Victory Dance

Woohoo! I managed to rise to the challenge of writing 50k words worth of a novel in less than a single month! Go me. It doesn't matter that I'm probably less than halfway through all the plot that my story will eventually have, because there's nothing in the rulebook of Nano that says my story has to be finished in 50k. In fact, 50,000 words was almost the exact amount to get me through the portion of my novel that I had planned out before November, which I find somewhat oddly coincedental.

You may be wondering what I get for all my hard work. Well check it out.



Yes, it's entirely true that I could have made something like that in Photoshop for a whole lot less work than Nano took, but that's not the point!

I'm currently sitting at 50,025 words with essentially two days to go. However, I think that I will be enjoying the 360 and doing some math homework during those two days, so my word count will not substantially increase. Once it's officially over I'll post my writing graph (and Rachel's with her permission) so you can see exactly how much work it daily took to reach the lofty goal of 50,000 words.

So who's going to join us next year? It really wasn't so bad.

Word of the Semester

This production of "Fall Semester" has been brought to you by the word 'Ridiculous.'

I find myself using this word over and over again, and I really don't like the fact that my vocabulary seems to have become so restricted, but on closer examination, I really don't know if there is another word that I could be using.

Perhaps absurd, but those are so similar that they should be the same word.

Let's look at three places in my life where this semester has been particularly ridiculous.

Soccer - Soccer itself hasn't been particularly ridiculous; in fact it was a really good season where everybody involved had a good time, I think. But reffing up here has been absolutely and totally ridiculous. It ended up that every week I would end up calling my brother to give him that week's "Stories from the Soccer Field" where I would get to tell all of the horrible things that the ref did in my games.

Some examples:

1. Not tucking in shirts. Now, if you're not a ref, you don't understand why this is a big deal, but I forgive you. It's actually put in the rule book that the ref's shirt should be tucked in. And it's not difficult to do. Basically, it's along the lines of dressing appropriately for work. Most people aren't allowed to wear cut-off jeans and a wife beater to work, just as refs are expected to look professional.

2. Being near completely deaf. Seriously. This guy could not hear a word I said. He had to have special flags so that the assistants could get his attention from the sideline, but of course the batteries were dead. There goes that idea.

3. Starting the game 20 minutes early for absolutely no reason. IN soccer, if you're going to change anything having to do with game time (length of halves, starting time, halftime break) you have to get the agreement of both coaches. When my team shows up 45 minutes before a game, and 20 minutes of that is taken by the ref starting early (and refusing to answer my questions why) I'm just a little angry.

Arabic - Now, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying learning the Arabic language. It's challenging, completely different from anything I've studied before, and just plain fun to write in a strange script. But that's all true of specifically learning the language; the class is just plain ridiculous. In the beginning of the year, she almost completely ignored all of the 'non-heritage speakers.' She would frequently expect us to know words that we've never been exposed to, I think because she just assumed that we all already knew how to speak the language.

This, of course, has translated into testing us on material there's no way we could have learned. In recent weeks this has changed slightly (probably due to complaints), but she still gives absolutely no structure to the class, frequently not following the given syllabus, and deciding to give us huge projects on Tuesday that are then due on Thursday.

Most frequently, she's making us go to class to watch a movie, when she won't be there. But for some reason, renting it, watching it at home, and turning in the movie evaluation isn't good enough.

Cost Benefit Analysis - I was actually looking forward to this class at the beginning of the semester. It's interesting stuff, looking at the costs and benefits of different public policies and seeing if they're worthwhile. In particular, I'm interested in seeing how they do this for environmental issues. Well I got my wish, and then some.

The class has covered very little actual CBA material. We're using an undergrad book, which goes in depth over things consumer surplus and deriving demand curves. The first any Intro to Micro or Macro student would understand, and the second any student who has any math knowledge at all will know (there was a little statistics, but it was pretty easy).

In addition the wasted class time, we've been assigned a project with absolutely no structure, as well as very little research available. On top of that, the project doesn't actually involve doing any CBA, but merely looking at other people's and critiquing it.

