ambisinitre

toilet stalls

2009-03-28T16:38:00.002-05:00

As a male I probably spend more time than the average person in men's bathrooms. (According to 2008 world demographic data the average person is about 50.5% male and 49.5% female, and I most likely spend more time in men's bathrooms than a hermaphrodite that is just slightly more male than female. Also, I am a bit creeped out by men's bathrooms, so I will admit that I put toilet paper over the seat before I sit down, if there aren't any paper covers to use.) Typically, bathroom stalls don't make for wholesome reading, but I will admit that occasionally I get bored (there's really not much else to do) and will read what's on the walls of the stall. Once in a blue moon the stall walls actually have something funny/interesting. Often there are long drawn out strings of bathroom conversations between immature idiots. Recently I saw the following written in two different handwritings (I think it's pretty clear what was written by each person).

FECES <- mouse babies?

I have no idea what this means, but it made me laugh. Given the extra time on my hands, I thought about it and I think that maybe the second writer was thinking that "feces" is an amalgamation of the fake plural "meese" for mice and the word "fetus". I probably gave it too much thought, but it made me laugh nonetheless. I bet it's weird when people laugh from bathroom stalls....

bizarre

2009-03-16T09:25:00.002-05:00

[NOTE: This has nothing to do with programming, just skim over the first paragraph if you must.]

I subscribe to the MaplePrimes blog RSS feed. They have occasional blog entries about the Maple programming language. It's a programming language that is very well suited for certain mathematical problems, and I use it a lot. Today I was looking through my RSS subscriptions and I found a tribute to Pi day on the MaplePrimes blog. The tribute wasn't all that interesting, just a pie chart of the relative frequencies of the digits 0-9 in the first 200 decimal places of Pi. The interesting part was the comments on the Blog because it has stuff about how to differently write aspects of his program. In any case it brought on a short conversation about the Greek language. Then I came across this bizarre quote in one of the comments:

The Greek alphabet is the foundation of our written and spoken language. And it is the foundation of our mathematical system. And God embedded His Word through the Greek alphabet system. For in them we can understand who God is. For in the beginning, God was alpha, for He was the Maker. And Christ is pi, for He is the narrow Gate. And iota is the Holy Spirit for He penetrates the hearts of all men. And omega is the consolidation of the three, for omega is the end and the completion of all things.

I can't really figure out if it is a joke or not. It's really not funny, so I think he was actually being serious. I really don't know exactly where to start because almost every sentence is all wrong, slightly wrong, or just bizarre. I guess I can accept that it's not necessarily *too* wrong to say that the Greek alphabet is the foundation of our written and spoken language, but the *alphabet* is the foundation of math. What's that even mean?? I really dislike his use of embedding; it's not very mathematically accurate. But what's really weird is, "Christ is pi"?? and "iota is the Holy Spirit"?? I have no idea how iota represents the idea of penetrating the hearts of all men. In any case, what a weird comment...

grammar

2009-02-19T18:12:00.006-06:00

I find grammar very interesting as a subject. That is, I find rules about language and the reasons of their existence very interesting (if there is a discoverable reason). In late high school, I taught myself a lot about grammar. i.e. on the ACT the English section was my second highest score (second of course to math). Then in college I took several semesters of Greek which surprisingly made me understand grammatical concepts a LOT better. Since then I think I've forgotten a lot of things about grammar, but I still feel inclined to write an entry about my feelings on grammar.

I should start by saying that I really don't consider myself in any way to be a grammar nazi. My grammar is categorized into two basic groups. The first is "correct" speech. Of course this is what is prescriptively considered correct. The second is understood speech. This is what people actually understand without giving you strange looks while their language engine parses your sentence. So I guess it's fair to say that I view grammar as an interesting theoretical subject (or at least very loosely applied). With this in mind, I'm going to share some grammatical rules that I completely ignore, some where I'm wishy-washy, and some that I try to stick to religiously. I have various reasons for ignoring rules. Foremost, I want people to understand me. If speaking grammatically means that people don't understand my words then grammar has completely failed in its purpose. Also, I don't want to sound like I think I'm better or smarter or something like that. Apparently, knowledge intimidates, and I have no desire to intimidate. So I keep a very close watch over what I do and don't say and which rules I do and don't keep. But there's also a part of me that really wants to speak correctly, so almost any rule that I can keep while almost no one notices I would happily keep. So without further ado...

Stuff I ignore
1. Like the majority of the English speaking population, I whole-heartedly ignore the rule that one must never end a sentence with a preposition. I even have a strong distaste for the way the rule is usually stated. The idea is not really that there should never be a preposition at the end of the sentence. The idea is really that every preposition should have an object (preferably immediately following the preposition). For example, I wouldn't be surprised if most people who know the rule as stated wouldn't realize that, "Who'd you give that to, yesterday?" still breaks the rule? In any case, this rule when applied to real life can really be a detriment to spoken language. When I started actually understanding this rule well, I remember I spent a few months trying to always use prepositions properly. I had a lot of experiences like the following:

Me: "To whom did you give the book about which you were speaking?"
Them: "Wha?",
Me: "Who'd you give that book you were talking about to?",
Them: "ohh, I gave it to Joe."

So, needless to say, I gave that up. Since then I've come across the concept of "phrasal verbs". In this regard, these have been my grammatical salvation. A really basic way to explain these is that many prepositions used together with many verbs act very similar to adverbs and completely change the meaning of the verb. In this case, I just consider the preposition to be an adverb instead and my grammar parser is happy again.

