The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock treeHas given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.
–“Dust of Snow” by Robert Frost,
suggested by KaiYves
Patience, Please
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This really is a lovely poem, and I haven’t heard it before. Thank you for the suggestion, Kai.
New month, new poem — and an apt one for those of us still recovering from last month’s Snowzilla. Thanks to KaiYves for recommending it and ZNZ for seconding the motion.
Does anyone have any good snowy pictures we could use to illustrate it? The current crow/snow/tree image is one I grabbed from a Google image search, but I don’t feel good about doing that if there’s a homemade alternative.
Happy Feburary! And to all the babies born on leap day this year, Happy Birthday. Because it’ll be your last “real” birthday for a long, long time….
a paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox
we’ve quips and quibbles heard in flocks but none to beat this paradox
Eh, this last Leap Day Quartet seemed to go by pretty quickly.
With such an exotic birthday, you’d think February 29-ers might be more colorful and creative than average. But if you check Wikipedia’s “February 29” page, you’ll find that the famous people born on that day are more or less second-tier. The biggest name I spotted offhand was Jimmy Dorsey, the band leader — not bad, but not quite what I was expecting.
Skylab astronaut Jack Lousma was born on Leap Day!
Okay, top of the list.
This means he flew the space shuttle when he was eleven years old.
How quaint the ways of paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks.
On this day, February 1st, we remember the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, lost while re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere 13 years ago today.
Rick Husband
Willie McCool
Kalpana Chawla
David Brown
Michael Anderson
Laurel Clark
Ilan Ramon
Hail Columbia!
Happy Birthday Groundhog!!
That’s one birthday that’s easy to remember.
Thank you!
That explains the name
So, after some more conversation with that AI lecturer, he said sure, I can do his course. I felt surprisingly happy when I got the news! He contacted the relevant admin staff at the college of engineering/CS to get my permission number and they sent it out early the next working day. Meanwhile, the math lecturer I had to talk to because I got a 59 instead of the requisite 60 said the person at the college of science was still on holiday, so I’m still left hanging.
(I’ll nag him again if he hasn’t got to me before the start of classes.)
Before I got that straightened out, though, I was telling a friend about this and he commented something to the effect of am I sure doing a course without a prerequisite is a good idea. Since I’d already discussed it with a classmate a year ahead of me but at a similar point in studies, and since then the lecturer gave me the okay, I should be fine, but… I am kind of a masochist, aren’t I?
Work/life balance — how does it work?!
I’m mildly excited about the coming semester, though. (What the cake else would I be doing with my time if not studying? Being disciplined to turn up to a boring job? (My family members understand the struggle even less than I do.)) But seriously, I am looking forward to it.
Today we took our first career assessment.
It felt like a personality quiz.
Well, wasn’t it? The test is supposed to gauge whether you’re you’re the right “type” of person for different sorts of work.
It was supposed to be an assessment that showed what courses and classes we had taken and subjects we have prior knowledge of (at least that’s what it said on about section). Not “What kind of wall decorations do you have in your room”.
I’ll never understand assesments
Can you change that to the email I post under now? (This one)
With pleasure.
I like your Aisling avatar, by the way.
Aisling is my role model. And my cats middle name is Pangur.
I really, really like Secret of the Kells
I keep typing my old email out of habit. Oops.
You know the avatar changing drill.
I was going to comment on this too–I adore that movie!! I recognized her when you changed it right away
Have you seen Song of the Sea?
Yes I have! I seem to prefer animated movies from the other side of the globe as opposed to American animation. I enjoyed “Song of the Sea” as well, but I think I like “Secret of the Kells” more.
Also, Aisling can be seen briefly in the bus scene in “Song of the Sea”
Yes!! I love all their work. Saw a few stills from what looks liek is Cartoon Saloons next large project–something called Wolfwalkers, and am very excited to see more. I followed the SotS production pretty closely for about two years, and I feel like I’m going to do the same here… they just seem to really hit my interests at the right time with their releases. I saw TSoK the year before i studied abroad in ireland, SotS stuff started coming out as I was getting into mermaids (& selkies!), and now i’ve been working on a different story that has wolves as a strong theme…
(Whoops: there’s actually a different one coming out first–The Breadwinner! for 2017! which is not that far at all, though caters less to my specific interests but i am sure will be very good)
Yeah, there isn’t much decent animation in America anymore. It’s mostly CGI or outsourced to cheap Asian studios. Good thing other countries have picked up the torch. “Secret of Kells” was great!
Ugh, I’m used to ridiculous-sounding conspiracy theories, but “There is someone who looks vaguely like this very much dead famous person with the exact same name so that means they faked their death!†has to take the cake.
RIP Edgar Mitchell. I didn’t share all of his views, but I respect what he did on Apollo 14 and throughout the rest of his NASA career.
I made pasta tonight and had it with half an avocado. It tasted pretty good, and I saved the other half and the rest of the pasta in a glass container for tomorrow.
Today I investigated my mysteriously stubby thumbs (which I thought everyone had until last Friday). I have a harmless condition called “clubbed thumb” that some say is a sign you are a descendant from Europeon royalty. I highly doubt this because it came from Wikepedia.
