Random Thread: November 2014

We’re staying with the moon this month. China’s Chang’e 5-T1 test orbiter, nicknamed “Xiaofei” (little flier), just returned to Earth after looping around the moon and taking some beautiful pictures — including this one from beyond the lunar far side. China plans to launch a sample-return mission in 2017. Meanwhile, it’s always good to see our pretty little blue world from afar.

(By the way, because we were late in creating this thread, there are some November posts on the October random thread, starting here.)

Users’ Manual: Obey The Rules. Consult The Guide. Have fun!

Date: November 2, 2014

Author: Robert Coontz (Administrator)

Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness

Comments RSS TrackBack 294 comments

1

Lizzie

in November 2nd, 2014 @ 22:23

The more I blow my nose the more I feel like Lady Macbeth: Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much ~~blood~~ snot in him.

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1.1

oxlin

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 10:18

“Out **** snot”

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2

Groundhog

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 02:48

My friend’s wife had a baby girl last night/this morning. I think I’d like to make a gift for her, rather than buying, if only to avoid a situation in which everything the child receives is pink.

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3

bookgirl_me

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 06:40

2- But you could make/buy a and then watch the baby chew on it when she starts to teeth. Teach her to destroy the enemy early on!

Anyhow, thank the universe for motorcycles! If anyone told me beforehand that practicing emergency braking & dodging would be the most fun and relaxing part of my weekend, I’d have laughed, but there’s something very meditative about just focusing on yourself, the road and the motorcycle. And my driving teacher complimented me on how good I’m getting, which I feel pretty great about because I was pretty much the ultimate problem child at first.

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4

Dodecahedron

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 09:00

but Bookgirl, everyone has trouble at first with learning to drive, don’t think of yourself as a problem child. ~~except me because I was and am perfect~~

My partner is learning how to drive a car now. Since I’m not old enough to legally supervise him yet (25 days), my father went out with us and we made circles around the parking lot. My favorite part was when he started veering off into the grass when trying to turn at the edge of the lot. Coincidentally, me shouting “NO NO NO” as he began his very slow off-roading excursion was his least favorite part of the lesson.

I was also a big fan of the sign we passed again and again at 5mph that said “PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY”.

Everyone has to start somewhere, though! Someday I won’t have to always drive us everywhere. I’m really excited for that.

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4.1

oxlin

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 10:15

Hmm. maybe I should teach my boyfriend. I’m probably old enough to legally supervise him.

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5

KaiYves

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 10:05

What a beautiful photo!

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6

Catwings

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 10:45

Okay, so, I lost a friend for listening to KoÑn.
She claimed that the song I showed her was “satanic, demonic, malevolent, and sexual” being a narrow-minded Christian, she believes that anything that sounds like that will send you to hell, and she doesn’t want to hang out with someone with so much sin in their life.
She listens to Nikki Minaj, who sings mostly about sex, drugs and drinking. (Apologies if there are any Minaj fans reading this.)
While not even letting me explain that that particular song is about people who are so fake, acting tough just to make themselves look more important than others, while the singer is saying that he would never do such a thing as masquerading as something he’s not just to look cool.

Also not to mention that KoÑn’s bass player is Christian, too.

Makes me so mad.

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6.1

Agent Lightning

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 17:20

Metal has a reputation as being, well, satanic, demonic, malevolent, and sexual. Obviously you have every right to like a thing and no obligation to fit the stereotype. It is good to know what sort of stigmas surround the community of things you’re an open fan of, though, and know how best to fight those.

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6.2

Kokonilly

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 18:50

“she believes that anything that sounds like that will send you to hell, and she doesnâ€™t want to hang out with someone with so much sin in their life”

Uh… generally, if someone thinks this way, I would consider losing their friendship not so bad. People that judgmental are not worth spending time with, and are generally condescending/holier-than-thou anyway. Who needs that sort of stuff? If you have a friend constantly complaining about your “sins”, their friendship is not worth it. (Usually, if someone [not a family member] tells me that I’ve sinned, I just laugh.)

In my opinion [very hypocritically, because I’m talking about it], people should just keep their feelings to themselves. Judging someone for their life choices, at best, won’t do anything — and, at worst, will make them feel bad about it.

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6.3

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 22:42

I actually like Nicki Minaj, but hey, I never claimed to have taste. :p

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6.3.1

POSOC

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 23:20

Hey, like what music you like. There is nothing wrong with Nicki Minaj any more than there’s anything wrong with Korn.

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6.3.2

Catwings

in November 4th, 2014 @ 04:45

Hey, I did say you had my apologies.

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6.3.3

shadowfire

in November 4th, 2014 @ 22:43

I adore Nicki Minaj. Also, I have thankfully grown out of my middle school “all pop music is bad and evil and trashy” phase. Ew, past self.

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6.3.3.1

Taiwan Hippo Fan

in November 7th, 2014 @ 16:25

Ugh, with you on the past self. That was me, too and I weep daily for my lost hours of pop enjoyment. But how was I to know?

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6.3.4

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 5th, 2014 @ 03:49

Ah – the sad face was directed at your friend, the rest was meant to be lighthearted.

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7

KaiYves

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 17:58

I made the mistake of watching “Without Warning” (the made-for-TV fake newscast apocalyptic movie) while up past my bedtime last night. The plot may not have made much sense, but holy cake was the ending scary. Brrrr…

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8

ZNZ

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 18:25

Tom Magliozzi (one of the Car Talk brothers) died today.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been listening to Car Talk since I was [hand hovers three inches above ground] yea high, but: you know how there are some people who exist in the world and are so honest-to-God good that the thought of them being alive and doing things on the same planet you live on is a quiet reminder that not everything is lost?

I’m gonna miss him.

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8.1

KaiYves

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 18:59

Agreed.

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8.2

Midnight Fiddler

in November 3rd, 2014 @ 19:47

I also grew up listening to Car Talk. I always threatened my dad that I’d call them about the weird things my Yugo (and later, my car affectionately known as the Stealthmobile) did.

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8.3

fireh

in November 4th, 2014 @ 08:13

WHAT NO

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8.4

Cerulean Pyros

in November 6th, 2014 @ 13:04

*Joins sobfest*

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8.5

Groundhog

in November 7th, 2014 @ 03:15

Me too. Listening to Car Talk actually made me wish my car was more of a clunker, just so I could call in and ask what was wrong with it.

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9

KaiYves

in November 4th, 2014 @ 14:43

Man, when was the last time the Science Times Q and A answered a question that didn’t start with “Can I catch Ebola from…” They should just do one big article about a bunch of common situations they’ve been asked about and be done with it.

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9.1

KaiYves

in November 11th, 2014 @ 22:40

In today’s paper, they noted that they had been “besieged” with questions about the topic and that it was part of the larger problem of people not understanding the disease.

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10

Piggy

in November 4th, 2014 @ 17:43

I talked to the prior of the monastery on the phone again today. It’s official now: I’ll be entering on Sunday, January 11th. At seven a.m., no less. I (and my family, I hope) will fly out there the day before. I realized several hours later that I forgot to ask about writing letters, but I think that information should be in the Mega Entrance Information Email that Br. Simon Mary’s going to send me, so I’ll let you guys know ASAP. Tomorrow I’ll be putting in my, er, three-week notice at work, though I already told my boss it would be towards the end of November that I’d be quitting.

These are going to be simultaneously the shortest and the longest two months of my life, I’m pretty sure. January!

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10.1

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 4th, 2014 @ 20:10

Congratulations again!

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10.2

fireh

in November 5th, 2014 @ 09:58

It’s amazing how smoothly all of this is coming together for you. I’ll definitely be writing you letters though!

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11

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 4th, 2014 @ 20:13

I always forget that going to the polls to vote is how the vast majority of the country does it. I don’t think it will ever not be weird to me. Why have all the stress of dealing with crowds on the one day you’re allowed to vote when you can vote in the privacy of your own home weeks before the due date? I get that it’s kind of an event and I suppose it would feel more patriotic that way but it just seems really antiquated.

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11.1

Cat's Meow

in November 4th, 2014 @ 22:50

I know what you mean. Since Washington is almost entirely vote-by-mail, my voting experiences have consisted of dropping ballots in mailboxes, and once in the ballot box at the library.

I was very disappointed for a while that I would never get an “I Voted” sticker. So, now, I post a selfie of myself every time I vote, no matter how small the election. I’m also really glad that Voldynet (for one) is letting people easily set their status to “I voted!”, since while you don’t make the same connection with strangers at the polls, you do actually have a better chance of influencing your friends to get out and vote. For young people, I think that’s especially important.

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11.2

Dodecahedron

in November 5th, 2014 @ 09:52

in New York we need an excuse to get an absentee/mail ballot (e.g. caregiver who can’t take a day off, unable to get to polls because of documented condition). I voted absentee in 2012 because I was away at college, but sadly that was no longer the case this year.

My polling place doesn’t give out stickers Also they had a sign out on the grass in front/by parking for my polling place for one of the candidates? Probably less than/close to 100 feet away from the door, but there weren’t clearly posted distance markers. Is that legal? I suspect it isn’t but I don’t know what to do.

I was disappointed with how the elections went this year. My state senate district went Republican, and it looks like the NYS senate is now majority Republican due in large part to that race. I really didn’t like the winner’s policies, and I found it disingenuous for her to post “Women for Sue Serino” advertisements when her policies were, in my opinion, anti-woman. Not to mention that I’m really worried about the majority-Republican national House and Senate, since I feel the Republicans have demonstrated that they have exactly zero commitment to getting anything done, and people are being hurt because of it.

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11.3

Cerulean Pyros

in November 6th, 2014 @ 13:08

Huh, you just mail it where you live? Cool! I like that. There was only one person ahead of me when I went to my poll (in early afternoon), so I don’t actually have complaints, but I’d pick mail if I could.

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12

shadowfire

in November 4th, 2014 @ 22:41

Wonderful thing about college: sometimes professional acts come to our theater. So I volunteered to usher a show that Ira Glass is doing. And I got to see Ira Glass live. For free.
(muffled squeeing continues in background)

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13

Kokonilly

in November 5th, 2014 @ 11:08

There is an undergrad research conference I want to attend at Harvard, but they’re not subsidizing travel expenses unless I want to give a plenary speech. And because that isn’t going to happen for now (what would I talk about? just thinking about the possibility makes me nervous), buying a $300-400 round-trip plane ticket only to spend more money there doesn’t seem worth it…

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13.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 5th, 2014 @ 11:53

I’m not sure how helpful this is, but this 10-year-old article on undergraduate participation in conferences includes a section on getting funding:

http :// sciencecareers.sciencemag . org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2004_08_06/nodoi.15309044315678069779

Maybe your own department could help?

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13.2

Dodecahedron

in November 5th, 2014 @ 12:48

When I went to a conference involving undergraduate research, I received funding from:
-my department
-my school’s Student Association
-the local chapter of the IEEE (professional organization in my field) (note: this was a local chapter of the organization drawing from their local budget, NOT the national organization as a whole, although national orgs might offer scholarships if you are presenting research)

I’d suggest starting by talking to a professor in your department about it; they’ll likely know of a couple more sources of funding.

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13.3

Kokonilly

in November 7th, 2014 @ 04:06

Thanks for the tips! I’ll apply to present a poster at the conference — hopefully my lab can fund my trip.

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14

KaiYves

in November 5th, 2014 @ 12:49

My absentee ballot didn’t come in time. What do I do if it comes today?

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15

RÃ³s Ã¾yrnir

in November 5th, 2014 @ 14:17

People who think I would be hella cute with short hair:
-Me
-My grandma
-Probably most people
People who would hate it if I had short hair:
-My parents
People whose approval I need due to the fact that I am living under their roof and they are paying for my education:
-My parents
You see my problem here?

