Pollage

There's a new poll up (I'm just posting about it here because I know some people use feeds). I realize that some people might give biased answers, but that's okay, I'll forgive you.

What's up with the new trend of releasing 'special' box sets of entire series of television shows in boxes that have something to do with the show? Some of them I can understand (Alias' was an important artifact from the show, Six Feet Under is a plot with grass on top), but some I can't even figure out what the box is supposed to be, like for Gilmore Girls. Since I already have all but the last season I won't be buying it, but even so, I don't think I would because I just can't tell what it's supposed to be. Maybe you can.

More Free Rice

A while ago I posted the link to Free Rice, which is a vocabulary game that donates rice for every word you get right. I'll occasionally play it when I'm sitting at my computer and bored, and I've been surprising myself with how many words I know. Granted, the format is multiple choice, and anybody who was in US History with me knows about my mad guessing abilities, but it can't all be explained through that.

Most of the words in the level I'm at now would never come up in conversation, or even in writing a paper, but I know them through books. It's pretty interesting what kind of archaic language will be routinely used in fantasy, so that I'm very familiar with a word like "simulacrum" when it's apparently a word that most people don't know (Props if you can figure out which book I especially know this word from - I know at least one person out there has read it).

The other way that I know words is because I'm a very strange person who has studied both Greek and Latin for a year each. This helps reinforce my absurd guessing abilities, but really, if I can recognize a root in a word, I've gone beyond guessing. I just wish I could retake the SAT verbal portion and see what I could get. Well, I would never want to waste that much time taking a stupid standardized test that isn't necessary, but you know what I mean.

Has anybody looked at Free Rice? If so, what's your level? I'm just curious.

Monopolistic Opportunity

So apparently Monopoly is coming out with a worldwide version. I'm amazed that they haven't done it before, but that isn't the point of the post. They've set up a voting system online so that they can claim they're not being partial to certain cities (since they not only have to pick which cities make it into the game, but also their order, and which are the most expensive).

Anyways, "Jerusalem, Israel" has apparently caused a huge ruckus, so they took off its nation. But then Jerusalem looked different from all the other cities, because they all had their nations attached, so they took off all the countries from all the cities. I find this hilarious.

If you're interested in voting for your top ten cities, you can go to monopoly.com and do so.

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.

There is an intersection between home and campus that literally has gas station at every corner. The NW corner has a Chevron, NE an ARCO, SE a Shell, and SW a BP. It baffles my economic mind how something like that could possibly function. The intersection is near the freeway, but not necessarily close (you can't see it from the freeway), and while it's busy, I don't think it's quite as busy as California and Stockdale, to pick one that most of my readers know.

Towards something completely unrelated, I think I'll start asking people to comment why they voted however they did on some of my polls. For this one I'm particularly interested, because I just can't decide between two of them in particular, but there's also a third one wanting to creep into consideration the more I contemplate it. I'd vote for Tom because he's not afraid to get up there and duke it out with the aliens when that's called for, but is that really a responsible thing for the President to do? Then there's Andy who I just plain like, but he seems like a push-over for much of the movie, and only steps up to the plate at the very end of the movie (but who can blame a guy for not slinging mud back)? Finally, trying to catch up to these guys, is Dave, who isn't really a President, but manages to make the job look easy, and for whom I would definitely vote for in a city council election.

And Chris, I don't want to hear about why I should vote for Merkin, I just threw him in the poll because four is a better number than three.

In other news, my grandma (well, step-) is having a 70th birthday on March 1st, so I will most likely be home that weekend, if anybody cares. Of course, it's right smack dab in the middle of midterms (have a test on the Wednesday and Friday before, and the Monday after), so things could change, but really, why start preparing for tests now? I haven't decided yet if I want to take the train and read/study on the way to and fro, or drive and save some time and money. We'll see.

Meant to post this a while ago

So I wrote this right after the California primaries, but never got around to finishing or posting it. So read some of my unfinished thoughts on voting.

It must be pretty lame to vote in a primary, and then have your candidate drop out of the race the next day. This would especially be true if you don't completely despise all the remaining candidates, or especially hate one of the remaining and won't to vote against that person no matter what. But if you vote for somebody that doesn't even make it to the end, I'd have to wonder what the point of voting is.