So APPARENTLY for the first time in 25 (26 technically i guess since its almost my birthday?) years, aka the first time in my whole life, I’m watching the
stupidsuper bowl. Apparently, it’s a thing that happens now ever since my sister got married because her husband likes football. And since their tv hasn’t gotten good reception for 2 years because their antennae broke, they now watch it at the parents house. And we always spend Sunday afternoons at the parents. Ergo……I am at the parents house and watching Super Bowl.Oh well. Mom is making munchie food and so far there seems to be more commercials than game. Which is good (which is a weird statement to make lol since generally I hate commercials) because I don’t actually understand the rules of football so it’s kinda boring to me.
During the Clemson-Carolina game, my cousin tried teach me the rules of football. I think she figured out I was hopeless when she aksed me if I remembered what position player 14 was and my answer was “Is the Carolina band playing Star Wars?”
Speaking of Star Wars. There was a moment earlier I could have sworn I heard a couple measures of music that sounded an awful lot like Star Wars theme music…..
All anyone here has tried to explain I me is yellow and red flags. And that Denver player 21 has anger issues.
My cousins came over at halftime. I’m just sitting here watching the a puppy bowl while they’re screaming at the TV and spilling salsa. This is why I am not a football fan
Or a cousin fan, evidently.
As a marching band kid, I’ve been to every single home football game at my high school… still don’t understand the rules of football. My family has a traditional Super Bowl party with my grandparents and I don’t mind because there’s food.
I just finished my eighth season of going to every football game and I still don’t really understand the rules.
After I mentioned this at my first college football game, the rules were explained to me and I think I kind of get them. Ignorance is not something to be proud of! No matter the subject. (And no one likes it when you make fun of or deride their interests, see xkcd 1480.)
Here goes (may be slightly inaccurate):
– Each team has a side that they are guarding and a side on which they score, like basketball or soccer.
– A touchdown is 7 points. This is when one person runs the ball all the way down to the opponents’ field (I believe the line is called the end zone). Once a touchdown has been scored by a team, they have the opportunity to score one more point. This is done by the kicker. I do not know what the point is called.
– Each team has 4 tries (downs) to move the ball 10 (?) yards toward their opponents’ side. If they do not succeed, the ball switches teams. If they do, they get another 4 tries to move the ball another 10 yards.
– If a team thinks they cannot move the ball far enough with the number of tries they have left, they attempt a field goal. A field goal is worth 3 points.
– The game is timed, but they take breaks all the time because they have to figure out how far the ball has moved and then reset to kick the ball down the field again. So really, even though it’s supposed to take an hour (?) it takes waaaay longer than that.
So that’s my guide to football. I don’t really watch it ever (I didn’t watch the Super Bowl), so some details might be wrong, but it’s enough for me to follow a game and know when to react appropriately if I happen to be watching a game with friends.
Well done! A slight correction: a touchdown is worth six points. But professional teams almost always make the extra point (which is called the “extra point”) for seven.
I’m actually vaguely embarrassed by my ignorance at this point, rather than proud of it. I also should’ve spoke more specifically–it’s not so much that I don’t understand the rules, because I knew all of the stuff you said (except the field goal thing which I forget a lot). It’s more that I find it hard to follow–I find it more interesting to talk to my friends in the band than to try to figure out what’s happening on the field. But a number of my friends in the band also really like watching the games, and I respect that too.
I can’t even keep track of where the ball is…..Now maybe part of that is the relatively small TV screen, but….I don’t know. For me I wouldn’t say I’m proud of my ignorance of the rules, etc, it’s just a fact. And I can’t know everything, lol
Were none of you required to play flag or touch football in school? How times have changed.
This is MUSEBLOG, remember?
My first game of flag football was in high school during Sports P.E. Most people took the weightlifing P.E. class.
I learned the rules of football from my dad, though. He likes watching college football, and I like learning rules to games, so that was a father-daughter bonding moment.
I vaguely remember maybe playing something along the lines of flag football in the PE class I was in when I was grade school aged, but I don’t remember anything beyond people had flags tucked in a waist band. And a lot of running.
But I has significantly less formal PE time, since I was home schooled, and I think the home school PE class only lasted a couple years or so…..
we played flag football in like elementary school / middle school I think but it was mostly trying to look busy and stay out of the way while the athletic boys who would actually go on to play football creamed each other
high school PE I took foundations of physical fitness, which was health class with some running or something like that, walking class where we suited out and walked to the gas station on the corner, bought soda, walked back, and did an independent study individual sports, which was learning the rules to tennis and bowling, taking paper tests on that, and then faking timesheets to make it look like I actually had played games.
We played flag football, but never tackle. Now soccer, that we played a lot of.
Oh I wish. We played so much dodgeball during junior high that I absolutely loathed it after a short while. And this weird hybrid game that was essentially baseball without a bat. Oh, and basketball, but those games never lasted long because someone always got hurt and for some reason I kept being unfairly accused of fouling people.
High school gym class was mainly volleyball and occasionally jogging. Though I do remember one weird game the teacher made up during which I brained someone with a sneaker (this was not the point of the game). I think we stopped playing it after that- I can’t remember the rules for the life of me. Perhaps it was supposed to be field hockey with shoes?
