| this blog now resides in a nicer residence, http://www.escval.com
reasons for the move:
it makes use of a registered/dedicated domain name that would otherwise be collecting dust.
no advertisements of any kind.
far more customization options.
to further emphasize the change, I've retired the blog name 'brain juice' in favor of 'escape validity'. see you on the other side. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| people pay a premium for goods that exhibit prized characteristics. I'm curious how a consensus is established about what these characteristics are. like the explanation for so many things, it's probably a combination of learned behavior and instinct, the exact proportions of these two ingredients depending on the person and the good in question.
I'm struck by how many dollars could be saved by someone whose ideas regarding prized characteristics of goods directly opposed common consensus. it would be effortlessly frugal living. take these three food examples:
day-old bagels are packaged together and sold at half price on the discount rack.
yogurt past the sell by date is donated to the food bank.
box wine...'nough said.
it's one thing for some hag to enjoy these "lower-end" foodstuffs remorsefully, wishing they could afford fresh bagels, bottled wine, etc. it's something quite different if there's a person out there who genuinely prefers goods with unpopular characteristics (stale, approaching rancidity) to those goods with characteristics favored by the majority of people. essentially, they would be paying less to buy things they enjoy more.
look at wine closer. the only thing I know about wine is that its price range varies from being free to being so expensive that its purchase serves more the purpose of being a symbol of social status than a beverage to accompany a meal. I'm guessing that the more expensive a bottle, the closer a wine approaches the ideal qualities which wine drinkers have been conditioned to believe the perfect wine should possess. this means that an experienced drinker wouldn't have much trouble lining up samples of wine in order of cheapest to most expensive. the ideas about what makes a good wine good have been so well established for so long that they're unlikely to change anytime soon, but I'm entertained by the idea that a social outcast, who has no preconceptions about what a good wine should be like and doesn't operate under the assumption that the more expensive the bottle the better the wine, could prefer box wine to a $500 glass of cabernet sauvignon.
obviously, this idea applies to all goods, not just food. so, for example, someone who prefers acrylic to real cashmere wool and capitalizes on the lower cost also. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| ever since I dropped out of ee 354 last spring, I've been followed by a shadowy fear lingering behind the scenes. 354 is a pre-requisite for 434 and, having dropped 354 last spring, the only way I could graduate this coming May would be to take 354 and 434 together, 354 acting as a co-requisite. throughout the summer and last fall I was comforted in the knowledge that other students had been given permission to do this, and that I had a classmate who would be attempting this herself at the same time. still, last semester it was sometimes difficult to concentrate on my coursework knowing that whatever victory I might manage in finishing the semester with good marks could be rendered bittersweet if I was denied permission to take these two courses side by side the following semester.
finally, today, this lingering fear has been decisively dealt with. shall this student be allowed to take 354 together with 434?
434 instructor: yes
ece department head: yes
associate dean: no
verdict: no
the girl I referred to earlier was given permission since her final failing grade of 'D' confirms that she had been in 354 till the end, whereas my withdrawal 'W' indicates I was not. their logic is sound, I've no reason to be angry with the associate dean, he's doing his job of maintaining the integrity of the college such that the program will be ensured continued ABET accreditation.
it is a major blow, pushing my graduation back an entire year till May 2010 on account of a single 4 credit course, since it's only offered in the fall. it makes me wish I'd never dropped the course, or at least consulted with the prof. beforehand, especially since she told me afterward that she was confident I would've done fine. I should've trusted my history of earning better grades than I anticipate.
I can't help but wonder if I have an aversion to success. maybe, inexplicably, I was hoping this would happen.
I've never wanted to leave fairbanks more than now. my adviser predictably advises against dropping out of the program, but I've long known that I could not wait a further year to graduate. I want to move away from this place. I don't know to where. possibly a foreign country, though it's unlikely I could become a citizen of any of the countries I'm interested in. after all, I'm sure that being 13 credits shy of a bachelor's of science in electrical engineering is reduced to high school graduate as far as immigration officials are concerned. this place makes me sick. the university was the only thing keeping me here.
