eccentric squares

adventures in poor clothing design part II

2009-08-28T00:47:00.000-07:00

i've never been all that fashion concious. a couple years into college, i hadn't heard of abercrombie and fitch, and i asked my friend yaqub what it was. he told me "abercrombie and fitch is where white people buy expensive clothes to make themselves look poor."

not as a matter of fashion, or as matter of socioeconomic camoflauge, but as a matter of necessity, i've been wearing a lot of distressed style clothing. one reason is that i walk 3 miles to work on the beach and another reason is i hate ironing clothes. for whatever reason these wrinkled and disheveled looking clothes seem in.

i seem to have some unfortunate luck regarding cargo shorts though. article of evidence #1 below, my first pair of cargo shorts. after several several washings, it's a little hard to tell now, but there is a small maroon paint drop on the inner right leg. my roommate and i were painting our apartment in that red color and a drop spilled onto my shorts. subsequently, it has come to be known as my superbad shorts.

to spare me and any post pubescent girl that is standing near me any embarassment, i bought another pair of shorts. i had been using the pair below for a couple years when a few weeks ago i managed to sit in an oil puddle or something. the unfortunate placement of this very permanent brown/black oil stain seems to suggest i have the inability to maintain my internal bowel movements. i'm pretty sure i was wearing these when i saw julia stiles.

to replace the above shorts, i ordered another pair of shorts. it would be my first online clothing purchase evar. upon receiving the shorts, i noticed immediately that the yellow staining they used to give them their distressed look is regrettably placed near the crotchticular area. all of my clothing seems to suggest either a mild incontinence or bad ordering/timing in the hand-belt-zipper-in-the-bathroom department.

dining in the dark

2009-08-16T23:22:00.000-07:00

my gf and i went to opaque on friday. kaori and chris had fun in the opaque up in sf, so i figured i'd try eating in the dark. per the opaque website:

Just imagine, that you can not see for an hour or two, that you are abandoning vision in exchange for a new, multi-sensual dining experience. Opaque is enhancing our senses of taste, smell, touch, and hearing by abandoning one that we often take for granted – this is “Dining in the Dark”.

Brought to you by Opaque, the dining in the dark experience allows you to willingly plunge into a world of sensitivity you have never experienced before, taking you through a journey of taste, sound and touch, all in the dark.

(yes, this is a restaurant not some viagra dealer). the restaurant is located in v lounge in santa monica, on 2020 wilshire (heh, didn't even notice the 20/20 reference). we were greeted at the front by what we thought was a doorman. however a few milliseconds after my gf asked him "do you want to see our ids?", i noticed he was blind. turns out all the waiters are blind, and they meet you at the door.

you look through a menu and order in the lounge, which is normally lit. the food is expensive (esp considering they don't spend anything on decor or lighting...), but you're paying for "the experience". after ordering, your waiter leads you single file into the dining area.

the dining area is pitch black. consider what pitch black really means. before you go to bed at night, closer your eyes, and put your hands over your eyes. that's pitch black. stated in another way, based on vision alone, i couldn't tell whether my eyes were open or closed. i was pretty tentative when i first got into the dining area, even bordering on freaking out for a couple seconds, but i settled down after being sat.

the first part of the meal turned adventure is buttering your bread. even grabbing a piece of bread and the bowl of butter is a nontrivial task. a few fingers ended up knuckle deep in butter, but that's not much different from most of my meals i suppose. next, they bring out a small anonymous appetizer for you to identify by taste/touch. it's a pretty easy guess, but i'll give you a hint, it's ellipsoidal and it's got a nice surprise inside (extra credit if you're thinking balut).

eating your salad is pretty difficult when you can't see what's on your fork. often, i'd find that i'd raise my fork to my mouth expecting that there were tomatoes or lettuce on it and i'd find the fork empty. the preferred technique for most of the dishes of the night was using my left hand to push food onto my fork, lowering my head close to the table (to minimize fork to mouth distance), and then shoveling.

next, our waiter came by and told us we were going to play the feeling game. we told him that we were already playing that game, but apparently he had something different in mind. he brought out a bag of small items which we had to figure out. apparently, we were the first people to figure out all of them, althought that may be just something he says to all the guests.

we ordered the filet mignon for our main entrees. the restaurant wants you to believe that depriving you of sight elevates your other senses, namely taste. that may be true, but it's difficult to distinguish the effect from the salty salad or the extra buttery cous cous. i liked the extra seasoning of the dishes, but it may be a little much for some. the desserts were good, but if you're a neat freak, you may have issues eating chocolate lava cake and ice cream in the dark (aka with your hands).

our waiter saw that we were on a date, so he took it upon himself to provide an air of romance, even singing a song. most disturbing was when he snuck up on us to hand me a rose to give to my gf. without sight and given my poor hearing, i lack awareness of my surroundings, so when my waiter snuck up to our table to handed me the rose, i wasn't sure who was grabbing my arm. my gf had told me about what i thought was an irrational fear of hers: of people randomly touching her. now that i've had a large man sneak up on me in the dark and hand me a rose, i can now say i share that same fear.

the bright part of the evening was the after dinner mint. they give you a certs mint, which, when bitten into, lights up like a small thundercracker. sitting in the dark for a few hours makes it seem especially bright, it's actually continues to sparkle for a good time after you first crack into it. all in all, it was a pretty fun night, a little expensive to do more than once every few years, but something you should try out once if you have a chance.

old tricks, new dog

2009-08-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

i bought my D90 ~3 months ago and since then i've picked up a whole bunch of toys to sustain this expensive habit. i think i'm finally at the point where (start samuel l jackson voice from snakes on a plane...) ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! i'm pretty happy with the equipment i have so far, so i don't anticipate picking up any new hardware in the near-mid future. perhaps some software, but as far as hardware, i think i'm done for at least a year or so. the equipment i have so far is:

the nikon D90: i had been looking at the D5000 too, but i'm glad i settled on the D90. i'm not sure how i would survive without built in auto focus. i used to take a lot of photos with my canon P&S, so one nice new feature in SLR land is the ability to shoot 4-5 exposures per second. plus, tv tells me (when has it ever lied?) that women will treat me like ashton kutcher with this camera. i got a good deal on it from samy's camera, whose in store price was cheaper than anything google found (no sales tax!).

