To finish undergrad. Econ.

For those who have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "Mr. Swenson" and wish to know:
http://fallenearth.org/blogs/loup-vert/archives/001032.html

Anywhoo, a week or two ago I registered for Running Start spring quarter classes. I'm takin' choir - all 4 days this time - US History 2 (HIST111) at Hawk's Prairie, and a Microeconomics course. I knew who all of my proffessors were going to be, except for Microecon. The course entry in SPSCC's catalog had "staff" as the teacher. "OK," I thought to myself, "I guess I'll just take my chances with this mystery proffessor. He couldn't possibly be worse than the one I have now..."

Well. The class database updated. Guess who's teaching me Microeconomics, five days a week?

Dang, damn, diggity-DAMMIT - Swenson's name was listed in place of "staff."

Quoth I when Swenson entered the Macro. class yesterday: "Hello, my Springtime buddy."

Everyone in my class who arrives before he does gives me their condolences.

Over The Hill

Well, on my Blog edit page, I've had '49' entries and '149' comments for a few days now. I'm a bit tired of the "off by 1" phenomenon, so: The time has come! 50 entries! Hooray!

...ehr, ok. To quote my Physics teacher, "For all practical purposes, [I]'ve shot my wad." (Context: His lecture was on transistors, those thingies that work like a dam for electricity. That line came up while he was doodling on the board during the lecture.)

That's the second time I quoted him today.

Anywhoo, I spent all day out of the house today, fueling myself on Cheez-Its and Kern's, expecting a dinner tonight with a guy from Psych. I haven't gotten word from him, though, so it's startin' to look like flank steak for dinner.

Mmm, cow....

And on a parting note, I took my third quiz of my life, just because I wanted to see which Bebop song I was most like - though I would like to note, I specifically said I was "Lemonade." La voilà:

what's your cowboy bebop theme song?

Lend Me Some French Stuff

OK, Cortni's recent blog ("If you didn't...") inspired me to share with you one of my favorite lines from Lend me a Tenor. It sounds positively Red Dwarf-ish, and you only need to see any one of those episodes to agree with me:

"He's fine?! No, he's not! He's dead! Fine is living!"

And, in other news, I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics recently (oh, wonderful vacation of two days, how I enjoyed thee...), and I decided to give a crazy French name to the main character, as per my habit. Where in Neverwinter Nights I came up with Mauling Matter (Matière Mutilant), Purple Parrot (Perroquet Violet), and Steel Bug (Punaise d'Acier, current character), I found a new favorite name in FFT:

Nombril. ("Belly button")

Also, I checked the French-to-English side of my little dictionary, and discovered this saying:
"He believes the world to revolve around himself." (English)
Il se prend le nombril du monde ("He takes himself as the belly button of the world")

That's goin' up on the French whiteboard next Monday. 3rd-4th year shall be enlightened with verbal ventral antics.

Post-Valentine's Day

Oy, my legs. They haven't been sore like this since track of '01. Oy, my ridiculous high-knee walk won't be happenin' today, no siree Bob...

Last night was the Jitterbug Club's opening dance at SPSCC. The turnout wasn't stellar, since some people probably have better things to do on Valentine's day than dance (like have a date), but the small group guaranteed making quite a few new friends, at least.

I spent a bit more than four hours at that dance making new friends. Methinks I use my left arm a bit too much - the shoulderblade started to complain ever so slightly three hours into the dance. Yet, I still don't think I pull strong enough to get the follow Linday Hoppin'...

Ah, but fueled on one of Oli's granola bars and plenty of water, I stuck around 'til the end, where about eight people remained. I recommend to anybody who doesn't have Friday night plans (hey, it's Olympia, it's quite possible) to come on over to SPSCC'S Student Union Building at six o'clock next week. Parking's free, you don't need to know too much swing to come, and it's always a blast to see Nick (not Wilkins, a tall guy) pull out some extraordinarily stupid move.

He did something that he called the "Magnetic Bumper," or somesuch, which was basically a Linday Hop with many a forward pelvis thrust, training him and his dance partner all across the floor. Oli awarded him with the "Coolest Stupid Move" metal sign.

Now, honestly, who'd want to miss the "Coolest Stupid Move" sign? Hope to see you next Friday =)

The Third Lie

This was one of the "Response" essays from my Writing 102 class. The class was assigned three essays to read; that weekend, they all had something to do with either statistics or 'fuzzy' numbers. I'll give you the titles of the essays I quoted now, since its sorta anticlamactic to end a blog entry with a Works Cited page.

____

Works Cited

Budiansky, Stephen. "The Numbers Racket: How Polls and Statistics Lie." Hatch 164-171.

Hatch, Gary Layne, ed. Arguing in Communities. New York: McGraw Hill, 2003.

Lutz, William. "From Doublespeak." Hatch 171-177.
____

There was a quote that Lutz used to end his essay, supposedly from Benjamin Disraeli: "There are three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics" (177). The authors Lutz, and Budiansky revolve around the same topic, from essentially the same viewpoint: Statistics are the Third Lie.

The Third Lie is considered a lie because of a simple concept in statistics. The mathematics of statistics involves analyzing large amounts of data and seeing how far data fall from the 'norm' of the sample, which is defined by the data en masse. The theory is fine and well, but there is a fundamental underlying problem with statistics: the data. At a dinner, I was in a conversation with one of the executives of Washington State Department of Social Health and Services, and a statistical model came up as a topic. "Now, this model addresses one of the most fundamental issues of statistics..." he started, until I interrupted, "Gathering them?"

While it drew a sagely chuckle from everyone in the room, it was, in context, equal to a well-placed joke about the weather that one would tell on any normal day. To gather raw, unbiased (by the pollster) data is a difficult science of itself. No amateur with a clipboard can draw good data from a crowd. I speak of this as one of those amateurs.