2. A rule that I completely ignore is not splitting the infinitive. Basically when you have an infinitive: to go, to eat, to walk, etc (verbs with the word to), you are not supposed to put the word "not" in between the words. So the sentence,

"I should tell him to not go to the park."

is incorrect while the sentence,

"I should tell him not to go to the park."

is the correct form. Now usually there isn't really a difference, and there are times with it actually sounds better to not split the infinity. But other times it sounds SO much better to split the infinitive, and other other times it even feels that they have slightly different meanings.

3. This last two may be be somewhat hard to explain. First, when you are writing about a general person, you are supposed to use the word "one" as a pronoun. Like in the following sentence:

"When one is writing about a general person, one is supposed to use the word 'one' as a pronoun."

As you may have gathered, I straight up ignore that one. It sounds so odd and antiquated when one repeatedly uses the pronoun "one". Interestingly enough the French have an official personal pronoun "on" which acts similarly, but the French often use it instead of "nous" (we). It's kind of the opposite of what English speakers do. I guess language speakers just don't like to keep rules.

On a similar note, we have the pronoun "they". In colloquial speech we have this AMAZING ability to use it when we don't want to specify the sex of an unknown person. For example we can say sentences like,

"I saw someone at the store and they were buying apples."

This makes the blood of grammar nazis boil, but I find it fabulous!

4. One more very specific thing that I ignore is the word "swum". I still remember in 5th grade or so when I learned that the past participle of swim is swum. (I have swum.) Back then I thought it sounded ridiculous and today I still feel the same way. So I refuse to use the word swum. Although, I guess technically I usually don't actually break the rule. I just find some way to bend the sentence in such a way that I wouldn't use the past participle. For example, instead of saying, "I have swum with manatees," I'd say something like, "I remember swimming with manatees" or "When I was in Florida last I swam with manatees." On the other hand, maybe that's why I'm just generally not a big fan of swimming; deep down inside I know that if I swim too much I'll have to use the past participle of swim.

Somewhere in between

1. Imagine you're name is "Joe". You get a phone call and the caller says, "Is Joe there?" Of course, everyone knows you are supposed to say, "This is he." But very few people do. I'm usually one of those people who doesn't. The reason I disregard this rule is because I think it's silly. Now I understand that English has a Latin based grammar and so it's wrong because we are using a verb of being and you're supposed to use a nominative (He rather than me or him), but I have beef with the basic concept that English should have a Latin based grammar or even that that should imply that one is supposed to say "This is he." For example, let's look again at French. As opposed to English, French actually is a romance language (evolved from Latin). So it would actually make sense for French to have a Latin-based grammar, but even in French it is proper to say, "c'est moi" (It's/That's me) when someone asks for John. Now if French, with l'Academie Francaise as the super prescriptivist group can say, "That's me" then in English, where we have very little real etymological reason to be Latin based, it should be ok to say, "That's me." That being said, I still occasionally say, "This is he," simply because I know it's right and at times my grammar engine wins the few millisecond mental battle.

2. Next on the docket we have special plurals. That is, plurals from other languages that somehow kept their native plural. A lot of math words keep their original form (at least among mathematicians) like: maxima, extrema, matrices, bases (plural of basis), indices, etc. With all these math words, I use the "proper" plural forms. This is basically because everyone around me does too and so it's acceptable and even expectable. On the other hand there are plenty of loan words where I don't use the "proper" plural. Like stadium. I think I've said "stadia" maybe once or twice in my life. I think I dislike this one because it is so inconsistent.

3. Finally, to the anguish of my brother I'm sure, when someone asks me, "How are you?", I rarely ever say, "I am well." Honestly, I rarely ever say, "I'm good," but I don't care in any way when people say, "I am good." I think typically use some other word like "fine" or something, which may be equally as bad. It's just that this way I don't sound like I'm better and I don't want to cringe inside while saying, "I'm good."

Stuff I don't ignore
1. Finally there are a few rules that I try to follow religiously. These are rules that a lot of people don't follow, but even if I do they will both understand me and not even notice that I spoke differently. First is adverb/adjective agreement. I realize that there are plenty of words that can be used as both adverbs and adjectives, I just don't know which so I pick words that are easily distinguishable. For example, is it ok to say:

"He runs fast."?

I can never remember if words like fast can be used as adverbs. And if it can be, is that only because people have abused adjective/adverb agreement for so long? In any case, I would stick to either, "He runs quickly", or "He's fast". The beauty of this is that if someone were to say, "He talks weird", I doubt they'd notice if I said, "He talks strangely" instead. On a similar note, I can't stand Apple's old slogan, "Think different", even though they claim they are using it as a fanciful category. (I doubt many people see "Think different" and think to themselves, "ohh they are using 'different' as a category, like 'think yellow' or 'think change'...hogwash, they see it and think, "I'm supposed to think in a different way." i.e. "Think differently.")

2. I also try to always use the subjunctive correctly. Sentences like:

"I wish I were an Oscar Meyer Wiener."

The only problem here is that I get confused as to how I'm supposed to write mathematics. There is a common mathematical tool called, "proof by contradiction". Basically you want to prove that x is an integer, or something like that, so you assume that it is not an integer and then arrive at an impossibility (a contradiciton). When I'm proving something by contradiction, should I use the subjunctive? Since I know that x is not real, should I say, "Assume x were real."? I've not come to a formal stance on this and I think it's probably very dependent on the structure, but it still bothers me when I'm writing proofs.