I have got to learn a lot about issues in environmental economics, but I'm pretty sure I signed up for CBA, not Intro to Environmental Economics.

Nano 08, Day 25

Yesterday I pounded out 5,000 words. That's 1/10 of my goal for the month. The day before that, I managed 4k, which is also impressive. Now I'm still behind, but only by 6k, which I've just showed I can almost hit in one day if I really put my mind to it. Hopefully by the end of the day, I'll be less than 4k behind, and ready to catch to be caught up by Thanksgiving Day.

The showdown between Rachel and myself has heated up. We are closely guarding out daily word counts, hoping that the other suffers a power outage or is attacked by rabid monkey demons who steal her laptop so she is forced to chase after them for two hours, losing 2k potential words. She's playing catch up, but is doing a very good job at it, and the reward of most days writing the most words is still up in the air.

16,000 words to go, 6 days to write. I can totally do this.

Painful experiences

I've had a heat pack on my neck/shoulder off and on all day today (well in the afternoon after I went to the store to buy a heat pack). I needed to do this because apparently I got hit a lot yesterday at my game, and woke up with a bad headache and horrible pain in my neck. Looking back, I can count four times that somebody decided it would be fun to try and just stand still where I was running through, causing the other person every time and me a few times to end up on the ground. Of course, there was also an incident that I did to myself which involved slipping on the wet grass and managing to end up on the ground.

Hopefully by tomorrow I won't feel like I gave myself partial whiplash.

Also, I'm hoping that tomorrow I can finally motivate myself to write this paper I've been putting off. I don't know when I've ever had this much trouble getting started on a paper (perhaps one of the insanely stupid assignments from Janota?). In trying to figure out why I'm having this trouble (to hopefully fix the problem), I've hit on a couple interesting facts.

I generally have no trouble making myself write a paper in which I get to pick a side and argue. I also don't have trouble taking a difficult to understand topic and making it understandable. This pretty much covers all possible philosophy topics. I don't mind doing research to describe something. For example, piecing together bits of information to put together a coherent picture of an economy or some such. While this can be a little boring, I don't have trouble getting myself to do it.

Now, you'd think that would describe most economic papers, but this sadly isn't the case. Currently, the paper that I just don't want to do involves, well, nothing. Or at least that's how it seems. I'm supposed to compare and contrast non-existent Cost Benefit Analysis projects of California's Solar Initiative. Granted, a lot of this has to do with the fact that my group decided a smaller project would be better (I still don't know why they thought that was a good thing), so instead of looking at 1.1 billion dollars worth of a policy, we're only looking at 100 million.

Which means that nobody cares about it, because it's so small. Which means there's no research done on it, particularly because it's geared at low-income housing, which by law has to receive 10% of funding. So nobody has bothered to do a Cost Benefit Analysis of this for us to look at, because it really doesn't matter.

So really, this assignment is completely pointless, unless I want to teach myself how to BS, which is something I already know how to do, and don't really like doing (contrary to popular opinion I would much rather write a paper with an actual point).

At least I've learned that I'd better pick a worthwhile thesis topic if I want to be able to make myself write it.

Just can't escape it

I come home for half a week and they put me to work! It's HS volleyball playoff season, which means that they need four refs for each game, instead of the usual two. My brother told the assignor that I was going to be in town, and apparently he immediately asked if I would be willing to do some lines. Who am I to turn down $25 for doing nothing, so of course I agreed.

But it turns out that not everybody is happy with the fact that I did a line, because I'm not a member of the 'association' (this year, at least). Of course, the person who is upset is a complete jerk (and that's putting it mildly), so I'm kind of happy to be upsetting him.

Also, this week I've finally gotten to take a better look at Fable II, which is a bit too much like Fable for my tastes. I feel like they should have been able to make it much more complex, but it appears that all they've done is make it bigger. Oh well, should still be a fun play.

One sick puppy

Max was sick earlier this week - and I guess it was pretty bad. His red blood cell count was way too low, and basically if it didn't go up, he would have died. But somehow he got miraculously healed. Seriously, the vet had no explanation, and even asked my dad if he was religious, because he had no idea how it happened.