Nikon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G ED-IF AF-S VR [Vibration Reduction] DX Lens: this is my default lens (though "default" doesn't really mean as much when you only have 2 lenses...) and has served me really well so far. i had thought about buying a sub 18mm wide angle lens, but the flexibility this lens showed on my hike to the wave made me think otherwise. i know that on my upcoming 14-16 mile half dome hike, i won't want to be carrying more than a single lens.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4D AF Nikkor Lens: i'll switch to this lens when taking pictures of people. on the D90 DX sensor, it's has a 35mm equivalent of a 127mm lens and it opens up to f/1.4, yielding some really good bokeh. helps a lot in low light too, letting me keep fast shutter speeds and lower ISO settings.

a tripod: pretty much required for long exposures like this, also for the few occasions when i need to show my face in pictures.

Nikon ML-L3 Wireless Remote Control: i'll admit, i haven't quite gotten my $15 out of this yet, but in theory i can see it being useful for fireworks and light painting photos. really wish i remembered to bring this and my tripod during our recent bonfire in VA beach.

photoshop: well, i've had this lying around for a while, but i never dove too deep into things. i had been inspired by some old aggressive skate magazines to convey motion by stacking several frames on top of each other. initially i had written a quick matlab program to automate this, but i found i got better results using auto alignment/blending and layer masks in photoshop. manually painting the layer masks takes a little effort, so i may look into writing a more robust version of my own in the future.

a waterproof pack for my canon sd700: there are much more expensive underwater packs for point and shoots, but this one is quite the bang for the $34 bucks.
that sums up all my gear. as they say though, it's not the camera, it's the photographer. (although try submerging your camera and see how well that cliche works for you...)

GET RICH QUICK FAIL

2009-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

given the facebook app on my blackberry and feeds on digsby, i've become somewhat of a facebook whore (as you've probably noticed). i've managed to stay off twitter so far (microblogging for someone that blogs once every few months?), but that doesn't stop me from using it conceptually for my own perverse enjoyment.

i stumbled across this, which reports that twitter now has an API which can be used to compute importance. given the daily increase in the rate at which crap is produced on the internet (i'm not excusing myself...), "importance" in searches becomes more and more ... well important.

>6 months ago, a CS student had asked me for project ideas for his scientific computing class. turns out one of my ideas seems like its about to pan out...

from noel
date Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 10:24 AM
subject Re: Hate matlab!!
mailed-by gmail.com

oh, well here's something that may be relevant to you: who's the most important person in twitter. we can consider who follows who as a directed graph. we know from CS that we can model a graph as an adjacency matrix, where each column (each column is a person) has a 1.0 in the row if the if the person follows the person in the corresponding row. in this, one way to compute "importance" would be to sum of the rows. if your row has the highest number, you're the most important person, because you're followed by the most people. however that can be a flawed model, because your grandmother is following all 87 of your cousins, so she may be unfairly contributing to your family's importance scores. we want everyone to have a total of one "vote".

so in a more refined model, we can normalize each column to sum to 1.0 (just divide by the sum of the column), so everyone has one "vote". this means that the more people you follow, the less valuable your followings are to others' importance.

the best thing we can do is model our importance as a function of the other people's importance who follows us. so this means that bill gates following you is more important than your grandmother following you. so if you imagine one row of the resulting adjacency matrix, the linear system would look something like (x_i is importance of person i, a_i is the coefficient for matrix A, which you create from the above two paragraphs, lets look at the third row of a 3 person twitter universe, and you can't follow yourself):

a_1 * x_1 + a_2*x_2 + 0*x_3 + ... = x_3

if you write that out for every other column, you see a pattern, which can be summarized in the matrix equation Ax = x. this is identical to Ax = lambda*x for lambda = 1, the canonical eigenvalue equation. so basically, the importance score would be the eigenvector for the normalized directed adjacency matrix of twitter. the highest values in the resulting eigenvector x would be the most "important people". so someone who is followed by lots of important people would be the most important person.

the practical difficulties in this is that the size of the matrix increases in N^2. and for twitter, there are tons of users, probably in N ~= 1e6 or 1e7. the dense matrix can't be represented in memory, but with some tweaks, you probably could represent (some?) of it as a file on disk. so given that you can't just pass in this monster matrix into matlab's svd(A, 'econ'), how can we compute this? if you haven't done it already, you can use a simple power iteration scheme for eigenvalue problems. basically, come up with a random vector and just keep multiplying the matrix by it (then normalize). so then all you need to do is write a matrix-vector multiplication for however you represent your matrices.

note that the above is completely inspired by google's page rank algorithm, which effectively is the world's largest eigenvector computation.

adventures in poor clothing design

2009-07-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

i have a fat head. not figuratively speaking, but literally speaking. as in, the ratio of the circumference of my head to my height is larger than that of the majority of the populace. granted, it's not as big so as to cause birds to fly into it, but still, it's pretty big.

so i usually end up buying L/XL hats. i picked up a L/XL hat at lids the other day and it's still way too tight on my head. i end up getting headaches because this thing ends up depriving my brain of oxygen.

i picked up a pair of riding jeans at del amo motorsports. they have abrasion resistant knees, but more importantly, they're not tight. i have serious difficulties finding jeans i can wear nowadays. i realize that tight pants are the style now, but i can't have people knowing what's on my mind at all times, can i?

the thing about these pants though is that instead of a zipper, they have this button fly. that's all well and good, but the bike i ride is naked, meaning there is no front windshield or fairing. what ends up happening while riding on cold nights is that arctic blasts of frigid air flow over my gas tank, directly into my crotchticular area. the space between the button flys is just large enough to permit freezing gusts of air to chill the frank and beans. and we know no one likes their franks and beans cold.

missed connections: julia stiles

2009-06-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

for reference, see: http://losangeles.craigslist.org/mis/

WHERE: the ralph's supermarket on admiralty and mindanao

WHEN: 11:30 friday night

YOU: julia stiles, beautiful hollywood actress. remembered from such films as 10 things i hate about you, save the last dance, and the bourne movies.