3. Finally, there's not much to say about it, but I try to always use fewer and less correctly. This is also something that most people wouldn't notice.

Another Set of Dreams

2009-02-01T13:16:00.003-06:00

Seems that all I do interesting lately is have weird dreams. So I figured I'd share the dreams of my last two nights, well at least the parts that I can remember.

I really remember very little about this first dream cuz it was two days ago. So the first one I was at a swimm'n hole with my sister. When we got out of the water she screamed and said, "There's a humongous frog!!". And sure enough next to the swimm'n hole there was a mud hole and there was a humongous frog playing in the mud. The frog, when sitting, was about 2 ft tall and he had a really long neck. Anyway, when he saw me he came straight for me. He chased me a few times around the mud hole and finally he took a big jump at me and it startled me awake. Yes I did shake awake.

On to last night. My dad had started a new business. I think it was a car repair business. In any case he'd figured out a new ingenious way to life cars for repair. He showed me on his new business vehicle (which was a ghostbusters station wagon!!). First you would take several rolls of paper towels and attach them to the frame of the car. Then you'd put the rolls on a metal bar (that is the bar goes through the tubes for the rolls.) Then you'd roll up the paper towel rolls and the car would of course lift. His secret: the paper towels were extra-ply. So he took up shop in a large several story house boat. I also remember that children would come to his business for school field trips and he specifically showed me a bowl that he had in the bathroom in case the toilet stopped working...I'm not sure exactly how it was used, but ohh well. So then a friend and I went on the upper floors of his boat house to find his weed cellar (yes marijuana). The weed cellar had gotten into disrepair, but we could see the weed inside through the windows. So we decided to break the door open. When we did lots of rats started coming out. We had to smash the rats as the exited. But some of the rats had been mutated by the weed and they were growing weed on their backs, so we kept those rats after smashing them. But then one particular rat that I tried to smash had somehow been bitten by a radio active spider so when I lifted my foot back up he'd managed to attach his webbing to the bottom of my boot. He started climbing up his web toward my foot. Again I started awake shaking my foot in bed trying to get the rat off, until I realized that it was all a dream.

Does it mean something that I keep getting startled out of my sleep when being attacked by freak of nature animals? I don't know, but I do know that I seem to have weird dreams. Actually I remember another dream I had that I was surrounded by foot long ants. They didn't attack me or anything, but I remember the whole time wondering how much weight they could carry.

Harry Audio Potter

2009-01-19T18:12:00.003-06:00

Out of curiousity I downloaded the first Harry Potter audiobook in French. I like it only for the fact that it's in French, but otherwise it is very disappointing. The dude's main reading voice is of course just fine. No problems nothing. The problem is his portrayal of many of the characters.

First of all there's Hagrid. He makes Hagrid sound like a complete and total imbecile. Now I'm not saying that Hagrid is supposed to be smart or anything, but he shouldn't take 20 seconds to spit out a few words. And furthermore he makes Hagrid talk something like, "Hagrid like carrot." (although that exactly is not necessarily possible in spoken french, it's of the same character as the way the reader reads Hagrid.) So in any case it makes it annoying to listen to him read Hagrid's parts.

The next voice is Mr Dursley. This one is not so bad as Hagrid's voice, but it is still less than satisfying. First of all, Mr. Dursley is ALWAYS irate, and always basically yelling. Now I can understand him not being happy when talking to Harry, but it does get kind of annoying. Secondly, he sounds more constipated than angry, so that pretty much makes it worse.

The last one I'm going to mention for now is Ron. It took about 20 pages for me to realize this but...HE GAVE RON A LISP!!! What the heck?!? 'Nuff said.

In any case, I'm a bit over a third the way through and I'll post again if I have something else to say about the audiobook.

nighttime

2009-01-13T17:26:00.002-06:00

So last night I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. When I went back to bed, I laid on my left side. Turns out there was a pimple on my left hip and it hurt, so I had to roll over to the other side. Stupid pimple, I wanted to sleep on my left side.

In an open set containing that time period as a compact subset I had an interesting dream. Presumably, it was influenced by the fact that I'd listened to the first chapter of Harry Potter in French before going to bed. There was a land where everyone had magical abilities. Everyone had one ability that they could do exceptionally well. I think it was called their character ability or something like that. Everyone had magical abilities, but this "character ability" was a spell or activity that the person in question had an extra special nack at.

So in the course of growing up everyone would eventually figure out their character ability when something drastic would happen that would require them to use it. After having discovered their character ability a tattoo would form on the person's forearm representing their character ability. Typically, it was also representative of the character of the person. Like a very compassionate (and tall and elfish) friend of mine (who is not a real person) had healing as his/her character ability.

There was one person in particular who was special (not sure at this point if I played that character in the dream or not). This person's father had died saving his life (haha, different from HP because only one parent had died and the specialness was gotten from the father instead of a kinda mix of mother and Voldemort). In this process at least the father's ability was somehow transferred to the child. Now, I say "at least" because there was some question as to how many "character abilities" this person was endowed with. The tattoo wasn't stuck to a certain form like those of other people. It was constantly changing and shifting throughout the day. Somehow his mother knew exactly how many character abilities this person had, but wouldn't say. All I know is that it was somewhere between 3 and 22. Also there was some question as the the efficacy of deciding that the ability defined the man. This main character for example was plagued by the fact that "flaming axes" was one of his abilities (sounds stupid I know), which apparently is typically that of someone evil.