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15.1

Midnight Fiddler

in November 5th, 2014 @ 22:06

Why would they hate it, have you asked them/have they told you?
Hair is hair. It grows out. Are they afraid that you won’t get taken seriously/people will make unfair assumptions about you because of your hair, or they simply don’t think it would look good? Because for the first, I think it’s important to point out that while it’s true that hairstyles are often used as signifiers of lifestyle choices and whether that’s correctly read or not, it is something that happens. That said, why is it exactly a bad thing if your hair gets read as something, even if it’s not totally accurate? And if they think it just looks bad, that’s not really their place to say, because it’s not their hair and body and you’re old enough to dress yourself so you should also be able to control easily reversible/non-permanent aspects of your appearance.
Basically, I can understand parents’ unease with their children changing their bodies, but I also think it’s super important that people be able to have autonomy over their bodies, and especially when it comes to things like hair that is basically a non-issue because it’s a totally renewable resource.

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15.1.1

RÃ³s Ã¾yrnir

in November 6th, 2014 @ 13:11

They have made it very clear. Around last August I had it cut so that it was just short enough that my ears showed sometimes (it was layered and longer in the back so it mostly covered my neck) (and it wasn’t even the whole ear, just the bottom of the ear). My mom hated it because my ears showed (apparently she thinks that haircuts that show ears look bad on women???) and, due to the way it curled and poofed, looked like “old lady hair”. The ear comments were made more confusing by the fact that she has mentioned many times how small and nice my ears are, and that she likes it when I have my hair back. My dad’s specific objections were not clear. Almost everyone else thought it was cute. I, however, didn’t like that length due to the fact that the way my hair naturally curls/waves/poofs just didn’t go along with it and it was a pain to deal with.
As for the concerns regarding people making assumptions, I actually consider that to be a good thing- I want to, for lack of a better term, look gayer. (I’m turning into such a stereotypical lesbian. Sorry not sorry.) And considering how my parents handled me coming out to them, they probably don’t want me to look gayer (they’re not exactly homophobic, but they won’t really accept the idea of me being queer).
Considering… various things, I came to the conclusion that it would be best if I don’t try to rebel against them too much until I don’t live here anymore. I need to stay on their good side as much as I can until I leave. Alas, that won’t be for almost two years (since I’m staying here for my freshman year of college).

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15.1.1.1

Midnight Fiddler

in November 9th, 2014 @ 22:31

Yup okay, I figured that looking gayer was something they were probably iffy about. (Also, never be sorry about becoming a stereotypical lesbian. Have you SEEN stereotypical lesbians?! it’s a great look.)
Still, I’d say that your appearance is your business, but the choice between passive aggressive parent comments (or straight-up aggressive, depending) and feeling at ease with your looks is a super nuanced and personal decision. I’m sure you’re a total cutie no matter what you do. ♥

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15.2

Kokonilly

in November 7th, 2014 @ 04:12

I have the opposite problem. My hair is now the longest it’s ever been — down to the middle of my back — my mom hates it and says I look like a buruka (witch), but everyone has been complimenting my long, black, silky hair and I love it. Plus I’m in college half a country away now and I can do whatever I want, so #YOLO

(Basically, I’m telling you to wait until you move out to do anything drastic. Two years may seem like a long time, but if they’re really that opposed to it, you might as well wait. I say this as an Asian girl who has stayed on her parents’ good side her entire life and fears life on the bad side.)

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15.2.1

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 7th, 2014 @ 18:05

Heh, same for me. I started growing mine out from bob length in eighth grade, and by the end of high school I was an out queer girl with hair as long as everyone else’s. (Which I then dyed half of purple). (Admittedly, to the extent that there are bisexual stereotypes for looks it seems to be “femme or normal-looking until it’s TOO LATE”) But my dad is pretty chill about how I dress, so uh… Kokonilly probably has good advice.

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16

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 5th, 2014 @ 20:30

This morning I shared a Metro car with some anonymous-looking people in Guy Fawkes masks, on their way to the Million Mask March. I’m not sure whether a million marchers actually showed up, but I can attest that there were at least four of them. Did any of you have marches in your town?

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16.1

Jadestone

in November 6th, 2014 @ 04:58

No marches or masks, but I did get a giant bonfire and some nice fireworks Strange to be in the right country for the holiday for once!

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16.2

KaiYves

in November 6th, 2014 @ 10:16

I don’t know if there was anything here, but I didn’t see anything.

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16.3

Dodecahedron

in November 6th, 2014 @ 12:00

To be bluntly honest I’m so, so done with people buying mass produced Guy Fawkes masks because they are ~edgy~ and ~nonconformist~ and ~liked V For Vendetta~ and ~anonymously working to better the world~.

The problem with Anonymous is that there’s no centralized accountability, so if truly awful things happen they can claim it was an individual’s actions when the movement was supporting them the whole way. Also see: Gamergate.

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16.3.1

KaiYves

in November 6th, 2014 @ 14:05

I agree with most of that, but what’s wrong with someone buying a mask because they liked the movie or comic?

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16.3.1.1

Agent Lightning

in November 6th, 2014 @ 15:41

Nothing at first, but as it grows connotations, one has to be careful about the stigma surrounded by such articles: I didn’t even realize the Anonymous masks were Guy Fawkes masks until it was brought up just now. I just knew them as Anonymous masks.

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17

Luna the Lovely

in November 6th, 2014 @ 03:52

Whoo! Tonight was awesome. Kissed two Aussies on the cheek, hugged two other Aussies, and got sort of kissed on the cheek by one of the Aussie’s I kissed on the cheek.

And holy *beep*. I did not even realize until I saw Robert’s post above that today (well technically yesterday now) had any significance to my life. But it was the day (4 years ago) that my ex and I started dating. And I didn’t think about it once. It never even occurred to me. And I went to a male strip show on what would have been the 4th anniversary and that is so caking hilariously awesome to me right now.

Actually, if i was just a little bit less nice, it makes me really totally want to send that pic of me kissing a hot Aussie to the ex just to be a jerk, given the significance of yesterday’s date.

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17.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 6th, 2014 @ 06:58

Wait. You want to be a jerk? Does not compute.

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17.1.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 6th, 2014 @ 08:27

There is a part of me that’s tempted. But I think I’m slightly too nice to actually follow through

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17.1.1.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 6th, 2014 @ 08:53

All the more credit to you, then, for resisting temptation.

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18

KaiYves

in November 7th, 2014 @ 15:55

Gee, Apple, maybe if you’d let me delete all of these “permanent” apps I never use like Stocks and Game Center, I’d have enough space free to download the update…

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18.1

Agent Lightning

in November 7th, 2014 @ 18:28

This exact struggle. I can’t wait to buy a phone with enough storage for every song in the universe.

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18.2

Selenium the Quafflebird

in November 8th, 2014 @ 07:47

If you’re talking about iOS8 for the iphone, I didn’t have enough memory either, but you can do it through iTunes (by plugging it into your computer) and doing a software update from there.

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18.2.1

KaiYves

in November 8th, 2014 @ 09:45

I did that, although it reverted my phone to last year’s back-up again in the process. (This time I was able to remember my password for the e-mail account I’ve gotten since, so I reconnected the account very quickly.) Oddly, one of my problems before was being told I didn’t have enough space to take more photos, so I would quickly delete them after uploading to Dropbox. Now I have the 600 pictures I took last year back and yet I still apparently have 9.6 GB available.

Eh, computers, what can you do?

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18.2.1.1

KaiYves

in November 8th, 2014 @ 09:46

Whoops, misspelled my e-mail…

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19

Agent Lightning

in November 7th, 2014 @ 18:29

There are kittens! There are two. One of them is orange and the other is black. I am very contented.

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19.1

Kai D.

in November 10th, 2014 @ 16:17

And what a sad world it would be if there were only two kittens in the world. If this is not what you mean, then I don’t understand the reference.

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19.1.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 11th, 2014 @ 21:03

Kai D., I think that means that Agent Lightning has acquired two kittens.

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20

Kai D.

in November 7th, 2014 @ 20:46

It just occurred to me, why DON’T NASA officials sent up tourist shuttles? It seems like all space-related deaths in the history of the earth don’t amount to the number of deaths of NASCAR drivers in the history of NASCAR. So maybe we Earthlings are more close-minded than we like to think-We prefer the Earth-based entertainment with a higher death rate to the space-based entertainment. COME ON NASA, THERE’S TOURIST MONEY TO BE EARNED!!!!!!!

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20.1

Lizzie

in November 8th, 2014 @ 07:12

1. Instead of the basic numbers, since the scale between NASCAR and NASA is so different, a percentage might be a more accurate way to reflect the danger.
2. NASCAR is an observational form of entertainment, NASA would be participatory. Personally I think most people are more comfortable watching something where someone might die than participating in that thing.
3. I can watch NASCAR for a lot cheaper (even in person) than I could take a tourist shuttle for.

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20.1.1

KaiYves

in November 8th, 2014 @ 09:56

What Lizzie said– the cost per person and the operational costs would be much greater, and NASA doesn’t really have enough money to build all-new vehicles that could carry enough people to break even, let alone fly on something like a regular schedule, on top of everything else they do. Like I’m sure you’ve heard, they don’t get as much funding as they used to.

However, some of the companies they have contracted and given funding to for the purposes of re supplying the space station, such as SpaceX and Sierra Nevada Space Systems, do want to carry tourists once they can be sure their craft are safe for humans. (There are certainly people who wouldn’t want to wait, but our society is so prone to lawsuits and even a tourist aware of the risks could have a family who might not see their death in the same light.)

So wait, advocate for them, and save up your pennies!

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20.1.2

Kai D.

in November 8th, 2014 @ 15:48

Well, what about danger to the drivers? Why do they keep showing up? They even have to train! But tourists don’t at all.

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20.1.2.1

KaiYves

in November 8th, 2014 @ 16:39

I presume that NASCAR drivers continue to show up despite the danger because they consider it worthwile and believe the benefits of the job out-way the risks– just the same as astronauts and cosmonauts.

While there have only been seven space tourists so far (millionaires who paid a lot of money to the Russian space agency), all of them did have to train quite a bit– the most recent of them, Guy Laliberte (the founder of Cirque du Soleil), made a documentary about his flight called “Touch the Sky” that shows his training– although I don’t think it was as intensive as the training for career cosmonauts.

I don’t know much about other space tourism companies, but from what I’ve read, Virgin Galactic does have a training plan set up for their passengers, although a lot of it is just making sure they can handle the g-forces and a possible pressure leak without health problems. (Again, lawsuits.) This training would be less than a week, though, not the months and years professional astronauts and cosmonauts go through.

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21

KaiYves

in November 8th, 2014 @ 12:03

Dang it, XCOR, how am I supposed to make fanart of your spaceship if you don’t post pictures of it on the Internet?

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22

Piggy

in November 8th, 2014 @ 21:33

All-you-can-eat sushi and sashimi. Is there any better way to spend a Saturday night? Well, yes–if you follow it up with a spontaneous symphony concert (Mahler’s “Resurrection” symphony, if you were curious). It wasn’t mediocre sushi, either, it was good sushi. Good tea, too.

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23

Luna the Lovely

in November 8th, 2014 @ 21:59

Back at my apartment in [college town] after 2 weeks in Vegas. Time to start hard core studying for boards (oh god only 15 days left and I”m only 37% through the prep course oh god oh god).

Meanwhile, however, I’m super behind on Doctor Who, haven’t watched any since I left for Vegas so counting today’s episode (what is with this stupid 12 episode season and today’s being the season finale, seriously), I’m three episodes behind.

So instead of going to bed like would be intelligent at 10pm after travelling much of the day, I’m going to go watch 3 Doctor Who episodes.

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24

Dodecahedron

in November 10th, 2014 @ 12:04

So I went to “Hack the Universe” this past weekend and I am still recovering from getting only one hour of sleep in the 38 hours between Friday morning and Saturday night. On the plus side, I wrote 95% of our app singlehandedly, and it worked at the end! I was a bit frustrated that, of our five-person group, I did so much of the actual project, but on the other hand it’s a great ego boost for me that I was able to accomplish so much in such a short time (15 hours or so of actual coding – 11pm-3:30am, 5am-2:30pm, breaks for food occasionally).

Our app was meant to get across the concept of lightyears to 7-9 year old children. They could record a message, and on another computer or phone choose a planet to send it to, and they’d have to wait an amount of time proportional to the distance from Earth to the other planet to hear the message again. It took <1 second to send a message to Mercury, but 30 seconds to send a message to Neptune.