ME: this guy + 20 years

WHAT: with your stretched black limo outside, you were grabbing some fruit from the produce aisle, no doubt to provide yourself a healthy snack before a night on the town. i had a basket filled with gatorade and arizona iced tea. in my left arm, i was cradling an extra large 12 pack of charmin extra strong toilet paper.

i looked at you with a look of confusion and delayed recognition. you looked at me like i was anticipating a night of explosive diarrhea. i think we had a moment.

adult swim: day 1

2009-06-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

nowadays, it's pretty much an accepted scientific fact that swimming is an unnatural activity, unparalleled in the realm of human endeavors in terms of its akwardness and lack of real functional utility. in my estimation, no more than 3 to 4 human beings are swimming at any time on the earth, and no more than 10 in the history of mankind have mastered its voodoo-like nature. so, as true man of science, it probably won't surprise many to learn that i can't swim.

it's not that i'm afraid of the water. just this past weekend, i went to the beach and pool. i've gone snorkeling (in water with high saline content) and jet skiing. i've gone boogie boarding in virginia beach. i've just never really learned how to propel myself through the water without the assistance of a giant wave or an internal combustion engine. just never got around to learning the actual mechanics of swimming i guess. it's not some deeply seeded emotional trauma that resulted from a childhood event. it was a deeply seeded emotional trauma that resulted from when i was in high school.

in july of 1996, my family decided to make a trip to jones beach. it just so happened to be the day after a hurricane, so the waves were pretty big. what i lack in swimmability though, i make up for in height and in a poorly developed instinct for self preservation.

there were a lot of people in the water, all happily jumping or treading water with the hurricane-produced waves, when a large number of them started to go back to shore at the same time. it became more difficult for me to catch a breath, as the waves would crest just above my face. i swallowed a lot of water. my cousin and i were caught in the current and couldn't get back to shore. i remember calling for help, but the people around us were (understandably) trying to make it back to shore on their own (i resigned myself to haunting them if i would have drowned). i flailed around under water for what seemed like an eternity...

...when my arm grabbed onto what seemed like a small rolled up carpet. serendipitously, a benevolent shag carpet had appeared and saw fit to save my life. actually, it wasn't a carpet, it was just the exceedingly hairy arm of the lifeguard who had come to rescue my cousin and me. being dragged back to shore, literally clinging for dear life on this follicle forest of an arm; that was probably the most emasculating experience in my life.

fast forward to today: working out in the 24 hour fitness in glendale, i've since overcome my fear of wet hairy arms, and had my first swim lesson. initially, i had feared swim lessons because i had imagined a horrific scene involving being surrounded by a bunch of little kids doing cannonballs into a 4' wading pool with me desperately clinging onto my arm floaties and loch ness monster innertube. reality was not so far from this vision...

my class was held in the middle lane of the "splash" pool, which has a maximum depth of 4'. there were a whole bunch of kids showing off their "backstrokes" and "freestyles". the lanes around me were labeled "guppy" and "minnow". it wasn't quite so bad as i had imagined though, because instead of loch ness monster innertubes, they gave us foam kickboards. including me, there were 4 people, a 14 year old boy, a 40+ year old mother, and a college age girl.

i'm the worst swimmer in the class. we haven't actually started swimming yet, but i find myself unfloatable. i like to imagine this is attributable to nonexistent fat stores and high densities of fast twitch muscle fiber, but this is rejected easily via cursory visual inspection. though i did beat the 14 year old kid in a kickboard race. heh, go crying back to your mommy sucka!

new camera w00t!

2009-05-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

i'd been wanting to pick up an SLR for a while, but until recently, i hadn't wanted to drop the $ on one. a couple weekends ago, i picked up a nikon D90 and an 18-200mm f/3.5 VR lens. was going back and forth between the D5000 and the D90, but decided on the D90 due to the built in AF motor and a lusting after some lenses without AF built in. i also signed up for a photography class at a local camera shop. having worked on telescopes and electro-optical sensors before, i feel like i already know all the technical details, but it's nice to hear the creative guidelines they teach. and it's also good, because it forces me to go out and actually take pictures...

not all black people look alike

2009-05-17T14:22:00.001-07:00

it's just the ones in the NBA and hollywood. to review:

kanye west and michael redd:

chris rock and aaron brooks:

andrew bynum and tracy morgan:

oh and all white people look the same too - michael rappaport and brian scalabrine:

physically fit. physically fit. physically physically physically

2009-05-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

in everyday conversation, whenever i ever hear the adverb physically used, i'm immediately struck by the inescapable mental image of a large, single pant-legged, gap-toofed colombian man repeating:

i like to move it move it
i like to move it move it
i like to move it move it
ya like to MOVE IT!

recently, i've been on a workout kick. i have a gym in my apartment, but i lack the motivation and attention span to do anything useful in it. combined with my naieve faith in the internet and infomercials (i once bought a tobi steamer sincerely believing in the power of steam), i've found myself trying out a bunch of different fitness fads. here are my takes on some of them:

P90X

this is a set of 12 dvd's that are hawked on afternoon infomercials. i got the set in NY a couple christmas' ago. all of the exercises can be done at home with a minimum of equipment. a lot of the movements are body weight exercises (push ups, sit ups), and the rest either utilize dumb bells (i only have a pair of 15lb and 25lb) or a pull up bar. the claim is that after 90 days (6 1 hour workouts a week), you'll have reached an extreme level of fitness.

i did it for ~45 days or so and i saw pretty awesome results. i went from being able to do a 2 or 3 pullups to ~15, and the layers of fat that lovingly cushion my hardened core of steel began to shed. note that after i saw the results, i stopped caring, after which i regressed to my previous form in well under 45 days.

crossfit

i had read on a blog (which i can't find anymore) about this new fitness fad. i recall having read that the workouts were so intense that they keep buckets around the gym for people to puke into (i've since verified this as fact). the blogger said something along the lines of:

after you complete a crossfit workout, you fully expect for someone to hang a gold medal around your neck and sing the national anthem with you

i can also attest this to be true. as an example, one workout is the murph, which entails:

1 mile run
100 pull ups
200 push ups
300 squats
1 mile run
For time. Pull ups, push ups and squats can be broken up and scaled as needed. Start and finish with a mile run. If you've got a twenty pound vest or body armor, wear it.
**There will be a 1 hour cut off time.**

yeah, you read that correctly. you're expected to do all that (100 pull ups!!!!) in under an hour. and should you have the requisite level of masochism, you are welcome to bring a 20 lb weighted vest. in hindsight, i was fully cognizant of the madness that it involved, so i'm not entirely sure why i decided to sign up...