I really don't remember much more about it, except that at one point he was trying to catch a plane. He was running out of time so he used his "slow down time" ability. That wasn't working well enough, so he used his "speed me up" ability. And then he had to levitate over an avalanche, inside a mall. (I guess that means he has at least 4 abilities.) I really don't remember if he caught the plane.

Happy Flipping Holidays

2009-01-08T19:37:00.005-06:00

I should start by saying that I really don't care how you wish happiness upon me between Thanksgiving and January 10. Hanukkah, Quanza, Kwanzaa, Halloween (ok, so that one would get you a funny look at the least) or Christmas; it doesn't affect the quality of my holiday whether you choose something I "celebrate" or not.

In the last few years there's been extensive talk of a "war on Christmas". Specifically, the idea is that the use of the phrase "Happy Holidays" means that you hate xmas (and xmas is NOT x'ing Christ out of Christmas either; x = χριστος = greek for christ). Of course, talking heads like Bill O'Reilly have been blabbing about it, for a while now. Recently I've noticed friends on AIM with status messages deriding the phrase "Happy Holidays". I think I also recently heard the head elder at my home church talking about the "war on Christmas." This idea is weird to me. I, of course, grew up in the backwoods of TN. Of course, there was only Christianity back there as far as I knew and December only contained Christmas (none of those holidays from other religions). Nonetheless I wasn't taught to hate "Happy Holidays". I always grew up believing that Happy Holidays means "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year; I'm just too lazy to say both of them." I actually do remember asking my mom what "Happy Holidays" means and her telling me that precisely (well the idea was the same). I've asked several of my friends (we'll say they represent millions of people) and they ALL said that until recently they just thought of "Happy Holidays" as "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year". It wasn't until the last couple years that I (we) found that it suddenly means all that stuff plus, "ohh and I hate Christmas".

It seems those near to me have started to be swayed to the dark side as well. Over Christmas break when I was in FL, I found that even my dad and step-mom had gotten on the anti-Happy Holidays bandwagon. Now they're typically dyed in the wool liberals, but somehow they didn't get the memo that liberals are fine with the phrase "Happy Holidays". Well, that or they are free thinkers :), which is cool. In any case my dad suddenly got angry at the idea that we should say "Happy Holidays". Out of nowhere he said that people should just get over it if someone says "Merry Christmas" to them. I personally think it's just a stupid issue all together, even though I most likely wouldn't wish a Jew/Muslim/other a Merry Christmas (although I did recently ask a non-Christmas celebrating Christian how her Christmas was and she said she doesn't celebrate Christmas, although she went to Kentucky with a bunch of other people to NOT celebrate Christmas...whatever that means.) So I told him it really didn't bother me. Then he moved on to the other/related hot button issue. "And I think that people should be ok with the 10 commandments. I mean anyway, they are laws in America nonetheless."

This was interesting, because Aneta, Stefan and I were all there and we all see this issue pretty much eye to eye. So we basically all said, that there are really only two commandments that I would say are American laws: Don't kill, Don't steal. There's an argument that: don't commit adultery and don't lie are laws. The former really isn't enforced and the latter is only a law in very special cases. So I'd give it 20% are laws and at most 30%, which really isn't a good average to say that our laws are based on them.

It seems that this "Happy Holidays" has been given a different meaning over time, maybe by the pro-"Merry Christmas" crowd, maybe by the pro-"Include Everybody" crowd. In any case, it just seems silly to me to care. On the other hand, it really seems that people are stretching reality when it comes to the ten commandments. Don't get me wrong; I like to think that I'm a commandment keeping Christian and all. Just don't quite see why I should try to change history to support my views. Anyway, I'm done writing and I hope your holidays were unhappy.