We didn't win or anything (possibly because we didn't actually USE much of the dataset we were supposed to be working with?) but it was fun. With that said, I wouldn't do it again anytime soon – staying up all night definitely did not help my cold or my faith in the fundamental goodness humanity.

(I also did not get ANYTHING done for NaNoWriMo in the past three days – hoping to get back on track today, since my 5k word lead is now gone)

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24.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 10th, 2014 @ 12:16

What fun! I’d love to have an app like that.

It sounds as if the numbers of seconds you mentioned are the distances in Astronomical Units. If so, your interplanetary communicator sends messages at about 500 times the speed of light. (1 A.U. is just under 500 light-seconds; that’s why it takes sunlight about eight minutes to reach Earth.) Neptune is actually about 4 light-hours away — too long to expect kids to wait for a message, of course.

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24.1.1

Dodecahedron

in November 10th, 2014 @ 12:44

It’s a web app, so you actually can have an app like that! Some of the backend is running on the work server for someone else in the group, so no guarantees that it’ll work forever, but try this link: hacktheuniverse . github . io/interstellar-telephone/src/parse-js-blank/

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25

KaiYves

in November 10th, 2014 @ 17:38

I needed that run, I really did. I had needed a good outdoor run since the Friday before last, and it felt great.

I don’t know if the members of U2 thought about it when writing the songs or negotiating the mass givaway, but most of the songs in “Songs of Innocence” are great for running.

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26

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 10th, 2014 @ 21:50

Things that interfere with one’s feels and abilities to think vaguely rationally:
3. Fandom
2.1 Politics
2.0 Arguments about whether something is political
1. Arguing with your dad about a plan and being pretty sure he’s not bothering to update his beliefs or something but ohcakewhatifhe’srightamIincapableofcatchingaplaneontimecaaaaaake

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26.1

Catwings

in November 11th, 2014 @ 07:32

I know the first one spot on.

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27

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 11th, 2014 @ 03:23

I’m not sure if it’s totally sunk in that I’m actually going to study abroad next quarter. Like, for realzies. I got a bunch of forms in the mail today to fill out for housing and I have the second meeting on Wednesday where everyone in the program is going to be there I think.

But yeah I’m going to Paris! I’m going to be doing the neurobiology program. Which is definitely not what I would have taken if I was staying here, but it’s all intro-level courses in Paris and it’s biology so it’s kind of sort of related to ecology? Not really at all but whatever. It was that or astronomy in the spring, and I was really torn up about deciding until I looked at the course descriptions and suddenly remembered that I switched to biology for a reason: there’s not enough practical stuff for me in physics. With neurobiology there will be labs! Yay!

I will also be taking French, which hopefully will not mess up my independent German re-learning too bad. I’ve been at it for a solid five months now, I can’t let all that progress go to waste! Even though I still haven’t gotten to the past tense yet.

Jeez everything’s going so fast. I hope I’ll be able to move back in the spring with no hassle.

I was thinking of starting a blog. Since I’ve come to the realization over the past few years that I never was very stoked about the whole “science” thing. I mean, I’m good at it; I’m good at math and I mildly like working with computers. But it’s never been something I’ve been passionate about, and seeing other people who are legitimately passionate about it has made me realize that. What I actually really like doing is experiencing stories. And writing them, too, I guess, though I haven’t had a lot of practice. I’ve always dreamed of being able to make my own youtube videos. Of being a content creator. But stuff always got in the way. First it was my parents (in general), now it’s a boatload of work combined with general laziness. I need to do something. Soon. Every day opportunities are passing me by.

Sorry, it’s 3:30. I never seem to post unless some of my brain function is impaired.

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27.1

Agent Lightning

in November 11th, 2014 @ 08:15

Whoa, are you going to the American University of Paris? My aunt has a family friend who studies there, and we met with her once when we were in the city this summer.
You should totally experiment with being a content creator! I’ve created minimal amounts of content in my life but really enjoy it and hope to make a lot more. It’s a good feeling.

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27.1.1

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 11th, 2014 @ 17:52

No it’s a program through my school that has a small campus there. It’ll be pretty neat!

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27.2

KaiYves

in November 11th, 2014 @ 09:33

Safe travels!

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28

Groundhog

in November 11th, 2014 @ 08:08

I think my job title needs to be changed to “Jill of all trades.” Because my company now has me doing programming, graphic design, and customer service.

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28.1

Kittymine, OSW

in November 12th, 2014 @ 22:14

(the squid is from me)

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29

Catwings

in November 11th, 2014 @ 21:21

My most recent train of thought that I regret fully:
“Oh, wow, I think I ate too much just now, I’m going to go lay down in bed, on my stomach so I can use my laptop because that’s such a good idea!”
Urp.

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29.1

KaiYves

in November 11th, 2014 @ 22:39

Laying on your side is good in cases like this. (My digestion is very sensitive, so I have some experience with this. You can even fall asleep totally on your side if you’re tired enough.)

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29.1.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 11th, 2014 @ 22:52

“You can even fall asleep totally on your side if you’re tired enough.”

Question of curiosity: So are you saying that, ordinarily, unless you’re super tired you can’t fall asleep whilst laying on your side? Personally, I fall asleep much much quicker laying on my side. Right side over left, typically. Historically laying on my back I fall asleep much slower, although can still do so if I ‘m tired enough. And laying on my back while falling asleep was a technique I would attempt to employ to fall asleep slower and give myself a chance to day dream a bit and let my mind wander before drifting off. These days, though, falling asleep slower merely translates to it taking about 5 minutes to lose consciousness instead of about 2 minutes, so it’s pretty much irrelevant what position I’m laying in. well, aside from my stomach. I don’t fall asleep well that way.

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29.1.1.1

Midnight Fiddler

in November 11th, 2014 @ 23:35

I am a confirmed side and stomach sleeper. I’m capable of sleeping on my back only when I’m extremely tired or no other way of lying is comfortable. I sleep on both sides, but usually prefer to stick my face into the wall (assuming the bed is next to one).

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29.1.1.1.1

Lizzie

in November 12th, 2014 @ 05:57

I sleep on my back because if I sleep on my side it kills my arm / shoulders. Side, fetal position is most comfortable for me though – second most comfortable is on my back, arms in vampire position but I can’t do that either because that kills my hands.

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29.1.1.2

Cat's Meow

in November 12th, 2014 @ 01:33

I’m a side sleeper as well.

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29.1.1.3

Errata

in November 12th, 2014 @ 09:28

I paused at ‘you can even sleep on your side’, too, but what’s really strange to me is this idea of deliberately trying to put off sleep.

Like, I usually estimate it takes ~45 minutes for me to fall asleep anyway, and probably a substantial fraction of that even when I’m really tired.

I sometimes try to go to sleep on my back, but always in the hopes that if I stay completely still for a long time, I’ll go to sleep faster than otherwise. Chosing any position for the purpose of slowing down sleep? Never.

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29.1.1.3.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:16

While I’m falling asleep is about the only time I have that I can daydream without feeling guilty knowing I have other things I need to be doing. And sometimes I’d like to daydream for more than just the 2 to 5 minutes it typically takes me to fall asleep anymore, soâ€¦..

But at most it prolongs it maybe another 2 minutes, nothing significant. It’s rare that I take more than maybe 10 minutes tops to fall asleep. Which is great at night, but sucks when you’re in lectures or other locations where it’s not really an appropriate time to be drifting off.

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29.1.1.4

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:37

I fall asleep more easily on my stomach than on my side.

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30

KaiYves

in November 11th, 2014 @ 22:27

Has anybody else ever noticed that the first part of the “Bunny Invasion” animation syncs up rather well with “Battle Without Honor or Humanity”?

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31

Kokonillly

in November 11th, 2014 @ 23:25

two of my friends from high school just got engaged to each other and it is weirding me out

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31.1

Cat's Meow

in November 12th, 2014 @ 01:36

Something like 3% of my high school class is engaged or married (~6/200), two to each other and the rest to people the grade ahead of us. It is weird. I can imagine it would be significantly weirder if it were two of my friends.

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32

Midnight Fiddler

in November 12th, 2014 @ 00:52

I DID IT I DID IT I DID IT
The draft of my thesis is done, converted to a .pdf and emailed to myself so i can print it tomorrow and hand it in and I AM DONE.
I know it’s rough, and I know there’s a ton more I’m going to need to do, and I know I’ll probably have to restructure it a lot, and I need to do a ton more digging through secondary sources (I only put two in, eeeek), but that’s do-able. I can do that. The main thing of just getting it onto paper is done for now and I’m going to bed, because my fingers have suddenly stopped being able to type.

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32.1

Cat's Meow

in November 12th, 2014 @ 15:54

Congratulations! The draft seems like it would be the trickiest part!

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Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 03:20

When my alarm went off to wake me up to watch the next step of Rosetta/Philae I was in the middle of a horrible dream where I was watching a Law and Order episode in an airport with some socially awkward creepy type guy (like my creepy former neighbor, in a way). And then we were some how on a beach, and thngs that were being said on the show/told to me by someone/tweeted/I’m not quite sure whatâ€¦..Were making it very clear that in reality, this individual was a Very Bad Person who abducted women. And his twitter handle (????) was @kellin_cotti, and I was trying to hide, trying to scream for help and I was opening my mouth to scream but was so terrified that just the sound of breath came out, I *couldn’t* scream, So I decided I was going to try to hide underneath the dock, where there was hopefully airspace, but I was also realizing that this was not a good choice, b/c he would definitely look there b/c that’s where he would drown his victims? (or osmething. dream world is a bit confusing). So I was trying to scream again and couldn’t and then my alarm started going off and I was freaking in my dream b/c OMG i had to make that stop b/c he was going to hear it and locate me and–

–then i woke up and was super disoriented and realized that oh holy cake thank god i was *dreaming* and it wasn’t real.

And then I realized that the twitter name for the dude kellin cotti was the species (as in, the second part of the genus species) kellicotti, which is a lung parasite.

So I’m dreaming about some dude named after a lung parasite who drowns people?

Too much studying for the NAVLE [boards] yesterday?

Holy cake. I”m almost afraid to go back to sleep now until my next update alarm in 1 1/2 hours.

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34

Groundhog

in November 12th, 2014 @ 06:48

Anyone else keeping track of the comet landing?

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34.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 06:53

Luna has just reported that she is. I am, too — one of my staff writers is at Mission Control in Darmstadt. Exciting, isn’t it? I hope that possible problem with the top thruster isn’t serious.

We’ve subscribed to a bunch of Rosetta/Philae/ESA Twitter accounts (drop by @Kokonspiracy to see them).

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34.1.1

Groundhog

in November 12th, 2014 @ 08:05

Whoops, I missed that part of her post. I was focusing more on the nightmare part…

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34.2

Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 07:16

Yup! Got the live ESA feed running in the background. Although the woman who does all the talking and interviewing and stuff on that feed is really grating on my nerves for whatever reason.

Fingers crossed for a successful landing and everything! I gave up pretty much my whole night’s sleep to keep track of it, lol.

I had thought there had been going to be some pictures and stuff transmitted after htey regained contact, but either they’re not sharing those on the live feed or I”m just confused. Either are quite possible.

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34.2.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 08:07

She changed clothes. Why did she change clothes? It’s the same day. Are there rules against wearing one outfit all daylong? Have we started changing clothes upon returning from lunch?

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34.2.1.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 09:08

If I wanted to read tweets about Rosetta/Philae that random people posted on twitterâ€¦..I’d be on twitter reading them. You don’t need to waste my time reading them to me. I dont’ understand this trend in “journalism”

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34.2.1.2

KaiYves

in November 12th, 2014 @ 09:41

That was a replay from last night.

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34.2.1.2.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:13

No, it was definitely from today. Super early this morning my time, she was wearing a purple shirt w/o a jacket and talking about the things that were going on at that time (Philae separating, etc), then she said it was lunch time. Then they returned, she was wearing a brown jacket and different shirt. And she is now still wearing a brown jacket with different shirt while talking about the successful landing.

So while, yes, she was wearing a brown jacket last night her time, and there has been at least one point where my feed started playing a replay, she definitely changed clothes over lunch.