update, jan 28th: the associate dean reversed his decision, thereby restoring my May 2009 graduation. I got the phone call just a couple hours after dropping off a letter of appeal to the dean's office. it's funny, though, since the associate dean's change of mind was totally independent of my appeal to the dean. upon hearing the good news, I called the dean's secretary, informing her that the issue had been resolved, and asked that she dispose of the letter before the dean arrived at the office, not wanting to jeopardize my good fortune by unleashing the unknown consequences of the associate dean being contacted by his superior about an issue he had already resolved in my favor. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| these past few days I've been eating out of habit, not out of hunger. a glance at the clock. a cursory check of short term memory: how long has it been since my mouth was occupied with food and my jaws occupied with the chewing motion? this sort of thing has happened before, I am not concerned.
maybe this is a manifestation of being anxious.
maybe this is subconscious conditioning for homeless living.
maybe this is evolution at work. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| seven eighths through. I'm hopeful that the prospect of graduating in may will motivate me to at least pass all four classes that remain. schedule for the spring:
course (credits)
EE 354 Engineering Signal Analysis (3)
EE 434 Instrumentation Systems (4)
EE 493 Sustainable Energy Systems (3)
ESM 450 Economic Analysis & Operations (3)
the best thing about next semester is I only have one lab course. the worst thing is EE 354, which I dropped out of last year. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the idea of working as an ambulance EMT is becoming more and more attractive. so much so that it's beginning to motivate me to get a driver's license. two things:
1. while even most emergency cases might not be life threatening in the time spanning the ambulance ride, some certainly are, and EMT is one of few professions where your actions can be so immediately perceived as a barrier or passageway between life and death.
2. I expect that within a couple years of this type of work, I'd begin to think of strangers as mere bodies, not people. or, at least, first as bodies, second as people. personal friends I've known for years would retain their character and depth of person, and new people I got to know well would develop these qualities over time, but everyone else I would perceive as vessels of blood and water. I would see them as objects of remarkable complexity, with inputs, outputs, fluid pressure variability, bearers of interconnected systems, etc. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| my poor financial management skills have been given more funds to play with; I've received another scholarship. my perplexing success in this domain makes me wish I'd started applying for free money much earlier in my college career.
in april I meet with my private scholarship sponsors for breakfast at a pomp and circumstance recognition ceremony. since this scholarship was targeted exclusively for engineering undergrads, I'd like to tell these people that I have no job prospects related to my major and that I intend to become a high school substitute teacher for math, physics, and english. why? so that, sitting across from them, I might witness faint expressions of dread on their faces, dread resulting from a combination of disgust that their money has been wasted on so undeserving a candidate and the knowledge that, once granted, the gift cannot be rescinded. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I apologize in advance for the content of recent posts being mere summaries of what I've been doing. this one is not different.
we went out to the living room theater and saw let the right one in. best movie I've seen in a long time. if you haven't seen it yet, don't. wait till we can watch it together.
I recovered from a brief cold the day after my family returned home. it's unlikely there's a connection, but I'd like to think there is. if the cold had persisted, I'm confident I could have still walked into the chill wind and rain of portland nights, wrapped in the warm arms of a fever. as it is, I bought a rain jacket and my sinuses are clear.
after the tween vampire flick we went to a pizza joint. I got a slice of olive/mushroom + breadsticks. since I was chewing when the breadsticks arrived, I indicated with my hand rather than verbally that everyone was welcome to them, this invitation fascilitated the girls reaching across and tearing off a piece or two of the baked dough and dipping into the blood red sauce. the music there was above average, imo. during a particularly impressive track, I went to the counter and was informed that the band was 'black dice'. I write this mostly for my own personal future reference.
upon entering the flat I downed two cups of water and am now thirsty for a third.
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| I'm staying with pat, suzette, avtar, savage, and dimn, the latter two being cats. it is a good life. today I finished the poor mouth, subtitled a bad story about the hard life. it's by the author of at swim-two-birds and was checked out by pat at my recommendation when we were at the library, this library's copy of the second book not being shelf available. it is translated from traditional gaelic, though worth reading just the same on account of the consistency of the narrator's tone and the abundance of fine humor. to quote john updike "Patrick C. Power has performed sorcery in translating a work so specific in its allusions and exotic in its language. again and again, so consistently that we come to take it for granted, Mr. Power re-creates Gaelic music in English."
