Ataraxia

Hi all

2008-04-25T23:16:08Z

I'm still here. No, I'm not planning to make this blog active again or start showing up logged in on Y!M and messenger, but there are many of you with whom I've only ever been in contact online. So I'm taking this chance to say hi to all of you. My email address is TripleElation at gmail and you're more than welcome.

I might as well drop a word about what's been up with me recently. In the few next weeks I have 2 physics exams, 1 math exam and two lectures to give - one about the Prisoner's Dilemma and one about the concept of infinity. And I'm not even a student yet. Mm, Busy busy. Hope all of you are having wonderful lives.

Help

2007-08-23T04:00:12Z

Last night was all hazy and now my playlist is full of Richard Cheese lounge arrangements and Rockapella and I can't listen to anything else

oooo oooooo scooobaaa dooba doo doo dooo and she's buying a stairway to heaven tell me where in the world is carmen sandiego

One of Us

2007-08-17T15:31:47Z

What if God was crying?
What if God was lying in his lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing he was somewhere else instead?
What if God was lonely?
What if God was only
Waiting for a call
Sorry for himself, feeling stupid, feeling small
Wishing he had never left at all

^{(with apologies to Joan Osborne and ABBA)}

Sliding down the Gaussian going WHEE

2007-08-16T16:07:47Z

After four months of hard work, three hours of an exam and three weeks of nerve-wrecking anticipation, the results of the Psychometry, or the Israeli-SAT-Thing, or the SAT-Analogue (SATAN), or the whatchamachooseacallit- - are in, and they stand at 764 on a 200-800 scale. This is a standardized score over a normal distribution with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100; The sum of the probability distribution up to that exact point yields the position of this score as being on approximately the 99.6th percentile, thus giving rise to a highly inappropriate yet not completely unsubstantiated response on my part, namely

HELL YEAH.

And a nod of appreciation to the 1-out-of-250 people who apparently are, yet still, more competent than I am in the exquisite art of ADHD-inspired thinking.

List of things the internet CANNOT make me do:

2007-08-09T15:33:06Z

~~Keep a to do list~~

Me being cranky on Wikipedia

2007-08-07T09:54:59Z

More of the best pieces of dubiously-collaborative writing that I will ever regret.

This paragraph, much like a majority of the body text in most of category:Naruto, was originally mine. I am thrilled to hear that "its poorly written and doesnt make much sense" [sic]; I've always striven to go about my writing such that the most potent criticism of it would amount to "the complex syntax and polysyllabic words here elude my puny reading comprehension skills, and therefore suck", as seems to be the case here. At any rate, this observation was made over three years ago and is now hideously outdated; Naruto is about as character-driven now as a rusting, forlorn Subaru Station model 1992 with a vacant driver's seat. Concurring with this sudden inexplicable sentiment of doing away with this paragraph I have gone ahead and deleted it, in what could probably be considered as bringing that article up to date more than anything else. Call me again when you need the other outdated parts edited out (e.g. there being some sort of balance between drama and comedy; there being some sort of coherent overarching plot at all; Naruto being the main character). --AceMyth 02:36, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

I am sorry for my late reply; I have skimmed over your detailed response and have this to say.

I do have biases of my own. Indubitably. Do you know where else I had biases of my own? During editing bouts of the article about the Second Lebanon War, with missiles raining here and there in a few kilometer radius every now and then while I typed, all the while editors I suspect would have rather appreciated me being hit by one of said missiles and dropping dead were rather impressed with my impartiality. I have many faults, but an inability to see beyond my bias when the need arises is not one of them. I often do have a primary reaction to these assertions and others that is rather emotional, but ultimately I do not make changes to Wikipedia if the only justification I can think of is anger and spite. This is not about who has which bias. This is about how we apply our bias to the article, or rather, hopefully, how we don't.

