Perusing Aardvarks

Some level of hell

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:58:00 +0000

This has been floating around the blogs. Who knew I could be a heretic?

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

April Nineteen Albums

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:44:00 +0000

I just alphabetized my cds, so this month you get the first nineteen alphabetically (excluding mentions from previous months)

1. Back in Black - AC/DC

2. Big Ones - Aerosmith

3. Pump - Aerosmith

4. Bachman-Turner Overdrive - Best of BTO

5. Are Me - Barenaked Ladies

6. Disc One - Barenaked Ladies

7. Gordon - Barenaked Ladies

8. Stunt - Barenaked Ladies

9. Guitar StudiesKeith - Bartlett

10. The Information - Beck

11. When I Fall In Love - Chris Botti

12. A Charlie Brown Christmas

13. Greatest Hits - Cheap Trick

14. Blues - Eric Clapton

15. Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues - Eric Clapton

16. Reptile - Eric Clapton

17. Stages - Eric Clapton

18. Songs From An American Movie, Volume One: Learning How To Smile

19. American Idiot - Green Day

Keith Bartlett taught me how to play the guitar real good, that disc was to go along with my lessons. I remember fewer songs from it than I'd like to.

Free Rice or, Everyone Wins

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Do you have some free time and want a better vocabulary?
Visit www.freerice.com/ . You play a vocabulary game, and everytime you get the word right, twenty grains of rice are donated to feed the hungry people of the world. Seriously, how sweet of an idea is that?

No time? Don't care about learning new words?
There's links you can follow to simply donate money. Or you can print a letter to send to Stephen Harper (or somebody else important if you're not from around here). This is a worthy cause, go help out however you can! Go I say!

This Is Serious

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 23:13:00 +0000

Everybody knows climate change is a problem, but who thought it was this big? On top of barley shortages, I read that there may be a worldwide hops shortage! We have to do something, even if just for the sake of the beer. Check out this new talk on TED from some guy about the bigger issue.

You gotta be kidding me

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:10:00 +0000

At least somebody's trying to fight global warming.

Excitement is stirring

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 19:37:00 +0000

I've been pretty busy lately, and looking through my everyday email hasn't been a top priority, so it's only today that I'm getting around to reading this tidbit:

Spring has sprung and we are excited to share our latest news.

We have begun recording our follow up to World Container. We will be spending much of the spring and summer with our good friend Bob Rock who is at the helm once again.

Yippy!!! The Tragically Hip are of course one of my favourite bands, and it seems like World Container just came out, so a new record being prepared already is big news to me. Although it's not going to be coming out for a while, I'm still pumped to hear about it. (The Raconteurs recently did it a little differently, they almost put out an album before telling us about it.)

If you don't know the Hip, but like honest rock and roll, good lyrics, Canadiana, onstage rants, then I suggest checking them out. Up To Here is maybe their best album, but every album they've put out (I think eleven so far) has some solid tunes.

This Week in The Sheaf

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:59:00 +0000

This week in the Sheaf, March 27th edition is here!

Seems that the Sask Party has agreed to extend our tuition freeze for another year. For those of you who don't know, we've had our tuition "frozen" at the same level over the past few years, which has been great for me. However, as many have pointed out, this is a band-aid solution. Besides the simple fact that tuition is still too much for many, as soon as it 'melts' there's gonna be a big jump in tuition and where'll we be? Well, I'll already have my degree so it won't hurt me, but I feel for the future students. Pepler to the government: "no you di-n't." Of course, I think I remember him promising to eliminate tuition completely.

And that was really about it for the first section.

The front of the arts section has a picture of some band, and they're doing the classic everybody stare off into the distance like you have something deep and interesting on your mind, and maybe somebody stare intensely at the camera. These kinds of pictures bore the heck out of me, and I cannot think of what good it does to put it in the paper, other than take up space so that you can write less.

There is a big two page spread on webcomics, which obviously got my interest. Something about it bothered me though. The writer said that these comics could control people, and then halfway through said yes sometimes they do control people oh noes, and then at the end starts to say that comic writers don't think people will do anything stupid because of their comics. I dunno, just didn't work for me.

Also an article on feng shui. Feng shui has been studied and practiced for thousands of years and is rooted deep in organic and holistic traditions. ORGANIC TRADITIONS! YAY! Those sound important, don't they. Oh well.

That's it for this week.

Bonus lyric:
You lured me into repetition, you lured me to want to go to sleep

March Top Nineteen Albums

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:10:00 +0000

As judged by the first nineteen cds I found around my room.

1. Van Halen - 1984
I don't think I really get the eighties.

2. Champion - Chill 'Em All
This is a great album. Even better is seeing DJ Champion live. If you live in Saskatoon, there's a good chance that you have, or one day will. I've seen him perform here three times in the last year. I can't even begin to describe how much I love his concerts.

