Hanoko 003 ~ Order in the Sunny Meadow

Finished the audio for number 3 today. (Youtube kind of set it all off anyway :/ )

Abbrev.

So I'm embroiled in my reading for Human Variation and I keep getting confused and distracted. I'm sure the material is doing it's part as the scope feels less focused and defined than in past weeks. But a large part of it is due to the fact that I keep misreading an abbreviation in my mind. LD. What does that mean to you?

In the world of this week's Human Variation assignments, it means 'Linkage Disequilibrium', or 'the nonrandom association of alleles'. In that context it's neat because it's a means of variation in the genetic code beyond single point changes. But the problem is that for the longest time I read strategies for a certain children's card game and, unless I keep a laser focus, I read LD as 'Land Destruction', one of the most annoying, pathological game strategies. I keep hitting LD in this 15 page article and my gut reaction says 'ewwww, I hate LD'. I don't want to read about LD because if I agree with it, it's just going to be bitching and moaning, and if I don't I'm going to find myself in direct opposition to whoever thinks it's a justified deck theme. It takes me a moment to remember: 'Human Variation. LD is kind of cool.'

Abbreviations can be used because of relevance. They only make sense under the assumption that both the reader and the writer have similar background experiences. They cease to provide a convenient, abbreviated form of communication, however, once they become homophones in the written word.

One Must Never Call the Police Dumb.

I spent the majority of my discussion today in Human Variation writhing in mental agony because the professor, in trying to argue that some obvious morphological traits may not be considered adaptations if we can't know their function, used the plates of stegosaurus as an example. "We have theories but we can't say it's an adaptation if we don't know that it's something affecting an organism's survival against a selective force" what was said was something to that effect.

Thinking about it now, I get the point she was trying to make, but that example was outright terrible! The implication is that we don't know the exact function of the Stegosaurus's plates, so how do we know they were evolved to increase fitness and aren't a byproduct to something else. My mind kind of exploded out my mouth in a not good way; I can't even articulate how insane that all sounds to me; those kinds of structure arise, if infrequently, in the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous periods. Similar structures appear on each of the three main lineages of dinosaurs: Theropods, Sauropods, and Ornithischians like Stegosaurus. It's one of the most classic examples of Homoplasy I ever thought of! (aside from the whole fly-wing, bird-wing, bat-wing comparison). It's clear that with several different and yet similar structures among large animals of the Mesozoic that these find structures were being used for something communication, mating, heat regulation... something! Unfortunately I've never been articulate when my mind explodes in dinosaur rage and I made myself look an ass in class.

More towards the end I asked her if she ever shaved a polar bear. I don't know what it is with that class in particular, but I feel like I end up looking more like a freak every week I'm in there.

EDIT: I should probably say that although Stegosaurus and his plates are a bad example, you could talk about that weird space in his hip where people thought he had a second brain for the longest time. Or you swtich species entirely! Go to the Segnosaurs, no one even know what the hell those things are anyways.

Fail Cake

We experienced a set back today. I bombed a test and couldn't flail my Lit presentation/paper together on time. I feel like I didn't have a weekend at all, which is weird because I know I spent time relaxing and I hung out with friends. Obviously I've lost my mind, so it's a good thing I had the forethought to schedule some 'talk me through stress' time tomorrow morning. The problem is that I have papers etc due tomorrow right after my appointment, so I had to call in some substitutes for therapy: Fail Cake.

The rules of Fail Cake: Fail Cake must be delicious. Fail Cake must be rich. In fact Fail Cake must be so delicious and rich that while eating Fail Cake, all you can think about is Fail Cake. Fail Cake cannot be eaten beside milk. Fail Cake's unavoidable Fail Cake Sugar Coma is an acceptable time to Fail Cake Sugar Nap in public like a loon. After awakening from Fail Cake Sugar Nap, it's time to tackle a world where you're not eating Fail Cake for a while.

Fail Cake: because actual success is cake in itself.

Heebie Jeebies

Have you ever been in a public sit-down place with friends, and there's talking and laughing to be had? And then you get that weird feeling like someone is watching you, and out of the corner of your eye you can see someone eye-locked dead in on your conversation. It's kind of creepy, yes? Why the hell do people do that?