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34.2.1.3

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 15:55

Maybe she was up all night and didn’t have a chance to change clothes before lunch. ~~Not that anything like that has ever happened to me, of course.~~

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34.2.2

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 12th, 2014 @ 16:37

My Natural Hazards TA was watching, too, so she understood why I was eating at the beginning of discussion– she was a little late herself. She even talked about it with everybody and showed one of the videos!

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34.3

Jadestone

in November 12th, 2014 @ 07:41

I am too, vaguely! I’m at work so I can’t watch the live stream, but I’m gonna tune in anyway around 4 when it starts to land

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34.3.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 08:48

That’s 10 a.m. blog time, 11 a.m. Robert-and-Rebecca time (i.e., U.S. Eastern Standard Time), 8 a.m. Rosanne time, etc.

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34.4

KaiYves

in November 12th, 2014 @ 09:41

C’mon, Philae!

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35

Groundhog

in November 12th, 2014 @ 09:39

Aaaand it should have landed now! Pity we have to wait half an hour to find out what happened…

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Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:05

YES! Happy scientists!

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36.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:07

And now, busy scientists.

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36.1.1

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 15:53

And busy science writers.

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36.1.1.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 16:22

One of whom I just finished editing.

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36.1.1.1.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 12th, 2014 @ 16:32

Writers, editors, and educators are part of the mission, too, and I wish you the same good luck I wished the control team.

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Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:29

Please excuse continuous capitals. One is not generally given to implied hyberbole, but just occasionally, they are justified.

WE LANDED ON A COMET!!!!

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KaiYves

in November 12th, 2014 @ 10:34

They did it! Philae did it!

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39

Cat's Meow

in November 12th, 2014 @ 15:59

The XKCD live-comic is awesome. Even though I had class this morning, it nicely captures some of the celebration, uncertainty, and courage that happened moment-by-moment.

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39.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 12th, 2014 @ 16:23

You all can see the whole sequence at http :// xkcd1446 . org/ .

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Noah2316

in November 12th, 2014 @ 17:54

I love xkcd! I found that live-comic a little too late (about noon, blog time), so I had to start at the beginning and flip through the entire sequence. That’s actually where most of my information about Rosetta and Phliae came from today…

Normally, I just think in passing, “Oh, yeah, we launched spacecraft that traveled for ten years and landed on a comet millions of miles away. No big deal.”
But after I really start to think about it, it hits me like a harpoon! CAKE! We actually made it that far! Millions of miles! We landed a programmed thing (sorry Philae, I couldn’t think of anything else to describe you) on a COMET! We did this with technology that had been outdated for ten years, a craft that had been hurtling through the expanse of space for just as long, and on top of it all, a technical failure to make it even more exciting and spectacular. Meanwhile, us (mostly) regular folks sit around while amazing things are happening out there. Words just cannot describe it. Mind = Blown!

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40.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 12th, 2014 @ 19:16

Welcome to MuseBlog’s Students Promoting the Advancement of Cosmic Exploration club, or, as we call it, SPACE. I think you qualify, here’s your card, we’re glad to have you.

Have you seen the cartoons ESA has made showing Rosetta and Philae as storybook characters? They’re adorable.

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Noah2316

in November 12th, 2014 @ 20:08

I have seen the ‘Wake Up, Rosetta!’ video from when they first revived Rosetta a few months ago, but other than that, I’ve never seen them as cartoon characters…
(They are cute, though)

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41.1

KaiYves

in November 12th, 2014 @ 22:18

The most recent one is called “Preparing for Comet Landing”. Before that, there was “Rosetta: Are We There Yet?” (There may have been some others in-between that I missed. But “Preparing for Comet Landing is the cutest. Philae packs a knapsack for his trip!)

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Kittymine, OSW

in November 12th, 2014 @ 22:18

Does anyone else feel a bit like they’re running around in an episode of Star Trek?

We landed on a moving object. In Space. Mind. Blowing.

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42.1

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 13th, 2014 @ 02:32

It seems to take quite a lot for me to step off the hedonic treadmill type thing and notice that actually, the early 21st century is pretty cool too, but… yep.

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42.2

Luna the Lovely

in November 13th, 2014 @ 11:20

What’s especially mind boggling to me is when I take a moment to remember that the probe was launched ~10 years ago. With 10+ year old technology, before smart phones and wifi, and all the tech we have now was mainstream.

To me, that’s what truly makes this amazing.

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42.2.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosettta!

in November 13th, 2014 @ 15:36

Well, 2004 was hardly the age of vacuum tubes and certainly not in robotic space exploration, which goes back to the LITERAL age of vacuum tubes. A Rosetta launched today would be better, but the technology of a decade ago was more than up to the task. Now, the Vikings landing on Mars with four kilobytes of memory, THAT’S a world away from our current tech.

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42.3

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 13th, 2014 @ 11:23

It’s the latest of many achievements by spacefaring robots. The NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft landed on a moving object in space (an asteroid) in February 2001. Deep Impact bombed a comet in 2005, the same year in which Huygens landed on Titan. In the 1970s, the Soviets even landed probes on Venus. I’m sure KaiYves can tell us about many more.

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muselover

in November 13th, 2014 @ 10:48

I just applied early decision to a college.

I feel old.

Also, hi, everyone. How’s it been?

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43.1

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 13th, 2014 @ 19:44

Hi muselover!

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43.2

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 14th, 2014 @ 07:03

Hey!

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Catwings

in November 13th, 2014 @ 12:25

I would Google this, but I just felt like I should open up an interesting conversation up on the ‘blog, since I haven’t in a while, and I know a few residents of this site who will just love to answer these questions.
1. What is a ‘light-year’?
2. How long does it take, approximately, to build a spacecraft. I know it would probably depend, but….
3. How exactly do satellites work? Like, ones for cell phone companies and such. If they orbit the Earth, then wouldn’t the reception have to go completely through Earth to reach it after a while?

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44.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosettta!

in November 13th, 2014 @ 15:30

I’m going to give each of these their own post because they’re all worthy topics of discussion in their own right.

1)

A light-year is the total distance that light travels in one standardized Earth year. (Light in the vacuum of outer space travels at the constant speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. In air or water or other substances where it has more particles to interact with, it goes a bit slower but is still insanely fast. As in, basically the fastest thing known baring some weird quirks of physics.)

In normal Earth units, a light year is about ten trillion kilometers, six trillion miles, or sixty-three thousand times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The nearest star is a little more than four light years away. Space is big!

We can also measure distance in light-seconds, -minutes, -hours, -days, etc. by multiplying that 299,792,458 meters per second figure by the number of seconds in each of those time units to get the distance in meters that light travels within that time. (No groaning about the math! I suck at math, but I like this kind where you know exactly what the numbers mean, you can use a calculator, and you just look up the values and plug them into your calculator.)

For example, a light-minute would be (60 seconds) x (299,792,458 meters per second) or 17,987,547,480 meters. That’s almost 18 million kilometers or 11 million miles. The Earth is about eight and a half light-minutes from the Sun, which is about 150 million kilometers or 93 million miles. Light takes about eight and a half minutes after it leaves the sun’s surface to reach the Earth. Space is big!

I don’t know if you’ve learned this in science class yet, but the rainbow spectrum of visible light from red to purple that we see with our human eyes is only one part of a larger spectrum of other types of radiation that run from radio waves (which carry the least energy) to gamma rays (which carry the most). (They’re organized by their wavelength, which we can talk about some other time.) Most of these other forms of radiation travel at the speed of light, too.

Because radio waves can only travel as fast as the speed of light, but space is so big, it can take a substantial bit of time for a signal sent out by controllers on Earth to reach a spacecraft exploring another planet– and it takes the same amount of time for the spacecraft to send a signal back! When Philae made its landing yesterday, the control center in Germany didn’t know about it until 28 minutes later, because the comet was twenty-eight light-minutes away from Earth. That’s why many spacecraft operating far from Earth operate on pre-programed instructions for quick tasks like this, where things have to be done much too fast to wait and see what Mission Control says.

Right now, the two Voyager probes, the spacecraft furthest from Earth that are still working, are respectively 36 light-hours and 29 light-hours from Earth. This means that it takes more than a day for the signals they send back to reach the Earth! The Voyagers have been traveling since 1977 and are now at the very edge of our solar system, far beyond the planets, where the sun’s energy begins to fall off. (The next time you wash your hands, look down at the bottom of the sink at where the stream of water from the faucet falls. It should spread out very quickly in a roughly circular pattern in straight lines up to a certain distance from where the stream first met the sink bottom, and then go slower and get more bubbly and calm past that distance. Now imagine the sun’s energy doing that– the Voyagers are right at that part where the water turns calm-ish. We call it the termination shock.)

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44.1.1

Noah2316

in November 13th, 2014 @ 18:52

Wait- so all the other forms of radiation like microwaves, radio waves, and gamma waves travel at the speed of light? I guess that makes sense, because they’re all just extended off the ends of the visible light spectrum, but I’ve never thought of it that way before!
Speaking of me learning new things about the visible light spectrum, I just watched the fourth of fifth episode of Cosmos, where it talks about how a spectroscope works. I thought it was really cool, because I didn’t know anything about spectroscopes. But in the show, Neil deGrasse Tyson said that using this device, scientists could figure out the composition of exoplanets. How would that work? Doesn’t the light you can see from a distant planet reflected from a star, in which case they would be finding the composition of the nearest star from the planet?

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44.1.1.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 18th, 2014 @ 13:59

Yes, those other forms of electromagnetic radiation typically do travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, although, like light, they may travel slightly slower through other substances like air, water, glass, etc.

Oh yes, spectroscopes are very cool. If any of your school’s science labs have one, using it to look at samples of ionized gas is always fun. (That sounds dull, but they look like neon signs to the naked eye– in fact, neon signs have ionized neon inside– and through a spectroscope, they look like, well, beautiful lines of colored light on a black background.)

I haven’t seen those episodes (although I have seen the bit about spectroscopy in the original Cosmos, and I liked that very much), but I would imagine that with exoplanets that have atmospheres, the gasses would both absorb certain wavelengths of light from their star and emit their own energy if ionized by light from the star (like the ionized tubes I was just talking about). Thus, the spectrum would be slightly different from the planet than just from its star (absorbed wavelengths would be additional black lines in the spectrum and gaps might be filled where new wavelengths were emitted.)

I can ask the astronomy department more about your question at the observatory tomorrow.

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44.1.1.1.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 10:42

I did, and they agreed with the explanation above.

Also, while listening to U2’s new song “Iris (Hold Me Close)” while running, I realized that the lyrics at one point are very appropriate to this discussion: “Something in your eyes took a thousand years to get here. Something in your eyes took a thousand years, a thousand years…”

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44.2

Errata

in November 13th, 2014 @ 22:41

As it happens, when I read this post I was sitting in a building where spacecraft are designed and built. I’m sure Kai will be able to come in and give a ton more information about all this, but I was curious about my dad’s answer anyway. Based solely on his experiences.

To start off with, he isn’t just constantly working on missions. There’s a lot of time in between where NASA says “hey, we need a spacecraft to do this science”, a bunch of teams say “we can do that!” and NASA says “great, team x has the coolest mission, you go build it”, and all the teams with slightly less cool missions are bummed out because their cool science ideas will never fly. As far as I can tell, that process takes about six months total, but any given scientist/team can spend several years between getting selected for a project.

If they’re actually selected, in my dad’s experience it’ll probably be about four years until launch, give or take six months. That’s divided roughly into two years of design/planning, a year of actual construction, and another year of testing. These all overlap somewhat, so if they need a part that takes a long time to build, it’ll be ordered during planning, and testing doesn’t wait until everything’s finished to start.

Obviously this isn’t hard and fast. He mentioned that some communications satellites with more established designs can be put up in two years or so total, while the people making GPS satellites spend eightish years researching and testing and then put the things up in batches of ten or so.

I don’t know how much this length of time would vary with different types of mission. I can imagine rovers and landers taking longer to design and test, and I would pretty well guess that designing a vessel for humans would take a longer timeframe than I outlined.

