It appears the entry pipe is all backed up...

[sniffnoy]

So much to write about yesterday, with meant no time to write about it... there is no relation between the parts. Longer parts will be LJ-cut.

Part the Zeroth
It's really scary when my bus arrives. I'm standing there, out in the cold, waiting for the bus, and then, it comes, and as it turns, for just a moment, it points right at me. But yesterday, it kept facing that way for about an entire second... of course it's not like it was going to hit me or anything, but I got so scared, I had almost started to move when the bus went back to turning.


Part the First
2 days ago my mom said that due to looking at colleges, we will probably not have a seder this year. I didn't say anything, but hearing that was just utterly shocking. You can't not have a seder. I don't get it. Firstly this callous disrespect of Judaism - you're not going to have a seder?! - I mean, I don't really get it, what's the point of being Jewish if you're not even going to follow Jewish law? We're not orthodox, we ignore it enough already... I just don't get that. This isn't some minor thing, this is a seder. Yes, I'm an atheist, but this isn't about me, this about the family. (Somehow I get the feeling that even when I've gone off to college I'll still be keeping kosher for Pesach and fasting on Yom Kippur...) And speaking of the family, that's the other way of looking at it - as a family tradtion. Not that it itself is specific to us, obviously, but rather that we have 2 major feasts every year - one at Thanksgiving, one at Pesach. (Generally one of the seders is not nearly so large as the other.) To only have one of them... that's, that's not balanced... Gah. Man. I'm just plain shocked.


Part the Second
This part has been left out because I decided it was uninteresting and didn't really have enough to write about it.


Part the Third
So, I failed to get into National Honor Society.

Not that I was trying or anything.

See, we got an email about it early in February. I figured I wasn't doing NHS, ignored it.

Just the one email.

Friday mom asks me when the NHS application is due.

Checking, it's due monday.

Well they're supposed to be available in the Junior breezeway... but when I go to math team the next day they're not.

And so on Monday, I go to Mrs. Rios. "I know this is a bit ridiculous, but..."

Well, she says she'll accept my parent's signature tomorrow, but the rest had better be in today.

There's no problem getting Mrs. Wolff's signature or Mr. Krassy's. The problem is writing the essay which it never occurred to me existed. 500 words on how I embody Scholarship, Leadership, Service, and Character. Hardy har har. The only chance I even got to write it was during Stock Market (yay for do-nothing classes!), and, I decided, I couldn't come up with any way to demonstrate my "leadership" or my "character". So I didn't write it.

Well my mom's pretty annoyed, that's for certain. She says I'll do it next year. I suppose I will.


Part the Fourth
Sorry, no puppets.

Dr. D had said he wouldn't let me see his giant microbes because I was sick, but yesterday I wasn't so sick anymore...

"Did you wash your hands?"
"Yes!" (I had just gone to the bathroom.)

"You owe me $45 for looking at the yearbook."
"But I didn't look at the yearbook!"
"I wasn't talking to you."

After several minutes after which I finally realize that I do not owe Dr. D $45, I finally ask him again to see the microbes.

"No. I'm eating lunch."

So I leave, and come back a little later, to see that he has finished his pizza. Yet he claims to be still eating lunch - really he's just drinking his milk.

"But you're *not* eating lunch anymore, you're drinking lunch!"

After arguing him with several minutes about whether he's eating lunch, he finally takes his apple and starts eating it. I concede that he's eating lunch and leave. He tells me I can see them when the 3rd trimester starts.

I forgot that, today, though, and bugged him anyway. :D


Part the Fifth
Yesterday was Freshman One-Act Plays. Not really a lot to say about it... Elana was in one of them... they were OK. Not particularly great.


Part the Sixth
A hilarious essay: http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html


Part the Seventh
As you know, Fergie ate 200 carrots in one day and turned himself orange.

Tom plans to pay Colin $5 to do the same thing.[0]

Right before senior portraits.

(Colin doesn't know that it'll turn him orange. :D )

Of course it should take less than 200, since Colin is lighter, in both weight and skin color.

Well today on the bus back George heard us saying something about this... and said *he* would eat 400 carrots in one day. (400?!) I doubt he will, but this should be interesting...


Part the Eighth
Hooray for ice from Greenland!


Part the Ninth
Hehehe. Yesterday Dr. Ostfeld told us how they used to do numerical integration - they would graph the function, then cut out the graph and weigh it. :D


Part the Tenth
No puppets here either.

I'm told Asaf is easy to sidetrack, but I hadn't really tried it before.[3]

Today at lunch I managed to sidetrack him from the Big Bang to abstract algebra. :D (Effectively removing him from the conversation as he never even noticed what I was doing and had to leave before we ever got back to the Big Bang. :D )

See, what I said was, "Well, according to string theory, the universe probably did not start at point size but rather at Planck size."

And he asks what Planck size is.

