Expected vs. Actual results

I don't think I could be a scientist. I'm having difficulty interpreting the data of my experiment. The last set of experiments went well, I got a 90% on the lab reports.

The real pain in the ass is expected vs. actual results. If you don't get the results you want... you have a difficult lot of things to explain.

Speaking of expected vs. actual results...

You Were Actually Born Under:

You are solid, methodical, and you do things right the first time. Even when no one else does, you always believe in yourself. You tend to see the world in black and white, right or wrong. A good memory and eye for details means you tend to thrive at near impossible tasks. You are most compatible with a Snake or Rooster.

You Should Have Been Born Under:

You are solid, methodical, and you do things right the first time. Even when no one else does, you always believe in yourself. You tend to see the world in black and white, right or wrong. A good memory and eye for details means you tend to thrive at near impossible tasks. You are most compatible with a Snake or Rooster.

What Year Were You Born Under?

Don't. Lose. Hope.

Never give up, never back down! I've had some tiny bits of good news in the middle of this challenging quarter. I got over a ninety percent on my lab report. The mean was high, and I only scored a few points higher, but that certainly sounds better than the results of my Genetics midterm.

Which of course, segways nicely into Genetics. I failed the first midterm worse than one can ever possibly fail a midterm. I left a lot of spaces blank simply because I ran out of time. At this moment, I am beginning my Campaign Against Genetics Failure (ie, studying like a madman a week before the next midterm). If I don't get a ninety percent, I may as well give up... well, if I get an eighty percent, I may study even harder for the final.

This has happened before. In CHEM 6C, I also failed the first midterm worse than one can ever possibly fail a midterm. Six weeks later, I got an A- in the course overall.

Moral of the story--failing the first one isn't the end of the world. Having a class that drops low midterms is also a plus.

Some qualifications about the last post

1. I am not a conservationist.
2. I am oppossed to the Iraq War, though probably for different reasons than your typical Democrat.
3. I am not your typical Democrat. In fact, I am not a Democrat at all...
4. ....nor am I a Republican (anymore).
5. I believe war can be fought for good/right reasons. Needless to say, most civilizations great and small would agree. Even in the tolerant Hindu religion, there is a warrior caste. If you have ever read the Bhagavad Gita, you know then that Krishna told whats-his-face to slaughter all those people because it was his duty. (Perhaps this should be saved for a later discussion).
6. I do not advocate genocide.
7. I do not believe overpopulation is that big of a deal.
8. I do believe that people (even me) are too afraid of death. What else can support multibillion dollar drug industries? Since latter half of the twentieth century, we have been so accustomed to science finding answers to all of our problems and curing all of our ills. We no longer expect to die before the age of fifty.

This final point could also be the topic of another post, but I'm running out of time. I'll just leave it at this: it is unreasonable to think that six billion people can possibly enjoy the same standard of living of a few hundred million, and this fantasy is what is causing liberals to have delusions. I'll refine this thesis some other time.

War! (huh!) Good God y'all, what is it good for? I'll tell you, you moron.

We have become a nation of idiots. Strike that--we have become a planet of idiots.

Think about this--when is the last time you saw or heard of a conservationist who was NOT a pacifist?.... If you're like me, you've never heard of a single one. We live in a generation of people who demand their cake and eat it too. Eco-nuts preach contraception and abortion as a method to stem human population growth and protect the environment. Yet people most likely to practice contraception are the ones least likely to deliberately harm the environment, while African and Asian children desperate to kill any four legged creature for a bite are (quickly) beating out Whitey in the demographics wars. I'm certain one reason liberals hate the Catholic Church is due to their stance on contraception AND their hold on Third World people. But Catholicism alone cannot be the sole answer to Third World population growth, as (many statistical doomsayers say) Muslim babies are being born by the bushel (unintentional alliteration). And Muslims don't have a Pope to tell them contraception is bad.

So liberals have a problem: we have too many people in this planet. Most of these new people are Third Worlders who don't give a shit about the environment or lofty Western ideals. And all that our contraception is doing is erasing our pansy-ass civilization and environmentalist cant from the planet. Their solution? Education. Love. Outreach. All those bullshit things which never drove the Moors out of Tours or crushed the Nazi stranglehold on Europe. As a matter of fact, many of these dolts want to heal these undeserving poor. News flash people: if you want to halt population explosion, you don't support the species you want LESS of.

Which brings me to my original point: War. Anyone who knows a shred of Darwinian biology knows that species must be kept in check lest the entire system of things crashes to a halt. Mankind has reached a point in his existence such that no other creature on earth can threaten its existence. Disease is being systematically thwarted (although resistant bacterial strains jeopardize this) and people in general are enjoying life expectancies considered prodigious 1000 years ago. Furthermore, humans can alter their environment to maximize their survivability (i.e. FARMING). The only thing that can touch mankind is natural disasters, yet in places with great emergency response, casualties can be reduced. Whoops, I seem to have drifted. But war, war... Man is his only threat.