The justification for my "reactionism", if you insist to call it that, is that the thing on the other side of this talk page is not a Master's Thesis on the Harry Potter ship debates. It is not, in fact, even an article about the Harry Potter ship debates, but rather an article about the shipping phenomenon in general. Given this, and given the fact that finding a reliable source for many of the claims we would make on a hypothetical detailed run-down of the HP ship debate would be flat-out impossible, we are left with a simple, inevitable conclusion: This article will not describe the Harry Potter Ship Debates that you knew (and, yes, I did too, to a mild extent). This article will describe a highly abridged representation of the Ship Debate aimed at the casual reader who has had absolutely no interest in the subject until this very point. Said representation will bow humbly to the principle of least astonishment and the necessity of utmost brevity. Or, rather, this is what it will do if it does not want to eventually explode out of existence in a sudden AfD. This is not speculation; this has already happened. There used to be an article around with the title "Shipping in The Harry Potter Fandom", no less, in which your edits would have felt right at home, with the Harry/Hermione position having a whole section to itself to state its case. Said article, apart from often being cited and praised in H/Hr forums in spite of allegedly-biased yours truly writing the section on that as well, eventually became so bloated with digressions and original research that when the AfD came it was doomed from the first vote.

Now, keeping that in mind, we are left with the task of honestly representing the Harry Potter ship debates in two paragraphs and a half. Say what you will, but constantly referring to the H/Hr set of mind's perspective on everything as the final word- even where it was patently absurd, such as with insisting that "Harry and Hermione? Do you really think they're suited?" and "They're very platonic friends" and "Harry and Hermione, do you think so? Ron and Hermione, I'd say there's more tension there" are, by some logic that is clearly not earth logic, inconclusive- is not honestly representing anything. Harry/Hermione shippers, from GoF onward, were the minority. Of them, those who insisted on such arguments, and later on pillow symbolism and love potion theories and whatnot, were a smaller minority still. We cannot have Joe Reader coming into this article and believing that any of these views were factually legitimate by any stretch of the imagination. We are, I'm afraid, past that jolly era of forum discussions where humoring whatever belief, no matter how absurd, was fashionable. This is Wikipedia. Does Wikipedia end every paragraph on the Theory of Evolution with a rebuttal from the creationist point of view? Let alone leave it at that as the final word? It doesn't matter how notable or ironic or important creationists are. Doing that would be dishonest and misrepresentative of established consensus, given the cold, hard, facts of the matter. And the same rationale, I believe, ought to apply here. --AceMyth 09:24, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Insane as it might sound, this might probably be where it's decided how this whole ship debate ordeal will be remembered for posterity (when was the last time you tried to Google some obscure forum of some event long past to see people's reactions in real time?). Is that freaky or what.

In other news: Less than two weeks until I probably get my SAT results (yep, that's pretty much what it is, after all; we just blatantly ripped America off, surprise surprise. Oh, didn't I mention it was on the Thursday before last? It was). Until then, my life is a void of anxiety. But it is a hopeful void of anxiety.

Man, my Google search history

2007-08-02T04:05:49Z

This is not some sort of hand-picked sample. This is essentially it, or at least whatever part of it my browser apparently remembers.