swimming with (the?) manatees

2009-01-04T10:51:00.003-06:00

For xmas my dad and step-mom took Stefan, Aneta, and me swimming with manatees. (I always want to say "the" manatees, but I can't figure out why it should be "the" except that it sounds better and for some reason that's not good enough. I'll say "the" from now on because it feels right.) The manatee place was a few hours from their house so we got up between 3 and 3:30, and headed out in the dark.
It was slow going at first, cuz my step-mom can't see well in the dark and so she insists on driving when it's dark (that sentence was written correctly). During a large part of the drive we played this game called "Inky Pinky". You think of two rhyming words and a descriptive phrase to go with them and the other people try to guess the words. An apropos example would be, "sea cow cleanliness" whose answer would be "manatee sanity".
Eventually we got the the proper city, had breakfast and embarked on "Captain Mike's Ultimate Manatee Tour." There were about 20-30 people there. They gave everyone wet suits, masks, and snorkels. My dad brought his own wet suit because "only my piss has been in it". Considering his remarks I figured it was best to not go commando and so I wore a pair of boxers under the wet suit (I'm sure I would have done this anyway, but the comment was fresh in my mind nonetheless). When everyone was wet suited up we watched a video about proper manatee etiquette. The basic idea is "don't under any circumstances harass the manatees. They can harass you, but you'll get fined or thrown in jail if you screw with them. But have fun with the manatees :)."
The manatee swimmers were split between two different boats. Our boat had our family and a group of people who apparently lived at Stonehenge. Well, when we asked where they were from their response was, "You know where Stonehenge is?" Seems an odd place to live, but to each his own.
We stopped early because the driver found cuddles and another manatee that was apparently very friendly. My dad was somehow the first in the water and cuddles immediately came up to him. It made me laugh because this manatee was apparently too friendly. My dad couldn't get the manatee far enough away from him to take a picture of the manatee with his underwater camera. He had choice words for the manatee and his friendliness, but I'll refrain from using them.
Eventually the rest of us got in and my family got to play with cuddles while the other people played with the other manatee. Cuddles was so cool. He loved being petted and he'd roll over in the water so that you could rub his belly.
Eventually I got really cold and was shaking somewhat violently in the water so I figured it was time to get out. My dad was already out and so he came over to help me with my wet suit. He unzipped the back and started pulling on my wet suit. I was thinking maybe he'd do like all the cool kids do and pull the wet suit down to my waist. Nope, he just keep going on past my waist. As I mentioned earlier though, I wasn't wearing shorts I was at least wearing something, which was a plus. So there I was in the middle of 15-20 people in only my underwear. This could make for an embarrassing situation. It really just made me laugh (inside), but surprisingly it really didn't bother me. A) I didn't know these people except my family and I don't care if they see me in my boxers. B) I really don't care who sees me in my boxers; I stand in front of our balcony window in TX almost every morning in my boxers while I brush my teeth (I know I'm weird). Nonetheless I did accept the towel that was handed to me and wrapped it around my waist. Eventually I was dry enough to put on my pants and the event passed without notice.
Afterwards we went to a thai restaurant and other things happened like having to go back to Mike's after it closed and breaking into our boat so that we could get the waterproof camera that someone in the family accidentally left on the boat. But I'm tired of typing so I'll leave that to your imagination.

HP Series (un petit mot)/(a short note)

2008-12-17T18:23:00.008-06:00

je viens de lire le dernier tome de Harry Potter. j'ai quelques choses à dire sur les livres.
le premier c'est que les premiers deux ne sont guère intéressant que les suivants. les deux ne sont pas écrits avec l'habileté que les autres. mon ami m'a dit qu'il pense que quelqu'un d'autre les a écrits. mais je vais dire qu'elle est meilleure que quand elle a commencé.
Mais, au derners tome, je croix qu'elle a tué trop de gens. en commençant avec le quatrième elle a tué une personne importante dans chaque tome, mais dans ce tome-ci elle tue quelqu-un d'importance avec chaque centaine de pages. je croix que c'est le style à la mode. c'est ce qu'ils ont fait avec 24 et Lost, et tous les deux sont très populaires. quand Harry marche vers son propre meurtre, elle veut qu'on pense, 'elle a vraiment cassé la tête! elle ne rigole pas! elle va tuer le pauvre gars!' mais je ne peux pas être faché parce que le seul meurtre dans ce livre qui m'a fait malcontent a une bonne raison (pour le plupart) (je croix que je peux dire (seulment dans la message française) que la seule personne dont la meurte m'a fait facher c'était Dobby...le pauvre elfe de maison). Mais je dois dire qu'elle est vraiment un bon auteur; il y avait beaucoup de petites choses qui se dépendent. et le dernier mot est 'jours'.

I just finished reading the last Harry Potter book. I have just a few things to say about the books.
First, I want to say that the first two books weren't nearly as interesting as the following books. They didn't seem to be written with the same skill as the others. A friend of mine tells me that it seems that someone else wrote the others, but I will say that she just became a better author than when she started out.
But with the final book, I think she killed too many people. Beginning with the last 4 she killed one important person with each book, but in this book she killed someone important basically every 100 pages. I think it's the new writing style. That's what they do with both 24 and Lost (so I'm told about Lost) and they are both very popular television shows. In any case, when Harry is marching towards his death I think she wants you to thing, "She's truly nuts! She's not kidding around! She's straight gonna kill this kid!" But I guess I can't really be too upset cuz the only person whose death made me upset had a mostly acceptable reason (read the French version of this blog entry to know who it was). And I guess I should also say that Rowling really is a good author. There were lots of little things that happened and they all in the end seemed to depend on eachother, so that was fun. Ohh and the last word was "jours".

The (my) Mind

2008-12-13T13:19:00.002-06:00

In general, the way the brain works is very interesting. How it processes information how we remember things, how we recall things, how we discover things. But what's more interesting (well for me in particular) is how my brain works. It would be nice to know what types of things work better for me. I have certain strategies (that would probably be super boring to most people) that I use in trying to memorize and learn things. Whether or not they are the most well suited to my brain in particular is debatable. Actually, I personally don't greatly enjoy memorizing things (even though I do sit down specifically to memorize stuff from time to time), possibly because it seems like such a low level activity.
Anyway, lately I've been thinking a lot about memorization. Recently I realized that I don't think I have a very vivid imagination, or at least that my brain doesn't create very vivid mental pictures. Here's an example. Possibly because I'm a goober, possibly because I have a boring life, but from time to time when I'm laying in bed waiting for sleep to overcome me I do various mental activities. One thing that I do is mentally practice typing on my phone. I realize that it is not a very important skill, but I guess that time from laying down to sleeping is not always the most valuable time anyway. My phone of course uses predictive text (or T9, you can read about them on wikipedia if you don't know what that means.) So I, of course, imagine a keypad, but all I see is an array of 4x3 (or 3x4 depending if you are a mathematician or a computer scientist) of boxes. Each box of course represents a key, but I don't see any of the letters on them; I can't see any of the letters on them. To be more precise I can't even make myself see the numbers on the keys. Then as I mentally type the words I see the boxes light up. Now when I first started doing this I don't even know if I realized that I wasn't seeing the numbers on the keys, but I've become more aware that it's just the grid.
This reminds me of back when I was memorizing the digits of pi (I sadly never memorized a significant percentage of the digits). I made part of pi my password and occasionally added more numbers. At some point I was up to at least 30 or 35 digits (really not an amazing feat). I realized whenever I would tell them to someone I would feel compelled (or even need) to mock type them as I spoke them.
Anyway both of these are interesting to me because they are either some sort of memorized motion or they at least have motor activity very closely associated to them. And this is interesting because movement seems to me to be a much more basic activity than speaking and words. Makes me wonder if there is some way to associate motion to other types of memorization...

