Friday, July 10th, 2009
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7:53 PM - 80s Party
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There is a Retro 80s stag and doe tomorrow and I hadn't even thought about an outfit. I couldn't think of a 80s persona with a shaven head. Anyway, I went out and bought a pair of white tube socks (only need one sock though), a black marker, and some chopsticks. The outfit? Umm, maybe just a generic shirt with the collar up and some jeans. There is another outfit I can wear, but that would be too obvious.
It's a stag and doe, so I'm sure some pictures will get onto facebook.
current music: Strawbs - The Broken Hearted Bride
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(Give your own rant)
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5:04 PM - Heart Chakra
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After the end of my little rant where I tangentially mentioned the heart chakra, it struck me as odd that I couldn't remember any of my four current yoga instructors mentioning chakras. Yes, it is normal for yoga instructors to avoid mentioning it at first to avoid scaring people off, but they usually let it in eventually once our guard is down. (In contrast, both my Senseis have been the most esoteric, almost quoting each other word-for-word, during people's first class.)
I thought I'd see what would happen if I brought it up. They always ask us if there is something we want to work on. On Thursday, I said that I had just told someone that I needed to open my heart chakra. She almost panicked. I added that the instructors here don't every mention it. She said that she hadn't and probably wouldn't bring it up. She's more into the physical and if I'm interested in the spiritual, I should see if Rene is teaching a class in the fall. Oh well.
I mentioned that to today's instructor (and club founder) and he was amused at it as the first instructor is not into that stuff at all. That is so not what she is about. He told me that yes, I could open it up during what we are doing, but it is more about our intention with what we are doing then doing a difference sequence. It also depends in what I mean about 'opening up the heart chakra', do I mean "opening the chest, deepening..."? I shrugged. During the class, he brought up intention a few more times than usual and especially when we were stretching our chest open.
I don't know if I'd opened it, but I actually engaged in small talk today which is normally one of my greatest fears. It wasn't so bad.
current music: Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition
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(Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, July 9th, 2009
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6:17 PM - The Humpty Dumpty Definition Fallacy and False Reassurance
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It’s been a while since I’ve written an inflammatory post about Objectivism. I should do something about that.
Was Ayn Rand an idiot? Well, she defines an ‘idiot’ as someone who is bad at redefining terms to suit their own purposes, so no, Rand was not an idiot. That bit of silliness gets at a common error Rand throws at us. She will redefine a word using a irrelevant technicality so she can dodge being labelled as such.
For instance, take 'naïve realism'. We covered naïve realism in one of my psychology classes this week while we were dealing with psychology errors. It was an accurate description of the kinds of mistakes Rand commits. “I see reality, and my actions and beliefs are based on a rational interpretation of reality” was one of the applicable lines. Another line translated into Objectivese would be “Ultimately, there is no such thing as genuine disagreement between honest men”. There was a third line about those with different beliefs, but no one would believe me if I translated that into Objectivese.
However, Rand told us that she isn’t a naïve realist. Objectivists used to tell me that all the time. She said that she isn’t, so she isn’t. Are you calling Rand a liar? Well no, just that she is really really bad at analyzing her own philosophy and a very sloppy thinker. How did she avoid the naïve realism label? Well, naïve realism she tells us is when we grasp objective truths instantly, but it is more complicated then that and it takes longer where we spiral inwards (not upwards) towards the objective truth. A subtle technical difference, but what makes naïve realism both naïve and realist is not the length of time it takes to grasp objective truths. It’s that it is there and we can grasp it. Her redefinition notwithstanding, Rand is a naïve realist. Sorry.
Another example is 'conservative'. Is Rand a conservative? Hell, yeah. Every Objectivist would deny that for, I dunno, some technical reason that escapes me. I probably didn’t know it when I used to argue that she wasn't back in the day, but that didn’t stop me. It boils down to Rand redefines the term so she isn’t one, so she is not and I would appreciate it if every non-Objectivist would stop saying that she is.
My favourite bit of redefining a term in order to win an argument actually comes from Nathaniel Branden on the nonexistence of instincts. The argument goes like this: Knowledge is redefined to only be propositional knowledge. Propositional knowledge isn’t inherited. Therefore, instincts don’t exist. QED. Let’s ignore that nobody thinks that knowledge is only propositional knowledge and that is clearly not what people are talking about when they talk about instincts. However, it is good enough to confuse 16-year-old Objectivists who don’t know better.
Damn. I have another favourite. I think I can do this for a while. Science. Is Rand pro-Science? Yes. Well, not if you mean science as in empirical science, the scientific method, or what scientists do. Objectivists hate that! If you mean Aristotelian Science however, that is, naïve realism, then yes Rand is pro-science. What? No one means that when they use the word ‘science’. Screw ‘em. I go by Rand!
Now let’s switch gears. Naïve realism gives us a zoo of ontological goodies. We have the power to grasp these ontological thingies. Not instantly, that would be naïve realism and silly, but it takes a while going through the long process of Aristotelian science which is also naïve realism and silly. However there is a problem. Your religion is false. Those things don’t exist, we can’t grasp what isn’t there, and we don’t have those powers even if they did. Bummer. We have another problem though. We think we have these objective truths in our head and that we grasped them all scientifically. We aren’t appealing to evil empirical science, to non-Rand authorities, or to a panel of experts. We grasped them. We grasped these objectively objective truly true truths. That is, we feel that they are true, so they are true. QED. A is A. Abracadabra. Let the truthiness set you free.
This is especially evident in aesthetics where we can’t even half-heartedly appeal to empirical science. Nobody who is arguing for objectivity in art thinks that their argument collapses to “I like this and not that”. No, great art is great art. It just is. Really. Truly. Yet everyone who argues with them thinks that the Objectivist’s argument does collapses to “I like this and not that”. It does and it has to. Lots of people have tried not to do that and they all failed. They reassure us that they aren’t personally making the decisions of what art is or is not, but as the argument moves along everyone else sees that is exactly what they end up doing. Why? Because your religion is false. Objectivity in art does not exist. Naïve realism makes you think that your opinions, feelings, beliefs, and intentional objects are really real and they really aren't. It's our brain's fault.
Okay, that's enough inflammatory comments for today. Now it is time to go off to yoga and meditate on my heart chakra to shine loving thoughts to the world. Namaste!
current music: Oceansize
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(8 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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12:52 PM
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| Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
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1:49 PM
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I miss the time when they let me use MLA format. No page numbers?!? Madness!
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, July 7th, 2009
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5:48 PM - CNN
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One of the best things about not having cable and downloading all my tv shows is that I don't get cable news networks. Otherwise I would have battered wife syndrome and think that this time CNN wouldn't abuse me again.