prior to signing up, they give you a baseline fitness test. it's a fairly standard set of exercises which by themselves, seem manageable, but are timed and ordered in such a way to really push your limits. with significant effort, i was able to complete the test in a reasonable amount of time, but when the sales pitch came afterwards, i had to hurry it along, because i was not feeling well. i hurried the sales pitch along then ran to the bathroom where i promptly experienced several dry heaves. i never actually threw up, but i hadn't been that close since the last time i drank.

in the classes, with everything being timed and recorded on white boards, you'd be forgiven if you thought that this brand of shame-induced fitness was what compelled people to push themselves. that's partially correct, but in the classes, there's this difficult to describe element of teamwork (commiseration?) that pushes you. it may be stockholm syndrome, but whatever it is, it's a damn good workout. every week, i'm sincerely scared to go, but afterwards, i'm always proud to leave.

yoga

initially i thought that yoga was for women and oddly colored indian men with hyperextending joints, but i was wrong, yoga is no joke. i attended a class in santa monica that was run by this guy who reminded me of ben kingsley as gandhi, except with a hint of a belly. he was not very jolly.

in this class, i discovered i have a somewhat underdeveloped proprioceptive sense. that is, i don't really know where my body parts are at all times. like i can see the people contorting themselves into these positions, but i can't quite figure out how to position myself in that same way. feeling like you don't know where your elbow is, is a unique experience to say the least. oh yeah, and i also don't know the names of all the body parts they used either.

the portions of the class i was able to keep up with though were pretty intense. it's a large room, but it's packed with people and they close the doors and windows. i don't think i've ever sweat as much in my life. oh, and i heard horror stories about certain colon relaxing contortions which make people fart, but thankfully, no one in that class had their colon that relaxed.

parkour

Parkour (sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement^[1] (English: the art of movement) is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.^[2] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment—from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls—and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Parkour practitioners are referred to as traceurs, or traceuses for females.^[3]

i saw a video online of people vaulting off buildings and climbing over landmarks and i thought "i'd like to do that". i have a somewhat colorful history of criminal tresspass, so i figured parkour would be something both fun and useful! i found a class at a gymnastics school, where the floors are springboard and everything is padded. they have a video of a class and looked like fun, so i signed up.

the class i attended was focused on rolls and balancing. there was a good amount of time spent doing plyometric exercises and stretching and then it broke into the parkour portion. we practiced shoulder rolls, which are intended to safely decrease your momentum after jumping off something. afterwards we worked on balancing, which basically entailed running forewards and backwards on balance beams, in different positions. it wasn't quite the workout of a crossfit or P90X, but it was definitely a lot of fun.

*note. you have to take off your shoes when you work out in the gymnastics gym. recall that people are running around doing backflips and stuff, so they get sweaty. this means that the place smells of feet (not an overpowering stench of, but the definite hint of. like if someone were to put one of shaq's dirty socks in your backpack and not tell you about it). so since you're rolling and crawling around on all fours, i did detect trace amounts of foot when i smelled my hands afterwards.

on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony aka my weekend

2009-05-04T02:06:00.000-07:00

on friday night, i went for sushi with kelly and marty. they asked me if i wanted to be third wheel on their date to x-men origins. my girlfriend and i had just broken up, so i had been planning an eventful evening of watching melancholy music videos reflecting on the nature of faith/relationships/commitment. but i figured why not? my ex would be enjoying a weekend of excess and debauchery in vegas, so i would one up her in the excitement department by seeing a comic book movie with two dudes. besides, whenever i see the way kelly and marty interact, it reminds me that true love really is possible.

before we got into the movie, marty suggested that we each pretend where we're one of the x-men. he immediately called dibs on wolverine. i told him this was a lame idea...because everyone wants to be wolverine and the only way that would be realistic is if we were the different wolverines from the infinity of different continuities in the marvel universe. and lets face it, those storylines are all pretty lame.

being serious now

after seeing the movie and going to bed, at around 4 in the morning, i was awakened by a woman's terrified scream. she was literally screaming for her life, at the top of her lungs. she was crying HELP! and GET AWAY FROM ME! and from the way her voice trailed off, it sounded like she was running away from something.

i don't know what i was thinking, or if the superhero movie somehow invaded my (sub)concious, but something compelled me to try to help out. for whatever reason, i didn't think of calling the cops, my first instinct was to go wherever the screaming was. i got up and ran out of my apartment towards the dog park, where i thought i heard the screaming. the gates to the park were locked, so i climbed over one gate and hurdled over another. i heard more screaming from the parking garage, so i ran into the visitor lot where i saw a young woman and a shirtless man with bloody gashes on his back and on his face, bleeding all over the parking lot. i guessed the woman inflicted those wounds while attempting to defend herself. the woman saw me and screamed HELP ME, HE'S BEEN CHASING ME WITH A KNIFE!!!

less serious, but this honest to goodness all really did happen

standing there shirtless, i'm not exactly the most physically intimidating presence. at dinner that night, kelly had ordered 70+ pieces of sushi between the 3 of us. i have a mostly lanky build, but after devouring what seemed like sea world on rice, i imagined i look like a single-pea edamame pod when viewed from the side.

for whatever reason, i also imagined that there would be other people that heard those blood curdling screams and that i would be standing united with a full contingent of concerned citizen do-gooders. but the now sobering truth was that it was just me, standing there shirtless, in my old navy pajama pants and brookstone gell slippers. unless he was an abused filipino child, i don't think me brandishing my tsinelas and threatening GUSTOMO PALO?!?!?! would do much to deter the alleged attacker.

despite the situation, i am a fairly calm person, so almost non-chalantly, i asked them what was up. he said something about her stealing $300 from him and she just kept screaming that he was trying to kill her. i told them we should just call the cops, but for whatever reason, neither of them seemed receptive to the idea. later on, i learned that she was a hooker and he was umm...in need of a servicing. i never found out what exactly caused this though.