Tangentially related next activity: Write a program to teach myself 10 notes to then associate them with the digits and see if I can memorize strings of numbers as "songs"...if only we used a base 5 or 3 numbering system...

Bhagavad Gita

2008-12-02T20:23:00.006-06:00

Today I was walking to the library and there was a sudden gust of wind that blew my hood to my sweatshirt strangely. As I moved it, I saw some guy walking towards me. I think he thought that I was waving at him. Anyway, for whatever reason, he stopped and I was obligated to talk to him. He was wearing a large coat, a backpack, and a large burlap bag over his shoulder. He asked me if I was intelligent, and began pulling a book out of his bag. I indicated that I wasn't exceptional or anything and noticed that the book he was pulling out was a book called "Bhagavad-Gita As It Is". I really don't know much about Hinduism (except that the Bhagavad-Gita is Hindu), so this ~~peeked~~ piqued my interest.
-"Ohh, good. Well do you meditate?"
There are things that I do that one could call meditate, but I don't call it meditation, so I said, "Well, no not really." Maybe I should have given him more information, but I didn't.
Then he began his canvass. He explained to me how people today try to find happiness through Hedonism. Specifically he mentioned: drugs, alcohol, and sex. He showed me the pretty pictures from the book of unhappy cartoon people with turbans hoarding money. He said this was lacking because our bodies are temporary and so these things can only give us temporary happiness. He then said there was a better way. He turned to a picture of people of various ages (one a skeleton) with sunbursts over their chests and light beams connecting the sunbursts. I figured this represented souls or something. He started talking about how everyone is connected or something. Then he said, "Our souls are connected. You know about eternal souls, right?" He looked at me expectantly.
Here I should mention that when I was canvassing one of the first things that I was taught was to find common ground. Search for something that you and the person you're talking to have in common. Then branch out from there. So I'm sure he was trying to get a foothold onto me here. The only problem, is that Adventists (and I) don't believe in souls per se. Again, I could have given him more information or mentioned something else that would give him a chance to find a new foothold, but I just said, "I don't believe in an immortal soul."
He was clearly thrown aback, and was quiet for a second. He then asked, "Why not?"
This question was a bit odd to me, because it seems that for supernatural things the burden of proof is on the believer not the nonbeliever. That is, I think a better question is for me to ask "Why do you believe in a soul?" Well I instead just said, "I don't see a reason to believe in a soul."
So he said, "Well if you don't see a reason to believe in a soul then you don't see a reason not to believe in a soul." I ignored this bad logic. He then asked, "Wouldn't it be better to believe in a soul?"
WHAT?!? But I think I said, "I don't follow."
"Well a positive is better than a negative. It is a positive to believe in something and a negative to disbelieve."
I thought about this for a second. The problem is that I believe not having a soul is a positive thing. So I said, "Well it depends on what you think is a positive."
"Having a soul is a positive."
"Not necessarily, what's the consequence?"
"Eternal happiness if you accept it"
"And if you don't?"
"Suffering"
"Well there's the negative in it."
He thought for a second. Then he said, "Well if you don't believe in a soul then life is temporary and the only purpose you see in life is hedonism." I didn't quite agree with him, because I don't believe in a soul, but I also believe in eternal life of some sort (just not eternal damnation...maybe it's complicated.) He never did get around to the point of having a soul. Then he asked, "What do you think the purpose of life is?"
I thought for a few seconds. I thought of the various common Christian answers to such a question. Then I went with, "Well I don't really think about that much."
Then he put his book back in his bag, said "ok", and walked away. That was weird. So now upon reflection I wish I'd answered some of his questions differently. If he were giving away his book, I'd like to have a copy of it. I'd like to know more about Hinduism and it had a bunch of stuff in ~~Hindi~~ Sanskrit, which would be cool to look at (I can't read it). Ohh well, maybe next time...

Dreams

2008-11-18T10:30:00.007-06:00

I listened to this wonderful episode of Radio Lab about sleeping. It was super interesting. It talked about why we sleep. How our sleeping is different than other animals. In particular, with many animals only half their brains are asleep at a given time. Anyway, it made me want to try to use sleeping to figure out some homework problems that I'd been working on lately. So for my last two waking hours I immersed myself in my complex analysis and particularly this problem that I'd been wanting to solve. Then I went to bed. I definitely had dreams about the problem and sporadically I woke up with a possible answer to the problem. Turns out each attempt was garbage. So I just ended up with a bad night's sleep and a lot of failed attempts at a complex analysis problem.

I also read a news article about how people who grew up watching black and white TV were more likely to have black and white dreams, even today. While people who grew up with color TV were more likely to have color dreams So basically black and white TV completely changed our dreams and now color TV is sending us back into the stone age dream-wise.