"I really thought CNN would be concerned about the news this time." Of course something happens involves a celebrity that can legitimately called news, so they can whore all over it. It's not cheating if it is technically news. Of course, if you can technically do it, that doesn't mean you should do it over and over again for weeks at a time. Hugging your secretary is fine, but after a while it becomes cuddling and it's not fine anymore.
I'd forgive all the whoring, I would tell myself, because at least they stopped doing that "other thing". Those services in the bathroom of the highway gas station. You know, ignoring that the upcoming war has no justification and pushing the hell out of it since they'd kill in the ratings. I know it isn't technically a sex crime. The Johns didn't pay them; imbedding and other access grants are not technically payments. They told us they didn't enjoy it. They got paid though. Ratings were great.
It started off so innocently. You know like a semi-annual trip to Vegas where I choose not to ask about it. We called it "The Hollywood minute" and it was a little thing at the bottom of the hour. No big deal. A little sorbet to cleanse the palate before the real news started. There was a clear division between Vegas and here behaviour.
My cousin over in England has a much better deal. She does "that thing he likes" in exchange for him not whoring around. They call it their little "tv tax". It sounded bad in the abstract, but it has worked out much better. He keeps it in his pants.
current music: It Bites - The Tall Ships
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(5 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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12:38 AM - Banned Clothes
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Clothes that should be banned besides the burqa:
Speedos -- No one needs to see that
Fanny Packs -- Yes, even on tourists
Fedoras -- Thousands of people wears this so they can be unique
Pajama bottoms in public -- Life is not a sleep over
Vertical stripes on fat people -- Myth that it is thinning
Rubber shoes -- Have no traction in the rain
Ninja outfits -- So Muslim women don't just switch to this
Pirate outfits -- Can't let them win against ninjas
Shoe on one foot with no sock and on the other a sock and no shoe -- Saw this once in a bus station. Freaked me out.
Hemp Clothes washed in organically pure detergent -- Amuses me to get Hippies to use Tide
Ironic eye-patch -- Can't even let the pirates have this one
Red String on wrist -- Demeaning to people with evil eyes
Anything with Abercrombie & Fitch logo -- I'm just getting mad with power now
Any bling that weights more than 5 pounds -- Especially that Gino guy in the Mudflap girl tracksuit with a gold crucifix that covered most of his torso
Jew Beanies -- So weren't not just racist against the Arabs
Beanies with propellers -- Do these even exist anymore?
Poodle Skirt -- Satanic
School Uniforms on people 35+ years old -- You're not fooling anyone, Angus Young and cougar porn stars
Cowboy hats in the city -- If people outnumber cows, there is no need for the hat
Blue Jeans -- What? That's madness! I was with you until this point.
Fuchsia clothes -- Red is good enough
Polka dots -- Polka should only come out during Octoberfest and even then wait until we are really drunk
Gold teeth -- Wait. This isn't even clothes anymore. Anyway, it just looks like yellow teeth to me
Pantaloons -- Trousers, yes. Pantaloons, no!
Neck Tie -- Oppressive to human life and kills creativity
Wedding Rings -- Oppressive to hound dogs
Purity Rings -- Don't worry. We already know who to beat up. You don't have to signal it.
Mullets -- Again, not clothes, but wrong nevertheless
current music: Agents of Mercy - The Fading Ghosts of Twilight
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009
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1:08 AM - Fingerprints Of God
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I forgot to mention that I read Fingerprints Of God a while back. It is a sincere look by a NPR journalist at religion and new empirical science dealing with religion. I found the science parts fascinating, but was less interested in the parts about God and individual stories of coincidences. She kept trying to bring the discussion back to God and the scientists would tell her that science has nothing to say about God. She concluded that science cannot disprove god and is completely consistent with God. Well, it’s completely against the very essence of science, but they humoured the journalist who is writing about their research, so they let it slide. The science of religious experience stops being science once the god talk come in. What she suspected they believed when they weren't humouring her is that “neuroscience will soon relegate ‘God’ to the ash heap of history” [141].
On the science side, there is a lot of interesting research being done. William Miller says that since psychology came out of religion, the field has worked hard to intentionally avoid anything that might appear like religion. Psychology is mature enough now that they don’t have to push away its past [29]. Another change is that the Post-Timothy Leary restrictions on psychedelic drug research have been relaxed, so that type of research can go on.
There was interesting research by Roland Griffith and also Franz Vollenweider dealing with serotonin and stuff the brain thinks is serotonin like LSD, psilocybin, and peyote. Serotonin is the main neurotransmitter for spiritual experience. The analogy used was that serotonin is the bouncer that lets you into the religious experience party. Other neurotransmitters are involved after that including dopamine and glutamate.
Michael Persinger’s God helmet sounds promising. Instead of using drugs, Persinger stimulates area of the brain magnetically to evoke religious experiences.
He also had a great quote:If we look at the trend in the history of science, first we thought we were the center of the universe, and Copernicus modified that. Then Darwin removed the illusion that we were a special creation. Freud ripped apart the concept that we were logical animals and shows that that was only a veneer, that actually we were still a primitive animal.
So the next big question is: What is the last illusion that we must overcome as a species? That illusion is that ‘God’ is an absolute that exists independent of the human brain. That somehow we are in His or Her care. We have to realize that ultimately that may not be true, but what we may learn from it may take us much further than we ever imagined. [141] Andrew Newberg takes spiritual virtuosos – such as Tibetan Buddhist monks, Franciscan nuns, Sikhs, and Pentecostals – and scans their brains. There are two types of spiritually virtuoso brains: contemplative and rowdy ones. Contemplative spiritual brains, with monks and nuns for example, are lit up in the frontal lobes and darkened in the parietal lobes. In the rowdy spiritual brains, from techniques such as glossolalia, the frontal lobes shut down and the parietal lobes light up. All of the virtuosos have thalami asymmetry in the rest state, where normal people have fairly symmetric thalami.
That’s a good quick look back. I’m intentionally skipping the stuff on out-of-body-experiences and coincidences. She looked at a lot of interesting stuff in the book that unfortunately got filtered through some irrelevant concerns she had. I now have the names of some of the scientists doing work here, so I’ll look at them instead.
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, July 4th, 2009
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8:01 PM - Your Religion Is False
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This book isn’t what you might expect. Well, unless you are expecting a very funny book with genuine insights on religion, then it is what you would expect. You’re going to be disappointed if you are expecting an angry book attempting to offend everyone, one that provides rigorous proofs disproving the ontological existence of God, or one that gives a systematic and encyclopedic overview of religion. Don’t get me wrong, you will be offended, then laugh, and then be offended again. Reasons for believing in God (like free Bible-study pizza) are quickly gone over as well. Joel does has an encyclopedic knowledge of religion, but more often than not that encyclopedia is Wikipedia. It will make you uncomfortable when it in goes over bits of your religion humorously, like getting the virtues and vices in Sikhism mixed up and providing convincing arguments for them, but then he’ll make another absurd joke and you’ll be laughing again.