The best way to curb population explosion is to let all the little wars going around on the planet to continue, and to cut off aid to all those African tinpot dictatorships. But no, no! Liberals are ones who are oppressed by phantasmic demons of guilt and racism (more on this later). They don't want over population, but they can't staaaaaaaaaaand the thought of another African baby dying due to what they believe is White sin. And so the struggle never ends.

The next time you see a pacifist who is worried about overpopulation, kick him in the balls. If she doesn't have balls, trick her into believing that Hillary isn't running for office.

Which Historical General Am I?

Ulysses S. Grant You scored 66 Wisdom, 43 Tactics, 64 Guts, and 65 Ruthlessness!

Like you, Grant went about the distasteful business of war realistically and grimly. His courage as a commander of forces and his powers of organization and administration made him the outstanding Northern general. Grant, though, had no problem throwing away lives on huge seiges of heavily defended positions. At times, Union casualties under Grant were over double that of the Confederacy. However, Grant was notably wise in supporting good commanders, especially Sheridan , William T. Sherman , and George H. Thomas. Made a full general in 1866, he was the first U.S. citizen to hold that rank.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 69% on Unorthodox You scored higher than 7% on Tactics You scored higher than 77% on Guts You scored higher than 90% on Ruthlessness

Link: The Which Historic General Are You Test written by dasnyds on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

"Linux Users" are Assholes

I say "Linux user" in quotes because I know more than a handful of people who are nice Linux users. What I mean by "Linux user" is the kind of person who wears a penguin t-shirt and sprinkles a bunch of technical lingo in everyday parlance. This kind of person also tends to wear horn-rimmed glasses, is rebellious in a very conformist sort of way and hates George W. Bush (I don't like him either, but typically conservatives and libertarians except Vox Day tend to be less bombastic in their criticism of him).

Why are "Linux users" such assholes? Hell if I know. But they believe that their beloved little kernel is the shit of the computing world. And they make their opinions known. And they denounce everything and everyone that don't conform to their narrow world view. I think "Linux users" outclass rednecks and fundamentalist Muslims in intolerance.

Supposedly, with Linux one could do a lot more things with a computer than if one simply had a PC or Mac. I don't know, and frankly I don't care. I only need my computer to do homework, blog, chat, look at porn and watch movies and listen to music. But from what I have seen and heard of Linux, it is a total bear and user-unfriendly. It's one of those things with massive amounts of lines and codes and a bunch of crap that only pale, horn rimmed spectale-wearing, punk music listening geeks with no social life can decipher. It doesn't matter to them that there are people who don't care for all those difficult things and would rather use Windows or MacOS to get the job done. But I guess since they can do things which are tedious and difficult for the vast majority of the population, they consider themselves superior.

I believe the reason they want to take down Microsoft is because they want to go back to a time when computers were inaccessible to the general populace and maintain an oligarchy on information flow.

What is the Breaking Point?

I'd say the breaking point is when I kill myself. But no matter how intense the stress I recieve is, I can't bring myself to do it. I am (or was) the kind of guy who would wail like it was the end of the world when I lose a pencil (this was in fourth grade, or so I was told).

I haven't reached the breaking point, since obviously I'm typing this entry. I don't think I will either, since I didn't when my... accident happened. I was hysterical, yes. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. But I feel broken on the inside. I recieved more bad news today, suffice it to say. Under the advice of my... um, advisor, I won't give any details in case anyone actually READS this blog. But this new bad news, combined with stressors from class, made me feel shitty in a way I have never ever felt before.

If anything good can possibly come out of this, it is that this whole thing will be my driving force to enter Med school. Sure, Mom says that I shouldn't enter a career I am not passionate about, but then again I was never passionate about school and got by anyway. What made me get by in school was that I was absolutely, positively compelled (coerced, even) to go to school (I'll simply leave the homeschooling option out of this debate). I am not thrilled at the prospect of more studying, more "lab" time, residency and lack of sleep--since at the minimum six-a-day I am a basket case. Nor am I thrilled at the high malpractice insurance looming ahead. (Seriously, I am sick of insurance already). But if the worst case scenario comes true, I will have to get out of the red somehow--and a six figure salary can do that quickly with a little spending money left over.

I still don't want to be a doctor, though.

About to reach the breaking point

Not totally related to this entry, but one person did show up at section yesterday. Whopee.


I think I may be close to (or at) the point where I realize I'm totally in over my head. What caused me to get there? Perhaps the fact that it took me two hours to do two practice problems in Genetics three days before the exam date did. Combine this with the fact that I now have the responsibilities of a leader (I'm not belittling the station of a TA) and a lab that is absolutely BRUTAL, and you'll see that I'm in the most sticky of situations. What's worse is I have no right to complain since I still live with my folks, who subsidize my schooling. Well.... I could complain about the fact that I lost my car, but then again, I've never had to pay for the insurance (though I do pay for gas).

Oh yeah, the car! I'm still waiting to see whether the police report exonerates me or says I'm totally fucked. Yes, I am near the breaking point. I am so pathetic.