A+B-2AB
Abdicate
Ackermann Function
Agadu Lyrics
Alanis My Humps
Alchemical Symbols
Aleph Null
Aleph Null Bottles of Beer on The Wall
All That She Wants Lyrics
Anal Retentive
Anarchist Cookbook
Ad-Hockery
Base -1
Binary Logarithm Taylor Series
Binomial Test of Statistical Significance
Blowing on Your Thumb
Blur Boys and Girls Lyrics
Book of Lists
Bukra fill mishmish
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest
Bye, Bye Mesoamerican Pi
Breakthrough
Calixtuplication
Cam Clarke
Candid
Carmine Meo Translation
Chi-Xi-Stigma
Chicken Invaders
Classica D'oro
Collapsible Hand Glider
Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland
Congregate
Convene
Cruelty
Culpable
Compendium
Concentric
DNS Host
Dana O'hara
Decaying Rooster Apathy Kaboom
Demented Cartoon Movie
Dreamer's Disease
e^(i*pi)+1
Endeavor endeavour
English Gematria
Epuron Commercial
Erdős–Bacon number
Ego sum papa
Extreme Ironing
FLÜGGÅƏNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN
Fandom Wank
Fear of The Dark Lyrics
Fimbulwinter
Firefox Add-Ons
Fitter, Happier, More Productive
Four Second Frenzy
GDI
Geek Mythology
Google
Graham's Number
Grande Valse
Hakke Sho Dreidel
Happy Nation Lyrics
I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own
IOU
Integer Sequences
Interactive Fiction
Is the answer Ghostbusters 2?
It's raining in Shanghai!
Kamael
Kapoot Kaboom
Latin Possessive Case
Lucky Star Opening
MWAHAHA
Magic The Gathering
Math Class is Hard, Let's Go Shopping
Meet The Beat-Alls
Mein Lieben
Michael Savu
Modular Multiplicative Inverse
Msscribe
Neoplorgismanteau
No Soup for You!
Oh Blessed Be
Online Virus Scan
Open Office
Ouch Burn
Paintings By Hitler
Pallywood
Pan Flute Flowchart
Photopia
Pi in Base 24
Placebo
Pointless Topology
Propositional Congruence Relation
Planck Length
Quadratic Scale
Qunatum Bogosort
Radix Sort Running Time
Ralph Nader - Be Prepared
Rock Canon
ROT-13
SAT Tips
Selene
Spam Event Horizon
Standard Deviation
Spente le Stelle
Sunny Lyrics
Syzygy
The Falcon cannot hear The Falconer
The Song That Doesn't End
Tycoon Tycoon Tycoon Tycoon
The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything
Ultraviscous Water
Underclocking
Vampyrism
Wax on, Wax Off
What is The Time
White & Nerdy
Wonderwall lyrics
xkcd
Yar Har Fiddle Dee Dee
You are not your job
Zeeky Boogy Doog
Zero to the power zero
Zeros of the Riemann Zeta Function.

The righteous rally the troops to triumph over the defenseless bits and bytes of collaborative media

2007-07-23T22:37:39Z

(DH SHIPPY SPOILERS.)

Answer: What is Wikipedia?

I have a feeling I have a bit of a job ahead of me before this person goes away.

Deathly Hallows

2007-07-22T08:26:08Z

P. 743

"So it all comes down to this, doesn't it?", whispered Harry. "I know what you're thinking. 'Does the wand in my hand know its last master was disarmed?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as that is the Elder Wand, the most powerful wand in the world, which if it were to backfire would blow your soul right off, you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, Punk?"

We are a wacked out nation

2007-07-19T20:57:57Z

The website of Yedioth Ahronoth, a major media outlet, runs a story about the imminent release of 256 Palestinian prisoners. Obviously this is a complicated issue and a case could be made for why this is a good idea, or why it isn't.

And what are the talkbacks about?

"LOL! It's a power of 2!"

Robert Baden-Powell Was Clearly Evil

2007-07-15T15:45:56Z

So prepare for the coup of the century
Be prepared for the murkiest scam
Meticulous planning
Tenacity spanning
Decades of denial
Is simply why I'll
Be king undisputed
Respected, saluted
And seen for the wonder I am
Yes, my teeth and ambitions are bared
BE PREPARED!
[All:]
Yes, our teeth and ambitions are bared
BE PREPARED!

Shrek 3

2007-07-08T12:57:16Z

Okay, if you've seen it then you've already seen it, if you haven't seen it then you may want not to get spoiled, but.

Dude. SNOW WHITE'S LIMIT BREAK.

BAM! 99,999 DAMAGE!

acemyth @ 2007-06-25T22:12:00

2007-06-25T19:16:41Z

Detective Bart Lasiter was in his office studying the light from his one small window falling on his super burrito when the door swung open to reveal a woman whose body said you've had your last burrito for a while, whose face said angels did exist, and whose eyes said she could make you dig your own grave and lick the shovel clean.

Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

A retired mechanical designer for the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory is the winner of the 24th running of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. A resident of the Sacramento suburb of Carmichael, Guigli displayed appalling powers of invention by submitting sixty entries to the 2006 Contest, including one that has been "honored" in the Historical Fiction Category. "My motivation for entering the contest," he confesses, "was to find a constructive outlet for my dementia."

An international literary parody contest, the competition honors the memory (if not the reputation) of Victorian novelist Edward George Earl Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873). The goal of the contest is the essence of simplicity: entrants are challenged to submit bad opening sentences to imaginary novels. Although best known for "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), which has been made into a movie three times, originating the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword," and phrases like "the great unwashed" and "pursuit of the almighty dollar," Bulwer-Lytton opened his novel Paul Clifford (1830) with the immortal words that the "Peanuts" beagle Snoopy plagiarized for years, "It was a dark and stormy night."

The contest began in 1982 as a quiet campus affair, attracting only three submissions. This response being a thunderous success by academic standards, the contest went public the following year and ever since has annually attracted thousands of entries from all over the world.

While the Winner parodies hard-boiled detective fiction, the runner-up toys with perhaps the most famous piece of dialogue from Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" movie. In keeping with the bignitude and high seriousness of the Contest, the Grand Prize winner will receive a pittance. Other winners must content themselves with becoming household names.

Runner-Up

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

Stuart Vasepuru
Edinburgh, Scotland

Full list of winners, runner-ups and honourable mentions here.

That May Pose a Problem

2007-06-18T18:23:54Z

http://www.tailsteak.com/000433/

My course instructor on digit substitution SAT questions

2007-06-13T16:02:48Z

"What I want to illustrate here is that when you add up two numbers and the maximum number of digits one of them has is one less than the sum, the leftmost digit in the sum must be one. Consider the following:"

(he turns around and starts jotting on the blackboard)

   R E M
+
   E M F
 -------
 A C D C

(he then goes on to the rest of the explanation, which doesn't matter)

A question to fellow touch typists

2007-06-04T01:33:05Z

Does your right hand /also/ go renegade and type words and letters that make a weird sort of sense, yet you have obviously not intended to write? With its access to letters such as I, N and G mine transforms nouns into verbs and adjectives into nouns with such hasty glee that I'm starting to wonder whether my left hemisphere needs some lessons in Stop, Collaborate, Listen.

This happens much more frequently when I'm tired.

At World's End

2007-05-24T09:08:14Z

We went to see At World's End yesterday. I will not spoil anything here but I will say that it is the first movie I've encountered in a very, very long time that manages to do this thing with the characters, to make so many of them come alive in their own right, that often lies solely in the domain of television series. All the more an awesome achievement given the vast amount of television series that run their course a gazillion episodes over with a horridly off-balance emphasis until a character and a half are overcooked in the stew of their own themes and you can hardly remember the names of the other ones (you know which ones I'm talking about).

I never liked the popular division with "plot-driven" vs. "character-driven" writing. I've always been of the opinion that if you're doing one without the other then either you don't really have a plot, or you don't really have characters, or your characters have nothing to do with your plot (and if this carries a bit of a scent of No True Scotsman about it, that is only because I refuse to let the meanings of "character" and "plot" be reduced to "anything that happens to be alive" and "anything that happens to be happening', respectively). While sitting through this movie I was struck with the sheer hutzpah of the scriptwriters that dared assume the audience capable of mentally handling a plot the fundamentals of which were not reducible to the proverbial conflict of the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys but rather stemmed precisely from that much-elusive synthesis of character and plot. Sadly, some negative reviews this movie is getting seem to be grounded in its supposedly "convoluted" and "over-plotted" progression, which is precisely the sort of criticism I'd expect this kind of movie to get from people who have grown too used to being spoonfed an experience to appreciate a good challenge.

In short, I liked. If you've seen Dead Man's Chest then you've already sort of experienced those odd moments when a character would suddenly do something that the needs of the plot strictly dictate they shouldn't do and the plot would seem to veer wildly off course for a few seconds and then you'd realize, wait, now this is the new plot. Well, At World's End is pretty much one big moment like that, and it's a great ride if you're willing to keep up.