And so I go into a history of the Planck units. What we set equal to 1 - even the ones not necessary for length - what there's some disagreement on. I manage to confuse him for a bit when I say "Dirac's constant." "What's that?" "h-bar." "What's that?" "h/2π." "Which is?" We go in circles for a bit before I realize he doesn't know that h is Planck's constant, and tell him so.

Anyway, after explaining the Planck units as a system of natural units, I then continue that the Planck scale is where both relativity and quantum become relevant, and therefore what we don't know how to deal with. And finally I get to the relevant part, which is that in some weird way, in string theory, a universe of radius 1/r (1 being Planck's length, of course) is equivalent to a universe of radius r. (Does the universe even need to have a radius? Beh, you don't need to actually know this stuff to be able to sidetrack Asaf. :) )

And then, while he boggles over that, I jump on it and say, "Well what's really neat is the holographic principle. Have you ever heard of that?" No, he hasn't. "Well what it says is, there's a possibility - since they've been able to set this up for alternative universes, with different physical laws - that our 4-dimensional[4] universe could actually be isomorphic to one with only 3 dimensions." Notice this time I didn't say "equivalent", I said "isomorphic". *g* Well he asks what "isomorphic" means. I say that it's a one-to-one correspondence that preserves structure, and leave it at that. And I say, so gravity in the one universe, corresponds to heat in the other - so a black hole in one is just a lot of heat in the other - and yet it all works out to be equivalent. (I'm getting this from the recent Scientific American article.) I think he understands the idea of "isomorphic", but after a bit I realize he doesn't, which means of course I decide to explain it a bit more formally... ie, starting with what a homomorphism is... he's never seen a whit of abstract algebra before, and I don't actually bother to define a ring, so, by the time he has to go to class, he still has no idea what I'm talking about. :D Well he has some idea... he finally realized that "isomorphic" essentially meant "equivalent" and "indistinguishable" - since I finally told him that explicitly - even if he didn't understand the rest of it, which I doubt he did. But as a result of that, he finally got back to the holographic principle, which he boggled over, understanding what I meant by "isomorphic", and then had to go to class. :D So did I, but that's besides the point.


Part the Eleventh
Thank you Andrei![5]

Andrei, together with Anand, is currently doing the best of anyone in our class in WPBD. Of course they don't work on it during class time, so no one has any idea what is bridge actually is. Well last time he actually told me (and Mark, I think) one thing about it... (which I won't say :D )... and it has actually led to progress. Thank you Andrei!


Part the Twelfth
We had the AP Chem reactions test today. You only had to do 20 out of the 32, and you didn't have to balance them. Of course I did all 32, and balanced all of them. :D (Though there's one I'm really uncertain of - PbCl₂ + CO₃^-2. I put it goes to PbCO₃ + 2Cl^-, only because I couldn't think of anything better. There was also one I think I got right but I could be wrong on - Sn⁺² + CrO₄^-2 - I figured it goes to SnCrO₄, but maybe, with H⁺ additionally on the left, it actually goes to Cr⁺³ + H₂O + Sn⁺⁴... naturally I didn't mark either of those as one of my 20.)


Part the Last
OK, so it's not really Godzilla...

(18:49:25) fergie142857: Allright, Harry.
(18:49:32) Sniffnoy: what?
(18:49:45) fergie142857: I think I found a song more painful to the ears than your Cibo Matto song.
(18:49:50) Sniffnoy: Oh no...
(18:49:52) Sniffnoy: what is it?
(18:49:56) fergie142857: Here it comes!
(18:50:14) fergie142857: It's by Pink Floyd, who usually makes good songs.
(18:50:22) Sniffnoy: OK...
(18:51:45) fergie142857: You can play .wma files, right?
(18:51:59) Sniffnoy: yah, on my other computer :P
(18:52:10) fergie142857: No windoes media player?
(18:52:24) Sniffnoy: no windows
(18:52:34) fergie142857: BE CONFORMIST!\
(18:52:59) Sniffnoy: that's what the other computer's for :)
(18:53:07) fergie142857: Go and play it.
(18:53:14) fergie142857: I guarantee your ears will bleed.
(18:54:58) fergie142857: The "song" doesn't even have a beat.
(19:00:18) fergie142857: C'mon. That surely was worse than "Birthday Cake".
(19:00:42) Sniffnoy: I didn't listen to it yet, several disturbances
(19:00:47) fergie142857: O
(19:07:57) Sniffnoy: bah
(19:08:05) Sniffnoy: it's worse as music, OK
(19:08:11) Sniffnoy: but Birthday Cake still wins
(19:08:16) Sniffnoy: because of the breaking-ear factor
(19:08:32) fergie142857: The screeching didn't break your ears?
(19:08:37) Sniffnoy: not in the slightest
(19:09:09) fergie142857: Then why did Birthday Cake break your ears?
(19:09:48) Sniffnoy: because it's so much louder, sudden, and overallly screechier?
(19:09:56) Sniffnoy: more sudden*
(19:10:33) fergie142857: Umm... play Sysyphus loud on good speakers, so that the screeching reverbs.
(19:10:47) Sniffnoy: hm... still, it's not really screeching as such
(19:13:03) fergie142857: Yes. That is.
(19:13:15) Sniffnoy: not really...
(19:13:22) Sniffnoy: maybe I'd better play it again
(19:13:40) fergie142857: On good speakers, the screeching resonates.
(19:16:54) Sniffnoy: I just replayed both of them... I still Birthday Cake wins
(19:17:14) fergie142857: Because Birthday Cake I could tolerate.
(19:17:23) fergie142857: Sysyphus I couldn't.
(19:17:46) ***Sniffnoy shrugs
(19:18:10) fergie142857: O well.
(19:18:28) Sniffnoy: maybe I'm a bit biased because of the 2, Birthday Cake is the only one I've heard on good speakers :-/
(19:18:53) Sniffnoy: but even so I still think it sounds worse
(19:19:49) fergie142857: O. Well.
(19:19:55) fergie142857: My quest continues....