Try watching cricket. It only takes a year or two to work out what’s going on.
*sighs in relief* I actually managed to get through my whole birthday without people singing happy birthday to me! I don’t like all that attention, though I do do very odd things to get attention. Heh heh…a lot of my posts are pointless rambling or me assuming things to be true when they aren’t.
Happy birthday…?
Google’s doodle informs me that today marks the beginning of the Chinese New Year. Happy Year of the Monkey!
As it happens, I was monkey-born several cycles ago, so I assume this will be an especially auspicious year for me. I plan to savor each day as I reap the fruits of fortune’s largesse.
Happy Year of the Monkey! I am sure Kokopelli will appreciate any excuse to monkey around.
Not just the Monkey — the Fire Monkey.
That could be interesting. And incendiary.
Probably his favorite element, I’d bet.
Excellent… I don’t have that strong a positive reaction to monkey, but fire… fire I can work with. To an interesting year!
I’m a monkey, too, by virtue of being born in January, even though it was the following year by our calendar. I’m all for taking this to be auspicious.
I’m the opposite–I skip being a monkey by virtue of january birthday and am a goat instead! I figured this out for myself in 4th grade so never had an internal crisis over it like some of my january friends did in college and I mentioned the year start date difference to them.
I guess I’m the opposite– a rooster, but only by a week or two.
I wasn’t all that pleased about monkey, to be honest. But Fire Monkey…well, that’s a whole different barrel!
I’m a snake. I was born a month early so I wasn’t supposed to be a snake. XD But, the description of the snake fits me surprisingly well.
Happy belated Chinese New Year! I was born in the year of the rat (’96), but my boyfriend was born in the year of the monkey.
Rats and monkeys are supposed to be highly compatible, I understand.
Yesterday was not a good day, but I did watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode “The Blood Waters of Doctor Z” and had some much-needed laughs. Thank you, reviewers trapped on a satellite, for brightening my day.
ProQuest access to digitized historic newspapers is a beautiful thing.
Black holes merging! Gravitational waves detected! Exciting physics news!
oxlin: I was at the press conference! It was thrilling — physics love to the max. You can see my magazine’s coverage (most of which I edited) and more at
http:// www. sciencemag .org/news/2016/02/gravitational-waves-einstein-s-ripples-spacetime-spotted-first-time
and read my tweets at @rcoontz.
(I’ll turn that link into a non-link later, after the excitement dies down.)
My first thought when I heard an announcement was in the offing: Robert must be busy!
While everybody waited, NPR science correspondent Geoff Brumfiel tweeted this picture of journalists tweeting. That’s me in the middle, sitting in front of the TV cameras.
It’s a brilliant achievement, and amazing technology. Looking for ripples a thousandth the size of a proton by firing lasers over an effective path of thousands of km, then recombining them into an interference pattern. That’s crazy enough, but noise from traffic, seismic moments and hundreds of other sources must be millions of times bigger than the signal they were looking for. And they managed to damp it out all out Astounding.
Spilled water on my phone and now the speakers don’t work and I can’t hear any sound and I’m not supposed to plug it in because that could be bad, so I have to go to the Apple Store tomorrow, where I was going to go anyway because I’ve been having problems connecting my computer to WiFi and I think I need to upgrade it to something past Snow Leopard, and the university tech support said they couldn’t help with that.
Sound is back, screen is still discolored, still going to go and hopefully get the computer fixed.
Another Snow Leopard holdout eh? I finally got around to installing El Capitan, after multiple trips to the Apple store and having to wipe my hard drive (twice)! Hope your upgrade goes better.
I miss Snow Leopard….I’m on Mountain Lion, currently, haven’t been able to bring myself to upgrade further, yet. Admittedly in large part due to how cosmetically unappealing later versions are (just like w/ the newer ipod/ipad software). And I’ve heard El Capitan is pretty buggy.
I didn’t like the Yosemite UI at first, but it grew on me after a little bit… but I think you’re right about the bugginess of El Capitan. There was an article recently on Hacker News about the decline of the quality of Apple’s software — even reviewers who have historically been in Apple’s corner are starting to pan their software. iTunes especially is extremely buggy, I hear (after getting an Android I converted to Google Play).
updated to el capitan a couple weeks ago out of boredom and so far haven’t had any issues, UI seems fine, it’s more in line with mobile style (ie lack of serifs) but looks very clean and expansive
Upgrade was a pain but I haven’t had any problems since it started working. Seems faster and smoother, and the longer battery life is nice.
I’m at the store waiting as it downloads now. I’m probably just going to pick my own background, but it will hopefully fix my problems.
I’ve had an iPhone and a Toshiba laptop that runs Windows for a couple years and been really frustrated with the way Apple devices handle music. What are all these Snow Leopard and Yosemite things, and should I look into them?
They’re both versions of the Apple OS; you can’t get them anymore because they’re out-of-date. The newest version is El Capitan.
So… no? If you’re looking into getting a Mac, it’ll just come with El Capitan.
what don’t y’all like about itunes? to me it’s much more intuitive than say, spotify, which drives me crazy because the search is awful
the itunes program is so complicated its like you gotta have a degree from nasa just to play sweet home AlabamaI especially miss the beautiful picture of the snow leopard that filled my monitor every time I turned on the computer. Fortunately, I still see it sometimes.