So, the next couple nights I had bizarre dreams. The first night I had a dream that there was this rampant new canine disease. I gave dogs the ability to stretch and change shape (much like one of the superheros in the fantastic four). It had a downside though that it caused the dogs to want to each little children. There also was this particularly bad dog named Studs Turkel (he's apparently the father of the modern radio interview...and in the dream the name may have been Stubs). Well, Studs was well known for stretching such that he looked like a jungle gym and waiting for the unsuspecting child. There was also some old lady in the dream who was housing and hiding these diseased animals in her house that looked just like Sirius Black's house from the Harry Potter movies. Interestingly enough this dream was very cartoony.

Here's a drawing of Studs Turkel:

I forgot the dream that I had the next night, but pretend that story was followed by another particularly weird dream.

Stupid Hypocritical Number

2008-11-09T18:59:00.004-06:00

So the other day I was reading one of my political blogs. I forget the topic of the day (or hour maybe), but at the top there was an advertisement that caught my eye. There was an advertisement for a shirt that basically looked like this:

I shouldn't explain this, but I have to because it angers me. Sure at first glance it's cute, or intelligent or whatever. You see a rational number is a fraction of integers (integers are whole numbers like 1,2,3,...), and Pi is not a rational number (an irrational number). So i is telling Pi to be rational. On the other hand i is an imaginary number (if you don't know what that means then just nod your head, or screen). Thus Pi is telling i to be real. This is all fine and dandy except that Pi being a real number has a place to tell i to be real. BUT i isn't rational!?! At best i is an algebraic integer (I'm sure everyone wants to know that) or just algebraic. The point is that while i could tell Pi to be algebraic, it i has no place telling Pi to be rational! Hence it is a stupid hypocritical number!

Note: I realize that there are ways that i can be considered "rational". For example the set Q[i] is called the Gaussian rationals, hence any element of Q[i] is a Gaussian rational. Thus i is a Gaussian rational. The problem with this is that if you want to use an extended definition of rational we can just as easily say that Pi is R-rational and hence rational. In this case i is no longer hypocritical, but just bigoted.

Algebraists

2008-01-28T14:54:00.000-06:00

So sure I'm a mathematician, but more precisely (yet not as precisely as possible) I'm an algebraist. (Even more precisely I'm probably going to be a computational algebraic geometer, but that's too much information.) This means that I've taken a large number of algebra classes (I know you're tempted to say something like, "I took algebra in high school", but I warn you that that joke is old. If you do say something about your high school algebra, then your originality will be brought into question and no one wants to be deemed an owner of suspect originality.) So in the course of these many algebra classes, I've observed a lot of algebraists. I've noticed a common thread among the vast majority of these algebraists. They are all at least a little bit obsessive compulsive (or for lack of a better word anal.) My first abstract algebra teacher has the most beautiful and uniform handwriting that I've ever seen, and he rarely ever used logic symbols (like => instead of therefore). Then my graduate algebra teacher would write out everything that he would say beforehand on paper. I agree, this in and of itself is probably good teaching practice, but he would keep these papers and whenever he made changes he would tape an addendum onto this paper. I remember going to his office to ask him questions and he would grab his folder and pull out his lecture notes from the day in question, which was actually four or five quarters or fifths of paper all taped together. In my opinion, just slightly overboard. Then there's my adviser. This guy is awesome! We share so much in common when it comes to mathematical interest, and he is so easy to get along with (I hear that is a great thing to have). Well, there are occasional times when I'll be in his office and we'll both be trying to think of how to write a particular piece of code. Whenever there is any creative downtime, he'll save the file 4 or 5 times in quick succession. Backing up your data is a great thing, but wouldn't one consider the latter 3 or 4 saves somewhat superfluous? Finally the winner is my commutative algebra teacher. Every class period she would get to class 10 to 15 minutes early and clean the board with wet wipes until that sucker shined (I'm being completely honest here!). Occasionally one of the students would ask if they could help and of course she had to do it on her own.
Now I don't mean to deride these individuals in any way. I highly respect their knowledge and mathematical abilities. Furthermore if a little bit of OCD is their biggest flaw then they've really got their acts together. I guess it's time to admit that they are not really the point of this entry. It's my blog, so of course I'm the focus ( :) ). The thing is that in the last couple years more and more I've been accused of being anal. For the most part I've come to accept this, but I'm still slightly in denial. So what if when I make myself sandwiches I put effort into making them look pretty even though another piece of bread will go on top. Is it such a bad thing to add a little work for transient aesthetic pleasure? So what if I can't stand it when other people wrap up the cables to my laptop. The way I wrap it looks SO much more pleasing to the eye. I could come up with a few more instances, but this is enough... The thing is that only in the last couple years has anyone ever accused me of being anal. So I wonder if it's the algebraist in me showing itself or if algebra anal-izes people or maybe it's the influence of the anal algebraists around me. Have I been anal all my life and it's only now been noticed? Have I matured into an anal 25-year-old? I just do not know. I think I'll just stick with: I'm not anal...
Ohh and a side note, it seems that female algebraists are really interested in Judaism and things Jewish.

innommé

2007-12-18T22:14:00.000-06:00

quand une bien-aimée pleure

pleurant, elle m'a appelé. il l'a blessée mon amie. comment est-ce qu'il peut blesser une femme qui est tellement merveilleuse? savoir qu'elle lui donnerait sa vie à cet homme une fois de plus me blesse profondément. mais comment est-ce qu'elle peut avoir confiance en lui? comment est-ce qu'elle croirait que cet homme n'allait pas blesser à elle de nouveau? mais...quand elle pleure, je n'ai pas besoin d'essayer de trouver des réponses de ces questions. ses épreuves sont les miennes, et ces questions-ci n'aide rien. puis le seul point est qu'elle sait qu'elle est importante à quelqu'un. Elle est ma chère amie, et elle est importante à moi. je cherche un mot, une chose que je peut faire pour elle. certainement il y a quelque chose que je peut faire ou dire pour cette femme. mais ces choses échappent moi, et donc je suis impuissant. et ces larmes me blessent plus parce qu'il n'y a rien que je peut faire...je suis désolé ma chère amie.