I think this is part of my problem with democracy; I don't see how minorities have a voice, or more particularly, I don't see how individuals have a voice in general. This is perhaps why I've never bothered to vote in the Presidential election, because there is almost never a chance that California's electorate will go Republican. I mean, if the election result is already decided by the majority, and you know exactly what that majority is, what's the point of an individual voting? But then, if everybody thinks this, then there is no majority. It's a Catch-22, I guess.

So with a democracy, the big question is how to keep minorities and majorities (for individuals in both groups can feel redundant or useless) participating in elections, and politics in general? I think I'd be more inclined to pick a candidate and actually campaign for them, rather than vote, but if I had campaigned for a particular candidate, perhaps I'd feel a duty to vote since I was telling other people to do the same.

Perhaps a lot of people don't feel this problem because of a sufficiently instilled sense of civic pride or duty. Deontological ethics would state that as a member of a democratic state, each individual has the responsibility and moral obligation to vote, which is what people so often tell me.

I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne.

So while I'm a bit scared that it won't be any good, I'm still super excited about the new Indiana Jones movies coming out. Hopefully, with Spielberg tempering the crapiness of Lucas (lately, at least), it won't come out too bad. But anyways, you can begin deciding for yourself, because the first trailer is out. The movie comes out on May 22 (Lucas must have had something to do with the release date, at least), but I'll probably make myself wait a week or so to see it, due to the fact that I don't like crowded theaters (because I don't like showing up early).

http://www.indianajones.com/site/index.html

Look for a new poll soon.

Confession

I've started listening to NPR on the way to and from school. A lot of the reason is that I don't feel like turning on my iPod for that short a drive, but I also find a lot of what they talk about interesting. I've never been much interested in news on the television or newspaper, because I could really care less about what fire was where, what some senator said about somebody else, and all the normal stuff that we have to hear or read about in the news. Thankfully, NPR usually has things that are actually interesting, at least in the morning and around noon when I'm generally listening.

My parents listen to NPR in Bakersfield, but the station down there plays a lot of classical music, and doesn't always do the news and stories stuff. The station up here plays no music during the day (I think they play jazz at night, but I never listen at that time), so it's a great way to pass the 10-20 minutes that it takes to drive to school.

I guess I'm growing up, or something strange like that.

Boredom slaying, Part I

Since I'm searching for ways to entertain myself up here without a television, and without my normal assortment of computer games, I'm going to share some of my findings with everybody periodically. Here's the first one.

www.freerice.com

Seriously, it's a fun game, and it's for a good cause.

Shiny!

So I think that perhaps only one other person will care about this, and I could just tell him in an email of IM, but I think I'll make you all hear about it. There is apparently a new Firefly novel, which has been released online and is free for download. I'm having difficulty seeing how this isn't just another fanfic novel set in the Firefly universe, but I found the link on IMDB, so something makes this novel different from the (I'm assuming) thousand of other ones out there.

Perhaps it is because this one is by a real, published author (19 novels) who is published by Tor (which is one of the biggest sci-fi/fantasy publishers out there). So if you like Firefly (which anybody who has ever watched it should), you should perhaps check out this novel (it doesn't sound too long) during those boring lunch breaks when you're obviously not commenting on my blog.

Disclaimer: That last comment was not directed at anybody in particular, but the author of this blog has had no sarcastic outlet for quite some time, so you will probably see a lot of it coming out in posts.

One more change

I've decided to start using the poll option on my blog. I think it should be fun, and will be another way to get my friends actually contributing to my blog. Also, it should help me to update more frequently and regularly. The first poll should come as no surprise, since it is the only thing that has been talked about recently in any news program. And I'm actually curious who you all voted for.

Aristotle is my homeboy.

I have to love it when an economics class starts out with philosophy of science, then heads on to ancient Chinese philosophy, then to Hebrew philosophy, and finally to Greek philosophy, all in the span of a week. It makes me very happy that I will be tested on this, and have to write a paper.

I'm being very responsible about my work, which is kind of strange. It really helps that I have no computer games to play up here, nor do I really have a tv that I can watch daily. So I'm incredibly bored, and thus I turn to my philosophy and economics for solace. Also, I think it helps that I'm not living on campus. Since I don't feel like driving back and forth all the time, I'm staying longer on campus, and have nothing to do but homework. It's very nice that all my classes have the text books on reserve, since I haven't gotten any yet (they're on order, just haven't arrived yet). It makes me wonder how much more work I would have gotten done if I hadn't lived on campus at Whitworth. Of course, it could just be that I'm more mature now, but I really doubt that.