Not to mention that it's hilarious.

Splorg

2007-05-16T17:20:58Z

Imaginary numbers resulted from forcefully widening a mathematical paradigm to accommodate new symmetries while losing any obvious connection the original system might have had with reality. Observe as I do the same to Logic itself.

Definition: 0 = false.
Definition: 1 = true.

Simple enough. Now I want to define a logical conjunction, i.e. what happens when you put two things on the two sides of the word "AND". How does that behave? Well, it's false if any of the two thingies on either side are false, and true otherwise. What function do we know that behaves this way with 0 and 1? Multiplication! so we define A and B <=> AB.

Now I want a NOT operation. What springs out a 1 if you plug in 0 and springs out a 0 if you plug in one? Why, the argument 1-X. So we define NOT A <=> 1-A.

Now I want an OR application, i.e. either one being true, or both. You can define that with NOT and AND. A OR B is true in any case except if both are not true, or in other words A OR B <=> NOT (NOT A & NOT B) <=> 1-(1-A)(1-B) <=> 1- (1-B-A+AB) <=> 1-1+B+A-AB <=> A+B-AB.

XOR (either true, but not both) will be left as an exercise for the reader. At any rate, that's not the point. The thing is that now you can suddenly turn on your original assumptions that A and B have to equal 1 or 0 and see what happens. One thing that comes to mind is to say that A and B might be fractions between 0 and 1; this results in single-handedly re-inventing probability theory. Handy. Irrational and Transcendental probability we already have (e.g. the probability of two random integers being coprime). So what's next in line?

NEGATIVE probability! Or, as I will call it for absolute lack of real-world analogue, truth value Splorg. Splorg events have a logical value of -1. Thus we have

TRUE and SPLORG = SPLORG
FALSE and SPLORG = FALSE
TRUE or SPLORG = TRUE
FALSE or SPLORG = SPLORG
SPLORG and SPLORG = TRUE
SPLORG or SPLORG = -3!

WTF is a -3?!

I experimented with the OR function and it quickly became apparent that once you assume Splorg probability, what springs into existence is an array of logical values that are not powers of two. As in, literally, values of X where 1-X = 2^n for some n. Obviously using the not function you can generate anything that is a power of 2 from this. The other two functions can then be used to create a gamut of freak logical values (I have no idea whether these encompass all the natural numbers or not, but I may attempt a proof one day when I shouldn't actually be studying for you-know-which-test).

Another consequence is that if you apply what we know about imaginary numbers to this, you can get a firm, mathematical grasp on the thus-far elusive concept of imaginary probability. For example, if the probability that any two given mutually exclusive events will happen is purely imaginary, then the probability of both happening is some degree of Splorg.

Similarly, if the probability of something is Purely imaginary, and the probability of something else is not merely imaginary but imaginary Splorg, both of them must inevitably happen.

Which explains a lot.

acemyth @ 2007-05-13T08:02:00

2007-05-13T04:08:30Z

(A comment to angua9's post regarding a poll of whether mistakes were made in sending troops to Iraq which got too long to post in comment form.)

I was too tempted by this. Posting about politics is never healthy for the person doing the posting, because whatever position you convey you'll elicit a knee-jerk reaction from somebody. You suggest that war might be a good idea, under some circumstances? OMG right wing nutter! You suggest that war might /not/ be a good idea, under some circumstances? OMG left wing nutter! It just goes on and on.

So, before I start with the intolerable provocations, the bottom line is this: "Mistake" and "Not a mistake" create a dichotomy that is absolutely useless in this issue, because whether anything is a mistake or not depends on what you think the goals are and what you think would constitute justifiable means to achieve them.

If there's anything that's become clear to me in the months since last summer is that everybody's an expert in retrospect. Terms like 'mistake' get applied to a wide spectrum of types of failures, not all of them necessarily errors in judgment. Whether sending more troops into Iraq was a good idea is largely a function of whether sending there troops in the first place was a good idea, which is a very loaded and uncomfortable question. Unfortunately it is the important question so I'll be forced to discuss that.