i calmly told him to give me the knife, and to my surprise, he just handed it to me. the intensity of the situation dropped down several notches when he handed me an undeployed swiss army knife. granted, it is technically still a knife, but to me, being attacked by someone with a swiss army knife is just one step above being chased by someone with a toenail clipper. he then told me he was just going to slash her tires, because she wouldn't give her the $300 she took from him. (much later, i would kick myself for not asking her to give him a coupon or voucher or not asking him if she had indeed given it to him, then he should ask about her return policy)

the hooker got into her car and backed out of the parking spot to get away, when the guy started kicking and punching her car. he ran up to the front bumper and like an angry monkey, began pounding on the hood of her car with both fists. she gave him a look and then hit him with the car! in the 15 feet she pulled out, she had accelerated and braked fast enough to pick him up off his feet and fling him off the car into a brick wall. luckily, since he was only 6 inches away from the front bumper, he immediately got up. she drove away another 30 feet, but the damn idiot chased after her again. she stopped and it look like she considered hitting him again (it would have been really really messy if she had...), but decided otherwise and drove away.

seconds after she drove away, 4 cop cars arrived. when they learned he had a knife, they put him in the back seat of one while they took my report. i was able to report with precision and objectivity, the preceding events, including the model, make, and year of her car and its exact license plate information. but when they asked me to describe the hooker, well, that's when things got a little hazy. i gave the police lady the general details of her height, weight, race, and hair color. but when questioned on how her hair looked and the details of her dress, i drew a blank. to be honest, i wouldn't be able to identify either the guy or the girl in a lineup, i have seriously bad face and fashion recollection.

to review, we have the following (at least, per my interpretation):

prostitution
theft
assault
battery
maybe even attempted vehicular homicide

at the end of the ordeal, while listening in on the cops' conversation (remember, they all heard my report), i hear the gem:

well what i want to know is...was there a crime committed?

where your textbook dollars went

2009-04-08T00:58:00.000-07:00

chances are, that if you were in a real major in college, you took a calculus course. and if you took a calculus class, there's a good chance you probably used one of these (assuming of course you're around the same age as me):

i remember stewart's textbooks for being expensive, around $100 per book. we had to buy both the single variable edition and the multivariate edition, some of us even went off and bought the accompanying workbooks. well in case you're curious as to what dr. stewart was doing with his millions earned off abject college students, he's gone off and built a $24 million house with lots of curves, glass, and a concert hall:

The home's owner is equally eccentric. Jim Stewart, who will only say he is in his 60s, is a top-shelf classical violinist who earned his millions writing calculus textbooks. The math professor named the building "Integral House", after the calculus sign. Soft spoken -- he stumbles frequently when asked questions about his success -- Mr. Stewart also loves to throw spectacular parties like his annual Halloween costume ball (last year he donned a red dress to appear as the courtesan Satine from the movie "Moulin Rouge!").

heh, truly an eccentric square.

what personality is behind this blog?

2009-03-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

i stumbled across this recently. it's a website which claims to characterize personality based on writing style. according to business week:

What is your blog’s personality type? A new Web site called Typealyzer will analyze your blog and tell you what it says about you. Typealyzer is a research project that looks at how language reflects a person’s psychological type and his or her motivations and interests. The site was created by Mattias Östmar of PRfekt, a Swedish research and development company focused on media analysis.

For the past two years, Östmar has been collecting sample texts from blogs, based on research about personality type and writing style. The site uses a tool to run a statistical analysis of the text to come up with a word frequency algorithm for different personality types. After the blog is scanned, Typealyzer comes up with personality types derived from the Myers-Briggs model for looking at how people perceive the world and make decisions. You can find out your personality type by taking a short quiz here.

i think personality tests are a load of crap, although much like crap, in certain situations, it can be at least amusing. the results from my main blog page are:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time

apparently, from my main page, it has determined me to be a legwarmer wearing teenage girl with an unfortunate penchant for catching a wet frisbee with her grotesquely-deformed-three-fingered hands.

note that the typealyzer only reads the first page you give it. my blog is 6 years old (this month, w00t!) and has 616 posts, so i was curious to see what it spat out for other parts of my blog. here's the results for my actually worth reading category of posts:

ESFP - The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

according to my brain activity chart here, i would seem to be some sort of obsessive compulsive zen aromatherapist. oh yeah, and from the picture, apparently i have a small bladder and i drink carbonated blood from a wine glass with my remaining hand (the other was surgically replaced by a scarf).

and when i feed the typealyzer the geekiest category of posts in my blog:

INTP - The Thinkers

The logical and analytical type. They are especially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

i would continue making some snide remarks here (esp about the image of the androgynous satan worshipping mac user), but i can't seem to get parse past the =! symbol.

a quantum of solace

2008-12-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

in this dark cesspool of despair we term human existence (which may be more appropriately called a shit filled shaft fest), there are few joys. the first and foremost is death, which mercifully terminates our pitiful existence (in the climactic finality of a fiery explosion if we're lucky). the only other joy available to us, where if we're so lucky we may find a quantum of solace, is the mcdonald's dollar menu. for over a decade, buying a $1 double cheeseburger from the mcdonald's dollar menu has provided me a proverbial umbrella in this urine tainted shit storm (where the clouds have diarrhea), we call life. for in that small comfort, that infinitesimal respite, i felt i was able to work the system: to get my money's worth, to receive the nut due to the squirrel facing impending road kill. that my friends, is over.

the day of the $1 double cheeseburger at mcdonald's is over.

civics quiz

2008-12-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

i got 27/33 for 81%. try it.

Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions is the third major study conducted by ISI on the kind of knowledge required for informed citizenship. In 2006 and 2007, ISI published the first ever scientific surveys of civic learning among college students. Each year, approximately 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given a 60-question, multiple-choice exam on basic knowledge of America’s heritage. Both years, the students failed. The average freshman scored 51.7% the first year and 51.4% the next. The average senior scored 53.2%, then 54.2%. After all the time, effort, and money spent on college, students emerge no better off in understanding the fundamental features of American self-government.

Finding 1:
Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy

Finding 2:
Americans Agree:
Colleges Should Teach America’s Heritage

Finding 3:
College Adds Little to Civic Knowledge

Finding 4:
Television—Including TV News—Dumbs America Down
Finding 5:
What College Graduates Don’t Know About America

Additional Finding
Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public

BROOKLYN!!!!