Nobody has commented on the differences in the site, which makes me sad, since I worked so hard on them. Of course, I also worked very hard on making them unobtrusive, so I guess I did a good job. Or it could be that nobody cares, and thus won't comment. In which case you're all jerks, but I wonder what it will really do to call my readers names.

By the way, I can totally picture Brisco using the title of my post in an adventure. Ah, if only it had lasted more than a season.

Highlights Issue # 3

See if you can find all the little changes that occurred in this blog recently!

Trouble acclimating

I think there are two things in particular that I'm having trouble getting used to at school. The first is that I have to pay for anything that I may want to print. Now, I know this isn't unusual, but we didn't have it at Whitworth. Before I started going there they had a fixed number of pages that a person could print during the year (any more and they had to pay), but they did away with that once we started using an online service to put up sources and other course materials, instead of putting them on hold in the library.

So for a lot of my philosophy classes, I could just pull up the sources online, print them out in the library, and I'd be good to go (it was also great for things I wanted to print but weren't used for classes, like whichever story I was working on at the time). CSUS uses this same online service (Blackboard, for those of you who know it), but I have to pay for each page I print out! Inconceivable! This just means that I don't really want to print anything out, and it's possible because of it I won't do all the reading that I should. %0.05 a page seems a bit steep to me, but I could be imagining things. Does Kinko's let you print things off the internet, and if so, does anybody know how much they charge? Of course, I could fix this by having a printer up here, but where would I put it?

The other thing I just can't get used to is the fact that all of my classes are lectures. I want to discuss what we're talking about (read: argue about), and it's very difficult for me not to consume class time discussing small points that interest me as a philosopher, but really shouldn't be that important to me as an economist (and aren't important to all the other people in my class, since they're all business people). So far I think I've done a good job, but it's just going to get worse as we start Greek and Medieval philosophers starting Wednesday, because those are my homeboys, and I'll have a lot of trouble when the prof waters down what they said. I know it's necessary, but I don't have to like it! Maybe I'll get a neighbor to kick me every time I start talking about something that they think is unnecessary. But I would probably ignore them anyways, because I've been conditioned to ignore being kicked.

The Curse of the Bambecca

Since I've started watching television after I came home from college, I've seen show after show that I love canceled within a couple years of me starting to watch it. Due to all of these canceled shows (VM, GG, Alias, AD) I've decided that I am a curse to shows.

Lately I thought my curse might have been gone, since the only show left this fall that I have watched previously was Heroes, and I don't see that being canceled any time soon. Although , come to think of it, maybe my curse caused the writer's strike because there were quite a few new shows that I liked this fall (this would mean that my curse has gotten worse).

Lately I've been trying to get around the curse by watching shows that have already been canceled, like Brisco County Jr. and Dark Angel. So while I still get very upset when they end prematurely, at least I know what I'm getting into when I start the shows.

But I just found out that two of the shows I had thought were safe are canceled: The 4400 and The Dead Zone. Theses are summer series on USA, and usually shows that play on cable and during the summer last for a good number of series. Not only that, but I think both are popular, and I know that The 4400 started off with the highest number of viewers of a cable premiere.

I don't mind so much when shows get the ax once they start sucking. I think of the fact that Alias ended as the fault of the show, because it really started going downhill. As much as I think that there were more stories to tell in the show, it was its time to end. The same was true to a lesser extent of Gilmore Girls.

But I hate it when a show dies before it's time, and especially when the writers don't have an opportunity to actually end it. When a show finds out halfway through a season that it won't be coming back, there is no way to wrap up all of the plot lines that are in development. This is even worse when, in the case of these two shows, they find out in the off-season, when everybody had expected it to come back. This means that there is absolutely no closure for the series in general.

As one article said, "the move to cancel series with continuing story lines before a final resolution is beginning to wear on fans, who may reject new sci-fi series for fear of investing their time and energy in a tale with no end." So all of you Heroes and Smallville watchers, I'm sorry, but those shows will get canceled soon, and probably without reason, and without any real resolution. And it's very possible that Chuck, Journey Man (that is amazing and therefore absolutely no hope for it to stick around), and Bionic Woman won't even make it a second season. Sorry for all of you that actually like them.