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44.2.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:48

Belated reply, but I don’t think I have much to add. The simplest answer is “it depends”, because newer systems and systems built for complicated tasks take longer than satellites that are built along established plans for things that have become relatively common, like communications or GPS.

Cubesats are 10cm square cubes that weigh about 1 kilogram and have a very standardized exterior design, so I would imagine the time to produce them depends upon what the customizing party wants to put INSIDE and how long it takes them to develop that. Many schools and research institutions undertake Cubesat projects because they’re relatively cheap and light enough for a few to be launched along with some much heavier traditional payload. Boston University tried their own Cubesat project a few years before I got here, but it deployed upside-down and couldn’t turn its solar panels to face the sun, so it didn’t last long.

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45

Luna the Lovely

in November 13th, 2014 @ 13:08

So I had calamari while in Vegas for probably the first time in about 10 years. I’d forgotten how delicious it is (provided you don’t think to hard about what exactly you’re eating–something about the tentacle thing is psychologically unappetizing).

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45.1

Noah2316

in November 13th, 2014 @ 18:41

Fried calamari has to be the best food ever made after straight sugar. I get it every single time I ever go to a seafood restaurant, and it never gets old.
Also, I have strong temptation to squid this comment… must… resist…!

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45.1.1

Noah2316

in November 13th, 2014 @ 20:28

Oops.

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45.2

Kokonilly

in November 13th, 2014 @ 21:16

Yum, calamari. I’m so glad that squid aren’t too closely related to shrimp, crabs, and lobster — I don’t think I would have been able to give up calamari and squid rings.

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46

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 13th, 2014 @ 19:50

I got The World of Ice and Fire today. It’s supposed to be for my birthday, but I always open my presents whenever I get them. Don’t tell my parents!

Anyway, it’s full of gorgeous art. I haven’t even really started reading it yet. I spent a good two minutes looking at the pictures of all the house shields on the title page. And the dedication and preface are pretty funny. And that’s how far I’ve gotten. I can’t wait to see what’s in store for me.

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47

Kokonilly

in November 13th, 2014 @ 21:24

Has anyone seen the video for Taylor Swift’s Blank Space? I haven’t really been a fan of Taylor Swift — in fact, I thought We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together [or whatever it was called] was a parody of her that went viral rather than an actual song by her — but the video is incredible. I don’t know why… it just enraptures me. I think it’s fascinating.

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47.1

Kokonilly

in November 13th, 2014 @ 21:27

As an addendum, I think I really like it when the artists interact with their environment in some way. I also really enjoyed Regina Spektor’s Ne Me Quitte Pas video; she was basically just messing around with a bunch of random things. Very surreal.

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48

Groundhog

in November 14th, 2014 @ 04:22

I just found out Philae landed in the shadow of a cliff, and is consequently not getting enough sunlight. Which means that it can’t charge its battery enough, which means that it will stop working by this Sunday. Noooooooo!

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48.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 14th, 2014 @ 08:34

I hope the control center can find some sort of fix before then.

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48.1.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 14th, 2014 @ 08:34

Why did autocomplete change “fix” to “doc”?

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48.1.1.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 14th, 2014 @ 09:12

Good thing there’s a wetware override!

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49

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 14th, 2014 @ 07:11

Australia: Where you wear shorts to a job interview.

(It was 35 degrees today. Dry at least, but I’m not acclimatised yet. The interview in question was for tutoring the first year CS course, so the dress standards are… somewhat relaxed.)

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49.1

Dodecahedron

in November 14th, 2014 @ 09:18

I woke up and there was a faint dusting of snow on the ground this morning. I was sorely tempted to give up and go back to bed. I don’t even live somewhere that’s that cold?

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50

Dodecahedron

in November 14th, 2014 @ 09:36

oh, also:

I took first place at the Algebra Bee (think spelling bee) that the Association for Women in Mathematics held at my school last night. My feelings about it are as follows:
1. How can so many math majors be so bad at logarithms?
2. I never expected to win anything other than bragging rights and a sense of superiority from my math skills, so I’m in shock
3. I got to choose my prize, and I almost chose the sqrt(-1) ♥ MATH mug, but then I thought “I could buy several mugs with $60”
4. from now on, please refer to me as “the Algebra Queen”

and:
The {my hometown} Mini Maker Faire is this weekend, and I am excited to display my project. It uses a Raspberry Pi, a small circuit, and about 50 lines of Python to take pictures and post them online on social media. I’ve heard rumors that I may be stationed on a moving cart, so I can take pictures of everyone else’s projects and post them to the official social media page. Exciting!

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50.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 14th, 2014 @ 09:52

Congrats on your victory! All hail the Algebra Queen!

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50.2

Catwings

in November 14th, 2014 @ 10:33

Woah, congratulations, Algebra Queen!

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50.3

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 14th, 2014 @ 11:11

Vivat regina!

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50.4

Selenium the Quafflebird

in November 14th, 2014 @ 11:57

Congrats!

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50.5

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in November 14th, 2014 @ 12:51

That’s wonderful, Your Algebraic Majesty!

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50.6

Kokonilly

in November 14th, 2014 @ 15:57

Awesome job, and your Maker Faire project sounds really cool!

“1. How can so many math majors be so bad at logarithms?”
You ask this, but my friend and I — both Stanford engineering majors — spent a few minutes the other day attempting to calculate how much money I owed him. We both added 13 to 19 to get different answer… both of them wrong. >.>

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50.7

oxlin

in November 14th, 2014 @ 16:08

Well congratulations, Algebra Queen! *pies* for you!

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50.8

Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 15th, 2014 @ 12:41

I say! Congrats, old fruit!

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51

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 14th, 2014 @ 14:32

Before we bid farewell to Rosetta and Philae, have you seen “Ambition,” the short science-fiction video that the European Space Agency commissioned to publicize the mission? (Among other places, you can watch it here: http :// http://www.esa .int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/10/Ambition_the_film .)

Does anyone else think the young apprentice bears a striking resemblance to Midnight Fiddler? Especially those “what a stupid question” looks she keeps giving her teacher. I suspect Fern’s professors are very familiar with those.

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51.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 14th, 2014 @ 15:08

Who says we’re done talking about Rosetta and Philae?

That said, I really liked “Ambition”, it reminded me a lot of the Avatar animated series. And the apprentice does look like Fern!

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51.2

oxlin

in November 14th, 2014 @ 16:28

Huh, yeah. She does look like Fern.

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51.3

oxlin

in November 14th, 2014 @ 16:33

By the way, her name is apparently Aisling Franciosi. If you google image search her name, some pictures look eerily like Fern, and some don’t really.

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51.4

Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 15th, 2014 @ 12:53

Wow! I hadn’t seen that. It’s a lovely piece of eye candy.

It’s not Fiddler, though. She would have teased the Master unmercifully. And the word “buh” would have been used, probably repeatedly.

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51.5

Midnight Fiddler

in November 15th, 2014 @ 14:21

Hm. I guess I could see a slight resemblance, but I don’t know that I would immediately see a striking likeness. Maybe because I’m used to seeing myself with glasses now, and the short hair, but I also think that people generally don’t recognize likenesses that others point out as strongly.

Also, what are you implying about the ways I treat my professors, Robert and Paul?!

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51.5.1

Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 16th, 2014 @ 06:27

Not implying anything. Nothing. No, Sirree. Perish the thought. Wouldn’t dream of it.

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51.5.2

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:36

Oh, but can you use the Force? That’s what we want to know.

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52

oxlin

in November 14th, 2014 @ 16:10

So I was looking around at bios of people who do jobs I might want to do and I found that the Research Communicator of the local university’s bio said: “…his by-line has appeared in such venues as Astronomy, Orion, Electronic Learning, the childrenâ€™s magazine Muse,…” !!!

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52.1

Cat's Meow

in November 18th, 2014 @ 13:31

Sounds like a way to open a conversation!

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53

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 14th, 2014 @ 17:13

So Time for Kids has one of those bound 100-page things that’s somewhere between a magazine and a softcover book out that’s about robots and I bought it to drop off at a Thanksgiving book-and-magazine drive one of the sororities on campus is doing for kids on an island in Maine that’s pretty isolated in the winter. Of course I looked through it first, because I had books like that as a kid and wanted to see what would be different and what would be the same. It’s nice to see Asimo and Sojourner still getting their due even alongside Curiosity and Robonaut, but poor old Dante seems to have spider-shuffled off into obscurity.

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54

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 15th, 2014 @ 00:58

Has anyone tried using a Fitbit or similar activity tracking device? What did you think of it?

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54.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 15th, 2014 @ 10:14

I enjoyed using the pedometer in my phone’s health app, but it seems to have stopped recording data.

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54.1.1

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:35

I got “Map My Run”, which is good for keeping track of workouts, but isn’t the pedometer replacement I was hoping it would be.

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55

Catwings

in November 15th, 2014 @ 07:20

What ever happened to the Rants and Plaints thread? I have nothing annoying me at the moment, I was just searching the blog – logged-in of course – and it is nowhere to be found.

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55.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 15th, 2014 @ 09:48

Catwings, it’s still there, and, as far as I can tell, you should be able to see it.

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55.2

Agent Lightning

in November 15th, 2014 @ 12:35

I’ve encountered similar barriers. Try going to the comments page when you’re logged in and can see un- moderated comments. Then I usually control-f (or the search function equivalent on a Mac) and search ‘rants and plaints’- you’ll find comments people have made on that thread and you can click through the link to that page.
if nothing shows up when you search, go back a page by hitting the back arrows and try again. it’s a little tedious but that’s how I find it.

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56

Kittymine OSW

in November 16th, 2014 @ 15:47

It looks like I may have to use twitter at work (though I only have a week left of the internship. *sobs*). I’ve never used twitter, so I went of wikihow to try and learn about it so that if my boss asks me to search for twitter handles about diversity in children’s literature, I will be able to do that.

After spending 15 minutes reading through everything and gaining a good working knowledge of how to get around twitter, I still don’t get why it exists. What is the POINT?

Perhaps I’m just a Luddite, or maybe it’s the creative writer in me talking, but when I write something, I want it to me meaningful and to last for more than a day. And my life is busy enough without having to deal with a barrage of updates all day, every day.

Thoughts? Or perhaps reasons why/how twitter can be beneficial?

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56.1

Kokonilly

in November 16th, 2014 @ 17:44

I read somewhere that individual users are using Twitter less and less; in general, companies and famous people are, if not the bulk of, the most significant users on Twitter. It’s useful for a company to be able to connect with its employees, and it’s great (or horrible, depending on how you play your cards) for PR.

So yeah. Definitely valuable as part of a social media campaign for a person/company, and really really fascinating in terms of seeing what people are talking about (i.e. showing the path of an earthquake by when people tweet about it, or real-time updates of a Very Significant Event); not so much when it’s “eatin a sandwich #food”-type stuff. It’s like letters hundreds of years ago — some are significant, and some are “hello dear, yes, the farm is doing well” — but shrunken down in terms of content and multiplied by billions in terms of throughput. Which is cool in its own right.

There are a lot of interesting articles about Twitter; I’m sure you could dig up some really fascinating ones on Hacker News.

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56.2

oxlin

in November 16th, 2014 @ 18:57

Twitter can cause movements to be able to connect using hashtags. It is easier to communicate on a common interest because a user can search by hashtag and see all kinds of tweets on a subject. Sometimes conferences use it this way, with people live tweeting the conference and sparking discussion afterwards or before on a hashtag. I’d check out #WeNeedDiverseBooks It is a hashtag that sprung up around conversations about diversity in children’s books.