3.Led Zeppelin (The one with Rock And Roll)

4. Ozzy Osbourne - Under Cover
I bought it by accident, but this album actually introduced me to a couple other good songs and artists. Also, it has three John Lennon songs.

5. Robert Plant - Dreamland
This is one of two Robert Plant albums I own. "How did you come to own two Robert Plant albums?" you might ask. Well, I don't know, but this one has some solid tunes.

6. Shillelagh - Lemonade
This is a band I saw busking in Victoria I think a few years ago when I was on a band trip. Are they still around? I don't really know, but this album is solid fun.

7. Aerosmith - Honkin' On Bobo

8. Steppenwolf - 16 Greatest Hits

9. O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack

10. Eric Clapton - Me And Mr. Johnson

11. Neil Young - Harvest

12. The White Stripes - You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) Single
I really like buying singles and I wish more were available. My favourite part of this song is when he yells, it almost makes you feel like you're right there. And I think the video was shot during their super cool Canadian tour.

13. Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High

14. The Blues Brothers Soundtrack
Do you just listen to soundtracks all the time Corey?

15. Barenaked Ladies - Everything to Everyone

16. AC/DC - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

17. Santana - Shaman

18. Snoop Dogg - Rhythm & Gangsta (The Masterpiece)

19. The Rolling Stones - Beggars Banquet
Two versions of Sympathy for the Devil in this list. One is here, where's the other?

So there it is for this month. Do I have terrible taste in music? You think yours is better? Well what should I be listening to then?

This week in the sheaf: 6 March

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 02:03:00 +0000

I don't really know what James Pepler (or anybody else) really does as USSU president, but I do know he puts on a good show. Apparently he recently spent an entire night in a snow fort to protest housing problems for students. Sweet. Also, he's a funny guy, and I regularly reminisce about the days when he wrote for the sheaf. The article said that students spend anywhere from $300-1000 a month for rent. This isn't exactly true. I spend less then that, but I'm lucky (also my place is a shivhole, but that's another story). In the last year, housing costs have risen %40! There's enough people who have to chose between living and going to school that it's a problem. Also some politicians turned out, maybe all of them NDP.

There's a little opinions article by Bronwyn Stoddard, whom I must admit I enjoy reading. I'm not sure I like the title "Guest Lecturer Visits Wonderland" as the whole time I was reading the article I was waiting for it to refer to some lecturer who had either recently been her, or soon would be. Still, it's no secret that I love Alice in Wonderland, so thank you for that Bronwyn. Also, I have a secret interest in language and linguistics, which is what this article was about (I even took a linguistics course with the author a year or two ago).
It brought up the question of singular/plural distinction vs. the use of non gendered language. This is a big pet peeve of mine. I hate hearing their instead of his or her. Brownwyn seems to be on my side, which makes me happy, as it generally seems to be a losing battle.

Anne-Marie Hickey's article on the internet was somewhat empty, except for the mulitple webcomic references. I urge you to take her suggestions and read Questionable Content and XKCD (at least I think she was recommending it by using a graphic from one of the comments to take up as much space as her article). And Anne-Marie, most webcomics have feeds, and I think using a feed reader would help you keep up.

The letters section of the sheaf is almost always good, and I'm going to reproduce one here:

Dear Vince Friesen, Crystal Clark,
and other borderline-illiterate
pretend-intellectuals,
The word ‘history’ is not derived
from the masculine pronoun; it
comes from the Latin historia.
Compare that to the Latin masculine
pronouns of ‘infit’ and ‘inquit’, then
instead of admitting your ignorance,
cry about the reactionary misogynist
who called you a retard in the Sheaf.
My God (pun intended) Friesen,
you used the term “etymological
precision” 50 words after mutilating
‘history’ into “his’tory”.
That took me two minutes on the
Internet,
Douche Bag!
Pat Thomson

Well put.

The comics section on the other hand. . . I used to love the sheaf comics, but now the only comics in there I've already read on the internet by the time the sheaf comes out.

The Arts section sucks.

24 January: In The Sheaf (part I)

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 20:47:00 +0000

I've been meaning to do this since I got the last sheaf (the student newspaper at my university), but the end of the week was busy and the weekend found me away from home. Hopefully I'll be able to do this weekly.

