Sunset in Mission Viejo

Saw this while walking the dog up on a hill.

Enzyme inhibitors

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dhn5j747_0hswnv8

This is presentation on the pharmaceutical applications of enzyme inhibitors that I did for my Bio 20 class. It doesn't make much sense without my verbose, pedantic narration.

What is this dead animal?

Sea lion? It was about 7 feet long.

There wasn't much smell coming off of it, not even very interesting to my dog.

Tree lighting in San Francisco

Drove up to Fremont and took the BART to downtown and walked around in the craziness. Got a $1 knit cap at H&M. I hear that stands for hags and 'mos, and I always shop there with my mother.

I'm no 'mo, but I think it is good to act like one, or at least dress like one.

I make up for it by working on cars and having a rage problem.

Gatsby's first time at the beach

He saw the water, and a dead walrus. That is a perfect day for a dog.

Fernstrom

Currently we judge cognitive capacity by subjecting subjects to tests which purport to detect the presence of certain capabilities, such as awareness of object permanence.

We like to draw hard lines between man and beast. But I think that such differentiation is neither accurate nor useful.

I think cognitive capacity is not a set of discreet abilities, but a continuum.

I also think we'll be able to measure cognitive capacity, and when we do we should do so in standard units.

I propose a unit; the Fernstrom.

My own capacity would be a 1. A dog might be .2. Politicians., a .1.

Notice

Notice

Well, shit

Just like that, my blog got indexed AND it is the number one result for "spencer fern." I don't know if that is good or bad, but it is what I was going for.

I've tried a bunch of different things, but I think the template change is what did it.

Ugly

I changed my blogs template temporarily to a lame-boring-defaultish one because I'm afraid the old one was causing google to not index my site. We'll see if it changes anything.

Lazy Mythbusters

I'm watching an episode (old one) where they examine the myth that a superhero can leave the imprint of their ring when they punch someone.

To test it, they strapped some pork flesh over skull and punched it with a mechanical arm.

No clear imprint was left, so they called it a myth. This is so incredibly stupid. THE PIG IS DEAD. Any mark left on the skin due to a blow is caused by broken blood vessels, and specifically blood being pumped out of those blood vessels into the interstitial space. You can easily strike someone with any hard object, and leave an imprint of it. They just have to be alive.

Example:

Imprint left on one Wanderlei Silva by a kick from Mirko Filipovich.

ghost calls

I assume someone is trying to prove they can make ghost calls too, well I hope you're proud of yourself. Poor Christian.

I feel better now...

I have a new strategy for getting this math shit done. So I'm much more hopeful I'll be accepted into UCLA's Cognitive Sciences program for next fall. Speaking of such, did you know people are much more generous after looking at a pair of human eyes.

When I say people, I exclude German's of course.

-I'm more than half German.

Math

Right now I'm killing myself trying to cram about 2 years of college math into my brain in about 2 weeks. I know I'm going to fail to achieve that, but I'm hoping to fool a placement test into thinking I am prepared to take pre-calculus. Actually, I probably am prepared for pre-calculus, I have a pre-calc text, and it doesn't seem over my head.

However, the placement test seems to try to select only people who are completely over-prepared for the course it clears them for. Since Von Neumann is dead, I don't think anyone has all of mathematics sitting in their head. So it follows I don't have every bit of algebra and trigonometry in mine.

In math, you learn what you need to learn for the upcoming test, and you discard what isn't useful. Of course math teachers think it is all useful, and it is, if you plan to be a math teacher.

Incidentally, if you plan to be a math teacher, I plan to hate you. Nothing personal.

When I worked in the Physics department, the number one complaint about students was that they didn't know the math which they had to have been exposed to in prerequisite courses. To me it is like complaining that someone can't remember the solution to a Sudoku they did two months ago.

I think a huge amount of this crap is only useful for solving one or two kinds of problems. What math classes should do is teach you how to open the book and find the method which will solve your problem. Every math test should be open book.

How are you doing?

"How are you doing?"

When people ask me this I usually respond with a platitude; "fine." However, it is a question upon which I could pontificate endlessly. This is how I usually feel:
I feel like I'm too good for the life I'm living. I have the looks and acumen that many dream of having, and yet my life is a mess. I dream of driving my 240z, having a good job, and living with a beautiful woman. I could achieve all this, but I feel there is some corruption inside me which handicaps me. Sometimes I wonder if the scars which mark my back don't come from somewhere deeper. Emblems of a crippled sentience.
But then I start to feel that if I didn't live with this negativity and doubt, I would be doomed to live as others do. Maybe if I wasn't so dissatisfied with what I've done, I'd never do another thing.

Anyhow, that is how I'm doing, right now, alone on a weekend night.

Kiva.org

Okay, I don't want the rat leg at the top of the page for too long, so I'm posting much nicer picture of a businesswoman who I helped fund through kiva.org.

You can read more about her here.

Rats!

At the Fern house we have an ongoing war with Norwegian Tree Rats. Our weapon of choice is the conventional spring trap. 90% of the time it catches the rat right on the neck for an instant and presumably painless death.

90%... here is one of the 10%.

Wilde

One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

"Conclusion" on Gale-Shapley

I'm going to write more on this, but I'm going to state my thesis now.

For males, pursuit of marriage is an iterative process where a male "proposes" to progressively less attractive females until one accepts.

Females choose a partner from a pool of suitors and so it is in their best interest not to reduce the pool of suitors by rejecting one unless they have a proposal from a more attractive male.

So, men want closure so they can evaluate their relative worth, and ability to attract females in the future. If a "10" rejects them, then they will start asking out "9's."

If possible, a woman will remain in an unattractive relationship, or put off termination of a relationship until another more attractive suitor appears.

Women who claim to want closure simply believe they have lost their most attractive suitor, and want to reclaim him or move on to less attractive ones.

So, to personalize it, the woman who I was pursuing has cut off contact with me so that she does not need to explicitly reject me. If she returns in two years times, and I am finishing school at UCLA and getting a job at Google, I will hear from her. If I ask why she ignored me all those years ago, she will say something about being busy, and it being hard to get on the Internet where she was.

If she comes back in two years, and I still live with my parents, my car still doesn't run, and I still go to Saddleback community college, I will certainly not hear from her.

Yay ephedrine

Ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are the only decongestants worth a damn. However, they can be converted using widely available regents into methamphetamine. So the government has decided to keep track of who is buying the stuff. You have to present identification and sign a log book when you buy a cold medication with those ingredients. I think you are limited in how many you can acquire.

Yes, 9 grams per month or something. Also, all drugs with this stuff must have some adulterants, they must have gel coatings, and they must have blister packaging.

You also have trouble if you are buying the regents involved. I am not familiar with methamphetamine synthesis, but I have been carded when buying acetone and lacquer thinner I quantities of 1 gallon.

In addition to being a kickass decongestant, ephedrine is an excellent drug for anyone looking to lose weight. Yes, I said anyone. There are contraindications for people with heart, but you are far more likely to suffer from fat-assedness related disease than a fluke side-effect from a mild psycho stimulant.

Anyhow, I use it for this purpose when I diet, and I don't like going to the drug store every month to get an adequate supply. So I've located foreign sources which offer large quantities. I still stay well under that 9g number.

The picture is how they package it, I'm pretty sure it is mislabelled and contains only ephedrine and some binders.

Anyhow, I'm sick today, and I'm sure glad to have the stuff. Until an adequate replacement is created, this will be one of the sillier prohibition measures we have going.
Spencer