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56.3

oxlin

in November 16th, 2014 @ 18:57

Also looks like you can follow a twitter account, @diversebooks

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56.4

Agent Lightning

in November 16th, 2014 @ 19:18

Confession: I’m kind of a twitter junkie and have about six accounts.
Examples of how I use these:
-Commentary on day to day band activities, and my band friends follow it. I can post pictures from band parties and say funny things about band (I once ran a running set of photos featuring our mascot, David the Chicken, at band camp.)
-Commentary on different things I’m a fan of. I created a separate account for anime so my friends wouldn’t think I was a nerd.
-You can also find brands and corporations you like on Twitter, such as Nintendo, etc. You can follow these. Search any big brand on Twitter and you’ll find that they all have Twitters, which post promotions and jokes. Many try to fit into cool trends. Check out the Dennys twitter, which promotes subpar breakfast food through surreal humor. I knew a guy who got followed by Walgreens on twitter and got really excited about. My favorite indie musician once replied to me and I just about had a heart attack.
-Celebrities also have twitters, usually verified. You check for the little blue checkmark, and it means that it is a real celebrity tweeting those things. If I ever have a verified twitter, I will consider myself ‘famous’.
-Humor: Several sectors of twitter are known for catering to a specific type of humor or brand of aesthetic. You have Teen Twitter, known for their Relatable Teen Quotes (which I personally don’t find fitting to my tastes. Not that I can’t relate. I just don’t like the Relatable Teen Quote aesthetic. It’s a personal thing.). You have hundreds of stupid Relatable Teen Quote twitters (Common White Girl Posts is a common title, and also the stupid little dolphin with its fins photoshopped off of it), all of them posting /the exact same thing/. Then you have the Funny Pictures accounts, or the Sheldon Cooper accounts, or the Severus Snape accounts, none of which actually tweet original or funny things. Eventually, everything turns into clickbait Buzzfeed-esque things. Anyway. I’m rambling here. The point is, that corner of the internet gets retweeted at me all the time and I hate it. It’s so low quality. You also have Weird Twitter, with names like jomny sun, bucky isotope, dubstep4dads, etc, which posts surreal humor which is much more likely to be funny.
-My school county has a twitter. It posts news, and also people tweet at it constantly whenever there’s cold precipitation, begging it to call off school for a snow day.
-Private Twitter: Protect your tweets and only people who you want to see your tweets will see them. My friends and I all have private twitters and have a sweet private twitter network where we can post very personal things and be ok with who sees it. Many people have layers of twitters, like onions, and the further you go down, the more clearly you can see them for who they are.
-Current events: You can search twitter for a word (Rosetta, for example), and see people tweeting about it in real time.
Other cool things: twitter bots. If you can write a code for a twitter bot, it’s almost guaranteed to be a hit. Like my friend wrote the code for one that tweets [cake] in front of every word in the english language, in alphabetical order. It’s on the B’s right now. It finished all the A’s recently. [cake] arguments, [cake] alpacas, [cake] anime. Et cetera. It has Said friend also used to run one that tweeted the price of corn. I once discussed the idea of a twelve-tone chromaticism Shoenberg bot that would tweet every possible combination of a twelve-note chromatic scale. (This is kind of a music joke). I know of twitter bots that you can tweet an image to, and they will distort it in some cool way, like sorting the pixels or creating a hilariously bad png.

Also very important: Install tweetdeck client. It’s what all the pros use. Browser twitter is for amateurs.

GAPAs, I hope that wasn’t TMI about my own social networking life?

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56.5

Kittymine OSW

in November 16th, 2014 @ 19:19

Nilly – Interesting…I hadn’t thought of twitter like letters before. I like the concept. Thanks for the info. And I agree with your note about it being great/horrible for PR.
Oxlin – yup, my boss pointed #WeNeedDiverseBooks as a good place to start. Thanks for the note about a specific account to look at. *heads over*

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56.5.1

oxlin

in November 16th, 2014 @ 19:42

Another place to look would be at specific author’s profiles. Are there children’s book authors you like? Add them on twitter. Often authors (and other people within a field) know each other and then you can see the conversations within that field as they happen.

And you can follow the GAPAs at @kokonspiracy

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56.5.2

Kokonilly

in November 17th, 2014 @ 17:20

No problem! Twitter is great for providing a different lens for more modern historical events, like the Boston kerfuffle last April, or even to disseminate information quickly to a wide audience, like what AL said about telling people about snow days, without maintaining a ginormous mailing list. I think Twitter is very interesting as a concept, but I’ve tried joining it myself and I just don’t have the attention span to keep up with an account (plus, very few of my friends have personal accounts).

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57

Lizzie

in November 16th, 2014 @ 16:56

I did my 2nd master’s recital a week ago and now there is videographic proof:
Mozart http://youtu.be/GiE90FYZHFA
Poulenc http://youtu.be/trJMsqtBNuw
Brahms http://youtu.be/Ylk84PSiH54

Grant O. came to it, which was very nice of him and it was great to see him again. He appears to be in good form, although we only got to talk for a few minutes.

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57.1

Selenium the Quafflebird

in November 17th, 2014 @ 11:58

Wonderful!

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57.2

Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 20th, 2014 @ 11:33

I would urge all Musebloggers to investigate the videos. Lizzie is a bewilderingly good violinist. And more people should listen to Poulenc.

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57.3

Agent Lightning

in November 20th, 2014 @ 16:09

Lizzie, this is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for sharing!

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57.4

POSOC

in November 20th, 2014 @ 16:22

I have to agree with Paul. This is amazing.

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58

Midnight Fiddler

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:21

This probably belongs more on the Rants and ‘Plaints thread, but I’m posting it here in the hopes that more people will see it, because I would like some advice.
My thesis draft peer advising session was today, and it went pretty well, but my issue is that one of the members of my group (of three) only sent his draft to us last night. (They were all due last Wednesday.) Not only did he just send it last night, but it was incomplete. That’s fine, I understand that stuff comes up and sometimes deadlines can’t be made, and I assume that his grade will reflect all this. However, I just saw that I got an email from him this afternoon (our appointment was at 1, this email was timestamped 12:20) apologising that he didn’t have anything in addition to he stub he emailed us last night, and asking if the three of us could meet because, in his words, “I think it could possibly be more beneficial for me if we could possibly schedule another time in which we are all free and I can possibly have a full draft for you to critique/discuss?”
Now, I appreciate that he wants our feedback, but I’m also really frustrated that he not only gave us his draft 5 days after he was supposed to, but is in addition requesting another meeting (which is not included in our class schedule) to make up for the fact that he didn’t have his stuff together in a reasonable amount of time. Also, during our session when I said that my main critique of his draft was that he only sent it last night he did some pretty visible squirming and furtive glances at our professor and claimed that he didn’t realize he’d only just sent it last night. Now, I try to not accuse people of barefaced lying, but it seems like the kind of thing that’s pretty hard to forget that quickly, and his reaction makes me strongly believe that his sudden loss of memory had a lot more to do with trying to save face in front of our professor than actually not knowing that he emailed us at 10PM last night.

Anyway, the advice part I need is whether or not I should write back a strongly worded email saying that I am not interested in meeting again, because I think it’s unfair of him to expect special treatment for not turning his things in on time, and that I’m unimpressed with his handling of the situation.

My response (which I have not yet sent) is as follows:
[classmate’s name],
I think our peer advising session went well enough today. I think that given the fact that we were assigned a time to do peer review it is unfair of you to request another to accommodate your having not sent us a complete draft on time. I understand as much as anyone that making deadlines is horrible and sometimes impossible, but I also think that in such situations as much prior warning as possible is a matter of courtesy, and to accept the consequences of it instead of imposing upon the time of classmates who are equally busy as yourself
I also am unimpressed with your sudden “forgetfulness” that you only emailed your draft to [other classmate] and myself last night when I brought it up earlier.
I think the peer critique today was sufficient. Good luck with your continued researching and writing.
Fern

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58.1

Rebecca Lasley (Administrator)

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:49

My two cents: I think it’s enough to say something along the lines of “sorry you missed the session but too much else is going on to schedule another one.” Now that you’ve written out your feelings, I’d delete the scolding as it will just give him a way to ease his guilt by blaming you. Simply making him face consequences is more valuable in the long run.

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58.2

Luna the Lovely

in November 17th, 2014 @ 14:19

As much as I love a nice strongly worded email to people, Lady B is probably right, that it doesn’t really accomplish anything, and simply telling him “sorry, don’t have time” is probably adequate.

(However, if you do still want to send it, I’d probably make the following modifications–but that’s probably as much due to differences in writing style than anything else:

I think our peer advising session today was adequate. I recognize that making deadlines can be challenging and sometimes even impossible, but we were assigned a time to do a peer review, and it is unfair to expect others to go out of their way to accommodate you having been unable to meet the deadline.
I also do not appreciate your “forgetfulness” in regards to when you emailed your draft to [other classmate] and myself when it was mentioned earlier.
I think the peer critique today was sufficient. Good luck with your continued researching and writing.
Fern)

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58.3

Lizzie

in November 17th, 2014 @ 16:59

Yeah, I agree with the rest: I would just say, “Sorry, I don’t have enough time to meet again, good luck with your thesis.” and let the rest be implied.

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58.4

Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 20th, 2014 @ 11:36

Museblog is a great place to seek the counsel of adults with social skills. I will delete my thoughts and concur with the above.

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59

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 17th, 2014 @ 13:33

My Rosetta whiteboard illustrations have been a big hit on my floor.

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60

Noah2316

in November 17th, 2014 @ 18:42

Is there a debate thread on here? Something purely devoted to arguable topics? That would be really cool if there was… or if one happened to appear… *coughs*

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60.1

Luna the Lovely

in November 17th, 2014 @ 20:17

I think the Hot Topics thread ( https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=12920#comments ) is probably along the lines of what you’re looking for. I think you have to be logged in to view it.

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60.1.1

Errata

in November 17th, 2014 @ 21:24

Nope, I’m not logged in right now and I see it just fine.

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60.2

Errata

in November 17th, 2014 @ 20:59

There’s a ‘Hot Topics’ thread that used to get a lot of use somewhere around, if you want to talk about something controversal. If you mean just debating for the sake of debate, I don’t know that there’s ever been anything, but I’d probably be game.

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61

KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 19th, 2014 @ 17:22

I know it doesn’t really mean anything, but I like saying please and thank you to Siri.

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61.1

Noah2316

in November 19th, 2014 @ 17:49

I know this probably is a lot harder than it sounds (to all you awesome-at-programming-and-all-that-really-cool-stuff-that-I-can’t-do people out there), but can’t they just make it so she can hold a conversation? It would be so much cooler that way!

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61.1.1

Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 19th, 2014 @ 18:25

Give her five years. She’ll merge with Watson and Cleverbot and become a top-notch conversationalist.

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61.1.2

KaiYves

in November 20th, 2014 @ 12:20

I don’t really care if she can or can’t, I just feel like if I’m talking to someone who’s helping me, even if she isn’t really “talking” to me, I ought to be polite and thank her.

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62

Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 19th, 2014 @ 19:57

I turned 21 yesterday, which means I can now buy drinks with small amounts of ethanol in them, I guess. Which types of these drinks would other older MBers recommend?

But now I feel kind of old, because I remember making a big deal out of being 18, and I think I’m relatively the same person as I was back then. Well, I’m a lot more laid-back about things, and have changed my mind about my life goals, and stuff. Still have never had a boyfriend, though, and still care just a wee too much about it.

I hope you all will be around for many years to come to skim my late-night ramblings. Love you.

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Luna the Lovely

in November 19th, 2014 @ 22:42

Happy belated birthday!

My experience with alcohol is pretty limited, as I’ve found I don’t much care for the taste of ethanol. Although there was this rum and pineapple thing I had in Vegas that wasn’t bad (Malibu pineapple, I think is what i heard it called?), and there was some kind of cranberry-pineapple-vodka thing I had that was passable, but a bit too bitter and alcohol-y for my tastes.

Also. Boyfriends are overrated. (And I was barely any younger than you are, when my ex and I started dating.)

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Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 20th, 2014 @ 11:45

I’m with Luna. i don’t like the taste of the stuff. I make the following exceptions :

Mulled wine at Chrsitmas, with mince pies. Preferably Tudor mince pies, made with minced lamb.

Pimm’s during Wimbledon fortnight, with lemonade, mint and cucumber.

The occasional glass of Crabbies’ Ginger Beer – but Fentiman’s and Belvoir Farms are just as good, and they’re not alcoholic.

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bookgirl_me

in November 20th, 2014 @ 12:29

Drinks? *perks ears*

I’d recommend cider as something nice to start with- not very strong and doesn’t taste too strongly like alcohol. A lot of white wines & rosÃ© wines are nice as well- though I’d ask someone (oder relatives who drink wine with dinner?) to recommend a type/brand beforehand, they can also be pretty awful regardless of price.