I could move to portland in an instant. the public transit system here gets praise, though downtown and most things of interest are a pleasant distance walk from the apartment. I access that area via portland state university campus, thick with the walking of like-aged liberal youth. I spent some hours at powell's, the nation's largest independent book retailer. I bought two books recommended to me by people I think highly of, and two books by my favorite author up till then lacking in my collection.
last night three of us went out to dinner with suzette's real father, a kind man good for conversation who picked up the tab also. later that evening, back home at the apt., we were visited by three raccoons, whose wishes for cans of cat food were enthusiastically granted by pat. they're admirable creatures in both appearance and manner. I've not seen the use of paws approaching as closely the likeness of hands in any other wild animal.
the music scene is very healthy here. concerts spill into the weekdays because the weekends afford too little time. tomorrow night I'll check out a "compelling computer composition competition" at a place across the river in southeast.
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| the tone of this post might be somewhat influenced by at swim-two-birds, a book I started for the 3rd time last week and finished for the 1st time last night. I'm liable to write in a manner similar to the way in which what I'm reading is written, fair warning.
spent christmas day, and days preceding/proceeding that occasion, with mother's sibling(s) in victoria, or alternately nanaimo, british columbia. following are aspects of the subsequent travel to portland which I consider noteworthy, listed in roughly chronological order.
- the seagull that hitched a ride on the deck railing of the ferry I boarded to cross the waters between victoria, b.c. and port angeles, washington. it swooped elegantly onboard moments after a crew member blew thrice the fog horn, signaling our departure, and the bird remained a passenger till our docking in the u.s. I would like to think the gull has family in both places.
- my father declaring the names of restaurants and roadside rest stops as we passed them by, occasionally speaking with an intonation suggesting a mixture of interest in entering the premises and a knowledge that we will not.
- tree bark totally covered in green moss; trunk, branches, and all. the fungi being so much a part of the plant that one would be inclined to believe the combination was instead a single species, appearing this way since its childhood, only not as tall.
- fixing my gaze through the glass window onto growth in the forest a short distance from the road, my view interrupted at regular intervals by the straight trunks of trees closer to the car, as if the outdoors were an over-sized filmstrip moving too slowly to trick the mind into seeing motion from still images.
- regina spektor's sex sounds passing as song vocals, energized by the car stereo and engaged in an impressive attack against my defense of noise-cancelling headphones + cowon iaudio x5l + proem at volume 7.
- the transformation, during the darkness of the night, of our vehicle's interior into a fighter jet's cockpit, this being made possible by the likeness of backlit speedometer, rpm gauge, etc. to control panel instruments familiar to pilots. the headlights of oncoming traffic were, naturally, the bombardment of antiaircraft ballistics launched by the enemy, their brightest points giving away their precise locations at moments in time and allowing the autopilot computer to infer as much as necessary to dodge their curved trajectories.
in portland now. my real vacation starts on january 4th, when I am here alone. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| competition is fierce for placement in leading journals of science and engineering, such as Nature and IEEE Communications Magazine. inclusion in an issue of one of these publications earns the author(s) notoriety, prestige, and some measure of clout, which they can use to make sound legitimate outrageous claims that they might introduce while entertaining guests at a cocktail party.
based on the issues of technical journals I've read and due to my total lack of motivation to ever write a technical paper, I've compiled a short list of tips for anyone interested in being published to consider. each tip is paired with an actual sample of published material exemplifying its use.
1. Title - a good title is of paramount importance in ensuring that your paper is read at least once during the initial screening process. keep in mind that editors are flooded with more submissions in a year than all the trees on earth could produce paper for, which is a curious impossibility deserving of its own technical paper. the characteristics of a good title are counterintuitive and might strike you as being the opposite of what you would expect. the best titles keep the article's topic quite ambiguous and/or are collections of unlikely word combinations that find themselves linked thanks to multiple abstraction layers. your title should also feel a couple words too long when read, and should require more than one reading to appreciate all possible interpretations.
2. Illustrations - I am not referring here to graphs or other figures supporting the text. I'm referring to illustrations used for the express purpose of drawing interest to your paper. while inclusion of bits of artwork throughout an article's length is a matter of author preference, simple illustrations on the title page are obligatory. editors themselves are most often responsible for this aspect of the paper, but I include this tip with the rationale that an author taking the illustration responsibility upon themselves couldn't hurt their chances of being published.
as to what should be depicted in the artwork, it should make only vague reference to your paper's topic. ideally, the appropriateness of your artwork will border on being darkly witty and uncomfortably nonsensical. for example, if your paper is a comparison between two modes of transmitting data, one mode faster than the other, your title page artwork might depict a rabbit and turtle in the desert on an interstate highway void of cars.
the use of simple artwork communicates to the reader that the article is strong enough to stand on its own without depending on fancy artwork to justify its being published. rather than submit text only, which might suggest you are unaware that artwork can be used to counteract a lack of substance, text plus simple artwork is the equivalent of saying "yeah, I'm aware some people try to increase their odds by including fancy title page graphics, but as you can see, my article doesn't need that assistance."
a rule of thumb regarding the complexity of the illustrations is that they should be no more graphically intricate than the entries in the clip art library of microsoft powerpoint. one popular choice is to pick a rendition of a 3D object that is drawn in such a way that no attempt has been made to create the illusion of depth.