Now that I’ve read the book and reading the blog, I’m eagerly looking forward to reading negative reviews of the book. Atheism is after all just one-half of a debate. I expect two main types of negative reviews. One is from people who obviously haven’t read more than Amazon.com’s Product Description, like Kansas City James, and review it anyway. The other type I expect are from people on the internet that feel the need to refute him and pedantically grab onto a joke while conceding the main point. Like granting that Mohammad did marry a seven year old girl and had sex with her at nine, but standing fast on that there is absolutely no proof whatsoever that he played with her dollies. Insightful negative reviews are also possible I guess. The internet might surprise me.
Joel mixes explaining religious beliefs with absurd non-sequiturs (but I repeat myself), obscure geek references, and even more obscure 80s music references. You’ll want to read this book near a computer in order to look up obscure references, like chutney ferrets, monkey rockers, and tesla girls. Well, maybe not those ones. Since he is talking about religion, it is not always easy to tell when he is explaining something straight or making a joke, so you may want to guess and then look it up to see how you did. Once you find out that you did poorly, you will have reached enlightenment. Or weighted some flax. Or something like that.
current music: Wobbler - Afterglow
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(4 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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5:14 PM - Sikhism is false
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I got my Sikh roommate to read the chapter "Sikhism is false" (pp. 48-50).
He said that it wasn't as bad as he expected it to be. Only twice in the two-and-a-half page did he start to get offended. Once when Joel made fun of the comical names of the ten gurus. The second was when making fun of Sikhs being more likely to be taxi cab drivers... since his father drives a cab.
My roommate added that I shouldn't show this to a Muslim, which prompted me to show him the section on Terrorism (pp 128-9). He enjoyed that one much more than the Sikhism bit.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, July 2nd, 2009
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4:37 PM - Well, yeah
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In that industry/organizational psychology class I mentioned before, he just told us that different strategies are needed for creative people. He told us a story about a R&D department that was stagnant when the were doing the sort of stuff we've been learning. Once they threw that out, they were successful. We didn't learn any new strategies, just to ignore what we've learned already. I could have told you that! lol
current music: OSI - Blood
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(3 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, June 29th, 2009
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4:22 AM - The Three Big Questions
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Whenever I go all philosophical, I almost always go to the three big questions: how do we understand? How do we live well? How should we restructure life? Other commonly given big questions seem either uninteresting to me or unintelligible: What is the meaning of life? Why is there something rather than nothing? What are the good, the beautiful, and the truth? How can I be moral? What is my purpose? In a word, these questions are looking for external ‘metaphysical’ answers that I do not believe exist.
Philosophy fully abandons the metaphysical perspective of external things for a psychological perspective looking outwards. It’s deeply concerned with biology and physical reality and what we can know about it.
Philosophy is then a survey course of three different subfields. The first is methodology: A look at neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, scholarship, empirical study, and statistics. Metaphysics is also covered, but only to show us what not to do. We are concerned with understanding, not with something called ‘truth’. The second is well being and socialization: A look at neuropsychology again, neurochemistry, physiology, motivational psychology, behavioural psychology, social psychology, and microeconomics. The roles of drugs, food, music, art, social interactions, meditation/spirituality, and physical activities on individuals and groups are looked at. Morality is covered only insofar as it does not dip into the metaphysics of the good. The third is utopian studies: A look at macroeconomics, sociology, political philosophy, education, and technological innovation.
current music: Oceansize
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(6 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, June 27th, 2009
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5:12 PM - Post-Baby Boom Music
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Billy-Bob Thornton made a comment on Real Time with Bill Maher that is similar to one I used to say. My version was that all music made after 1980 sucked unless it was made by a band or offshoot of a band that existed before 1980. This was in the mid-90s when I said this. I hadn't gotten into U2 or Radiohead back then and still haven't gotten into REM, those being the most common exceptions suggested. Occasionally people would catch me grooving to The Black Crows or Lenny Kravitz and they would yell "Ah ha! Got you!". Well, they got me, but I then further qualified it with "or is decidedly pre-1980 retro".
Billy-Bob's version was a challenge to come up with bands that started after 1978 that we'll still be listening to 100 years from now. He could only come up with two, REM and U2. On the other hand, he said that he could come up with over a hundred bands easily for bands before 1975. Bill Maher doubted the "over a hundred" bit and, yeah, he had listed people like Chuck Berry. Do post-babyboomers listen to Chuck unless their boomer parents make them? I doubt that. Was he an important and significant figure, hell yeah, but I don't see people listening to him 100 years from now, if people do now outside of oldie stations.
I pretty much only listen to music that is less than two years old, but it is pre-1980 retro. Maybe not decidedly retro though. Is Mars Volta retro? Yeah, but there is a hell of a lot else going on. Frost* is prog surely, but there is a lot of English pop influence as well. I know I sympathize with Homer Simpson who said that music peaked in 1974 and it has been down hill even since, but I simply don't listen to pre-1980 music anymore. Amazing as it is.
Yeah, when the babyboomers were in their teens and early twenties music was awesome. Then they got old and they listened to Kenny G and killed music. The subsequent generations were never big enough to bring about many great bands. Good single artists sure, but great bands are out.
How do we get back to the music of the 60s and 70s? The same way we get back to the great economic expansion of the 50s and 60s: bomb the hell out of Europe and then have lots of kids. Simple.
current music: DFA - 4th
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(4 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, June 25th, 2009
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5:14 PM - I/O Psychology
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I'm taking a psychology class that makes me feel like an alien. The problem is that the course is all based on this model that starts off with the idea that we are motivated by two needs: the need to achieve and the need for affiliation. It takes an admittedly bad model of humans (i.e., the one based on the need to achieve) and just tacks on some social psych to it to apparently fix it (i.e., the one based on the need to affiliate). A social homo economicus.
I don't think I'd put those two motivations in my top five, let alone the dominating motivational factors to my personality. My need to affiliate is probably greater than I'm willing to admit, but it is not dominant. Let's go with saying that it is a 'weak' motivator for me. The need to achieve is there, let's say a moderate motivation, but it seems to be piggybacking on some other motivation than a dominant factor.
The course is called industrial/organizational psychology, but it seems to be an applied psychology course on management. It's a kind of survey psychology course focusing on job management. The kind of prescriptions in the course are the same old shit that makes working hell. You know metrics and all the crap that Mini-Microsoft, Joel on Software, and The Wire rant about. It certainly doesn't help my motivation to job hunt when the course is telling us how to make jobs into a hellish landscape.
