by zach @ . December 18, 2009 . 11:59PM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 16, 2009 . 3:49PM
I wanted to show Internet how cool I was for buying this vintage clock radio, which is half-broken. I don’t know what I don’t know about taking pictures of things in the dark that have screens, but you need and hate using your flash.
Now, that doesn’t convey the awesome that is me. Without flash, it was an overexposed piece of crap. Oh, what to do? Then I remembered that some guy was doing portrait photography by using a coffee filter as a ghetto flash diffusion unit. Some tikcering with the clock later (I really wanted it to work!) I ended up with this:
Mucho improved, right? You can tell it has separate volume controls for the left and right channel! Kick ass!
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 16, 2009 . 12:41AM
It is geting pretty late and I’m supposed to be studying for a Physics final, but I just finished watching the documentary The War on Kids. I’d suggest it to pretty much anyone, especially if you have pre-school kids. I’m not really qualified to make any points the film didn’t, but I wanted to share a quick story from when I was a high schooler.
I used to get in trouble for being defiant. I’ve always had trouble accepting authority, of course I had two parents who weren’t ready to accept authority and hate institutions more than I do. The punishment regime at my high school was pretty tame, though, this being pre-Columbine. You’d receive demerits. A demerit was 1/6 an after-school detention. So, I’d manage to rack some up by being late, or talking back (I love being talked back to, myself), what have you, and then I’d have to “suffer” a 2 1/2 hour after-school detention.
Detention was in the library. There was no talking in detention. You could work on your school work, read a book, or quietly write. Of course, kids from the age of 13-16 (the ages I went to that Jr./Sr. high school) would just think it was all sorts of hellish. Except I never really let it bother me. Why? Because I read and write as a hobby. Sure, I’d rather go home and play Super Nintendo or a rousing game of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, but it was pretty easy to blast through half a Tolkein or a (easy) history of the American revolution instead. Or maybe I’d write that golden missive, that wonderful single page of tightly-packed handwriting that would make that girl finally swoon over my manliness interpretation of bad heavy metal lyrics. And I’d go home, not a better person, not really a bother to anyone.
What was the lesson? If you are a bad person, you have to sit in a quiet library? I want to be a villain, then.
Of course, I didn’t have to worry about being tazed or screamed at by some Loch Haven alum who never had problems fitting in when THEY went to high school. The punishment regime would work as long as I pretended it did. And in turn, the school would pretend that I was being taught some sort of soft music-backgrounded sitcomesque life lesson. The only life lesson I really learned is that I could read a book through the apocalypse before it truly bothered me, and to always have something to read in case life got boring on me.
Variety’s Review
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 15, 2009 . 8:33PM
For the visually impaired, you can click for enormousvision.
For the really visually impaired, I pulled out the following objects when I got home from taking a political science final today:
- Game Boy Pocket (red) with Pokemon Blue (blue)
- Shure SE110 headphones
- My 8GB iPod Touch in a white inTouch case
- Keys, featuring the world’s slowest flash drive.
- Wallet ($6)
- Blackberry 8930 (aka Tour, Sprint)
- Orbit (peppermint)
- Dixon Ticonderoga (#3H)
- Kumo pencil sharpener.
- Pentel Clicky-Eraser jam.
- Moleskine 18 month academic planner – hardcover.
I always see these kind of posts on Flickr.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 12, 2009 . 1:44PM
In the three texts, Love’s Alchemy, The Tao Te Ching, and The Trial and Death of Socrates, wisdom and sight, seeing, and using these visions are inexorably intertwined. In each of the three texts, the nature of knowledge is given to the reader, while not being the central message of any of the texts, is central to the message nonetheless. Vision is something that we all have. We all know the world around us through our eyes and sight. In order to describe a spiritual existence beyond our tangible, visible world, then, comparing it to the one before us is a necessary exercise.
I love getting weird Google visits. And I had a thought that I’d just as soon put out to the world instead of an essay:
Do we need to talk about the nature of the metaphysical, and spiritual knowledge as being as such because of the Hero’s Journey? By the time of the writing of such books as, oh, I dunno – Exodus, did people know of tropes? Was there trope-filled-also-ran writing? Did ancient authors have to go through a lot of scene setting (okay, this happens in a world you can’t even SEE!) to separate their works from the Gilgamesh/Perseus/Theseus/Heracles figures? To guarantee avoidance of comparisons to the ancient Michael Bays, myth creators (or aggregators) went to great lengths to talk about a spiritual existence beyond our senses.
Just a thought. Also, I’ll be timing how long it takes me to get into first page of Google’s results for Mosaic 851 and/or Temple University.
by zach @ . December 11, 2009 . 11:59PM
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 8, 2009 . 8:53PM
I really like cruising the “other” section on The Pirate Bay, looking for some weird stuff. As a current Physics student who has finals next week, I took a peek at the torrent above. The bottom comment pretty much says it all when it comes to the usual character of this community. My favorite by far though, is the Dark Mission lecture I downloaded where we went from “NASA is hiding the truth about mars” to “NASA is full of Nazis, Masons, and Magi” in about 40 minutes of absolute drivel.