What was the official reason given to invade Iraq? The prospect that it is a dangerous country which might have access to weapons of mass destruction. Of course, that claim turned out to be patently false, which already raises multiple questions which complicate the issue beyond anything quantifiable by a yes-or-no-answer. /Would/ it have been a good idea in retrospect, had the troops found multiple mounted nuclear warheads? Aimed at, say, London, for the sake of the argument? Certainly such a scenario wouldn't have been absolutely implausible, given the type of regime dominant in the area (Ahmadinejad says hi). So if anyone feels that given such a concrete possibility an attack would be justified, they would be hypocrites to blame the government for something they would've done themselves. Anybody of this view might answer "no", or perhaps "yes, but..."

Of course, it doesn't end in that. Any questioning mind would inevitably posit the following: If it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction, it follows that the evidence for their existence was weak - so just who decided that they were an immediate threat, and that the best way to counter that threat is by going to war? Somewhere along the way somebody must have made an error, and you could certainly say, what with the WMD thing being the central justification for going to this war to begin with, either incompetence or downright dishonesty had to have a hand in it somewhere. The administrative system might have gone, "Well, we /think/ they might have them, and we're certainly not sure, but we'll have to make a call about this and shouting that we're going to war because Iraq perhaps might possibly have WMDs will not go over well in various inconvenient ways". Or it might have been something more along the lines of a primal salivating drool of accepting the evidence unquestioningly, because it flatters their ideals of when and where wars should be fought, or because they lack the common sense to differentiate strong evidence from weak. Or, perhaps you could raise a speculation regarding those in charge of intelligence, who for their own reason committed similar mistakes, out of incompetence or otherwise a similarly culpable* motive, and gave the administration the impression that the evidence was stronger than it was. Which would still mean that they were guilty of failing to ask the right questions and demand actual evidence instead of talks of it.

Or, you could finally say, WMDs? Huh. Right. As if that had anything to do with it. The actual motive, the one they had in mind when they declared war, was obviously something else - be it oil, or the prospect of pounding down some place which is a member of the so-called axis of evil (I say so-called but I would certainly call it that, given a precise definition of evil I accept and an obvious oversimplification in that no nation, let alone any group of nations, is comprised out of a borg-like hive-mind- which is why "omg evil bomb die lolz" does not immediately follow from that). The first case is pretty nasty and any decent people would have its government's head over it. The second case, well, that dubious goal was definitely achieved (hoo yay, lots of dead people, now what?), but they should have known better than to stick around and try to set up a democracy of any sort. Just go to any analysis of why this whole make-Iraq-peaceful-heaven-on-earth prospect failed and you'll see that the causes and factors behind this failure are hardly, hardly unprecedented, and should have been seen coming a mile away. There's little to be gained by keeping forces in such a place to keep the order and an awful lot to be lost. Attempted humane warfare against inhumane warfare either degenerates into inhumane warfare or loses. Inevitably, always. Or is the general idea reveling in the death and destruction of the enemies of the free world? Embracing our failure to separate the innocent from the guilty? Machiavelli would give a dark, solemn nod here. And I'm compelled to darkly nod back or to scream in terror that our humanity has been brought to this.

All these cases share something in common, and that is that the government was not honest with its people about the motive. And I think that's also the reason why Olmert's approval rating over here has dropped to something on minus-three-on-a-standard-deci-logarithmic-scale. Setting goals for a military action just because they sound better justified and more robust than the ones you actually have, even if these newly-declared goals are unachievable, and you could spend eons sending people to shoot at stuff and still fail to win judging by the standard you just set. It's not good for the public morale. It makes you look stupid. It makes THEM look stupid.

So I don't think that "were mistakes made?" is the right question to ask. It muddles the issue to the degree that the question might as well have been, "Is this war sucky enough to outweigh any suckiness that might hypothetically have eventually resulted from passing up on it", which is a question on a whole other strategic level. A better question would be, "What kind of mistakes do you think were made during the whole Iraq affair, and by whom?".