My motivations are closer to the need to understand, the need to solve problems, the need for intellectual honesty, and the need for empirical honesty. The ways of organizing jobs here don't just not deal with these, they are directly opposing it. The only time I feel like I'm being addressed in the class is when we go over people who won't do well professionally. The need to innovate seems foreign to success in this class. I feel not just unemployable after this class, but as if I'm a different species.
current music: Oceansize
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(1 counter-rant | Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, June 24th, 2009
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7:33 PM - Video Games
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Tom Clancy's Endgame. I liked this game. The thing is is that it is short. I finished the game in a day on Normal difficulty. I started replaying it on Expert right away as I knew that if I didn't continue playing it I'd already have my fill and not pick it up again. It seems to be an experiment for the voice recognition system, so they spent the time there instead of working on having a long game time. I noticed that some of the easy achievements for the game have a higher TrueScore on TrueAchievements.com than it should be and I suspect it is just that people don't play this game very long. It's not that it's bad; just not a lot of replay value.
The universe is interesting in premise with the middle east oil being destroyed in a nuclear attack, Russia is the new energy superpower, and there is a three way conflict brewing between the US, the EU, and Russia. They don't really do with anything with it though past the prelude.
I liked the voice recognition. There are a few glitches where it would 'attack' when I said 'move to', but it worked fine most of the time. I used it mainly in the beginning of a mission to get everyone where they should go and then used the controller for attacks. I tried out SITREP and it didn't do anything for me. It's good for Ubisoft to have gone through this experiment to give its other games an optional voice recognition system.
One thing I'll mention to provide contrast to the next game I want to talk about is the DLC (downloadable content). I am not sure what that adds. It seems like they turned off a couple upgrades just so they can charge more for them to restore it. Boo. Save your money.
Fallout 3 DLCs: The fourth DLC just came out and I bought it but haven't played it yet. This is what DLCs should be: an extra game that wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for people paying for DLCs. The gameplay for these are short compared to the game itself (60 hours to get all the Achievements), but its gameplay is about as long as Endgame. You get more of one of the best games out there and it adds new environments and such. They aren't as polished as the full game, but they are fine.
If you haven't bought this game yet, you might want to wait for the fall edition where they include some of the DLCs. Otherwise, pick these up.
Mirror's Edge: What do you call this game, a first person jumper? It takes the FPS engine and gives us something different. It's a beautiful world with challenging puzzles. The parts that I found the most challenging involve advanced moves (i.e., physically impossible moves) like jump-wallrun-jump-grab bar-swing-jump-roll or jumping backwards & up rather high while starting from hanging onto a ledge. You'll want to find a guide to tell you what impossible moves to use then. It's a good game and I'm sure I'll get Mirror's Edge 2.
Lost Via Domus. Luckily I found this for $10. It's a very short game that tells the story of another castaway and his story is intermingled with the events on the island (sorta like that Nikki and Paulo episode). The main thing here is the ending. The ending must of been a real WTF moment when it came out, but now it is revealing given what happened at the end of the last season. It has made me reject the theory I gave to what happens next in the series. I wish this game had an open sandbox map, so I could wander around and get a sense of the world (The last Harry Potter game was great for that) as I was more interested in moving around the island than the game itself.
I can't really recommend the game. It's okay and it's short, but it's not very good. However, I highly recommend Lost fans see some of the videos from the game, especially the ending. There is a video walkthrough out there. Unfortunately, it was removed from YouTube and the torrent is stuck at 64.6%, so you can't watch it. If anyone has it, I have some people I want to show it to, so I'd appreciate a seed.
Bully. I'm about halfway through. Good game that uses the GTA San Andreas system. If you liked San Andreas (and why wouldn't you?), this is more of the same but lighter and less use of the N-word.
current music: Martin Orford - The Old Road
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(Give your own rant)
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| Friday, June 19th, 2009
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10:50 PM - Catch Up of Aborted Posts
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I know I haven't been posting much. There has been a few times that I was tempted to post something, but didn't. Here is a kind of catch up of outdated posts that didn't happen.
Oracle Buys Sun: Dammit. The party is over. I used to write about Sun a lot. Sun was interesting as they spent a lot on software R&D and open sourced a lot of it--despite it not making economic sense. Good management of Sun properties will ruin it.
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I sent a resume to a catering company a while back. I didn't hear back from them. If I got that job I was going to write a post about how tv shows copy from my life. First there was that show they stole from my life that had a physics undergrad who had part time job sliding to parallel universes. Second was that show about an apathetic philosophy graduate who took a crappy retail sales job in Niagara Falls and God talked to them through stuff animals. Now actors who are thoroughly discouraged and are unemployable to real jobs take a meaningless tedious catering job they don't want. I was going to add that that last one doesn't quite work as I'm not an actor and the show came out first.
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I was in a place were I was content about not having a job and being back at school.... until E3. Dammit, why do they have to come out with so many toys I want? Project Natal, in particular, is something I sorta asked for in this journal. I'm not sure how the commercial version is going to work, but if they have decent boxing and martial arts, I'll need to find a way to get it. It could suck however, like Wii Boxing (which I've can't get it to do anything close to what I'm doing).
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I didn't really finish my argument that none of the characters in How I Met Your Mother have any personality. I just had a little game to get you to be dumbfounded while attempting to name something--anything--about Robin's personality. Now I have to extend that to the other characters. I admit that they will be harder as there seems to be more there. You might even be able to name something about Marshall and Lily. I couldn't think of anything that didn't have to do with them being in a relationship and instead had to do with them as individuals, but I suspect that it could be done. The trick I'll use to get past that is to remind people of the gaping whole that is Robin and see if you can grasp that sucking sound of personality in them as well. I think you can see the parallels. Barney is a harder to prove, but he is actually the one I realized lacked any personality even before realizing it about Robin. Barney certainly appears to have a personality and it was surprising to see it get negated. Every once in a while Barney would show his softer side and do something not just out-of-character, but negates everything about what we thought of him--showing his entire personality to be a façade. I include here luring women from Marshall and buying Lily's plane ticket home. That is it for the characters. Oh wait. I forgot Ted, the main character. I keep forgetting him as he is so uninteresting. Okay, I'll admit that he is a whiny bitch, but the thing is that by the time the show ends he'll marry the mother, get domesticated, and lose his only personality trait.
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There is a cute Muslim girl in one of my classes and I started thinking about how it wouldn't work out as I would mess it up saying inappropriate things and otherwise making a jackass out of myself. For instance, I might mention that she is a lot younger than me--but not Aisha young. I might mention that I would hide my box cutters whenever she came over. Say that we didn't need to bother with condoms as she wouldn't take off her burqa during sex. Nickname my penis 'Mecca'. Tape Jesus and Mo comics to my door. "Declare Jihad on her ass." Say "we could do that, but then I would have to stone you." "PBUH = Pedophile Be Upon Her". Yeah, it is best that nothing came of this as I'd wouldn't want to be charged with hate speech or cause a riot. All that without going into what I really think.