3. Flaunt your foreignness - your analytical genious [sic] will be evidenced by the inclusion of choice grammatical errors only a non-native english speaker could make. while most people deplore the use of stereotypes, few are able to make judgments totally independent of them. when your objective is publication in a technical journal, it's obvious how taking advantage of this handout could be your catalyst. another angle of argument: dedicated and publish-worthy researchers don't have time for petty language considerations when all their work is governed by mathematics.
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| it's a popular pastime of cynical disaffected youth to criticize small talk. I've done it myself occasionally. the type of thing where you mock how relatives greet each other at the airport "how was your flight?". depending on your reference point, the frustrating or funny thing about ridiculing small talk is that the criticisms are usually a dead end. we usually contribute nothing of our own that could be a small talk substitute. then some ominous voice booms an if/then statement "if 1. you dislike that when acquaintances meet they comment on the weather and 2. you lack the creativity to come up with a replacement for this staple of human conversation, then shut the fuck up."
what's the weakest reason for choosing one word over another whose meaning is similar? I think it's a tie between giving in to time constraints and lacking the motivation to lookup the best fit or an altogether new word. the best reason is "it won't make an appreciable difference to the writer or reader either way." or claim that the subject of your writing transcends language and therefore even a vocabulary as large as webster's would be hopelessly unable to describe what you mean. the latter justification is kind of a cop-out, and if you used it excessively you would risk receiving accusations of being a stupid fuck. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| some people maneuver through life in such refreshing ways that it's as if they grew up in another world. it's difficult to reconcile the facts that they are exposed to many of the same things I am and yet appear so untroubled. of course, this is a lie. everyone has troubles at some level, whether you see them or not is just a matter of how close you are to the person. still, when I see someone who exudes an innocent optimistic energy I want to keep my distance out of fear that getting close enough for them to notice me would contaminate their world. simultaneously, I have a conflicting interest in getting second-hand exposure to their outlook. balancing these wants has made me a skilled inconspicuous observer.
if there's one positive thing that can come from a person's false construct of the way you are it's the timeless moment of bewilderment when you're standing across from them at arm's length and they are helplessly statuesque, as the intricately contrived conceptions about you that they had assembled begin to crumble due to these conceptions being in contradiction with what all six of their senses are now telling them. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| there are people who create work for themselves in an effort to stave off boredom. they mess things up so that they feel obligated to set things right again.
also people who cannot keep themselves from telling you the whole story, when they only intended to divulge a part of it.
while drowning dishes in the sink I got a smear of tomato paste on my finger and for a moment thought I was bleeding. it was odd, to bleed without pain. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| is it damaging to let someone's misunderstanding of what you've said go uncorrected? depends on what you mean by damaging, but it's unlikely to ever be a good thing, except in the most mischievous of cases.
as wonderful as it might be for your opinion of yourself to be completely independent of what others think of you, humans are too social and capable of abstract thought for this to be the case. if you know someone sees you in a negative light as a consequence of their misunderstanding of something you said or asked, it can weigh you down. this problem is compounded when more people are around to misunderstand what you've said. but the most damaging thing about not correcting their misunderstanding is that it could lead you to become comfortable in keeping your silence when similar situations inevitably occur in the future.
on the other hand, there's a limit to how much effort should be expended on correcting a person's misunderstanding. when they think they know what you mean, some people are like stubborn trains unwilling to switch tracks. or it might well be your own fault, your fumbled words which led to their misunderstanding in the first place are now digging the hole deeper in spite of your efforts to do the opposite. and there's a limit to how much people can take. for example, in a classroom where you've asked the prof a question and they've addressed the question they thought you asked but didn't, the rule of thumb is this: if you can't articulate what you meant within 2 back and forth exchanges with the prof, then you deserve to be misunderstood, however unpleasant that might make you feel, especially if the prof believed you were asking about something sickeningly obvious. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| just now while walking home from school I was overcome with a strong sense that today was friday. though I normally welcome fridays with open arms, on this occasion I was discouraged because it would mean I'm 48hrs more behind on assignments than I already am. then, after a few seconds, I was relieved to discover that today is wednesday.