Feels like old times

The other day I realized that I'm regressing back to my childhood. And by this I mean my actual childhood of elementary school, as opposed to my maturity childhood of high school and college. My school colors are once again green and gold - just like at Van Horn, where I went to most of elementary school. And my mascot is once again a hornet - just like Van Horn. It makes me wonder why green and gold go with hornets. I understand the gold part, since bees and the like are known for their yellow coloring. But where does the green come from? Is it the color of the grass behind the hornet? Because don't they like flowers more than grass?

Also, I feel like I'm 9 years old again because most of the people I'm around are calling me Becky. Now, don't think that this is some sign that I'm going by Becky at school, and don't take it to mean in any way that you have permission to call me such a name. That name is reserved for people who are family members, or who have known me since I was 9 and were around my family who called me Becky. I think the number of people who fall into that list (non-family members who are allowed to call me Becky) is around 15 if I'm feeling generous.

But since I've been around my cousins and aunt and uncle, I'm getting used to hearing Becky. It's funny because neither of my brothers call me Becky, so I didn't hear it a lot in Bakersfield. I think much of my family there just calls me Beck or Becks. But here it's definitely Becky, and I've definitely noticed the difference.

In the midst of all this retro stuff I had a new experience today. And it'll lead to a new experience on Tuesday. Amanda had a handful of people over to her apartment in Davis to discuss the various propositions and the candidates for President. The real reason I went over there is because she said she was also going to bake apple pie (since what could be more American than talking about voting while eating apple pie?), and I love apple pie.

We spent probably an hour discussing the propositions, and then decided that we should watch the Hillary Obama debate that just aired, mostly because we couldn't figure out how they were that different (in terms of policy). So far this year I've almost completely avoided the political stuff, so it was interesting to hear what the important issues are (since they hit on the ones where they differ the most), and I was surprised to notice that I didn't hate listening to the debate. Of course, this could have been because they were actually cordial to one another, and it was inter-party, but I have to admit that I found it interesting. I don't think I like Republican vs. Democrat politics, but I could really enjoy other types (if there is such a thing).

After spending quite a bit of time discussing the different things (although interspersed with lots of other topics) I believe I will be voting exactly the way that I would have voted before I learned about what I was actually voting for. So my uneducated reaction towards voting is the same as my educated position. Interesting.

Things I wasn't prepared for

1. Parking
2. All lecture all the time.
3. Fast food on campus.
4. Parking (yes, it deserves two spots)

So far things are going well. I've got three classes, and it looks like it might stay that way, since I refuse to take any classes on Tuesday or Thursday, and the philosophy class I wanted to add is now full. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to use the extra time to re-teach myself Latin. Because it will be so useful to my Masters that I just have to know it.

I've added a Calc II for the Social Sciences class, which looks like it should be easy. They started with reviewing differentiation, which I've already finished, and will have to learn integrals, which I will be reviewing before the class gets to them. Apparently there's no trig in this class (which is sad because I love trig) and they gloss over some other topics compared to your standard Calc II class. So while I haven't taken Calc for 7 years, I don't expect any difficulty with this one.

It would appear that my initial impressions of my economics teachers are correct. One is going to waste all sorts of class time because he is obsessed with his own clerverness. This, of course, doesn't mean that he doesn't expect everybody to be in class, even though all of my learning will be done outside of it (he actually takes roll). I think I will have a lot of fun this semester relating all the tales of what he thinks is important to talk about during my precious class time. At least the subject matter is interesting, even if it looks like it might be pretty easy.

The other class is going to be awesome. Not only am I supremely interested in the subject, but it will be difficult (well, marginally), and hopefully will keep my attention. I do find it ironic that the first real topic we hit on (besides a very brief history of economics as a discipline) was the Vienna Circle and Logical Positivism. I really really hope that it is only a brief discussion topic, because if I have to hear about Logical Positivism all semester long, it is going to be very hard not to rip it to shreds every day. For those of you who don't care I won't go into what it is, but I will say that it is the most despised of all the philosophical ideas I learned. Ever.

I've located the Safeway closest to campus, so I'll have my deli food whenever I want it (I love Signature Soups). For all you SoCal people, Safeway is the north's Vons. It looks like there's really nice snow up in the mountains, but I don't think I'll go boarding this weekend. I should pretend that I'm up here to do things other than play, at least for the first week.

Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone.

I'm officially a student again, and I have the student ID to prove it. I've already been struck by all the differences between a big state school (it's much bigger than Cal State Bako, which I knew, but wasn't really prepared for) and the small private school that I'm used to. Paying for parking and my student ID are just the beginning of it, but I think it'll be a good change.