And that ends it. *Whew*.

-Sniffnoy

[0]Colin, for those of you who don't know him, is the sort of person who would eat a roll of paper towels for $2. And I can say that for a fact because he did.
[3]I was told that, though, afterwards.
[4]Actually I said 3 and 2 rather than 4 and 3 - I have a tendency to leave out time.
[5]Not that you're reading this.

--
"I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to
understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language
devised for telling one another when the best fruit is."
-Terry Pratchett, AFP

Comments

[grenadier32.livejournal.com]

So you're going to be out looking at colleges on the first night of Pesach? You can't push it back a day and at least come to our seder if your family is too lazy to do it? Ugh...

[ashleyisachild.livejournal.com]

Why will you continue keeping seder and what not if you're atheist? Doesn't that mean that you'd be meaninglessly restricting yourself?

Secondarily, it only takes one letter to change "asaf" to "asdf".

Thirdly, in reference to "Fergie ate 200 carrots in one day and turned himself orange," what do you mean by "turned himself orange"?

Lastly, I never knew that "/me shrugs" shows up differently on your screen.

[fergie142857.livejournal.com]

Harry means that I ate about 200 carrots in a 36-hour period, and when I woke up the next day, my skin was orange.

[ashleyisachild.livejournal.com]

Define orange.
Preferably by a comparable hexadecimal code.
Or by posting photos.

[fergie142857.livejournal.com]

*Looks at self.* My monitor's kinda weird, but FFCC44 should be pretty close.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Well, preferably by posting photos... :D

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

I assume you mean keeping kosher for Pesach - there's no question that I'd go to the seder, I mean, c'mon, it's a family gathering, you can't not go just because you happen to not believe in the religion. But more importantly, since when do I care about meaning? :)

[ashleyisachild.livejournal.com]

"You can't not go just because you happen to not believe in the religion"?? I mean, I'm not quite of the belief of "don't celebrate the holiday just because you don't subscribe to the religion" (I mean, I still do stuff for christmas and hanukkah and passover even though I'm atheist), but I don't understand why it's absolutely necessary for you to keep all the Jewish traditions just because that's how you grew up. If you're atheist, I think it makes sense to want to go to a seder as a family gathering, or just for fun or whatever, but I don't understand why you would do the ACTUAL religious things like keeping kosher and fasting. I guess the fact that you don't care about meaning explains it, but I don't think it justifies it. I never understand when people can't explain why they do the things they do except for saying "I don't care."

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Haha, not all of them. Of course not. But it doesn't seem right to me that by not believing in a god, I somehow get out of, to take the most extreme example, fasting on Yom Kippur. I mean, I used to do it (well still do right now, of course, but YKWIM), so I know I can, so it doesn't really seem fair that I should be allowed to eat - it'd almost be saying "Ha ha, I used to have to fast and now I don't have to!"

[ashleyisachild.livejournal.com]

I think it's sort of odd to say that lack of believing in a god "exempts" you from practices in that religion. It's like saying that fasting is the default, and that changing that requires action. Why don't you fast on Ramadan, too? Just because you don't practice that religion, are you now out of that requirement, too? I don't understand why you should fast based solely on what you've done in the past, or why what you've done in the past requires you to keep doing those things for any reasons "above" the fact of whether or not you believe in the underlying reasoning for those actions/traditions. I guess if you don't have any regard for the reasons behind your decisions to fast/keep kosher/etc, then it's hard for me to argue with you, but like I said, I don't get it when people try to ignore the reasons behind their actions. It seems sort of hedonistic. I can understand that you don't want to feel like you're taking the easy way out, but it's illogical to do things without reason; you obviously didn't change religions for the sake of exempting yourself from the difficult religious practices of that religion, but it seems like you're set on proving that to yourself and others.

[sniffnoy.livejournal.com]

Not exactly... it would be, essentially, habit - like how I always fold the corners of stapled papers, or close kitchen cabinets that are just slightly open, because leaving them otherwise just makes me kind of uneasy. My last comment was essentially sort of an attempt to rationalize just *why*, but... *shrug*. I don't claim to act logically. I can get very upset about the unfolded corners. :D