----
I got bored and gave myself a Brazilian. I was gonna post something about that, but then I thought it would be best if I let that one go unmentioned.
current music: Martin Orford - The Old Road
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(Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, June 18th, 2009
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4:49 PM - Ordered!
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| Friday, June 12th, 2009
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12:20 AM - Personality on TV
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I'm watching the fourth season of The Wire right now and I've been thinking about the characters a lot. The stand out from this season is Snoop, but there is a lot of interesting stuff going on with the kids as well. I'm trying to figure them out.
It's very realistic. It's strange how it seems even more realistic when the story gets a little stylized and the characters do something that makes you say 'WTF!'. As if it were so odd that it could only be based on something that actually happened. On another show you might give it as an example of how the show is unrealistic and yet it works here.
It then struck me how weird it is how in my psychology class the grad student teaching the class keeps using particular tv characters. Is she using characters from shows like The Wire that feel real and whose personalities have depth to them? No, she uses characters from Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and cartoons. Empty sitcom cutouts that are there simply to repeat lame jokes. We did a section on stereotypes and that would be a great time to use something from The Wire, but no, every example of stereotypes involved characters from Big Bang Theory. We've watched lame clips to learn about social psychology, including the Chicken Joke, Klingon Boogle, and Barney's awesome job application video. Do I have a better insight into the nature and inner soul of humanity from those videos? No, they were as helpful as they were funny.
It's funny that I was thinking all this earlier today and one of my roommates just volunteered that he likes How I Met Your Mother because of the great characters that he cares about. Wha? The characters have zero personality. Yes, even Barney. Don't believe me? Let's play a game. Tell me something about Robin. You know, about her personality. Okay, we know that she is Canadian and she likes guns, but those are just random items they bring out on occasion for a joke or two and they don't inform us about her personality at all. Tell me something about her. Go ahead. I'll wait. [*waits*] You couldn't do it, could you? There is nothing to say. She has no personality. There is nothing there to describe.
Now take Snoop. We don't know much about her and I'd have a hell of a time trying to explain her personality to someone who hasn't seen the show, but damn she exudes personality. That scene in the hardware store that opens up the fourth season? Whoa. If she didn't scare the hell out of me, that is someone interesting I'd want to know.
Another great thing is that the characters actually change and grow. Carver, for example, takes criticisms to heart and evolves. This reminded me of a post ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) radtea made about how the writers will do anything to avoid letting Dr. Gregory House grow as a character.
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(4 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, June 11th, 2009
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11:29 PM
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I haven't been losing a lot of weight, but I just hit that sweet spot where I switched from being a side sleeper to a stomach sleeper. Turns out that I'm really a stomach sleeper, but it has just been my gut rolling me over to the side all this time.
I guess I'll need new Ikea pillows. :)
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(Give your own rant)
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| Friday, June 5th, 2009
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7:05 PM
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The internet has been down at the house since Wednesday afternoon. The roommates have left for the weekend with the router locked in one of their rooms. How I am supposed to function? I've been biking to school every two hours or so to go online.
I've thought about starting a list of things to look up the next time I go online as I keep forgetting to search for a few things. I don't like not being to lookup something when it comes up.
And yes, I've downloaded security linux distributions to hack my neighbours' routers. They don't want to work with my broadcom wireless card on my laptop and my linux-compatible Edimax EW-7711UAn high-gain wireless USB adapter for the desktop won't be here until Monday. Anyway, the only WEP router around is ours.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Monday, June 1st, 2009
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4:10 PM - Making Out With You Killed My God
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| Sunday, May 31st, 2009
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10:33 PM
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| Thursday, May 28th, 2009
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5:15 PM
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I tried that 5-hour energy drink this week.
I'm not sure what it is that's doing it, but man I've been in a much better mood since drinking it.
current music: Circa - HQ
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(Give your own rant)
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1:14 PM - Absolute Pedanticness
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I try really hard to not be unnecessarily pedantic. No really, I do. Okay, fine, don't believe me. There is an instance though, I have to say something. When you understand what the prof is trying to say, but they are putting something down on the board which is simply false. Even when they say that "When I write this, I mean that". I can let it slide, but it's gonna end up on the test. Do I really have to memorize which wrong answers to repeat on the test?
My economic prof doesn't use absolute value brackets and we just have to know whether a value is the magnitude or the signed value. Fine, I'll add absolute brackets to the elasticity index in my notes. No big deal. Are %ΔP and %ΔQ signed? Well, it depends and you just have to keep that straight in your head. Actually I'm not sure when they are signed or unsigned as it seems to change--even in the same example. It's signed when you find it right before determining the %Δ of Total Revenue. What is the relationship of %ΔP and %ΔQ when the price increases of an elastic good? %ΔP<%ΔQ. What? No, that's just wrong. %ΔP>0>%ΔQ and |%ΔP|<|%ΔQ|. I have no idea which answer I should put down on a test.
As usual, my pedanticness didn't go over well. I was told to ignore the table, where she put that answer in, if it confuses me.
Update: There is a note on UW-ACE that she'll rewrite the example to remove confusion. Let's hope for absolute value brackets. *fingers crossed*
Update2: I should note that I gave her my userid number for something unrelated and she didn't believe it was a valid ID. I guess she hasn't run into someone who started in the 90s.
current music: Fast & Bulbous - Memorial Barbeque
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, May 26th, 2009
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11:20 PM - Compliment
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Well, I'll say this about my roommate's guitar playing: It's much much better than his singing.
current mood: Overly Generous
current music: Noise
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(Give your own rant)
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4:25 PM - Notes
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More people than expected joined the yoga club for the summer, so they added in more classes. I'm able to go to classes 6 days a week now and I'm trying to go to all of them. I should be pretty flexible by the end of the summer.
It's strange how in some poses I'm more flexible than most and in others I can't even approximate it when others are having no trouble. The troublesome ones are the ones that the limbs cross each other or reach across the body, like eagle's pose and cow's head.
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I'm relearning this dojo's version of gekisai itch, gekisai ni, sanchin, and tensho, so I have been sticking with the white-to-orange belt classes and the open class. I'll start going the green-to-brown class soon.
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Classes have mostly been review so far. We're up to elasticity in micro and calculating GDP/GNP in macro. The psychology courses have mostly talked about experiments I've covered before. Tests and assignments are starting to come due, so I'm getting caught up in my reading.
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One of the psychology classes got us to rate the sentence, "I am happy with my social life", from -5 (strongly disagree) to +5 (strongly agree). I left it blank as there was no space for "What social life?", "does not apply", or "Huh?".
