Aristotle, wow

Aristotle just lays this out there in "Poetics":

Such goodness is possible in every type of personage, even in a woman or a slave, though one is perhaps an inferior, and the other a wholly worthless being... The Character before us may be, say, manly; but it is not appropriate in a female Character to be manly, or clever.

Dang... he'd better watch his grave, I know some women who would not take kindly to such talk.

Owie

I've really messed up my wrist... I got a little more agressive than usual in an Intramural Ultimate game. And ended up landing on my wrist, hard, after a jump. It made some noises which probably wasn't good. It now really hurts. I think I probably sprained it. And I should probably see a doctor... Unfortunately I have classes pretty much from 8:00 until 2:00 today excepting this 30 minute break. So maybe I'll head up to the medical center around 2 and see if someone can fix me....

Oddities of thought

Every once in awhile I'll have a moment of thought which sends my head reeling. One such thought I had yesterday while doing physics was this: Why does anything at all exist? Not a religious / spiritual / philosophical 'why', but a physical 'why'. Why is energy? Why is matter? (Which are, as near as I understand, different manifestations of the some common substance). Even a religiously vague answer is insufficient, for we say that Christ, under God's direction, organized something which already existed. Why did that substance already exist? Why does God exist for that manner? (Again, in a strictly physical meaning.) I'm assuming there is much more to existence than my painfully insufficient, mortal mind can comprehend. Else, I quickly fall into an existentialist view, of there is no reason behind the physical existence of things, therefore what possible meaning is there behind our metaphysical existence?

When I was younger I used to lie in bed and attempt to comprehend nothingness. The problem is that when we think of nothing, it is most likely that we will eventually come to think of darkness as nothingness. But darkness is something, it is our eyes' perception of the lack of light. What would it be like to be blind from birth? I would assume you could not experience darkness, as you could not experience light. I would also assume that one attempting to comprehend nothing would imagine silence. But we have the same problem here, silence is just our ears' perception of no sound. And we could continue through all the senses, arriving at no further insight about nothingness. For even our thinking assumes somethingness, for as Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum". So what is nothing? I cannot say what nothing is, but I am sure what nothing is not: Nothing is not something.

Is your mind sufficiently boggled? I'm sure mine is...

Oh Physics.....

On Friday we were covering Schrodinger's equation in Physics 222. We discussed Schrodinger's thought experiment of a cat in a box being in the superposition state of both dead an alive and when we look the cat will settle into either the state of dead or alive. It's a little confusing, and I haven't fully explained it here (there's a vial of poison in with the cat, that if broken kills the cat...).

One student asks: "Is there a more intuitive way of understanding superposition? 'Cause these examples of cats don't make any sense either..."

Dr. Durfee: "OK, well suppose I shoot one photon at a double slit... The photon interferes with itself because its wave function is a superposition of having gone through both slits...."

Yah, that's much more intuitive... I was dying as this was happening, literally, uncontrollable chuckling forceably being repressed so as not to disturb the class...

Life, the Universe, and everything...

So surprise visiting readers is kind of humorous. That's right kids, if you're really nice, we (the board) might just drop in on you at 10:30 at night and make your life very interesting. Congratulations to the lucky apartment that we visitted, I hope we weren't too scary.

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Aside from randomly visiting readers, my life has been fairly boring. Characterized mostly by sleeping, eating, class, work, homework, etc. Hopefully I can make something more exciting happen this weekend.... so if you know of exciting things happening, you should let me know.

Fun Fun Fun.....

The Daily Universe ran our article today, but managed to never mention the url... ::eye-roll::

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Yesterday I spent 10 hours out of a 19 hour stretch working on a project that was due. The 9 hours not working on it were as follows:
5 hours - sleep
3 hours - class
1 hour - shower / walking to/from class/work

Sounds like fun, right? Well I go the project done for full credit: 20/20 points.

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My ward had an Ultimate game last night, which sapped me of all remaining energy.

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I was unofficially released from my calling apparently about 2 weeks ago, no one bothered to inform me of the change. I figured it out when I realized we had had 2 ward activities and there was a meeting of the Activities Committee and I wasn't involved in any of them (I was a member of said committee). From what little I've been able to glean from people who like to talk, I am supposed to be receiving some other calling (unknown to me), but until it's decided I'm not being officially released from the AC, nor am I involved in anything....