Not a holdout, just bad with computers and thus reluctant to change anything that seems to be working okay– and this has worked okay for six years!
I updated and it seems to have worked out, I took the opportunity to get a new background for my laptop– it’s still the Space Shuttle Endeavour, but now on the launchpad against a sunset, instead of the background of it in flight with the lyrics to Rush’s “Mission” that I made a few year ago.
My readings for Anthropology of Museums are pretty fascinating, especially the ones with excerpts from the actual writings of the fin-de-siècle people being discussed– there’s one bit talking about how to design mannequins where Franz Boas basically describes the whole idea of the Uncanny Valley in 1896.
But the coolest part is the actual scans of vintage letters pages from Science that she gave us, because the professor also scanned letters about other topics that were on the same page and it’s cool to see little tidbits of science news from 1887– Washington D.C. was still called “Washington City”, there was a debate about if stopped clocks were a useful way of measuring the arrival of earthquake waves, and some guy noticed how similar the geologic layers of Canada’s east coast and the British Isles were. (But sadly the page ends before you can see if he actually came close to suggesting they were connected in the past.)
I can help with that. *works at Science*
Wow, thanks! Um, this would be page 589 of the issue for June 17, 1887, and the letter would have continued into page 590.
(The one I read today was from a few weeks later and had a literary slap fight between Boas and John Wesley Powell about categorization and display of ethnographic artifacts in museums. With figures that famous, there’s a real “Batman vs. Superman” appeal to it.)
Thanks so much, Robert!
Always happy to help.
That sounds awesome. I love reading about how people thought in the past, because it gives you a sense of how far we’ve come and therefore how much more must be possible.
And what did the guy really say on the second page?
Happy Lincoln-Darwin Day, everybody!
I was reading an article about Ellison Onizuka and Coldplay’s “Clocks” came on the radio, and I always associate that song with Roger Boisjoly and the Challenger disaster…
I was recently hired for my first-ever job! Starting on the 23rd, I’ll be a page at my local public library. I’m pretty excited.
Congrats!
Congratulations, Rosebud! That was my first job, too. Getting paid to hang out in a library seemed to good to be true.
Congratulations!
Update:
So, I talked to my parents about the dance (a few weeks ago) and my mom actually said that she had a MEETING on Friday the 12th and that we wouldn’t be able to even go up to the mountain on that day anyway. So everything worked out after all, and the whole thing turned out to be REALLY FUN. I basically waited for this for my whole life and it finally happened! I finally ended up doing something like normal kids my age do! Crazy thought, right? I just.. don’t really know what’s going to happen next now. I’m kinda new to this. Also, I don’t really know the whole deal with the movie, either. She said that she would like to, but hasn’t really been able to… (which I thought was just a way to turn me down nicely but apparently that’s not true…) And I just am pretty confused right now. Happy, but confused. I hate the drama but I love being a part of it. Well, at least the movie is still playing in our local theater…
Today I put up a mirror that’s pretty big (not as big as a human, but bigger then my cat), and whenever my cat see’s herself in the mirror, she starts scratching at the glass, as if there’s another cat in the mirror.
Oh, hello. For those who are confused, yes I still exist here.
One thing that’s new, I’ve started a webcomic. It’s really not that good, because I’m not really that good at drawing, and the main characters are stick figures, but it’s a webcomic anyway.
I haven’t uploaded yet, because when I do I want to be prepared. Right now, I’m not even past page 6 in the script, but I am still happy with what I have so far. I tried a new art style when I drew the first page, and I really really like it.
That is all.
Yay! That’s awesome, Catwings!
I love webcomics and I think it’s fantastic that you’re starting one. Best wishes with the project!
Television Scenes We’d Like To See:
The heroes arrive in the town and conduct research into the mystery they have come to investigate (supplementing what they have already done at home, of course), including asking about all of the photographs and paintings conveniently hanging on walls that we would normally see only at the end of the episode being panned over while spooky music plays.
*Then* when they meet a mysterious person looking eerily similar and wearing old-fashioned clothes who gives cryptic clues about the mystery, they straightforwardly ask, “Are you that person who was mysteriously murdered under those circumstances conveniently related to this case several decades ago? Are you a ghost now? Will it help you move on if we solve the mystery? Okay, good, now this can go so much quicker!”
TV programs would be a lot shorter if KaiYves wrote them. Except for documentaries — they’d be longer.
It may be of interest to some people on here that The Verge has an article about giant squids in popular culture.
Recently I’ve started German lessons. It’s a language I’d really like to be able to understand (and speak/write), and could be useful if I want to study/live in a German-speaking country at some point. It’s a bit daunting adding another language into the mix (it will be my fifth) – it frankly feels alien to be such a beginner and to know virtually nothing, but hopefully I’ll be able progress quickly!
Fifth? That’s awesome! What are your other languages?
English, French, Cantonese, Mandarin.
It’s so frustrating knowing next to nothing and being hardly able to put a sentence together. Soon I hope!
But you also have the thrill of that steep, steep, never-to-be-repeated initial learning curve. “Beginners mind” is such fun!
