“Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language [which may be unsuitable for children], unusual humor [which may be unsuitable for adults], and advanced mathematics [which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors].”), which just catapulted into the ranks of ‘favorite web comic’ after I stumbled across the Map of Online Communities yesterday. I just came across this strip…

Embedded as a tooltip (the little pop-up text that shows when you hover over an image) was the text, “The younger folk in the audience think this is a joke.”

Curious, a quick Google search led me to this story:

On a fishing trip in Plains, Georgia, President Carter had an encounter with a “swamp rabbit”. This seemingly trivial event was seized upon by the press and became a sort of Rorschach test of the Carter presidency: reporters and commentators saw in this story whatever they wanted to see in Carter’s administration. Jody Powell, Carter’s press secretary, described the affair in his 1986 book The Other Side of the Story:

It began late one afternoon in the spring of 1979. The President was sitting with a few of us on the Truman Balcony. He had recently returned from a visit to Plains, and we were talking about homefolks and how the quail were nesting and similar matters of international import.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason — he was drinking lemonade, as I recall — the President volunteered the information that while fishing in a pond on his farm he had sighted a large animal swimming toward him. Upon closer inspection, the animal turned out to be a rabbit. Not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits, but one of those big splay-footed things that we called swamp rabbits when I was growing up.

The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.

The President then evidently shooed the critter away from his boat with a paddle.

(Photo in the public domain, courtesy the Jimmy Carter Library.)

Not overheard by me, unfortunately, just too bizarre and funny not to share. This is ganked directly from overheardsea on LiveJournal:

Select lines from a guy having a very long conversation with what I believe was his significant other on his cell phone sitting directly behind me [on the #26 bus]:

“I’m on my way to my brother’s to pick up weed, and them I’m going to get a cat at the Humane Shelter.”

“So last night I went to meet up with that couple I told you about. They’re a gay guy and a tranny girl. The interview went real well. They called me back later that same night and said I was their favorite, so things are looking good there.”

“I’m making dinner tonight with my housemates. No, honey! Honey! I told you I was doing this tonight! Well, we’ll have to play really quickly in the bathroom tonight because I have to be there for the dinner. I love you, too.”

(via The Slog)

There’s a long standing theory that Hollywood action movies deliberately play up US urban gang violence…a part of a propaganda effort to persuade foreigners that America is not to be [messed] with. The British equivalent is Faulty Towers and Monty Python, which simply makes people want to stay the hell away in case it’s contagious.

— originally somewhere in this forum thread, via learethak