I only had two classes today, and I'm very excited about one - both the material and the professor. She was an English and econ major in college (Jess, there's another in the world!) and is making us start with ancient philosophers in the history of economic thought, unlike most courses of it that start just before Adam Smith (late 1700's). So I get to read Aristotle in an econ class, which is very exciting. I also love that the prof told the class that this was going to be a hard class not because she grades hard, but because the material is dense, and there's a lot of writing. At the end of her little spiel, I thought to myself, "Hurrah, I'm home!"

The other shouldn't be too bad, in spite of the fact that the prof strikes me as a bit of an off-topic rambler. Of course, this is just a first impression, but I think it's a pretty safe assumption, considering that as we introduced ourselves, he interrupted almost every person with some tidbit of his own. While off-topic rambling can be fun, when I'm in class, I'm there to go over the material and not learn all about the personal likes and dislikes of my prof. If they throw them in every once in a while, that's fine, but completely taking up class time with non-pertinent facts is not okay.

Sacramento seems like a nice city, although I haven't seen much of it. The campus is situated right on the river, which is pretty cool, and there is a great bike/walk path running the whole length of the river (it's the American River, not the Sacramento River). If I had a bike, I could take the path all the way to campus from my uncle's house (about 5 miles), but I couldn't fit it in my car on the way up. Next trip I'll have to convince my dad to bring all my stuff up in the Expo.

I'll post again at the end of the week about first week impressions, and put up the biggest differences between Sac State and Whitworth, but for now I'm excited to get back into learning and procrastinating.

The Dead Zone

So I've gotten away from my series a month idea, but I thought it was time to bring it back. USA has a show called The Dead Zone which is based on characters from a Steven King novel. This novel was also made into a movie which starred Christopher Walken in 1983. This show has been around for a while (recently finished its 6th season this past summer), but I never really looked into it because with Steven King's name attached to it, I thought it would be more akin to horror than it actually is. With a name like The Dead Zone, I expected him to be seeing ghosts or something like that, but really, it just refers to the part of his brain that he uses.

But luckily, this past summer it was on immediately after The 4400, so I started catching episodes of it as I was getting ready for bed. I think I watched probably four episodes this way, all of which were at the end of the season, and got intrigued. So I decided to download the first season and watch it to find out what the show is all about.

So far, things look pretty good. The basic idea of the show is that John Smith seems to have the ability to experience past and future events by touch the objects or people around him. This happens because he is in a coma for 7 years, and when he wakes up, he not only has to integrate himself back into society (a lot could happen in 7 years, like your finance getting married and having a son, strangely enough named John Smith), and dealing with this ability, and people knowing about his ability. It's similar to The 4400 because the ability given protagonist doesn't try to hide them (like in Smallville or Charmed), and that leads to some fun episodes. I especially liked the one about witchcraft.

Unfortunately it's a summer series, so that means only 13 episodes per season, but that can also be a good thing, I guess, although I can't think of a reason right now.

Lack of class

There was a student in the class I was in yesterday named Sparkles. Seriously, that was the name listed on the roll print out. That is all I have to say.

And I didn't die once!

So Saturday after reffing two soccer games, I decided that it would be a good idea to head down to LA and join Rob's D&D group for some orc-slaying fun! Actually, I don't think we slayed any orcs, but we had fun running around a tower and trying to kill a spider lady. Plus, there was lots of food involved, and flashy cups.

On Sunday, Rob wanted to try out a pick-up Ultimate Frisbee game he heard about through his new Ultimate Frisbee league, so we headed out to Pasadena, and to a park in the Rose Bowl area. Now, you all may think I'm fanatical about frisbee, but you ain't seen nothing until you see these people play - very good and very intense about frisbee. It was a beautiful day, and it was great to get out and run around for a while, once we figured out the different rules and the subbing mechanism.

On Monday, I decided to pay my aunt, who lives about a mile from the Rose Bowl, a visit. Had I known she was that close, I might have made us go over on Sunday and say hi (it was literally almost on the way that we went), but oh well. I'll know for next time. It was good to see my aunt and uncle, and we went to the Norton Simon for about an hour (I had never been there before) and had Mexican.

Now I'm home and I have to start getting some things done. Only two weeks until my classes up in Sacramento start! I keep dreaming that I'm back in high school, only not high school aged, so I think I'm either worried or really excited about going back to school. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.