I was really worried because I usually play with Max and take him for a walk or two when I'm home, but thanks to wedding festivities, I didn't get to see him much when I was last home. I'm definitely going to make up for that this week, though. Even thought he got better, it reminded me that he's getting up there, and won't be around forever.

Please explain

Can somebody please explain to me how it's okay to vote for Obama because he's black, but it's not okay to not vote for him because he's black?

Happiness is....

As I was running today, my mind wandered to questions of basic distribution and enjoyment of goods.

My question is this: should we measure distribution in terms of the levels of happiness certain groupings of goods give, or should we just measure the distribution of "primary goods"? Of course we have to have some basic unit that we can compare across different distributions, otherwise we would be comparing apples to oranges, but I'm not sure which is superior.

Rawls argues that it should be primary goods, whereas Utilitarians think it should be the level of happiness, and I automatically want to think that Utilitarians are wrong. Luckily, in this case they seem to be, if only because measuring levels of happiness necessitates basing the distribution of society on the subjective happiness that people receive.

But what if a person is impossible to please? This would mean that, if we're trying to make utility equal for every person (not something a Utilitarian would want to do) this person will have to get a larger share of goods than a person who is very easy to please. Conversly, if we are trying to maximize society's total utility, the impossible to please person will receive less goods than the other.

Both situations seem unfairr, although for different reasons. Rawls tries to get around this by dealing only with primary goods, but it's unclear that this method is better. First, there are goodds which are excluded from being primary goods - but why shouldn't these be included in an examination of a society's distribution? Also, what if a person simply needs more primary goods than another to survive? A sickly person will need more medical attention than someone who is healthy, but it isn't entirely clear that they would get that under Rawl's system.

And if you made it to the end of this post, you can now see that I've been rambling without any real point. Except to say this:

We should play hide-and-seek (in the dark) on Monday night, since a lot of people don't have work on Tuesday (and yes, I'll be in Bakersfield!).

I'm never going to grow up

Every time I see a nightvision anything I have to almost physically stop myself from buying it. But as soon as I find a legitimate excuse to have one, I'm going to buy one. The same thing is true of a set of walkie-talkies (the good kind, not the $15 kind). So really, I need to start playing competitive hide-and-seek in the dark, or something like that.

Anybody know of a league?

10k

So I broke the 10k mark today during one of my classes (don't judge me!). I think that means I deserve a little break, which is good since I have a paper due on Tuesday, and have no idea what I'm supposed to write about. Yay for poor professors who both don't teach you the material and don't give you clear instructions!

Change?

It's going to be an interesting two and a half months, and an even more interesting four or eight years.

Election Day

You know, I'm a little bit scared about what is going to happen after tomorrow. It seems to me that there are a lot more polar issues this election day than there have been in the past. Perhaps this is because primary campaigning started so early, so people have been talking about it longer than I'm used to, but it seems like there are so many issues going on tomorrow than is normal. And this isn't just in the presidential election, but there are a couple of California props that have very strong supporters for both sides.

Regardless of how things turn out tomorrow, I think a lot of Americans are going to be very upset. I mean, how does it make you feel to not have the candidate you voted for win, especially if you're completely convinced that they are the only hope for America? This is the first election that I've really paid attention (how could I help but do so), and it really makes me think about democracy.

How does it feel to be a part of the minority when it comes to voting? I guess I know from the primaries, and I have to admit that I'm still not totally convinced that my choice shouldn't have won - but I guess that makes sense, because why else would I have voted the way I did?

All this to say that I'm actually really worried to see how people take both winning and losing tomorrow on all the controversial issues. There are going to be winners and losers, and I really don't think that tomorrow will end the discussion from both sides about what is right and wrong. If anything, it could polarize people even more, and polarization is the thing I despise most about politics.

Stupid class

I really wish I didn't have class tomorrow.

http://www.bingowecanbelievein.com/

(Mad props to Rachel for sending me this link).

Peer Pressure

I'm not really sure how it happened, but Rachel has convinced me to sign up for Nano this year. We'll see how long it takes for me to have ADD, but I am watching The Princess Bride tonight for inspiration of crazy shenanigans in a fantasy setting.