I save best things for last. this usually is inconsequential in terms of productivity and goes unnoticed by people around me unless they're very observant, and I do it because it's a source of enjoyment. for example, I'll first pick out and eat all the cooked carrot slices in the pasta sauce so that I can enjoy the rest of my dinner without fear of biting down on a gross cooked carrot slice. it doesn't really fucking matter whether I eat all the carrots first or eat everything all together like most people.
so here's an example of where my preference to save best things for last is a hindrance. I much prefer textbook analytical problem solving homework to laboratories. the ambiguity of labs and the expressionless face that is the lab report template combine to form a most toxic slurry that I'm forced to drink 3 times a week. textbook homework is assigned 1 week in advance. I can't work on these assignments during the first 6 days because I'm busy procrastinating lab reports. what's happened is, in the interest of saving my textbook homework assignments for last, I don't start them till maybe a day before they're due. this used to work, but doesn't anymore. it's either not enough time or I have a question about something or usually both. it's obvious I have to start my textbook homework soon after it's assigned, even with lab reports weighing on my shoulders, as uncomfortable as that will be. it's going to be like thoroughly mixing the cooked carrot slices with everything. I want to vomit. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| physical attractiveness is not simply a function of physical features, but also depends on the relationship that exists between the person gauging attractiveness and the person whose attractiveness is being gauged. "gauging" is an inappropriate verb insofar as it evokes the image of someone using a considerable portion of their attention to the task, when I'd imagine it more often occurs subtly in the back of the mind. in any case, the point is that a person can look more or less physically attractive to someone else even if a computer armed with facial recognition software reports that they look exactly the same as they did last week. the reason for specifying physical attractiveness is that there are other dimensions of attractiveness (for example mannerisms) which may be more resilient to changes in relationship.
counterintuitively, there's no reason to believe that a person will necessarily be perceived as more attractive by someone who thinks better of them than previously, or less attractive if instead the person thinks worse of them than previously.
finally, is there a correlation between a person's attractiveness and the importance they assign to looks in a sexual interest? I don't think so, but there are certainly sociologists who could say more definitively. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| as usual, I welcome this political season with yawns of indifference. I seek out someone who intends to vote in a fashion directly opposing my own, such that our ballots would cancel each other and we can both save ourselves the trouble of having to go to the polls.
amid the rumble of pundits, rhetoric, op-ed columnists who can barely contain their sense of self-importance and shout over one another on primetime, individualism being kicked in the gut merely as a consequence of standing packt tight with others in an arena all staring lobotomy-like at one person who speaks, cheering at the pause cue, heated arguments sprinkled with smiles of The Grinch variety, pointed finger accusations back to preschool with he said she said; at the core of all this there's a tablespoon of tulip nectar.
it's generally applicable to everyday exchanges among the public and in friend circles, but is most obvious near election time. when a speaker expresses an opinion which opposes the opinion of the listener, the listener has three choices in terms of their perception of the speaker: they may overlook the disagreement as inconsequential, decide that their view of the speaker has been negatively impacted, or change their own opinion to align with the speaker. I would guess that the first option is least popular among listeners. it's sobering how successful the nazi party was with the last option. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the first three letters of a license plate I saw the other day were EYB, which led me to think immediately of eyeball and has made me temporarily/mildly interested in shorthand. the incident was doubly amusing because the trio of letters corresponded to the organ I was using to read them.
I'd like to develop my own shorthand at some point. it wouldn't consist of an archive of usable letter combinations or be intended to come off as a code readable by few. instead, I'd come up with a few rules such that the shorthand equivalent of any word could be determined just by their application. for instance, for 2 syllable compound words, rule 4: the shorthand consists only of the letters necessary to form the sound of the first syllable plus the first letter of the second syllable. so bedtime = bedt. rule 5: the letters used to form the sound of the first syllable must be sourced from the letters used in the first syllable of the original word. this is why EYB isn't IB. rule 6: the shorthand equivalent doesn't distinguish between singular and plural, so that EYB could represent eyeball or eyeballs. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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