Doesn't it seem like it might be good to inform someone that they are no longer part of something?

I really don't understand my calling history in my ward. This is the third year in my ward, and I don't think I've held any calling for longer than 4 months. And it's not that I don't perform the duties of my callings. On the AC I cooked pretty much every meal our ward had for various activities, I did shopping, I moved things, set things up, took things down..... and now I'm being shooed off somewhere else. I was previously an EQ teacher. I know I wasn't a great teacher, but I did spend time preparing lessons. I can't even remember what other callings I've had....

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There once again is a big push to get everyone to go to FHE. I'd be fine with it if it were a quick thought/lesson, some socializing, some food and 10-15 minutes later you can leave; but instead someone's been pushing to have 15-20 minute lessons. Sorry, I don't have time for another Sunday school Monday nights, I'm already taking religion courses. So really the only reason I don't go to FHE is because it take way too long, does that make me a bad person?

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And, best of all, I have pretty much no social life. Thanks to the few people I do see on a regular basis, you keep me sane.

Official GRE Scores

I got my official GRE scores and percentiles today. I should be all set for the Master's Program here at BYU.... so without further ado:

Verbal: 540 : 70%
Quantitative: 800 : 94%
Analytical Writing: 5.0 : 71%

Yay! I didn't totally screw up the writing section... now let's just see if any of the other schools I sent my scores to are so totally interested in me that they send me information.... And back to my much homework.....

Board Party

Another exciting, amusing, and filling Board Party tonight. There were all sorts of great food brought by various writers, including my signature peanut butter brownies, Lavish's chocolate covered strawberries, Mr. Fix-it's brownie sandwich supreme, and loads of other great things. We played two rounds of Loser, which I did not lose (sorry Baked Alaska, that's how the cookie crumbles). And then three rounds of Mafia, which were much fun, especially since I wasn't narrator, so I didn't screw up those living and dying (next time I'll write things down....). Sadly we did not play Apostasy this time, maybe at the next party.

I've also thought up a new character for Mafia. Someone gets to be the Scarlet Pimpernel. After the candidates are chosen by the townspeople, the Scarlet Pimpernel gets to choose one of them to save from the gallows. If that person is the one that the townspeople vote to kill, then they are saved. Alternatively, the Scarlet Pimpernel could take their turn right after any superheroes, but as the superhero can only save from the mafia, the SP can only save from the lynch mob.

How about a blog entry?

So, I guess I'll write an entry since I haven't for a few days. Let's think of something to write about. Oh, how about the secret Senate meeting where they have authorized warrentless wiretaps for use on anyone. Gee, secretive meeting, no oversight, no voting record of the members, authorizing unconstitutional actions... yah this sounds like the great Democracy we live in....

I'm thinking of buying a Guy Fawkes mask and wearing it on November 5. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, look it up, and then go watch "V for Vendetta". It is a great commentary on the state of our government, and where we are quickly going (it takes place in England, but the commentary is definitely about America). Most noticeably is the suggestion of something that occurred in 2015 (the movie occurs around 202x I believe), the idea that Bush did such and such. I've seen some people attempt to call this a flaw in the movie, apparently they didn't quite get it. The point was that Bush continued to violate the constitution to maintain power.

I am optimistic that his regime hasn't caused enough fear and control to do such a thing, but I suppose there's still 2 years. Just so you know, if he does not leave office on inaugaration day, we are all in very deep trouble.

(Surprise! I'm not a republican, but neither am I a democrat.)

Bad Physics Joke

Ok, so I print off my Physics homework in order to work on it (imagine that). And here's the first sentence of problem 1:

An electron, a proton, and a photon all have a de Broglie wavelength of 100 nm.

It sounds like the beginning of some very bad joke made by a physicist.... I'm not sure I want to read the rest of the question yet.... Maybe Katya can provide some humorous punch-line, since I have no realistic understanding of what's happening in this class yet.

Maybe I just don't get it

Suppose there is a theoretical all-encompassing set of things which a person can understand and comprehend. There are a large number of things which I understand in that set. I get that people lie. I get the concepts of supply and demand. And, to a certain extent, I even get fashion. But then there are all sorts of things which I don't get. There are many things which I do (which are 'good'), but that I am not even sure I agree with doing. It is a troublesome state brought about by my fairly strong cynicism, as well as my general pessimism....