This is an alien and enticing outlook that I would love to cultivate. It’d get my over my fear of trying new things, for sure.
Novelty is the best policy! Have I taught you nothing?
Knowing something is not the same as grokking it. I’m trying to learn, though!
More disappointing Google Image Search results: Atlantean passport.
So I’m getting my wisdom teeth out tomorrow. Any words of advice?
I know I tell everyone these things, but:
1) Listen to your dentist and do what they say.
2) When your tongue is numbed, it’s natural to feel like you’re choking on it. You’re not, so don’t freak out.
3) Communicate with your parents by writing or texting while your mouth is still numb unless you can make your “Wa wawa wa”s really expressive.
4) Be prepared to spend a few days doing nothing.
5) Take the pain meds they give you as recommended.
6) Hold ice packs to your cheeks for as long as you can stand. It really does help with the pain.
7) If you want protein and carbs while you still can’t chew, ask your parents to get stelline, a very small pasta, and cook it with meat sauce. You’ll still have to eat very little spoonfuls at a time, but it’s a way to get some variety in your diet besides yogurt and applesauce.
Also, milkshakes.
Thanks for the advice, KaiYves!
BTW, I just googled stelline, and it’s the cutest pasta ever omg
I prepared plain ramen with different kinds of soups to add variety. Jello is also great because I don’t like yogurt or applesauce. Just eat things you can ideally swallow hole in the event that you can’t chew. My dentist told me not to eat small things in case they got stuck in the hole, so not rice or small pasta (contrary to Kai’s suggestion). Don’t drink from straws because then you risk dry socket (my mom did not know this and immediately put a straw in a cup of water for me because I was spilling it everywhere).
Also, I didn’t take any of the Vicodin they gave me and got by on ibuprofen, so YMMV when it comes to pain meds (but definitely take the FULL course of antibiotics). The anesthetic they initially gave me didn’t make me loopy or anything (everything I said was unintelligible, apparently), but it did give me double vision, which after the car ride home made me nauseous. Just sleep for as long as possible after the surgery.
*swallow whole. Choking is kind of a consideration because your mouth will be numb/feeling weird. I was up and about again the next day, though I kept the soft diet for a few days afterward. A week later I was pretty much completely fine.
When I was eating the stelline, I could chew a little but not very much, and I was eating it with the front of my mouth and being careful when swallowing not to get it near the holes.
Well thanks for the advice, guys! The operation itself went okay (they let me bring my own headphones and listen to music which was nice when I could hear it over the drilling) and had me on laughing gas, which lost its effects as soon as they took me off of it. So I was pretty miserable afterwards (I kept drooling when I was leaving and couldn’t tell my lower lip from my tongue, leaving me to believe that my tongue was hanging or of my mouth) but as soon as I got home I was ok. I can kind of eat now which is cool, but I have to go to school tomorrow which means I can’t have any of the prescribed painkillers (they make me drowsy and I drive) and have to get by on ibuprofen.
The part I’m most aggravated about is the fact that I can’t play saxophone or trombone for a while, meaning i have to miss tech week in the musical. Yikes.
They’re making you go to school the day after you got your wisdom teeth out? That’s harsh.
Nope, I got them out on Friday, so it will have been three days. Hopefully the worst of the pain will have passed by then. I think I would downright refuse to go to school the day after I had them out. My face was so swollen I didn’t want to go out in public at all.
There’s a Balrog in my bedroom.
To be more accurate, he’s in the entire apartment. Every half an hour to an hour or so, he’ll sound his drums in succession through the stand pipes, just to remind us mere, fragile mortals that he can, at whatever time he chooses, blast through the radiator and drag us to a fiery death with his red-hot whip.
I knew I should have named my Build-A-Bear Gandalf instead of Barliman Butterbur.
Fly, you fools!
Your Build-A-Bear has a lightsaber, that should count for something…
Alas, his lightsaber is several hundred miles away in a box in the basement of our parents’ house. And I don’t think you can Force Pull over hundreds of miles.
Okay, wait. It’s not that I disapprove of the name you chose… but why did you go with that over, say, Barliman Butterbear
Have I told you about my friend who has a cosmobear named Furi Babearan?
Somebody tell my brain it can’t cross-over a story I haven’t written yet with a video game I’ve never played. It doesn’t matter that they’re both set in 1968 and involve people lost at sea.
I’ve used multiple pictures from a game I’ve never played as avatars and such elsewhere on the ‘Net. (I shall be trying it soon, though! It’ll be funny if I don’t actually like it. I rarely overestimate how much I’ll enjoy things, so should work out.)
Am I the only one who isn’t getting ens wisdom teeth pulled? Because it’s starting to seem like there’s some sort of freaky dentist conspiracy going on.
I haven’t, I don’t think. How do you know when you’re supposed to?
I’ve kept mine! It’s to do with how much room you have in your mouth, I think?
I have all of my wisdom teeth, too, thanks to my big
mouthjaw.I have half of mine, and also have a big head…
I read once that wisdom tooth removal is the most common unnecessary surgery performed in the US – dentists often push it even if you don’t have any current problems because they’re hard to work on (and it makes money). I still have all of mine.