Personally, I like gin as well, though it’s really a taste thing- if you like tonic water, you’ll like gin tonic, otherwise probably not.

What Luna mentioned- there are a lot of rum/vodka mixed drinks that taste very sweet/un-alcohol-like. Go easy on those- depending on where you buy them they can have a lot more alcohol in them than you might assume (or the opposite).

Boyfriendsâ€¦ overrated in most ways, definitely. But least in my circle of friends, the ones who threw themselves at someone just because “you have to have had a boyfriend when you’re xy age” had the shortest/least satisfactory-sounding relationships so I think it’s smarter to do what you’re doing and not force it.

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Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 20th, 2014 @ 17:07

I’d like to mention that I have had beer and wine before, but only bad beer and wine. I’ve also had cider and liked it.

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Kokonilly

in November 19th, 2014 @ 20:15

Google Play has released the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack for free (possibly only for today?) and it is glorious

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KaiYves

in November 20th, 2014 @ 12:18

My brother P. loves that soundtrack– such a shame he already paid for it a few months ago when he could have gotten it for free today.

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Midnight Fiddler

in November 20th, 2014 @ 12:51

Hurr durr updating my resumÃ© but I have no idea what it’s actually supposed to look like so I have no idea what I’m actually doing but I should really start applying for jobs for the summer (ahahahaha actually real jobs instead of ones with a clear end date of going back to school HELP) aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh

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Groundhog

in November 20th, 2014 @ 14:28

I have my Israeli driving test tomorrow! Eeeek!

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KaiYves

in November 20th, 2014 @ 21:20

Good luck, I hope it’s easier than the New York test!

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Groundhog

in November 21st, 2014 @ 04:42

I passed! Woohoo!

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 21st, 2014 @ 08:34

Congrats!

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Catwings

in November 20th, 2014 @ 15:43

A word of warning: never ask a question about food safety to my dad, unless you expect to be lectured and reminded that he was a certified chef in an army kitchen.

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KaiYves

in November 20th, 2014 @ 21:21

We have a nice gym with a nice track and I like running there, I just wish it wasn’t on the other side of campus…

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Maths Lover â™¥

in November 20th, 2014 @ 22:19

Things I can do: vector calculus.
Things I can’t do: drive myself down a route I’ve taken dozens of times without getting lost. Twice.

“Anyone know how an internal combustion engine works?”
“Of course!” “19th century technology!”
“Anyone know how to fix one?”
“…”

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Dodecahedron

in November 21st, 2014 @ 08:54

Last night I surprise learned how to jump start a car! Luckily, it was my roommate’s car that wouldn’t turn on, not mine, so there was a lot less pressure from my end. I was also lucky in that my car owner’s manual there were instructions on how to jump start a car – the only part that wasn’t detailed was the part on how to open the hood of the car in the first place, which took me an embarrassingly long time to do (the lever is behind an unmarked panel, sort of, next to a different panel that snaps out much more obviously and contains something else that I don’t know what it is).

About halfway through, someone from the neighboring apartment came over and offered to help. I wasn’t impressed by his ability to follow the simple instructions in the manual (he started by connecting both terminals of one battery to both terminals of the other and I was like… I’m pretty sure SOMETHING should go to ground, from these instructions???) , but I was impressed by his willingness to touch a jumper cable that sparks were actively flying from and reposition it so it was better grounded.

And I should mention – in the end, her car did turn back on.

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Jadestone

in November 21st, 2014 @ 17:01

you know how you can buy bags of like, “Old Style Hot Chocolate” like how it used to be drunk? Well I got a period accurate like 1645 one, a bag with choc chips & orange rind & sugar crystals & spices & pepper etc. and it’s always like “they drank this in tiny amounts because it is very thick!! no one would drunk a mug of it like today”

well

anyway I doubled the amount of choc mix to milk on the label and put it in my biggest mug and finally I have a hot chocolate I fully endorse

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KaiYves

in November 21st, 2014 @ 20:58

Have you ever tried it Aztec style with chili peppers? I’m curious about how that would taste but you know my sugar thing.

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Jadestone

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 10:24

I have!! it’s delicious. this kind has some kind of chili pepper powder in it but I’m not positive.

and yeah I’m capable of downing IMENSE quantities of sugar no problem which is… not the best habit to have whoops

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Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 16:08

So have I.

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KaiYves

in November 21st, 2014 @ 21:13

Friday. TKIF!

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Maths Lover â™¥

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 05:56

I am so glad that a film like Mockingjay has almost coordinated worldwide release dates. And… am strongly considering seeing it twice, which before I’ve only considered a few times and done once.

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Luna the Lovely

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 10:31

It was good, I take it? I’m not sure when I’ll get the opportunity to watch it. Can’t afford to until after I take my licensing exam Monday. But doubt I’ll end up watching it Monday night due to exhaustion from a 7 hour test and a lack of desire to be out and about in a big city that is currently undergoing so much unrest and threateing to riot any day now.

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Maths Lover â™¥

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 18:29

I read the books a couple of years ago when I had a far lower darkness tolerance, but now I have so many feels. (I don’t even care for the romance)

And good luck for your licensing exam! (although I’m sure you’re knowledgable enough not to need it)

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Luna the Lovely

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 20:08

I read them a couple years ago, as well (so many tears during that last book). My ability to watch even slightly sad things without turning into a water fountain has completely vanished sometime during college (as in, things like the movie “Old Yeller” and books like “Where the Red Fern Grows” I could watch/read as a kid and yeah they were sad but whatever and nowâ€¦..cue the waterworks whenever something even slightly sad happens).

The romance in those books was so complicated. And so much sadness in that third book and ugh the feels.

I’m considering making my gramma watch the first two movies so that we can go see Mockingjay part 1 when I’m visiting her later this week.

And thank you for the good luck wishes! I am feeling very much like I can use all the luck I can get, because I don’t feel as confident in my knowledge as the rest of the world is, lol.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 10:02

Holy cake, Elon Musk is up for Person of the Year?!?! It’s very unlikely that he’ll win given TIME’s past track record with nominated science-y folks and personally I think the Ebola Doctors are more deserving, but it’s incredible that he could go from being known only to science fans to this kind of public recognition in only a few years.

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Kokonilly

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 14:41

I’m not surprised that TIME is nominating Musk… but I would be surprised if he won. It looks like the people on top of the readers’ poll are the Prime Minister of India, Putin, the Ferguson protesters, Malala Yousafzai, and Ebola doctors and nurses. (It seems I’ve missed something in the news regarding the Prime Minister of India?)

First of all, I doubt the Ferguson protesters will win, because The Protester won in 2011 because of the Arab Spring, etc. and I doubt TIME would go that narrow just three years later. I also doubt that Musk will win because Zuckerberg won so recently (2010). The Ebola people might win, simply because of the attention the media has so lovingly given to this epidemic, but as TIME tends to lean toward humanitarian people, Malala will probably win.

So that’s my spiel.

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Choklit Orange

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 17:59

Modi (PM of India) is… weird. He’s very charismatic. He’s also really controversial because he’s a Hindu nationalist, which doesn’t go over well with Indian Muslims/Sikhs/reasonable people (sorry). But he’s one of the most popular leaders India’s had in years, and a lot of young people are hoping he’s going to make progress on some of India’s massive economic issues.

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KaiYves

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 19:24

Hmmm… In the past 20 years there’ve been eight political leaders (well, two of them were chosen twice, so six leaders, but eight years) plus one other guy in an important political/economic position but I guess not a political leader, two religious leaders, five abstracts, three businesspeople with engineering backgrounds, and one non-engineer scientist (a medical researcher).

I always saw that as a bias towards politicians, but looking at it your way, two of the abstracts were humanitarian-themed (The Protestor and The Good Samaritans), both religious leaders were known for their humanitarian work and trying to cure AIDS is certainly humanitarian, so that would make six in the past 20 years. I see your point.

I guess Musk would be “repetitious” as the fourth tech-business-guy in twenty years, although I would imagine that if they chose him it would have more to do with his transportation and space projects than any of his his computer-related projects, which is what the other three (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Andrew Grove) were chosen for, so that would be a little different. (It’s funny that this distribution echoes the complaint I’ve made in various places that TIME’s “Science” pages being mostly “Health and Computers”– the scientists and engineers who’ve been POTY in the past 20 years were all involved with health/medicine or computers. Of course, that also means the Ebola doctors and nurses have a good chance because health/medicine.)

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oxlin

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 12:09

My friend just met Ursula K. LeGuin!

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Catwings

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 19:04

Okay, I cannot find the Rants and Plaints thread, so my one greivance will go here for now.

My hair. .
My incredibly long hair
My mom cut it off.
I got a few knots in it, and mom cut it off.
It’s above my shoulder blades.
And it was just about long enough, too.
I was trying to get it long enough so that I could take it to my cousin who is a hair-stylist, and then maybe she could style it so it would look like Dave Mustaine’s hair, or Kirk Hammett’s, or maybe even like James Hetfield’s used to be.
Now it looks like what Hetfield’s is now.*

And I look absolutely terrible with short hair. Some girls look cute with short hair. I don’t. (Well, I don’t anyway, but it was better with long hair).
I’ll have to keep my hair up until it grows back, now, because if my dad sees that mom cut it off, he’ll be very mad, and I know that nobody should be within the same vicinity as my dad when he’s angry.

*Dramatization.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 09:54

I’m sorry, Catwings. Nobody should force that on someone else. I keep my own hair short so that knots don’t form, but that’s my choice, not one that someone made for me.

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Luna the Lovely

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 11:19

I’m really sorry, that is really, really sucky. As someone with long hair (I’ve been growing it out my whole life, and while it never reached my childhood goal of floor length nor came close, it’s still waist length), I would be a combination of devastated and sobbing my heart out and an incoherent screaming ball of rage at the individual who had perpetrated such an atrocity.

So I can definitely empathize, and it really sucks that she cut your hair against your wishes. On the plus side: it will grown back! And maybe, even though it’s not long, and you can’t do the hairstyle you’re really interested in, you hairstylist cousin can do something with this short hair cut that will make it look more flattering than you feel it currently does? I bet she could do some pretty sweet ‘dos with your shorter hair, that while maybe not as much to your liking, would at least be tolerable.

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Midnight Fiddler

in November 22nd, 2014 @ 23:55

I PLAYED AT THE CARTER FAMILY FOLD TONIGHT. I performed on the same stage that Johnny Cash and all sorts of other incredible musicians have played on. The venue that was set up by Sara Carter’s daughter. Sara Carter of the original Carter Family, which is one of the most important groups in the early days of what would eventually become country music. (And before you roll your eyes at country music, I’m not talking about the grossness that passes as country these days, I mean proper country music which is actually wonderful.)
Anyway, I only played one song (Wreck of the Old 97) but it was really good and a bunch of people said they liked it a lot, and some other people said that I looked like I knew what I was doing when I was dancing and that was super exciting and right now my hair looks good and my outfit looks good and we sang all the way there and back and laughed a lot and on the way everyone else in the van got their instruments out and had a jam session and it was just so much fun ugh.

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Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 07:22

Doing your part and having fun add up to world domination in my book. Sweet, isn’t it?

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KaiYves

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 16:06

“C’mon, Rhodey, is there a LAW that says I can’t do the right thing and have an incredibly good time doing it?” – Marvel Adventures Iron Man.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 10:09

Awesome! Congrats!

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Paul Baker (Administrator)

in November 25th, 2014 @ 17:49

I suspect it won’t be he last time you play on that stage.

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Choklit Orange

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 00:29

I just went to see Interstellar and it was so so so so good oh my god i think i am broken

go see interstellar immediately

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Cat's Meow

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 02:30

Tragedy:
My boyfriend and I were watching Interstellar last weekend for our anniversary, in a really nice theater with comfy, reclining seats and pillows and blankets. (Definitely not the tragedy.)

More than two hours in, the fire alarms start going off. We went down to the lobby, and after lots of confusion – including being told after the alarm went off that we could go back to our seats only to have them start back up moments after we sat down – they told us, sorry, a projector room on the third floor is on fire, and we won’t be showing any more movies until this afternoon. (Tragedy. But more to come.)