I have yet to find a way to reconcile my actions with my lack of understanding.



Then there is always the nebulous set of all things pertaining to the opposite sex. But it is more general even than this, we just see the effect most commonly in dealing with the opposite sex. The problem is truly in the inability to understand why other people think and act the way they do. Every once in a while you can see a connection as it mimics your own being, but mostly it just makes no sense. In the end I guess it is merely a communication style on a non-verbal level.

In philosophy it is generally said that communication is merely an attempt to get someone else to read your mind. That is, the goal of communication is the make another person think the same thing you are. This is why we develop languages both verbal, written, and signed. The grunting and pointing just wasn't working out very well. Now the dance of social interaction is a delicate weave of saying things which show very little correlation to what you're feeling. The true communication must occur on a non-verbal level, for the most part, in most situations, with most people.

This is what makes communication between the sexes so difficult, more so than the same communcation between members of the same gender. I would wager to guess that most members of the same gender would have a higher probably of communicating non-verbally in the same way. Not so across genders. Which is why we may or may not devote alot of brain power trying to decide whether a smile was just a smile or if a smile was a non-verbal communique of deeper emotion which will allow for a mutual relationship that will blossom into eternal love, such that the heavens will open and light will shine down and a chorus will sing as you smile back.

But I may just be full of nonsense, as I said from the start, there's a fairly high likelihood that I just don't get it.

This is BYU, but.....

So In the past two days I've had classmates respond to a question by the teacher with a true, but distracting answer that involves some gospel principle. Yes, this is BYU, but I'm here to learn about the class, not some gospel tangent because you've been home from your mission for 2 weeks and don't know how to discuss anything else.

Example A:
Class: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Question: .... So what is intelligence?
obnoxious guy A (self-proclaimed home from mission for 10 days): 'The glory of God is intelligence.'
... See how this doesn't help the discussion at hand?

Example B:
Class: History of Creativity
Question: ... What are some uses of this paper cup?
obnoxious guy B: 'An object lesson about church structure.'
.... Also not helping the discussion of the class get where it needs to go.

Perhaps I'd better enjoy classes at a secular institution, because it just annoys me to get answers like this during class. It slows down the class and doesn't provide anything helpful. We don't have time to enter a debate about what "The glory of God is intelligence" means. And I don't care that you can use a paper cup as an object lesson, that's an arbitrary comment, which is, at best, tangential to the topic.

Anyone else feel this way?

The Board will be right back

So any of you that read the board, and I would hope you do if you're reading this blog, because otherwise I have no idea why you would want to read my blog.... not that I'm sure I know why you want to read my blog anyways...... well.. that didn't start off very cohesively.... let's try again.

So if you read the board, you know it is down, and should be back tomorrow. I'll let you in on a little secret about the board's absence.

Lean in real close....

Check to make sure no one is watching you....





ready?

ok here goes:
So the Board is down so that--- "Oh Hi Miss Editor! How are you today?"

"No, No, I wasn't going to tell them anything, I swear."

"But, I like my kneecaps how they are. I really don't think that's necessary."

"Ok, Fine, they can find out tomorrow like everyone else."

Sorry, you'll just have to wait. ;-)

Classes

So today is the first day of classes, and I got up bright and early at 7 am. Actually, it wasn't bright out at all, so it was really twilight and early.... 8 am classes are hard, and unfortunately this particular professor will not teach this class at any other time, so I have no choice. It is only Tuesday and Thursday, but I want to try getting up at 7 everyday, because it will probably be worse to try to get up at 7 one day and 10 the next.

It also didn't help that I didn't sleep well at all last night. I started the night with a bad combination of foods in my stomach which took a while to settle down. I then woke up numerous times to being too hot, and dehydrated. At 4:15 I finally got up and drank like 3 glasses of water, and opened the window.... And I haven't woken up at 7am in many months so I'm all sorts of alive right now....

On the other hand I had some amazing chocolate covered strawberries yesterday. And I believe I convinced a certain other board writer that I really am a renaissance man by exhibiting my amazing culinary skills in the process of creating said strawberries, as well as working my magic with cupcakes. And maybe if you're really lucky said board writer will allow you to sample the ambrosia that those strawberries are.