Mine came in perfectly fine and no dentist I’ve had has pushed me to get them extracted. I still have them. They’re useful for chewing (though hard to get things out of when stuck)
As a contrary viewpoint, I have a very small mouth (seriously, every dentist I’ve ever had has commented on it — “open wider!” “I AM”). I think it was pretty important that I got them out; they were starting to feel very uncomfortable and I could tell even from the one that was just poking out that they would not fit all comfortably.
I only have one and it hasn’t caused me any trouble so I’ve kept it.
“Ens” = ♥
Teeth story incoming! Teeth are always so fun to talk about, I wonder why?
I got mine out a couple years ago since the bottom two finally had grown in as far as they could. They were both growing in at ~70 degree angles toward my other teeth, and the dentist said that while that would otherwise be fine, the gap in between them and my other teeth would be really prone to infection. My top wisdom teeth had grown in perfectly, but were starting to overgrow because they had nothing to bite down on. So all four had to come out.
Oh, this reminds me, have I ever told y’all my wisdom tooth story? It’s a doozy. content warning, idk, dentists behaving badly? ill-advised medical procedures?
so the dentist examined me and said that she thought I ought to have them out, and made a note of it. But then she examined my mother and noticed that she has all of hers (it’s a minor point of pride, she’s also got her tonsils and appendix) and our mouths are arranged exactly the same way. So all concerned agreed that my teeth were fine, except that I had to come back later and have a cavity filled.
Now this dentist was the kind of dentist who never explains what she’s doing while she’s doing it, and I don’t have a huge amount of dental knowledge. So when we come back and she’s working on me, I 100% think she’s doing my cavity, except something seems off? And surely she doesn’t need to, like, slice? that much? And then I realize: she forgot to change her notes about my teeth when we decided I didn’t need the wisdom teeth out. She’s trying to take out my tooth.
This is the story of how I ended up sitting in a dentist’s chair, anesthetized, screaming “WHA AH OU OO-IN” over and over. But I still have the tooth, so it counts as a victory.
I was all fired up to make a comment about Americans encouraging unnecessary procedures… then remembered exactly who I was talking to. (Did you live in the US at some point? Saying that jogged a vague memory.) Ha, I see Lizzie beat me to it.
I had the two on the right side pulled when I was 17. They were starting to crowd the others, but my dentist said the others were fine. So I only had half my mouth swollen and painful, and it wasn’t too bad.
And now for me making this sound terrifying:
I never realised that getting a local anaesthetic, y’know, to stop the pain , was itself painful. Oh, we’re only going to stab a large needle multiple times into a very sensitive part of your body. And there were very interesting crunching noises when they dug the mostly-not-out lower tooth out of the gum. And the bits of flesh stuck on the teeth when they offered them to me!
SFTDP, but on reading replies to AL upthread: Is it weird that I didn’t need to sleep afterwards? (While I was eating a lot more sugar than ideal at the time, which empirically does keep current!me awake longer if not functionally awake longer. “[My brain just seems] to keep on running and running, never shutting down no matter how tired it got. It got stupider but it refused to switch off“. So the explanation seems to be it just wasn’t that taxing in my case. I mean, it was winter aka. between-semester school holidays and burnout and emotional pain and stuff, so I was mainly vegging out in front of a computer, but lower bound of being able to sit in a desk chair and think straight-ish!)
That happened to my brother, too. His friends came over afterwards expecting to comfort him while he mostly slept, and instead he beat them at Connect Four and stayed up late watching movies.
I grew up on a boat. It’s complicated. But yes, I did live in the US fairly often. Though tbh this wisdom tooth thing is worse in Austria- literally everyone my age I’ve asked has had theirs removed or is going to do so. While I’m sure that it’s necessary in many cases, it did seem a bit excessive.
The last time I went to my dentist, she also tried to convince me to get mine out and her arguments were …eh. She said they were unnecessary and that they might cause my other teeth to shift a bit. Admittedly, I have a slightly crooked front tooth that has become even more crooked since my wisdom teeth have come in, but there’s something about applying beauty standards to teeth that brings out my inner fireball. They’re just teeth- it’s not like my parents plan to auction me off like a horse.
Not related to wisdom teeth, but based on your comment about applying beauty standards to teeth: I had braces for years as a kid/teenager, and after they came off I eventually got fed up of wearing a retainer every single night since it wasn’t very comfortable, so the bottom teeth especially have shifted and are a tiny bit crooked now. My parents pester me about it from time to time, but honestly it’s not really anything terribly noticeable. Yes, the orthodontic work was expensive but not “wasted”; it fixed the main problem I had as a kid which was a jaw overcrowded with teeth, which did seriously need fixing, so the whole process wasn’t even primarily aesthetic. I guess I should have kept on wearing the retainer for longer (supposedly one is meant to for life? So impractical) – but having only 90% (and not 100%) symmetrical teeth has not impacted my life in any way.
I’ve had my braces off for over four years now and still wear my retainer at night- my mouth starts to feel weird if I don’t, and I don’t like my mouth feeling weird when I play wind instruments. I’ve forgotten it on long trips a couple of times and do eventually adjust & it feels normal, but I guess I might as well keep wearing it because orthodontic work is expensive and if my bite starts to slip back my lisp could worsen which would possibly affect my saxophone playing.