2008-11-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

even though i lived in the city for 4 years, i never really explored brooklyn.

the only times i found myself in brooklyn were when i was living at 200 water street (view from my window above) and i had fallen asleep on the downtown A at 4 in the morning. i would wake up in brooklyn, dazed and confused, take the A back to manhattan, oversleep my stop, and repeat ad infinitum. one night, i think i made 3 full round trips into brooklyn while oversleeping my stops.

with the lack of good pizza on the left coast, i've found myself hitting up some famous BK pizzerias. so far i've hit up grimaldis under the bridge and drigg's in williamsburg. i'll post up my reviews after lucali's and one more round at umberto's, but in the meantime, i figured i'd post up some pics from annie and my inadvertent explorations of brooklyn

the walk across the brooklyn bridge is actually pretty short. i do tend to walk faster than most olympic runners and small propeller driven aircraft, but it didn't seem like more than a 10 minute walk across.

while on the brooklyn bridge, you can see the east river, the statue of liberty, downtown manhattan, midtown, and the manhattan bridge. it can get a little cold, but it's best to go at night. less traffic and the nyc skyline at night is unparalleled.

also pretty cool in the bridge area is the river cafe. there's a $25 per head minimum, but it's a chill place for dessert after the pizza at grimaldi's and it's got a great view.

see the rest of the pics in a flickr slideshow

on being a free agent and looking to sign

2008-11-25T12:17:00.000-08:00

i was recently chatting with someone that i'd gone on a date with many many moons ago. this is a direct and unmodified quote:

remember taking me to see american beauty as our date? did you know you probably killed the aspects of anything 'date'

LOL!

the fugees featuring orrin hatch and ted kennedy

2008-11-25T07:12:00.000-08:00

the NYT and sfgate report that (along with a series of pardons) president bush recently commuted the sentence of the rapper john forté.

No one who received clemency Monday approached that level of national renown. But because of Bush's actions, Grammy Award-winning rap artist John Forte of North Brunswick, N.J., will be released after serving about half of a 14-year sentence for aiding and abetting possession with intent to distribute cocaine. Forte, whose clemency bid was supported by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, has been scheduled for release Dec. 22. He had performed with the Fugees and is a friend of and former backup singer for Carly Simon, who lobbied senior lawmakers including Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., for his early release.

i remember john forte mostly from the (fu|bee)gees staying alive video. here's an excerpt of what would be some telling lyrics from the 1997 song:

[John Forte]
I more than just a rhymer you still a small timer
Hopin that the game treat that ass a little kinder
Every step tangoed, your beef don't concern me
I'm eatin mangos in Trinadad wit attorneys (oh yeah)
(hatch and kennedy were lawyers before politicians)

My crew slang flow worldwide like a current
Went to every spot, where nobody got insurance
(in 1997, hatch and kennedy pushed through the state children's health insurance program)

Brother do the math, you ain't half near exotic
My man's claim true, you, forget about it
Po-Po just a nuisance, like my influence
(he had 7 years commuted off his sentence!)

Well recognized you a lie tryin to do it
Got juice told your lady, oops, we nuts baby
Smooth and charismatic automatic you gon save me (Forte)
God bless the dead as my son survive
We strive to teach the youth baby, and stay alive
(teach the youth how to sell cocaine?)

A Random Walk: Ever So Sweetly

2008-11-04T23:52:00.000-08:00

and then she stabbed me, but ever so sweetly.

For me, the sensation of a 6 inch piece of steel plunging into my flesh, was at least initially ... well ... unremarkable. In retrospect, I would have imagined more of a "AHHHHHHH SHIT!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" sort of moment. I mean, every movie and television show I've ever seen with a person being stabbed and bleeding to death has resulted in the victim screaming bloody murder. Screaming "bloody murder", would of course be an appropriate response to being murdered quite bloodily. In the very least, the situation would warrant a loud shout of distress or perhaps at a minimum, an alarmed, yet polite request: "please mam, would you kindly remove the cutting implement from my body with all due haste?"

Sadly, I lacked a commensurate response for the occasion. My initial thought was more of a: "Well...that's a unique feeling." The excruciating pain and profuse bleeding would very quickly follow, but before that, in a brief moment of clarity, I somehow realized that this sort of conclusion to the evening was very much inevitable.

I first saw her at the bar. I'm not sure what she was dressed as, but it looked to be one of those typical Halloween costumes for women over the age of 18. That is, it looked like some skanked out variant of a very mundane occupation. Like sexy librarian, or sexy cop. I'm somewhat amused by those costumes as I'd challenge a costume maker to come up with a skanky mummy or a voluptuous refrigerator costume. With those goggles sitting on her head and that frilly white dress and corset, maybe she was a sexy-dress-wearing-aviator? a sexy, but severely astigmatic duchess? whatever it was, her costume was definitely sexy.

As for me, I went all out this October. I bought $120 worth of glowing necklaces. The checkout clerk at Target asked me if I was throwing a rave and I was somewhat taken aback that a 15 year old even knew what a rave was. But I impressed him by telling him that I was creating a Tron costume. At this, I felt somewhat offended: Did this upstart yahoo dare to share or even appropriate childhood memories and pop culture references which were rightfully my generations'? Usually when this happens, I revert to my precanned tirade that starts with the high, reliable, die-cast-metal quality of transformer toys in the 1980's and ends with expensive, complex, and low reliability video game hardware of the 21st century. Since making my own glow in the dark Tron costume this year was fairly time consuming, I decided otherwise.

I was quite the hit at the party ... with guys my age. At least a dozen guys complimented me on my Tron costume. But every girl I tried to hit on thought I was either a Star Wars character or an inordinately safety conscious bicyclist at night. That all changed when I saw her. She was stunning.

She approached me. She brought me the first drink. She suggested we go into the hidden room. In a retro themed club packed with over 200 party goers, I wasn't even aware there was a hidden room. I was a mess of lips, hands, and tongue. Normally I can hold my liquor, but with my drunken reflexes, making out with me was more like being greeted after a long work day by your Labrador Retriever. I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but I think I licked her nose. I was about to apologize, but decided not to, since I don't know ... maybe a crazy girls like this has a nose fetish or something. Her kisses were soft and gentle, with what I would realize as a deliberate finality to them. She removed my helmet and ran her hands through my hair. She looked deeply into my eyes. If I had better awareness, I may have even caught the tear in her eye.