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I went through the Fallout 3 DLC Broken Steel's main quests. I still have to do the side quests and the next two DLCs coming out this summer. The Telsa Cannon is a very very powerful new weapon. Maybe too powerful.
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perich's comments finally got me to watch the first season of The Wire. Wow. It's good. (Thanks perich!)
I kept thinking about Stringer Bell in microeconomics today. It was that scene were he was telling off the low level gang members in the front company doing photocopies that they are acting like it is an inelasticity activity instead of elastic and getting blank annoyed stares.
current music: Agents of Mercy (Flower Kings related) - The Fading Ghosts Of Twilight
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, May 18th, 2009
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6:00 PM - Emergency
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Over this long weekend, I read Neil Strauss' Emergency. It's boring. Not recommended.
Okay, the second half isn't nearly as awful as the first half. The first half is Neil's non-adventures asking uninteresting characters if they know how to get a second passport and they don't. Finally he finds a guy who will get one for him and he wires him $67,284 and also needs to spend $300,000+ buying a property there. I'm still not sure why he thinks a second passport is that important to take out a second mortgage.
The second half is stuff he does to kill time during the year he is waiting for the second passport to be issued. Here he takes actually useful courses in guns, CERT training, CPR and first aid, tracking, knives, motorcycles, fishing, urban surivival, emergency management, EMT, CEMP, and ham radio. Do we readers learn anything from this? Not really. It's about Neil Strauss' time taking these courses. The book ends when the second passport is ready. Neil does nothing to reach the thrilling conclusion; the lawyer says it is ready and Neil picks it up.
If there was a recommended bibliography or lists of recommended supplies, survival shops, survival courses, and escape vehicles at the end of the book, then I would recommend skipping the rest of the book and reading just that appendix instead. It doesn't have those, so I can't recommend any of it. His website does list the items in his "bug-out bag" (the stuff he grabs when fleeing), so you might find that interesting.
Meh, if I wanted to prepare for the zombie apolcalyse, I'm sure I'd get much better advice from my friends list than what I got here.
current music: Lisa Hannigan - Sea Saw
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(5 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Saturday, May 16th, 2009
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3:42 PM - Lost Spoilers and Speculations
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| Friday, May 8th, 2009
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3:37 PM - Term Schedule
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One of the things I do when I'm in school is try to fit as much scheduling information on one side of a piece of paper as I can.
The following is a 4 month calender with all the due dates added. Below it is my daily schedule. On the right of the calendar is what chapters in my textbooks I should be reading for that week. At the right of the daily schedule is my eating schedule.
About that last thing, I've been eating too much pizza already and despite the sense of familiarity, I'm going to avoid that diet by going back on nutrisystem. It's as much as getting back on a schedule than losing the unemployment weight. Plus it's cheaper than eating out.
( Pics of the Schedule )
current music: OSI - Blood
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(Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, May 7th, 2009
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7:21 PM - Random notes from the first week back
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Proving that my previous studies, physics and philosophy, have no practical value, those programs are almost exclusively white males. I believe that the classes I'm now taking are of value simply because I'm in the minority. My econ classes are over 90% Asian. My psych classes have about a quarter whities.
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I thought it was curious that one of my psych courses had two teachers listed. Well, I did until I went to class. One of them is very pregnant. Luckily I don't know Lemaze, so I can't help out if she starts to burst during class.
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Since I haven't been here for four years that means that everyone I knew here has left, right? Well, almost. I do recognize a few people. The cashier at the pizza place is the same. I acted like an ass to a philosophy grad student 9 years ago when he was a frosh. Umm, that's about it. Even most of the profs I knew retired. I do remember two people at the dojo though.
The grad student incident was kinda amusing. This was probably in 2000. It was clubs day and all the clubs were on display. I was running the athiest club and displayed books such as "The Case Against God". The booth next to me was a Christian club, which is a highly probably thing to happen. The people across from us found this very amusing and kept laughing about it. The guy in the Christ booth looked like he either found Jesus or was totally blissed out on drugs. He felt the need to save me or something and we talked a bit. One of the things they were passing out was one of those stress balls. You know, one of those squishy balls that are supposed to strengthen your wrist, reduce stress, or something. This one was painted as globe in what I now suppose was an allusion to "♪He holds the whole world in his hands♪", but it seemed pretty random at the time. He gave it to me with a big production. He gave it to me like a peace offering with Christian love in his eyes and a gave a little bow as he unfurled his hands to present the gift. I thanked him. I then looked into the distance and said "I am a vengeful God! I now crush the earth! Grrr!" and squeezed the ball hard. That shocked the guy pretty hard and the people across from us dropped their jaws. It got very uncomfortable. I looked confused and said, "Oh wait, was that my inside voice or my outside voice?" That got a laugh and relieved the tension. I ran into him a few times after that and he always had a look of curious pity, wondering how this lost heathen is making out without Jesus.
He doesn't seem to recognize me and why would he? It's seems dumb to reintroduce myself as that guy who made a jackass of himself 9 years ago. Or to that cashier. "Hey remember how you cashed me out 4 years ago? Yeah, that's totally what you do every day."
----
I haven't seen my roommates much. One lives downstairs and comes up to cook every once in a while. I think he said he is in Lesuire and Rec at Waterloo, so I'll try not to hold that against him. The other is on a coop, so he is not here during the day. He's in third year computer science at Laurier (a.k.a, "the highschool down the street"). There was supposed to be a third roommate. I think he might have died last week. That's the rumour anyway. They had a party here Tuesday night, but I was tired and had a headache, so I was antisocial and stayed in my room.
current music: Frost* - Toys
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(1 counter-rant | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, May 4th, 2009
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10:12 PM - Noise?
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I forgot my alarm clock. Since they are building an apartment building directly across the street and they start in the mornings, getting up shouldn't be a problem.
I was unsure about getting this place as their is a drum set, tons of amps, and a lot of empty beer bottle lying around, so this might be a reheasal/party house. However, I was told the drummer got kicked out of the house and just hasn't bothered to pick it up yet. I also heard he died last week, so who knows what the deal is.
My noise cancelling headphones died months ago, so I might be spending a lot of time on campus. It hasn't been a problem so far.
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(Give your own rant)
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10:04 PM - First karate class back
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| Friday, May 1st, 2009
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10:21 PM - Grade 21? 22?
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I don't have confirmation that I got my courses, but they still have open spaces, so I think it's good. (Update: I'm signed up now.) I put it down for four courses. Econ 101 (micro) and Econ 102 (macro). I was reading textbooks for this (not the same ones though), so I might as well do it the right way. If I read textbooks for fun in my spare time, it's a pretty good sign I want to be back at school taking these courses.