Hadn’t thought of that! I don’t have that problem with the instruments I play
I still have all four of mine. When they started to come in, my dentist gave me a choice as to whether or not to take them out. I’ve actually been a bit scared to go to a dentist where I currently live, because I’m afraid that the first thing out of the dentist’s mouth will be “those wisdom teeth need to go.”
T E E T H F O R T H E T E E T H G O D
I got mine out in 2014, I was terrified of the drugs making me act weird in front of my parents, but I was pretty lucid and couldn’t talk because of the gauze in my mouth anyway.
Today I watched two men playing chess who were pretty into it, and one of them couldn’t think of any more moves, so he resigned. I pointed out that he still could have captured his opponent’s queen with his rook because they were about four spaces away in the same row. The other guy asked me if I was a chess master.
I found this very amusing because I haven’t played chess in years and when I did play chess, I was *horrible* at it. I think the last time I ever won was in elementary school. I do remember how the pieces move, but that’s about as far from being a chess master as knowing how to swim is from being an Olympic swimmer.
Stupid pun of the day:
What do you call a robot named Robotobor? A palindrone
I made that one up. There’s a lot more where that came from.
Nice, I like it!
MBers who have been to Turkey, what were your experiences with regards to female headwear? My dad is convinced I need to buy hijabs even though the female professor whose assistant I’ll be says I won’t need to cover my head, and every travel site I can find says that women are only required to cover their heads in mosques. I thought of getting a head-wrap I had seen at a camping store that was designed to be worn in various ways and has UV-protection and insect repellent, so that I could wear it like a headband or scarf while digging and reposition it to cover my hair if I had the chance to visit a mosque.
I haven’t been there, but I would definitely invest in some kind of loose, flow-y scarf if you haven’t already. You may not need to cover your head all the time, but if you’re digging in the hot sun for hours you’ll probably want to. If you buy a wide one, you can also use it as impromptu shawl to cover your shoulders/arms in case they get sunburnt.
I have a wide-brimmed that that I wore in Spain when I was digging there, it’s just away from the dig that I’m worried about.
KaiYves, Turkey is in principle a secular society, and in cities, at least, my understanding is that you should be able to wear European/American clothes without any problem. In fact, Turkish women in many jobs were not allowed to wear hijabs until 2013 — and you’re a foreigner. I’d avoid skin-baring outfits, though (e.g., no cutoffs and halter tops), and it’s probably not a bad idea to have a head scarf handy if you venture out into the countryside. Try a Google search on “what Turkish women wear” to get the general idea.
Those were the travel sites I’d seen, confirming what my professor had said– bring long sleeves and long pants, just lightweight for the summer. I will ask her about the wrap this week if I can make time to see her.
I second recommendations for a wide and lightweight scarf or shawl to use to cover your head and shoulders if you feel the need to for sun protection or blending in, but at least in cities you should be totally fine without a head covering. I don’t think you’re the type to wear super revealing things anyway, but midriff-baring outfits and strapless or spaghetti-strap tops are probably ill advised if you’re not sure where you’re going. I’d trust your professor on this one, since she’s presumably actually been there. It’s nice your dad is concerned for you, but he’s not your most reliable source in this case.
If you’re working in the field, I definitely recommend going to a thrift store and grabbing a couple white or light colored long-sleeved shirts (I like a button up because they tend to have enough roominess they don’t stick to you like a jersey fabric would) to wear to protect against sun, and a wide-brimmed hat. It may be different at the site you’re working at, or depending on what sort of excavation you’re doing, but often in the field sunglasses make it difficult or impossible to see color changes in soil, so wearing them is sometimes frowned upon.
I just spent four hours reading documents about the federal budget in order to respond to a joke post on External Blogging Site about taking funding from NASA to research a cure for acne. (The part of the National Institutes of Health that deals with skin diseases at the same level as the part dealing with cancer for the cost of 42 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The US plans to buy 2443.)
*could be funded at the same level
“Why have you been on the computer so long, Kai?”
“Someone is wrong on the internet! Probably.”
It’s more like “Someone said something bad about NASA! Talk smack, and I whack.”
OMG. If Potted Potter (the unofficial Harry Potter parody) comes to your town, and you’re a Harry Potter fan, I absolutely cannot recommend enough that you go and see it. We went today, and it was absolutely unbelievably flamablamablous. I had a total blast, Slytherin won the Quidditch match (we had an amazing Seeker–he was tiny, but man was he determined to get the Snitch). And just words cannot describe the amazingness. It’s laugh out loud (almost constantly) funny, with Potter jokes, current events/pop culture jokes, jokes on just about everything (including location specific jokes–they threw some Alaska ones in presumably just for us as their target audience. Such as the third book, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of the Alaskan Van).
But seriously. It’s is so so so so funny.
Wait — you were sorted into Slytherin?
Assuming it was anything like the show I went to, ‘sorting’ consisted of “you on the right, you’re Gryffindor, left, Slytherin”.
It is a really good show, I went to see it at Thanksgiving.
I wish I remembered it better, because there were certainly a couple of gags that were hilarious and we were trying to figure out if they were scripted, and now Luna would be able to confirm whether or not they were and I can’t remember them. Alas.