I'm sure everybody in Saskatoon and Regina knows about the strike last semester that left both universities without support staff for over a month. I think this was widely accepted as "not cool" and one expert found it to be "kind of retarded." I myself don't really get strikes. It always comes off to me as more of a tantrum than a justified method of bargaining. During the month that they were away the university of course became progressively less livable. The first day of the strike coincided with a midterm for me. Unfortunately I had decided to go out the night before and didn't come home. I woke up halfway across the city from where I wanted/needed to be. My friend gave me a ride but neither of us had a pencil (the midterm was all multiple choice and so I needed a pencil to fill out the answer sheet). "Oh well, I guess I'll buy one at school. Can never have to many pencils, right?" Well, it didn't work out that way. Where do you buy a pencil when all the pencil store staff are not at work? Also, where do you buy a coffee when all the coffee store staff are not at work? (I was also in dire need of a coffee, for reasons already outlined. Yes, I could have went to the coffee shop across the street, or in retrospect even Browsers and Treats on campus should have been open, but they were both out of my way and I was in a slight hurry) I ended up getting a vending machine coffee, which everybody knows is probably the best coffee anyways so why didn't I just start with that? and borrowing a pencil from the prof.
And many other strike related problems:

Buses wouldn't cross the picket line (for no good reason) and so I couldn't wait inside Place Riel like I normally would. I had to wait across the street in the cold.
Bathrooms were not incredibly clean (see below).
Sandwiches were much more scarce.
Most importantly to me, all my biochemistry labs were canceled during the strike. I should have had two biochem labs a week. We couldn't because apparently some of the people in the biochem undergrad labs are CUPE? Of course we still had to be evaluated. We were all given the same data and required to write our scheduled lab reports.

And that's just me. Everybody has their own share of sucky strike stories. Even the strikers. Which is one of the reasons strikes bug me. These people don't necessarily want to go on strike, or if they do, they don't really know if they should. But they have to, because they're in a union, and the union says "strike."

Back to the point, Corey.

The front page of the January 24th Sheaf declares "University promises students $25 for services lost during strike" and below is a pretty wicked picture of the president of the university on a twenty.

Laura Keil wrote an article giving details and reactions. Josie Steeves, the USSU member who talked to university officials about this deal sees the offer as a "goodwill gesture" and I tend to agree. I mean, twenty five bucks is bupkis compared to what most students lost, but what's the university going to do about it? Give everybody a full tuition refund for last semester? As Keil reported, the university says they made no money, or very little, off the strike. Maybe we should be asking CUPE for some cash. In the meantime I'm happy to get twenty five bucks, which apparently I can spend on goods and services at the university bookstore, the campus pub, the computer store, or another campus service. Who wants to come to Louis' the tuesday after we get the money? By my calculations I can get seven pints (would be eight if they hadn't started charging a cover, grumble grumble)

Some students, however, are not pleased. Levi Nicholat apparently thought the offer was a "slap in the face." For some reason Levi thinks the strike lasted two months, which Levi points out would be two-thirds of our semester. It didn't. Strike notice wasn't served until the 26th of October, and they didn't actually walk out for a few days after that. A tentative agreement was reached on the first of December.

Still, a few other students raised some reality based points. Books couldn't be taken out of the libraries, costing Grad students research time. A rec hockey player points out that he missed a handful of games that he payed to play.

I think the highlight of the article would have to be Michelle Brock's statements. She is also not pleased with the offer, feeling that the university mismanaged the strike and are now making an insincere gesture. She had a list of things students had to cope with similar to mine, but see if you can spot the difference.
"She says students had to cope for several weeks with bathrooms strewn with feces and tampons, classrooms overflowing with coffee cups, and library services that were largely inaccessible."

Okay, second place in this article I guess goes to the fact that the U of R has also made an offer to it's students, albeit 1/10th the size.
I wanted to make this a review of the sheaf, but I guess I had too much to say on this, so maybe I'll get back to the rest later.

Found on a Bathroom Stall Wall II

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:03:00 +0000

I WOULD BE CHRISTIAN BUT I SO WORRY TO MY C[L]OCK
-ESL Student
-I WOULD BE CHRISTIAN BUT I WON'T
-I WAS CHRISTIAN UNTIL I WAS MOLESTED, THEN I WAS GAY BECAUSE I LIKED IT
-I WAS CHRISTIAN AND IT WAS REALLY OPPRESIVE
Be moral, Go Oral
-for good christian girls or PIITB

BQJ 22 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:40:00 +0000

Matching!
List a: northern, Southern, western

List b: protein, DNA, RNA

Sea Lion Woman

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:23:00 +0000

So I had a really bad day today on many accounts. I started telling everybody that I was so upset that I wanted to punch a sea lion. Turns out I might be able to do this in a productive manner.

BQD 21 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:46:00 +0000

Draw the ring structure of glucose.

The Top Nineteen

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 21:06:00 +0000

Seeing as today is the nineteenth, I'm going to list the nineteen albums that are on the top of my stack right now (that is, not necessarily my favourite ones, just the ones that have somehow made it to the top of the pile on my desk). I plan on doing this every month.