I had a fine exercise in gathering data for a response-to-Freire survey. I surveyed my brother first, who had no objections to answering questions, and answered honestly. That was the most success I had with my surveying career, though; the next person I asked was also a good friend of mine, and after I got the last Boolean response from him, he told me this: "Nobody tells the truth when they see a clipboard and pencil."

I showed up to the next class with six sets of survey answers. Because of what my good friend told me, and my absolute disgust in public opinion polls in the first place, I just faked the last four entries. "...All too rarely is the truth behind the numbers questioned" (Budiansky, 165) - thanks to rarity, I got away with supplying four imaginary opinions. As Budiansky showed the illegal-drug-trafficking industry's 'imaginary number,' I too gave some data to be used without questioning; I just couldn't be sure that anything I would be receiving was the truth, since my poor short-term memory hitches a clipboard to me for data gathering. (See footnote 1)

I discovered, after the survey project was finished, that I had made an error in the survey without thinking about it. In drafting the questions, I had added one word to a question (not my partners; I was alone in suggesting it). I biased a question by inserting one word, emboldened here:
"Would you think the majority of your time in school was blatant memorization?"
"Loaded questions...are one way results can be tilted" (Budiansky, 168). I know I at least influenced the answer of my friend to that question. Of course, I got the answer that I wanted; he and my brother both said yes to that question.

Thus by their yeses, and my predictions that all of the people that I would ask that question would say yes, I got my first illicit poll to give the results I was looking for. Though, everyone in my group would have come to the 'yes' vote on that question with or without my numeric contribution - they all got yeses too, and I will assume them to have shown a little more dignity than I did, by getting flesh-and-blood yeses to prove our point. "Polls seem to present concrete, specific evidence" (Luntz, 174), but as both essay authors made clear, this concrete is only as rock-solid as you are told.

Footnotes:
1.) Was I justified in doing this? Of course not; however, will there be billions spent upon my decision? Since that is also a no, I felt a little less guilty about inventing 66% of my data; however, you all have my confession.

Enseigner

- Verb, transitive; "To teach" en français.

I know that I want to teach when I grow up. Uerh, when I grow older. If I don't get to teach math, I would also be happy with another topic that I've developed a zeal for: Writing.

Honestly, writing classes are pretty ambigious from the lecturer's viewpoint; you can give the same lectures in 101 and 102. My 101 and 102 classes are fairly interchangeable, with the exception of the main project(s) of the quarter.

If I were a writing professor, I would have to give a lecture that at least includes this lovely passage that I thought up tonight:

"Well, I've been told quite a few times, and some of you in Philosophy 102 Ethics may believe, that to attack a person's character is an unfriendly, unsavory, and unsavvy tactic in any class. The student should be allowed to grow on his/her own, or somesuch. Well, to quote Transmetal II Megatron of Beast Wars, in episode 52, 'Suggestion noted - and duly ignored!' as he pushes the Big Red Destructo-Button of Laser-Based DOOM."

I thought up this passage because of the most recent peer review session that the class had tonight. Of the twenty minutes that we had to devote to one person's essay, both reading the essay and critiquing it, I took up at least five minutes in critiquing by myself. Heidi also had quite a bit to say for everybody's essay, including her own; but there is one guy in our group of four that I really don't enjoy as a peer reviewer. (I don't know his name, but I equate his head description with a peach.)

Every week ("every" meaning "both" at this point), he has said so little constructively. Here's a quote from tonight's session:
"Well, [Heidi] gave the history of Ape Language Research...and I thought this was good."
He said even less last week; what's worse, he said what I knew to be nothing at all after I gave my five minute spiel on kidding Heidi for promising World Peace through her essay.

My Megatron quote is directed at this boy; not this "man," but this boy, because he offers so little in group revisions.

I apologize for writing about someone behind his back. But I've taken up the (potentially nasty?) habit of venting lately, and I'm happy with any writing experience I can muster. Speaking of mustering, I'll post another essay in a day or so that I've had quite positive reviews for. Not that it's a matter of pride or anything, but I feel the need to discuss Statistics suddenly.

Chocolate Chip

So, I came home from a drive that I had to take. The drive didn't necessarily go anywhere; there was no final destination in mind, but the car had to be driven. Seriously - I haven't driven the car for two days, and my dad walked out into the driveway and heard the engine's cooling fan whirring. I now know why The Stickamajig has had four dead batteries and one blown main fuse - it wasn't necessarily the fog lights, but that goddamn fan. So, anywhoo, I took a twenty minute, fairly purpose-free drive.

When I stepped into the door, my brother was taking a chocolate chip cookie out of the microwave. Since I knew that that was his third cookie of the day, I tried to think up something witty to instill the slightest bit of guilt in him for consuming so much chocolate before our five o'clock dinner...but this came out instead:

"Another cookie, eh? Well, carpe cookum, I guess."

Heh. Sorry. I guess it was so stupid, it just had to be said.

Advertising excerpt

Nike chose Pruett, a racecar driver, as a spokesperson as the company entered the Indy racing scene (Goldman & Papson, 41). Pruett was, according to the authors' implications, chosen because of his "do it" attitude, exemplified by racing after breaking his backbone in a crash. So, does advertising choose us, or make us choose, because of an attitude? If this attitude that fits the product is present, then must we sponsor this product? If so, advertising has found a new system of measurement; advertising will become a Boolean science, applying a string of 0's and 1's, falses and trues, to each individual for each mutually exclusive "attitude." If the product market continues to grow, one can imagine a second billion-bit long string of information that represents us as individual people, one that could even rival our first definitive information string. Thus shall the age of DNA pass, into the age of the "socially relevant."