What Errata said: They just split the audience in half down the middle, those on the left of the audience (stage right) were Slytherin, those in the right of the audience (stage let) were Gryffindor.
Thanks for the recommendation! It looks like they don’t have any tour dates set beyond Alaska right now, but I’ll try to keep checking back and see if they’re ever coming to my area.
GAPAs, it looks like four of my comments got eaten by the spam filter. Could you please investigate why?
I have no idea. The filter must be getting trigger-happy. Comments rescued and restored!
Thank you!
One of my coworkers mentioned that on his birthday (which was last week, and we were asking how it was) he discovered that he was out of money for food. So, the Trekkie and I made him a couple of sandwiches while we were on our lunch break. However, when we offered him the sandwiches, he got very embarrassed and refused to accept them. We didn’t do this while anyone else was around, but I guess pride can be a big thing.
So what now? I don’t want to embarrass him further, but he’s my friend and I don’t want him to starve.
He’ll be all right after his next paycheck, won’t he? You could try telling him that you’re just helping to tide him over and that he may buy you chocolate later if he likes.
I went to the hardware store to buy a screwdriver that would fit the tiny screws on my solar lamp, because I needed to replace the batteries. The store didn’t have a single screwdriver of the kind I wanted, just a tool with a bunch of small heads with that as one of them. They directed me to their other store, who didn’t have it either, so I just bought the tool with lots of screwdriver heads, because I guess it will be useful to have in general.
But the second hardware store was farther up the street it was on than I had been before, and when I was walking back to campus, I found an art gallery that was having this show of amazing landscape paintings. So I spent about an hour in there just looking at them.
Hurray for serendipity!
Happy Birthday, Kai D! Sincerely, Other Kai.
And happy 23rd birthday to you, elder Kai.
I had an “allergic reaction” last night. To what, I’m not sure. My doctor thinks it was Greek Yogurt or I’m Lactose Intolerant (But I grew up eating/consuming Dairy products)
But on a “dark humor” note, I remember someone telling me “that I don’t know how to put on blush”, since the mystery food made my face flush.
Ugh, I hope you feel better now.
How weird would it seem for a prose story to have the framing device of being a translation of a comic book printed in another language?
Moderately.
“But if you have a copy of the comic book, why not just share photos or scans with the translated captions and bubbles fixed in Photoshop or just with the translations in subtitles?”
Watsonian: “Uh… I don’t know what the copyright status of this comic is and I don’t want to get in trouble.” (Doylist: Because I can’t draw.)
“So why not just transcribe it in comic script style? You know, ‘PANEL 1: Bob and Alice stand on a deserted beach. ALICE (speech bubble): “I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years…” PANEL 2:’ That sort of thing?”
“Err… Because that would get dull, so a prose adaptation is more interesting to read? Don’t you think this sounds better? ‘Alice swallowed the lump in her throat as she stared at the sunset. Forcing back tears, she turned to Bob and took a deep breath. “I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years…” she said.'”
“But then how can we tell which details are yours and which were in the original comic?”
Hey Robert (or anyone else, I just figured Robert would be most likely to know), is there a post somewhere on the specifics of how the grammar of “en” works?
The grammar of “en” is easy to master. I explained it when I introduced it here:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1125#comment-169963 .
I’m happy to answer any questions about it, of course.
Thank you! That’s what I thought was right but there was the Anxiety Voice in the back of my head going “….but what if you’re wrong?”.
Speaking of serendipity (see comment 42.1, above), I was just searching for something else when I stumbled across this wondrous MB moment in 2010, when an SSSS almost broke the blog.
Do you think it wise to revisit that event?
Do you think it’s like the Thing in the Cupboard?
I’m taking an awesome Human-Centered Design class this semester, through the Center for Collaborative Creativity at school that I’ve been working at for the past year. We have to submit reflections at several points, and we were specifically told that creativity in medium is encouraged. Tonight, I wrote a reflection in rap form. I don’t think I’ve ever really tried to rap before. I may have been listening to lots of Hamilton recently.
I’m quite proud of my rhyming and how fast I managed to deliver it in my video!
Happy Leap Day, everybody!
For some ridiculous reason, to which, however, I’ve no desire to be disloyal,
Some person in authority, I don’t know who, very likely the Astronomer Royal,
Has decided that, although for such a beastly month as February, twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty,
One year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.
Through some singular coincidence — I shouldn’t be surprised if it were owing to the agency of an ill-natured fairy —
You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap-year, on the twenty-ninth of Febru-ary;
And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you’ll easily discover,
That though you’ve lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays, you’re only five and a little bit over!
MBLD factoids:
– MBer Nighthawk (fl. 2009-2012) was born on February 29, 1996:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?page_id=1779#comment-342775
– We had a Leap Day thread in 2008:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1220
– but just a few comments in 2012:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=11169#comment-448602
Happy leap day! I’m just glad I’ve got another day before deadlines of March 1st kick in!
It doesn’t seem like anyone mentioned it in the Gaboomba in 2004 either! (I just checked, using the web archive dot org.)
I know Fiddler’s met all four GAPAs. Has anyone else? I’ve met Paul and Robert, so I’m halfway there!