With things going this well, I decided to go in for the kill. I went to go remove her bra. Now I've removed quite a few bras in my time, but in my state, undoing those two metal hooks were like dealing with two B cups attached at the base by a rubik's cube. Her affinity for rube goldberg night wear was to the extent that after I removed it, I wanted the president of the United States to put a gold medal around my neck and sing the national anthem with me. When I released the metal hooks, I looked down at her perfect body. And then she stabbed me, but ever so sweetly.

hawaii flickr slideshow

2008-11-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

ikinawanastayalittalonga

2008-10-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

NaNoWriMo: take 2

2008-10-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

having read a couple of juan's bost posts and currently finding myself in the mood, i think i may take another shot at NaNoWriMo:

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

i got as far as writing my glowing review page and maybe a few thousand words last time. we'll see how far i get this time. so keep an eye out for the nanowrimo2k8 tag at the bottom of posts.

arnold palmer: the refrigerator raider

2008-10-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

there are certain items which are more skillfully created by specific people. some people prefer german engineered cars. some people prefer sneakers which can only be sewn together with the tinniest and most nimble of cambodian childrens' hands. i prefer iced tea and lemonade which comes from lemons and tea leaves personally picked by 79 year old professional golfer. nothing squeezes lemons like arthritis.

the green mullet: a captain planet retrospective

2008-10-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

on heroes:

in times of crisis, our nation turns to its heroes for guidance and leadership. and by heroes, i'm invoking the pre-2001 definition of the word hero. so while they have no doubt displayed exemplary courage and valor in the face of adversity, the following occupations are excluded from the pre-2001 definition of the word hero: police, firefighters, military personnel, and former mayors of nyc. so then pre 2001, who were our heros? well as it turns out, our heros were those with catchy theme songs that told us they were our heros:

EAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRTH!!!
Fire!
Wind!
Water!
Heart!

GO, Planet!

By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!

Captain Planet, He's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero
He's our powers magnified
And he's fighting on the planet's side

Captain Planet, He's our hero
Gonna take pollution down to zero
Gonna help him put asunder
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

"You'll pay for this, Captain Planet!"

We're the Planeteers
You can be one, too
Cuz saving our planet is the thing to do
Looting and polluting
Is not the way
Hear what Captain Planet has to say

The power is yours!

on hollywood:
much like captain planet, in hollywood, there is a long and established tradition of celebrities using their combined powers to solve real world problems. world hunger¹, the first iraq war², and black blindfolds³ are just a few of the problems hollywood has solved with their combined musical and acting abilities. and just like ma-ti (aka heart, who wielded the fearsome power of: talking to monkies), there are some whose presence only serves to diminish the collective contributions. and those people are (respectively):

latoya jackson, tito jackson, and ...well... every jackson listed except michael¹
cyndi lauper - didn't girls just wanna have fun?¹
michael bolton - no talent assclown¹
the futuristic cyborg peter cetera (aka optimus prime in love)¹
don king, jean claude van damme, and mike tyson - OMGWTFBBQ²
fred savage and the fonz (their inclusion is offset by alyssa milano)²
ja rule - FAIL³
lil kim - DOUBLE FAIL³
fred durst - TRIPLE EPIC FAIL³

again on ma-ti

seriously. everyone has some badass power like fireballs or tornados and tidal waves. even geordi laforge can shake the ground with his constipated shouts of terror. and you can talk to monkies?!? even michael jackson could do that. at least your heart shaped power ring kept you from being emasculated.

on the 1990's dancing with the stars:
other notable celebrities involved in captain planet:

Whoopi Goldberg - Gaia (1991-1993)
Margot Kidder (aka lois lane) - Gaia (1993-1996)
LeVar Burton (aka mr. reading rainbow, who is constipated while shouting "EARTH!" ) - Kwame
Scott Menville (wayne's best friend wart from the wonder years) - Ma-Ti
Frank Welker (aka soundwave from transformers) - Suchi
Ed Begley, Jr. (the only on the list to drive an electric car)
Phyllis Diller (as of this writing, she's still alive. nearly immortal, she derives her power from the mystical hollywood squares)- Jane Goodair
Danny Glover - Dr. Apollo
Louis Gossett, Jr. - Commander Clash
Steve Gutenberg (police academy)
Mark Hamill (luke skywaler)
Kadeem Hardison (dwayne wayne from a different world) - Goki
Neil Patrick Harris (doogie howser) - Todd Andrews
Phil Hartman (you may remember me from such characters as lionel hutz)
Helen Hunt
Casey Kasem - Lexel Starvak
Ricki Lake
Mark Langston (threw the grand slam pitch to tino martinez in the 98 world series)
Danica McKellar (winnie cooper)
Don McLean (american pie)
Rita Moreno (from west side story)
Kate Mulgrew (captain janeway from star trek voyager)
Lou Rawls - Dr. Rice
Fred Savage
Elizabeth Taylor - Todd Andrew's Mom
Ted Turner - Fred Lerner
Dionne Warwick (1-800-psychic)
Bob Weir (grateful dead)
Vanna White - Laurie Saunders
Edward Asner - Hoggish Greedly
James Coburn - Looten Plunder (1990-1993)
Jim Cummings (winnie the pooh and tigger) - Sly Sludge (1993-1996)
Tim Curry - MAL (1991-1996)
Jeff Goldblum - Verminous Skumm (1990)
John Ratzenberger - Rigger
Meg Ryan - Dr. Blight (1990-1991)
Martin Sheen - Sly Sludge (1990-1993)
Sting - Zarm (Season 1-2)
Dean Stockwell (brother cavil from battlestar galactica) - Duke Nukem (1990-1992)
Peter Cullen (optimus prime)
Townsend Coleman (michaelangelo from TMNT)
Brian George (restaurateur babu bhat on seinfeld)
Tony Jay - (a former shakesperean actor who voice acts a yeti)
Robbie Rist (aka cousin oliver from the brady bunch)

on ma-ti as a recursive allegory for hollywood and the real world:
in terms of solving real world problems, acting and singing are like shooting out a heart shaped beam at monkies from your effeminate gold ring.

on me:
WTF. did i seriously just spend all this time reading and writing about captain planet?!?!