Of course, there's that final view where war is so abhorrent and unthinkable that every war is automatically a mistake by definition, even /given/ some hypothetical situation of multiple loaded WMDs aimed directly at the whole of the western world. This fundamental objection raises exactly the discussion I kind of hinted at in the cut you had to click if you're reading this, and is another discussion for another day.

_{* as in, susceptible to accusations of some sort, and justifiably so.}

A very belated playlist double take

2007-05-10T02:26:11Z

School's Out - A*Teens feat. Alice Cooper

...

Isn't that like something by Metallica feat. Britney Spears?

_{...though I probably would listen to that too.}

The SAT-like Israeli test continues to amaze

2007-05-07T09:10:17Z

I've been pulling an extended all-nighter (a Baker's all-nighter?) and the last thing I thought I'd be doing before I go to sleep was posting here (or anything that isn't studying for that matter). But the following question, under 'logic', begs to be quoted:

12. Given are the following prepositions:
-All wafers are covered with chocolate.
-No wafers are filled with cream.

Which of the following, combined with these prepositions, would lead to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a wafer?

(1. That which is covered with chocolate is filled with cream. 2. That which is not filled with cream is covered in chocolate. 3. Anything filled with cream is covered in chocolate. 4. Anything covered in chocolate is not filled with cream. But, really, answering this is trivial; the notoriety of the SAT-like Israeli test stems not nearly from the questions actually posing any challenge in and of themselves as from the associated time constraints, which force the process of solving problems into an experience not unlike this.)

And now for something completely different

2007-04-22T14:10:49Z

Dear flist,

You are hereby presented with a movie of one of my friends trying to catch his runaway parrot.
It will not have a positive effect on your life in any way. In fact, clicking 'play' is almost guaranteed to waste 77 seconds of your life that you'll never get back.

Enjoy.

D'oh

2007-04-02T09:48:50Z

I bought a new computer, because this nearly-six-years-old one has been breathing its dying breaths for months now (won't play sound anymore, and my screen is split by weird vertical lines of digital mutilation as we speak). Now I don't have a car or a relative I happen to live with who owns a car, so I paid up for UPS to send it here for me.

I plug it in and it beeps a few times and whirrs and the monitor does not respond.

Tech support are under the impression that this problem is not solvable over the phone.

Not a meme

2007-03-23T15:55:44Z

I don't know enough about my flist.

I want to know more about my flist.

1. Where do you live? What kind of a place is it?

2. What's your first name? You can decide not to answer that if you for some reason believe Google and the government don't know you already down to your favorite ice cream flavour. Do you know why your parents decided on it? What does it mean?

3. What languages do you know?

4. What's your best talent?

5. What's your favorite band? It's okay, you can name a few.

6. What are your spiritual beliefs? Do you believe in God? Might he be just one of us / just a stranger on the bus / etc.?

7. What's your line of work? Is that what you wanted to do when you'll have grown up when you were little? Are you happy with it? Or are you too young still to consider the stuff you do for money a "line of work"?

And finally,

8. How are you different now than you were a year ago?

...

What are you online? Are you you, or are you just a nickname that's idly saying things on your behalf to pass the time?

The entry that does not belong

2007-03-13T20:26:50Z

Here are four random things I have hardly anything to do with:

1. Naruto (these days)
2. Fanficiton (for the past five years or so)
3. Yaoi (ever)
4. The German Language.

These four elements converged the other day to create an astounding twist of fate where a person on MSN messenger asked me whether maybe I knew anyone who could translate her Naruto Yaoi fanficiton piece into English, because apparently German yaoi fanfiction for a shark-jumped franchise is in low demand.

You can imagine the several reasons I am not qualified to do this, but apparently this is very important to her. So if anybody feels up to the task, err, E-mail me (AceMyth at noidonotwanttoenlargemygenitals Gmail dot com), and I'll refer one of you to the other.