Anyhoos, there’s good stuff on there if you are looking to learn science, hacking through a thicket online to get to something like the Feynman lectures.
If you catch yourself in the path of 9/11 truthers, there’s always the very well-written report that Popular Science published in 2006. Treating conspiracy theorists like misguided children doesn’t help, actually arguing doesn’t do a lot of good either. Suffice it to say that a conspiracy theory is a mental shortcut that allows a person to skip some severely complicated or emotional stuff, and that it’d be hard to drag anyone through that unless they’re willing.
The reason why youth pastors start at 24k a year and the average computer scientist makes $98,000 in their median year midcareer is because facts can say whatever you want them to, given enough framing and juryrigging.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 8, 2009 . 5:55PM
In what may can only be described as a mid-afternoon malaise, I was on the Canadian Club whiskey’s website, thinking about the kick-ass fonts they use in the “your dad” campaign that is featured there. After figuring out nothing, and already having a Canadian Whiskey that barely comes in a glass bottle in the house – I thought, hey, maybe our friends at CC can help me figure out how to get some Canadian Whiskey drank in this house because I am just so tired of looking at it.
After recommending that I drink it with cola (how sophisticated!) or ginger ale, I came across this:
Hey! I bought a bottle of Triple Sec a while ago, when I was all flush thinking “it’s important to be well-rounded.” And, whaddya know, I also had some lime juice (close enough) that I was going to spice my Gin and Tonics up with (FAIL).
*if I smuggled this bottle of Black Velvet (which is a terrific country song) back to Canada, would the bottle saying “Imported” make it a liar?
So how is it? Pretty good, actually. Never having Triple Sec before (at least not in a home cocktail capacity) meant I was thinking “Oh man, this stuff is gonna be like rocket fuel,” and after that first non-wimpish manly sip, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how well the flavors compliment each other. Seriously, though, Canadian Whiskey doesn’t go in ANYTHING, at least in comparison to Gin.
by Zacharias @ http://inexactitu.de . December 5, 2009 . 4:32PM
According to the Wikianswer that I just made based on 15 minutes of intense cookie eating/internet researching, the average American reads nine books every year. I’m fairly sure this means actual books, not book-like substances (i.e. anything that Kirk Cameron has published) – but I digress. This semester, I seemed to always be on Septa, mainly because I was going to two colleges at the same time. As much I enjoy reading dead-tree, I also have a hard time listening to Wagner, ignoring my fellow passengers, and actually reading. Thusly, audiobooks. Since audiobooks are much easier to read (pirate) – I decided to challenge myself with some formidable works.
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
Ayn sounds a lot like the German “1,” by the way. Since this is easily the most formidable tome a lot of people will ever read in their lives in the scope, at least, I felt that it was time to tackle this before I was all old. Was it any good? meh. I can see how this can be seen as “important” – or at least important to the formation of western thought. The question, of course, would be, were works like The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged symptoms of a post-war America ready to be more assertive, or the cause?
Here’s a thought: Once you read this book, you can save the cost of the book just by not giving change to poor people anymore.
The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence of Evolution – Richard Dawkins
Mr. Dawkins’ most recent work, of which I’ve read about half of at this point (of his, shall we say, consumer-targeted) works didn’t do the job that I’m hoping for, which was to get Jenny interested in science, biology or evolution. Or at least catch a nidge of my Anglophilia. Without a doubt, this is an essential work, one that thinking people need to have in the old intellectual toolbox.
I feel like this book is at the sharpest point, a x and y that are, beyond at this point, the crossroads of the mutually exclusive notions:
- Scientifically Proven
- Easy to read.
After reading the God Delusion and the Selfish Gene (which, at this point is 30% Introduction and Afterwords, erratca, and the like), I’ve seen the improvements that Dr./Sir Dawkins has managed to make concepts like Phenotyping (the lack of transitional species in the fossil records) and irreducible complexity more understandable and certainly has the leverage of logic. The problem is that without at least a high-school understanding of how the scientific method works, its very hard to say that this “scientific belief system” is worth more than some religious view.
The introductory notion of having to perform a rearguard action is one that belies a core notion I’ve taken from this book: Unless you are wiling to go out there and shout down a preacher when he says “God created man” – those on the side of reason and logic are always going to be on the defensive.
The Tipping Point – Malcom Gladwell
Of course things work this way, dude, take a math class. Oh, and thank you for:
- Reminding me why I don’t read business books.
- Being short.
In all seriousness, though, the case studies are at times interesting, at least from a pop culture historical standpoint. I can’t really say that it’d HURT to read this, just that I’m having trouble thinking about how this is terribly useful from a self-employed, one man business. If you are in charge of a brand with some sort of reach, yes, by all means, but until you are off the ground, you can keep this towards the back of your “business reading” list.
Of course, the weapon of choice to get these ideas in your head consist of blobs of ink smeared on dead tree. Next time, I’ll touch on these.
by zach @ . December 4, 2009 . 11:59PM
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