They told us at that point that if we came back in an hour, they would restart Interstellar where it left off. We left, ate lunch, came back in an hour. And they told us they were just going to restart the movie for a brand new showing. We couldn’t stay another three hours, since I had to get back to campus and he had a midterm the next morning, so we simply did not see the ending. (Tragedy!!!)

I still don’t know how it ends.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 10:11

Ugh, that sucks. I hope you get to see the end of it soon.

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Choklit Orange

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 22:05

Oh no! I hope you find time to see the end; it’s fabulous all the way through.

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bookgirl_me

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 12:17

MBers to the rescue? Can any of you recommend a book for a friend? She reads a lot, doesn’t like high fantasy too much (but urban is okay) and ummâ€¦ yeah, just good books in general, especially if they play with/subvert tropes.

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Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 14:29

Has she read Un Lun Dun? I liked that one a lot. Two girls get transported to an alternate London with all sorts of strange creatures and locales. And it subverts a biggie fantasy trope.

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Agent Lightning

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 19:03

Ooh, seconded! I love Un Lun Dun.

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oxlin

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 20:03

Thirded.

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ZNZ

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 20:45

Fourthed.

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shadowfire

in November 24th, 2014 @ 02:11

Fifthed! Also make sure she gets a copy with the illustrations because they’re stunning.

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ZNZ

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 20:41

War for the Oaks by Emma Bull is one of the best urban fantasies ever; I’d recommend it to anyone who likes the genre even a little bit. Otherwise, I reread We Have Always Lived in the Castle recently and I’d recommend it to probably everyone in the world.

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bookgirl_me

in November 24th, 2014 @ 03:36

Thanks guys!

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oxlin

in November 24th, 2014 @ 16:52

What are some books your friend has liked in the past?

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oxlin

in November 24th, 2014 @ 21:24

Though offhand I’d recommend the short story collection Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link, especially the short story Magic For Beginners. Also anything by Patricia C. Wrede and/or Caroline Stevermer. They’ve written Sorcery and Celia or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot (+ sequels) together and many other wonderful things separately. Diana Wynne Jones is awesome. Some of my favorites are the Chrestomanci books (Start with Charmed Life or The Lives of Christopher Chant), Fire and Hemlock, Deep Secret. Vivian Van Velde’s books are good, though I’ve not read many. I will think on if I’ve got more suggestions and probably post more.

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oxlin

in November 24th, 2014 @ 21:59

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison is fairly new and quite wonderful.

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Vendaval

in November 24th, 2014 @ 20:19

I’ve been recommending Anathem to everyone recently, I suppose because it has a great mix of hard science and the feel of a real but alien world.

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oxlin

in November 23rd, 2014 @ 23:30

I saw The Lion King today! I’ve been wanting to see it since I was 11 and was in a dance production of it. We took the broadway songs and danced to all of them, but I’d never seen the actual broadway version. It was really cool!

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 24th, 2014 @ 09:52

The Lion King is awesome, it was my first musical!

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oxlin

in November 24th, 2014 @ 11:01

Cool! My first broadway touring one was Mamma Mia when I was 11. Never seen one on Broadway itself.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 24th, 2014 @ 11:58

That was also the day I lost my first tooth. It was a memorable day.

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 25th, 2014 @ 09:36

Picked up papers to sign up for a Wild West LARP in my dreams, sadly woke up without them.

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Piggy

in November 26th, 2014 @ 12:32

Today I had a sudden craving for some kind of pan-fried trout, maybe with some roasted potatoes and fried apples, maybe asparagus, something like that, and some chewy sourdough or the like. Ideally it would be eaten in a log cabin in a rainy/foggy forest around sundown with dry red wine, then coffee after dinner.

I’m not sure about the cabin, but I’m really tempted to make the rest of this a reality this weekend. We’ve got company staying at our house for a few days (my sister’s long-distance boyfriend), so maybe that would be a good Sunday evening dinner or something.

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Piggy

in November 26th, 2014 @ 16:37

Food has been on my mind all day. I was paging through The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating and now I’m thinking of serving quails for Christmas dinner. I’m also calculating how much it would cost to fly to California and back for the sole purpose of eating at the French Laundry.

I think that, after quitting my job at a grocery store kitchen last week, I feel like I want to cook a lot more. Now that it’s not something I have to do, it feels a lot more attractive. Besides, I’ve only got a month and a half left of eating meat!

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 26th, 2014 @ 16:43

Spent today cooking and cleaning with my family to prepare for our guests tomorrow, but it’s all part of being home.

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Selenium the Quafflebird

in November 28th, 2014 @ 15:00

I’m kind of curious to experience what a Thanksgiving meal is like.

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fireh

in November 30th, 2014 @ 12:47

Come visit me next Thanksgiving and experience a good ol’fashioned Southern Thanksgiving!

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Choklit Orange

in November 30th, 2014 @ 16:59

Alternatively, come visit me and watch as my mom’s friends from grad school gather ’round the turkey and debate whether you’re actually supposed to put the stuffing inside.

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Lizzie

in November 30th, 2014 @ 21:42

you are.

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KaiYves

in November 30th, 2014 @ 20:48

You’re welcome to come spend it with my family if you’re ever in New York!

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Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 26th, 2014 @ 17:11

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

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Catwings

in November 26th, 2014 @ 18:36

One small question, here.
If A were to mind-control B into hurting C, would it be B’s fault for hurting C, since he was technically doing it of his own will, even though he was mind-warped into doing so? Or would it be A’s fault for the mind-control in the first place? Or would it be A’s fault for the mind-control, but also partly B’s fault because it was his will? Or, would it be C’s fault for getting A angry in the first place to make B hurt C? Or, would it be A’s fault for the mind-control and the hurting, and B’s fault for actually having the will to hurt C?

This is the kind of thing I sit and think about when I’m home alone and have nothing else to do.

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Robert Coontz (Administrator)

in November 26th, 2014 @ 20:05

You’ll grapple with similar questions if you study philosophy or law.

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KaiYves

in November 26th, 2014 @ 21:14

There is a blog called Law and the Multiverse that answers questions related to law in superhero comics, you could e-mail them and see what they say.

I asked them a few months ago what citizenship a clone has and they wrote back saying that for the US, a clone born in a lab on US soil would be a citizen, as would a clone of a person who has at least one citizen parent.

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Vendaval

in November 27th, 2014 @ 15:27

Happy Birthday to Pan and Dodec!

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Dodecahedron

in November 28th, 2014 @ 06:44

Thank you! <3

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 28th, 2014 @ 09:49

Happy Birthday, Dodecahedron! *digital pies*

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Selenium the Quafflebird

in November 28th, 2014 @ 14:59

Happy birthday!

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KaiYves- Yay Rosetta!

in November 28th, 2014 @ 09:50

Happy Birthday, Pan!

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KaiYves

in November 28th, 2014 @ 16:24

Here’s an interesting question– Did anyone else here first hear about 3-D printing in Jurassic Park III?

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Maths Lover â™¥

in November 28th, 2014 @ 19:05

I haven’t actually seen the sequels, but the answer is:

My dad’s company has had a 3D printer for about 10 years. Someone heard that the art school had one they no longer wanted, so they bought it cheaply. They’re too stingy to replace it with a cool modern one, so it sits ~~in the basement~~ on the ground floor, running with the aid of a ~~brick~~ early laptop running Windows XP.

But the first time I remember hearing about 3D printing was in the Bo’s page of Muse.

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Catwings

in November 28th, 2014 @ 21:51

So, I’ve just successfully moved my gaming computer from one room, to another room. That… was actually quite tiresome. It’s a heavy computer, and I’m only 13. And it was, like, I had to do an incomplete circle around my house, since I was moving it from one room that was adjacent to the one it is in now, but the two were separated by walls. It’s not a very big house, but it still took a while.
Also, the whole time, I was worried that I was either going to drop it, or get electrocuted. Neither happened, don’t worry.
The best part is, I can Minecraft again! Because that’s the only computer it’s saved on, currently. And I’m really happy for that, since I’m sure my servers were missing me…. Okay, maybe not so sure.

</SenselessParagraphPost

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Agent Lightning

in November 30th, 2014 @ 11:32

Being thirteen… playing Minecraft… you’re getting me all nostalgic, Catwings.

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Noah2316

in November 30th, 2014 @ 12:15

I haven’t actually played Minecraft before. Ever. There was some sort of thing last year or the year before when practically everyone I knew was playing it, talking about it, or not getting enough food or sleep because of it. It does sound kind of interesting, with all the building, creating, and managing, but I was repelled from the prospect of playing the game because I really didn’t want to fall into that whole shebang. Also, if I picked it up now I’d feel like I’m just jumping on the bandwagon, which I don’t like doing that much. Minecraft is just to addictive, widespread and popular for me.

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Groundhog

in November 30th, 2014 @ 03:35

I applied for an animation job on Friday! I really really hope I get it, especially because my current job is slowly sliding down to the level of “the pits.”

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KaiYves

in November 30th, 2014 @ 20:47

Good luck!

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89

Luna the Lovely

in November 30th, 2014 @ 13:47

Going to go watch Horrible Bosses 2 with my gramma because Chris Pine. She vetoed hunger faves, thinks it sounds awful, and for three movies…..since she’d be confused if we started with mockingjay.

So horrible bosses it is. Even though I doubt I’ll enjoy it outside if Chris pine lol

I love vacation. Staying up to 3 every night with gramma and sleeping until 11. It’s great.

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90

Rainbow*Storm

in November 30th, 2014 @ 16:54

My friend who loves comics, video games, robots, superheroes, and computer programming has decided they dislike nerds.

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90.1

Agent Lightning

in November 30th, 2014 @ 19:32

Some people don’t like the ‘nerd culture’ thing, where people proclaim themselves nerds and purposely separate themselves from the social norm. Perhaps your friend thinks that the self-abeling of a group of people with certain interests will only serve to create conflict.

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90.2

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 30th, 2014 @ 20:15

Hmmm… do they either already have some other slightly weird subculture they identify with, or, like AL said, a disliking for that sort of thing? Due to cynicism, or being really nonconformist, or… I don’t know, I don’t fit that category myself.

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91

Maths Lover â™¥

in November 30th, 2014 @ 20:58

From the ages of 10 to about 14, give or take a year, I really loved malls. I’ve always lived in/near moderately sized state capitals (by the standards of a country with extremely low population density, anyway). Maybe I liked looking at the pretty things and having my parents buy iced chocolates and reading random stuff in the bookshops and newsagents, maybe it was the sort-of-crowd, maybe it felt like the proper cool teenage girl thing to do which for some reason (hormones? misplaced lust for mwahaha power? I liked YA for other reasons?) I really liked, maybe I liked the architecture or something.

Now I wander around cynically, for most of the time (given how much I listened to “Let It Go”… :roll:). But I have given up on consumerism? Nope.

Yesterday I was looking for both e readers and the phone service shop in our excuse for a town centre. I inwardly yelled at technology and the trials or acquiring and owning such. It was fun.

“So, what happens if I drop this?”

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92

KaiYves

in November 30th, 2014 @ 21:01

Ten years ago today, I had the incredible good experience of meeting one of my childhood heroes, underwater explorer Robert Ballard. I got to hear him speak and received a replica expedition cap as well as a signed copy of one of his books.

Today I am a senior at Boston University, preparing to graduate with a degree in Archaeology in May, and applying to graduate schools to continue my studies and become an archaeologist. But ten years ago, I was just an 11-year-old underwater archaeology fan who was tired of having to explain to everyone that no, she didnâ€™t mean the movie.

And while there were many steps along that road from there to here, getting encouragement from my hero certainly helped me along the way and inspired me. So thank you, Dr. Ballard. I wish that everyone else studying or planning to study a science could have a similar moment of encouragement.

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Lizzie

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Maths Lover â™¥

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Cat's Meow

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Kokonilly

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RÃ³s Ã¾yrnir

Midnight Fiddler

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Maths Lover â™¥

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KaiYves

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KaiYves

KaiYves

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Catwings

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