The other two courses are upper year psych courses. I have six psych courses already, so it seems like the most obvious 3rd or 4th degree. Organizational Psychology and Social Cognition are the courses.
Even though I'm in philosophy, I'm not taking any now. The one course I need to get the BA isn't available until January. I might also take an epistemology course in the fall.
I was also looking at CS and religious studies courses. The CS courses all had prerequisites I don't have, but I might take 135 or 145 in the fall. RS courses are iffy. I'd have to talk to the prof first.
I have karate at the Waterloo dojo penciled in for Monday to Thursday, yoga in for Friday to Sunday, and some spaces between classes for the gym. I'll have to drop a lot of that once I get a part time job.
That's the only part I'm worried about. I love learning and being in school, but I don't miss school poverty. This was the first time in a while I didn't get a form pop up when I applied for OSAP that said, "You didn't bring in enough money to met your basic needs. Please explain below how you are supporting yourself." Hopefully I can get a job that will bring me above subsistence this time. Fingers crossed.
Oh ya, one of the kids at the dojo asked me what grade I am going into. That got a good laugh from the parents. "Umm, grade 21?", I replied. It might be grade 22 though. I started in '94 and it's been off and on, so it's a little fuzzy.
The bike is back from the shop and I've started packing. It's hard to know what to pack without knowing where I'm moving to. Tomorrow is room hunting!
current music: iQ - Frequency
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(Give your own rant)
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2:00 PM
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| Wednesday, April 29th, 2009
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2:49 PM - May or May Not
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The register office is telling me I might have to wait until the fall term. It took two days for them to tell me which form to fill out, so I hope they tell me by Friday if I'm enrolled or not. The courses are picked, the moving van is booked, OSAP is taken care of, my initial workout schedule is planned out, and my bicycle is in the shop.
Provided I get in, Saturday I'll find a place and move in on Sunday. I'll have to find a part-time job once I get there. Classes begin on Monday.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
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1:04 PM - Opinion: Religious Studies Is Out of Touch
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There is an interesting op ed in the New York Times called End the University as We Know It. Not because it is a good article, it's not. It's interesting because he is unintentionally saying that religious studies is out of touch. He is just confusing religious studies with The University at large. Replace "graduate education" with "religious studies" and you almost have a good acticle.
The almost is his truly bizarre recommendation that we get rid of the departments as they stand and replace them with topics such as "Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water". Another great example that religious studies is out of touch (the author is the chairman of the religious studies department). I'd agree that religious studies should be replaced with courses in psychology, neuro-psychology, history, archeology, great works, and philosophy and done to the standards of those departments, but a department of Water? An engineering course or two dealing with water issues and a resource management course in poli sci or economics could be a good idea, but an entire department? Huh?
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, April 27th, 2009
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10:43 AM - Waterloo?
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I'm completely bored and the summer semester starts in a week. I think it might be time for Plan B: go back to U Waterloo.
Anyone still in Waterloo? Know of any part time jobs in the area? Need a roommate?
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, April 26th, 2009
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3:22 PM - Tai Chi Seminar
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| Friday, April 24th, 2009
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9:36 PM - Sensei Ricci Seminar
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So I am not burying the lead, I should start off by saying that I really don’t think I broke her hand. Yes, I was the last one to spar with her before she went to the emergency room, but she seemed a bit off when we point sparred. Her energy was way too high for being in the middle of a long seminar. It was either a “someone’s going to get hurt” or a “you just broke something and are having an adrenaline rush” level of intensity. She wasn’t particularly intense when I trained with her earlier in the night.
I overheard that someone elbowed her hand. I don’t remember do that during the sparring. About a half hour earlier she punched my elbow, which was completely my fault, but that was merely a “hey that was wrong” moment.
I sure hope I didn’t break it. I already feel bad that she tried to tell me that something was wrong twice. The first time my hands were up so I couldn’t see that her lips were moving and I could barely hear her. The second time I still couldn’t hear her and we moved to a new partner before she could tell me a third time. Sorry about that.
Okay, so I went to a karate seminar in Grimsby yesterday. It was lead by Sensei Ricci.
( Read more... )
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(Give your own rant)
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| Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
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10:18 PM - I think I'm gonna stay in for the rest of the night
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I locked the keys in the truck and I might have broken some young lady's hand... I think I'm gonna stay in for the rest of the night.
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Monday, April 20th, 2009
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11:35 PM - White Crane Kata: [fill in details here]
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One of the white crane katas, San He (pronouced 'sawn hey'), we did last week felt very familar, but we was told we haven't done this one before. I went back through all my notes to see if I find out which one I did. I have been meaning to make a list of seminars and special classes I've been to as well as all the extra katas I've started as I'll need these lists for my black belt grading, so this gave me an excuse to finally do it.
My notes include a section on white crane that includes a bunch of exercises and then it has "white crane kata" and a long blank space waiting for me to go back and fill in its name and details. Whoops. I asked Sensei tonight and he thinks it is probably "Sho Hakutsuru"
The extra katas are: Wanshu (Waterloo foreign kata – only first few moves), Taikyoku Soto Uke (Waterloo kata), Ananku (Sensei Platt seminar), Noboriru (double tanbo), Arakaki No Jo (jo – elements opening), Techu No Kata (techu), Gekisai Itch Sai (sai – Sensei Yagi), Gekisai Ni Sai (sai – Sensei Yagi), Saifa Sai (sai – Sensei Yagi), Seikun No Tanto (knife), Paqua set, Pinan Shodan (shornji – Dr. DeCunha), Suishi no Kon Dai (bo), Unso (shotokon), So Hakutsuru (white crane kata), Sunno kake no kon (bo), San He (white crane), and Hakutsuru Sho (white crane).
That's a lot of katas. Does this mean I know all those katas? NO! I haven't even attempted many of these for years. My notes for them range from very detailed to long empty waiting spaces. I have video of someone else doing five of them. Does it then mean that I've actually done all those katas at least once? Still no, I've done some of those at least once but certainly not all. It does mean that I can get a black belt who knows one to help me out without getting permission first. I need to pick two extra katas for my black belt grading, so I guess I need to (re)learn at least two.
I still need to learn one more kata for black belt, Wolverine, plus have the rest tight. The rest being Taikyoku Geden, Taikyoku Chudan, Taikyoku Jodan, Taikyoku Mawashi Uke, Taikyoku Kake Uke, Gikisai Itch, Gikisai Ni, Sanchin, Tenchi, Saifa, Seiru, Byakko, Shishochin, Sanseiru, Tensho, Tenryu No Kon, Sushi No Kon, Matsa Higa No Kon, Sekiun No Tonbo, Arakaki No Jo, Matsu Higa No Tonfa, and Matsu Higa No Sai. Plus all the extra stuff I need to be refreshing. Oh man, maybe I should hold off relearning these until after getting my black belt.
current music: Oceansize
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(Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, April 19th, 2009
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5:17 PM - Bday
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| Thursday, April 16th, 2009
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11:34 PM - Spirit Tracker tracker, continued
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Oh. The attempt to use a private tracker again isn't going well.