19. The Sound - Mocking Shadows

18. Room For Squares - John Mayer

17. Johnny Cash (It's some collection)

16. Up to Here - The Tragically Hip

15. Get Behind Me Satan - The White Stripes

14. World Container - The Tragically Hip

13. Icky Thump - The White Stripes

12. Grace Under Pressure - Rush

11. Phantom Power - The Tragically Hip

10. Best of Both Worlds - Van Halen

9. Songs From An American Movie Vol. One: Learning How to Smile - Everclear

8. Nevermind - Nirvana

7. In Utero - Nirvana

6. Incesticide - Nirvana

5. No Code - Pearl Jam

4. In Between Evolution - The Tragically Hip

3. Coke Machine Glow - Gordon Downie

2. Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell - Meat Loaf

1. Soft Machine - Teddybears

Somehow all of my Nirvana CDs ended up together, right next to my one Pearl Jam one. That's nice to see that they're getting along. The Hip are maybe a little overrepresented, but that's okay. They're good. I'd like more Teddybears discs, but I haven't found any yet. Please somebody feel free to send me some. I saw the Mocking Shadows a few years ago, I think shortly after they released Out of the Blue, and they kicked it in. I went to a show a few months ago when they released The Sound, and they were quite different than I remembered. I'd recommend getting Out of the Blue though.

My First Album

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 20:33:00 +0000

Through Science After Sunclipse I found a first album meme.

The title of your album is the last four words of the last quote listed on this random quote page.
Your band name is the first article you get by visiting the Wikipedia random article page.
The album background is a (dubiously legal) derivative of the third image on Flickr’s last seven days of interestingness.

Title is from "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty." by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The background is pretty cool. I think it even fits the title.
I'll talk to my bandmates about changing our name to "Payne, Oklahoma"

BQD 11 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 19:37:00 +0000

A peptide bond is not thermodynamically stable, so why don't proteins break down faster?

BQD 10 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:33:00 +0000

What are three "Omics"?

BQD 9 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:20:00 +0000

Which amino acid(s) has(have) two chiral centers?

BQD 7 January

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:43:00 +0000

Does an enzyme change the equilibrium of a reaction?

Somebody gets a free test

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 19:08:00 +0000

So somebody's offering me entries in their contest, and all I have to do is write this, which I should probably be doing anyway. If you're interested in genetic genealogy or if you're interested in genealogy or genetics, you should probably read his blog. If you aren't interested in this stuff, reading the blog will probably cause you to be.

But to the point.
The Genetic Genealogist is offering a free genetic test to one lucky someone who enters his contest. This is REALLY cool.
If you win you can even choose whether you want your Y- CHROMOSOME or your mtDNA tested. Sweet.

I like to read: comics

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:33:00 +0000

Rice boy is a great story with great characters and great settings and great art. I love rice boy.

I live vicariously through A Softer World.

If you don't want knew pictures everyday but you like interesting bits of knowledge about everything, Dinosaur Comics may be for you. It probably is anyways.

The Perry Bible Fellowship may offend you sometimes, or it may make you laugh, or it may make you try something new.

I'm new to Michael's Exciting Life, but dude's got some great ideas, and sometimes I laugh loudly.

I didn't like the most recent Dresden Codak for some reason, but I liked every other one, and predict I will like future ones.

Perhaps you need to be interested in science and math to like XKCD, or maybe it just helps with most of them.

For some reason I think of Questionable Content as a guilty pleasure, even though I love it and don't think there's anything wrong with that. One of my favourite things about it is the shirts, which I want to own more of.

Least I Could Do showcases what I think are the good parts of the jerk in all of us.

I have been with White Ninja for years. It contains the essence of awesome.

If your comic is not listed here it's probably just because I forgot it. Let me know and I will add it.

They aren't friends with Giant Isopods

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 00:09:00 +0000

Giant isopods are not cool to everyone

Found on a bathroom stall wall

noreply@blogger.com (Corey) — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:44:00 +0000

Time to seperate Qubec
-you can't even spell Quebec you dud

Why did "God" give me colitis?
-Bcuz you dot your i's with little circles
-Maybe if you stopped having anal sex you wouldn't have
--I knew all the anal sex was gonna come back to haunt me
-God didn't years of self abuse you gave it to yourself but you can't blame yourself can you
--Why do you think it was years of self abuse that gave that guy colitis?
-Maybe if you had Jesus in your heart these kinds of things wouldn't happen
--I don't know who wrote this but that's not the point of Christianity. Chirst never said anything about making life on earth perfect or without pain. He did promise hope, relationship with God and a perfect afterlife as well as many other things
---And also lots of large breasted women in the afterlife. No wait, that was somebody else. That's a good promise though, maybe I'll believe in that guy
---I don't know who wrote this but Christ also didn't promise jokes, but some Christians get them anyways