¹ we are the world
² voices that care
³ what's going on

on the bailout

2008-10-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

for the most part, i'm politically apathetic. i can't stand politics (except when parodied by tina fey). and i think our current voting system (yes, there are alternatives - i like borda count) is pretty shitty in that it merely presents a false sense of choice and influence. since politics tends towards value judgments and since i don't believe anyone can really be convinced of anything, i find arguing politics is a giant waste of time.

it sucks because i'm addicted to cnn and npr. add to that the fact that i am a voracious reader (favorite morning read: cereal boxes) and i just can't seem to escape this bailout stuff. so, i decided to do some poking around on the bailout subject. if you check out around page 262 of the bailout bill, you'll find lots of pork. so much so that it's no longer kosher (yuk yuk).

Title III
Sec. 308 - Increase on limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
Sec. 309 - Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa
Sec. 310 - Extension of mine rescue team training credit
Sec. 314 - Indian employment credit
Sec. 316 - Railroad track maintenance
Sec. 317 - Seven year cost recovery period for motorsports racing track facility
Sec. 319 - Extension of work opportunity tax credit for Hurricane Katrina employees
Sec. 322 - Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia
Sec. 325 - Extension and modification of duty suspension on wool products; wool research fund; wool duty refunds
Title IV
Sec. 401 - Permanent authority for undercover operations
Sec. 402 - Permanent authority for disclosure of information relating to terrorist activities
Title V
Subtitle A - General Provisions
Sec. 502 - Provisions related to film and television productions
Sec. 503 - Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children
Sec. 504 - Income averaging for amounts received in connection with the Exxon Valdez litigation
Title VI
Sec. 601 - Secure rural schools and community self-determination program
Sec. 602 - Transfer to abandoned mine reclamation fund

i couldn't bring myself to read much more than that, but it's interesting since a certain presidential candidate who voted for this prides himself on cutting pork. i've been poking around trying to find out more why exactly this bailout is necessary, but i seem to be at a loss when understanding why credit should be so pivotal in daily operations (...like salaries?!?!?!) of companies. perhaps i'm confusing intuitive rules of personal finance with some non-intuitively-obvious rules of corporate finance? this SNL video clip seems apt:

also, i was curious to see what alternatives were out there to funding this bailout (sure, lets make all taxpayers invest in shitty real estate!) and i stumbled upon the block quote below. anyone have any pros/cons to this? to me, this seems attractive in that taxpayers (well ones that aren't immensely wealthy) wouldn't directly foot the bill. and it has a measure of punitiveness (is that a word?) for us angry citizen types. plus, we already have excise taxes on more pedestrian forms of gambling. what's derivative speculation other than a slightly more institutionalized form of gambling?

Speculators buy $500 trillion of securities derivatives each year and don't pay one penny. A mere 1/10 of 1 percent sales tax on purchases of these derivatives would raise $500 billion per year to pay for their bailout. Let the speculators fund their own bailout

update: ok, so i found this as a con to a derivative tax:

Korea will simply kill its derivatives market when it decides to impose a tax on derivatives transactions, warned a foreign executive specializing in brokerage of equity-linked warrants (ELW).

``It's quite likely if you have a very onerous tax, of course depending on the size of the tax and how it is applied, you might kill the market,'' Ross Gregory, Korea head of Macquarie Securities Group, said in an interview with The Korea Times.

He added that such taxation will potentially deter a certain trading pattern and investors from the country's derivatives market.

Thus, it will significantly dampen and damage liquidity underlying the derivatives market even more so amid the financial fallout, and the option should not even be considered furthermore, with or without taking into account of global market conditions.

of course, this quote should be taken with a grain of salt ... as it was taken from someone who likely has a conflict of interest in this area. oh and it's probably also from one of the papers that brought koreans fan death.

eccentric squares

adventures in poor clothing design part II

dining in the dark

old tricks, new dog

GET RICH QUICK FAIL

adventures in poor clothing design

missed connections: julia stiles

adult swim: day 1

new camera w00t!

not all black people look alike

physically fit. physically fit. physically physically physically

on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony aka my weekend

where your textbook dollars went

what personality is behind this blog?

ESTP - The Doers

ESFP - The Performers

INTP - The Thinkers

a quantum of solace

civics quiz

Finding 1:
Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy

Finding 2:
Americans Agree:
Colleges Should Teach America’s Heritage

Finding 3:
College Adds Little to Civic Knowledge

Finding 4:
Television—Including TV News—Dumbs America Down

Finding 5:
What College Graduates Don’t Know About America

Additional Finding
Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public

BROOKLYN!!!!

on being a free agent and looking to sign

the fugees featuring orrin hatch and ted kennedy

A Random Walk: Ever So Sweetly

hawaii flickr slideshow

ikinawanastayalittalonga

NaNoWriMo: take 2

arnold palmer: the refrigerator raider

the green mullet: a captain planet retrospective

on the bailout

eccentric squares

adventures in poor clothing design part II

dining in the dark

old tricks, new dog

GET RICH QUICK FAIL

adventures in poor clothing design

missed connections: julia stiles

adult swim: day 1

new camera w00t!

not all black people look alike

physically fit. physically fit. physically physically physically

on the unreliability of eyewitness testimony aka my weekend

where your textbook dollars went

what personality is behind this blog?

ESTP - The Doers

ESFP - The Performers

INTP - The Thinkers

a quantum of solace

civics quiz

Finding 1:Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy

Finding 2:Americans Agree:Colleges Should Teach America’s Heritage

Finding 3:College Adds Little to Civic Knowledge

Finding 4:Television—Including TV News—Dumbs America Down

Finding 5:What College Graduates Don’t Know About America

Additional FindingElected Officials Score Lower than the General Public

BROOKLYN!!!!

on being a free agent and looking to sign

the fugees featuring orrin hatch and ted kennedy

A Random Walk: Ever So Sweetly

hawaii flickr slideshow

ikinawanastayalittalonga

NaNoWriMo: take 2

arnold palmer: the refrigerator raider

the green mullet: a captain planet retrospective

on the bailout

Finding 1:
Americans Fail the Test of Civic Literacy

Finding 2:
Americans Agree:
Colleges Should Teach America’s Heritage

Finding 3:
College Adds Little to Civic Knowledge

Finding 4:
Television—Including TV News—Dumbs America Down

Finding 5:
What College Graduates Don’t Know About America

Additional Finding
Elected Officials Score Lower than the General Public