I downloaded two torrents. A small 100MB video and a medium 6GB video set. I don't know why gigatorrents break down private tracker requirements, especially when that site focuses on gigatorrents, but I've been auto-demoted to Leech already. Two moderators have bumped me up to a regular member, but it automatically demotes me to Leech ten minutes later, so they have good intentions even though that was completely pointless. I've downloaded a few Free-Leeches to see if that can bump me up, but I can't even browse the torrents anymore, so I can't even try to do that anymore. I don't have upload access, so I can't do that either.
It looks like I'll get kicked off on Wednesday. I have to get a ratio of 1.5 before then to start downloading again. 0.5 to get back to a regular member. I'm simply guessing that I'll get kicked off on Wednesday as private trackers don't actually tell you the precise requirements in fear of people gaming the system.
The "seed until 1.0 or three days" rule doesn't seem like it's an "or" after all, so it doesn't fix the requirement to be better than average. There are literally ones of people seeding/leeching them, so I may or may not be able to seed enough to save my account.
If 1.0 is average, I don't get making the requirement to make new users be way better than average to stay on. All this does is promote people from leeching as much as possible in their brief stay.
Too bad they don't just upload the torrents they have that aren't on public trackers to public trackers, instead of going through the pointless exercise that is private trackers. Oh well.
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(2 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
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1:21 PM - Yudansha class
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On Monday we had a three hour yudansha class. That’s a black belt class, but it was open to select kyu belts this time.
( Read more... )
current music: Marillion - Happiness Is The Road
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(Give your own rant)
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| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
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9:59 AM - Private Trackers
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I've come to think of private bittorrent trackers as pyramid schemes. They are great if you are one of the first seeders there, but if you're new, it doesn't work. You're left seeding torrents to no one and watching your share ratio go to ban levels after just one or two gigatorrents. You can either irrationally attempt to seed to get a decent ratio when you know it isn't going to happen or leech as much as possible until you get banned. They also tend to be dickish about enforcing rules to combat systematic problems with their approach, not have enough users to maintain old torrents, and ban you if you don't log on every week.
On the other hand, public trackers have blockable ads. Oh wait, that's not an issue.
So I found a small private tracker that might have fixed some of the problems. Spirit Tracker gets you to seed 72 hours or to a 1:1 ratio. That fixes the pyramid scheme problem as you only have to seed 3 days--even if you are the last downloader. They also have a bunch of "Free Leech" torrents that let you download for no ratio cost, so you can fix your ratio by sticking with them. This might actually work. We'll see how long it takes them to ban me for no good reason.
You have to go to their IRC channel to ask to join.
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(Give your own rant)
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| Monday, April 6th, 2009
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10:13 PM - Close Range
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8:47 PM - Reisman
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Okay, I've been re-reading this section, chapter 5 part B, in Capitalism over and over again. Either I don't get what he is doing or he doesn't even know how to plot a trivial demand-supply chart.
The first 150 pages are horrible, but they are horrible in a predictable way. There are verifiable statistics that are made up, not checked, and not even close to being right; saying something obviously wrong and then giving the obvious objection, only to dismiss it with something irrelevant; saying that things have gone to pot because of socialism and then saying socialists would think everything has gone to pot, but it hasn't because capitalism is awesome; and he doesn't understanding what 'finite' means. Basically all he is doing is rewriting stuff from Rand and Von Mises and stepping up the sloppiness. It's semi-useful as a restatement of those authors, if you are interested in those authors.
This section is different as not only is this the first we are seeing something recognizable as economics, rather than philosophy, but it's also the first time that he doesn't include Rand or Von Mises in his syllabus or have an associated audio lecture. It's only Bohm-Bawerk. The page references are to a different edition than the pdf at mises.org, so I don't know where they point to. It seems to involve Bohm-Bawerk's "marginal pairs", but it not obvious how that applies.
The first thing he does is summerize the standard textbook way of doing demand-supply charts. Okay, he forgets to mention 'equilibrium' which is the whole point, but whatever. Then he says in Austrian economics, the supply schedule is a vertical line. Let me say that again: "a vertical line". The reasoning is that with millions of quantities, the marginal value is zero for the supplier. So the next unit should cost infinitely more? That makes no sense.
He mentions "zero and up", but that should still be a point at zero. Suppliers can sell for more than the equibrium point, especially if they are so small that can't change demand. "And up" is assumed and doesn't need to be graphed.
Here is three paragraphs from the book (pp 154-5 (204-5 in the linked PDF)). The first one states the vertical line bit and the next two has to do with how prices are determined. I can't make heads or tails of how it applies to the discussion.
( Read more... )
Any Austrians know what the heck he is talking about? Up to this point, I've been able to follow him and see what he is doing wrong, but I don't even know what he is saying here.
current music: Wobbler - Afterglow
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(6 counter-rants | Give your own rant)
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| Sunday, April 5th, 2009
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4:13 PM - More Lost Spoilers and Speculations
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| Saturday, April 4th, 2009
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10:03 PM - Writing Project
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I started reading Capitalism by Reisman. I know what you're thinking and yes, that book's level of suck is incredibly high. I attempted to read it once before and I see where I stopped reading the first time. It was the part adapted from Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism which not only sucks, but it makes him a bad person. (Basically America is superior in every conceivable way, we can learn nothing from other cultures, and it is immoral to teach anything but white American history.)
Two benefits have come out of reading this book. One is it made me so bored that I wanted to get a job. That hasn't panned out to anything, but it gets me to want to do anything else. The second is that it's an encyclopedia of suck. Take the worst of Rand and pad it out to 1000 drawn out pages. It's been helpful in my re-evaluation of my economic beliefs and I have been taking notes.
This gives me a plan B. What to do if I don't get a job soon. In September, go back to University to finish things up and get some letters of recommendation to apply to grad school. In the summer, write the GREs (not actually a requirement for Canadian schools, but might be helpful since I've been out for a while) and work on a writing project. It's a project that I have written a table of contents for semi-annually for years, but it doesn't go past that. Maybe with all this time on my hands, it'll get a little further.
I didn't get into grad school the last time I applied, but of Reisman can get a PhD and a teaching post, how hard could it be to get in?
current music: Riverside - Rapid Eye Movement
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(Give your own rant)
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| Wednesday, April 1st, 2009
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9:32 AM - Annual Day of Lame
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I appreciate a good April Fools joke on the internet. I think. I've never actually seen one. All I see are broken websites and other examples of fail.
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(Give your own rant)
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