Rainy Day. :)

I feel drunk in rain

the ground seems so uncertain

Refrigerator.

Internet Profiling

I was in one of my classes the other day to, you know, to break up the monotony of being physically in class. One of the main themes we talked about, on the subject of memoirs, was self representation. In the terms of the internet, self representation takes on a whole new dynamic. There's a drastic change between representation and reality in some communities, like with furries. (If anyone isn't familiar with what a 'furry' is, take the safe search off and Google 'yiff'. Be amazed at the capacity of the human imagination.) But even the majority of users (and therefore the majority of people) realize that 'webpresentation has become very close to a real life representation. People get up, dress for the day, and check their email. Throughout the day, like someone checking their hair in a mirror, people check their Facebook pages. I have friends that police the activity of Friends on their Facebook page because a bad Facebook associations are just as bad as having real life delinquent friends. In this way, you could say that the internet has given people just another way to represent themselves in the present, their virtual life in parallel to their real life.

There's a strange flip side to this though. Online profiles and the ilk behave a little differently than real life representations. Unlike casual associations, where people drift apart and forget, the online world remains pristinely static. For instance, if you were to ask old high school acquaintances what they thought about me, you'd probably get a short description of poorly timelined events... maybe even some rumors if you were lucky; I wasn't ever someone that noticeable or popular. However, my old high-school LiveJournal is still exactly how I left it. All the things that fade in the memory of people are preserved in perfect stasis (until I eventually get uneasy and delete them, as I'm sure I'll need to do one day when I go job hunting).

The reason I'll probably have to delete them though is another disconnect: while these self representations are all brutally honest (There's basically one one thing that I never mention in any of them), these perfect copies of frames in time are often outdated! Self representation online makes itself difficult when you look at honest representations that are now disingenuous as they are dated but presented in the present tense. No where on my LifeJournal is written a preface that says "This is me 10 years ago, and here's some context that relates it to today." If you didn't pay attention to the dates, you'd think I was still a 15 year old angst riddled boy living at home and swimming at ungodly hours each morning. This makes online profiles of any sort almost parodies of real life if they aren't properly maintained. Casual profiles made on whim stand just as strongly, shouting to the hills your words at that moment just as strongly six months or two years later. Text on a page doesn't fade. The passion and even the state of mind you write in it doesn't fade off web pages, it doesn't turn yellow and brittle either. Self representations online are so perfectly enduring that they often surprise even ourselves when we find them later.

Online representations are often like memoirs in that they allow us to portray ourselves through thought and words, but they are also distinctly different in that they're more alike to scribbles on scraps of indestructible paper than a formal published book. I was just thinking that today.

Marriage Trials

Itching to see a big gay production? This website has constructed reenactments of the first few hours of the first day of court proceedings, based on released transcripts and descriptions from people watching the trail in person. The dialog is accurate, in all it's dry, droning glory.



It's worth mentioning that while the words are there and the actors portraying the transcript and description appear to make attempts to look and sound similar, the nuances of words and the exact nuances of things like stutters and pauses and the like will be different. This shouldn't be confused with actual trial footage. If you watch it, listen for words, not necessarily for presentation, which is put on to make distribution of the exact dialog palatable.

Late Night Pitter Patter

The ferrets were keeping me up last night. Norman Bugbear especially was ringing bars because he wanted to play... and I wanted to sleep. So I wheeled them out in to the living room and went to bed. Norman kept going at it though for a while longer before he suddenly stopped.

I was almost asleep when I thought I heard little pattering on the tile in the hallway. I thought I imagined it at first and then he ran into a wall and it became clear that he was on the loose and I had to get up. Turns out the bottom of the cage had shifted off the base and Norman was loose. I walked out in the hallway and Norman poked his little white head out of Justin's room; he wanted to play 'chase'... I was tired... so I made like I was walking away and he scuttled out to chase me and scooped him up when he got close. I fixed the cage and put him back in before flopping back into bed. Norman stared at me in utter confusion.

I need to get a ferret wheel to tire these things out.