Je veux penser comme ça...

2007-11-06T20:13:00.000-06:00

J'ai une questionne à laquelle je ne peux pas répondre. Mais je dois commencer avec quelque histoire. J'ai trouvé que le subconscient est incroyable (ou les processus oiseuses comme je dis (je ne sais pas si ça paraît stupide en français, mais c'est une terme informatique)). De tout façon, quand je trouve un problème mathématique qui est très difficile à résoudre, je le lis beaucoup de fois. Je le lis jusqu'à ce que je comprends la questionne très bien. Et après j'ai fait ça je ignore la questionne. Je fais des autres choses, je vais courir, je fais des autres problèmes, ou peut-être je dors. Mais j'ai trouvé que mon subconscient essaye de le résoudre. Et de temps en temps, pensant en autres choses, la solution apparaîtra! Je l'aime beaucoup, et ça c'est incroyable à moi. Mais le seul problème est que je ne peux pas utiliser cette méthode avec les choses moins domestique. Par exemple, comment est-ce que je pense de quelque chose? Que est-ce que je veux faire avec la reste de ma vie? Que est-ce que je pense de cette femme? Quel genre des maths est-ce que j'aimerais le plus? Ou une bonne million des autres questions. Ça me fait malcontent, car je veux savoir le réponse à tous ces questions, mais ça ne passe pas...je me assois à ma table pour penser en ces questions et je ne trouve rien....poopoo

P.S. Si quel qu'une lit ce blog qui ne peut pas écrire français, j'aimerais un remarque en espagnol...

quelques histoires

2007-09-22T15:48:00.000-05:00

J'ai quelques histoires que je veux vous raconter. Ces sont choses qui m'a fait rire et aussi mon expérience au CCYF (Fédération des Jeunes aux Villes Capitales). Quelques uns à mon église m'ont demandé si je voudrais aller au CCYF. C'était une réunion pour les jeunes de l'église adventiste de Texas. Je savais que c'était, pour le plupart, pour les jeunes plus jeune que moi, mais je me pensais que ce serais bien à tout prix. Mais après on me l'avais justement dit, jr m'a rendu compte que c'était une réunion pour les noirs. Cependant il ne m'importe pas et puis j'ai décidé d'y aller. C'était une expérience culturelle pour moi. Ils aiment beaucoup chanter et 'danser' (ce n'était vraiment 'danser'...umm...c'était se déhancher avec rythme). Le premier c'était que je suis blanc et puis je ne sais pas me déhancher avec rythme ou même battre les mains avec rythme. Il y avait quelques centaines de gens et mon colocataire et moi étions aussi les seuls blancs. Ne me mal comprends pas, je ne déteste pas les noirs, mais je ne suis pas habitué à être le seul blanc. Mais je dois vous dire que je moi aime l'expérience et la musique était très bien (bien que je ne puisse pas chanter avec les noirs). Le seul ennui était que le volume était trop fort...mes oreilles me faisait mal.

Voilà un drôle d'histoire. J'enseigne trois classes de calcul mardi et jeudi. L'autre jeudi quand j'attendais le commencement de ma classe quelques élève étaient là. Ils parlaient. Après un pue de temps le sujet a changé de pieds. Et puis je me suis rendu compte qu'une élève avait enlevé une chaussure et qu'elle avait six doigt! C'était le plus bizarre que j'avais vu. Et puis l'homme assis À COTÉ D'ELLE a enlevé sa chaussure et il un doigt qui était deux fois plus grand que normal! C'était drôle qu'ils étaient dans la même classe mais qu'ils asseyaient à coté de l'un l'autre!

Et finalement, l'autre jour j'étais dans mon autobus. Quelqu'un lisait son livre de classe. La femme assis à coté d'elle a vu le livre et a dit, 'ohh! L'astronomie! J'aime beaucoup l'astronomie!' Puis la première a dit, 'C'est l'océanographie.' Ça m'a fait rire, est-ce qu'il y a les plus diamétralement opposés que l'océan et l'astronomie?

dehors de l'age pierre

2007-09-04T19:16:00.000-05:00

Cette semaine ils ont connecté l'Internet chez nous (pas trop tard!). Il parait être dans l'age pierre. Je n'avais rien à faire que lire et faire mes devoirs (et la première semaine je n'avais pas beaucoup de devoirs). De toute façon, ils ont connecté l'Internet chez nous. J'étais très heureux! J'ai consulté mes email. J'ai cherché quelques mots dans "wordreference" (J'ai trouvé que le nom 'Robert' veut dire 'sein'. Ça me fait rire parce que c'est le nom d'un de mes colocataires, et je l'appelle presque tout le temps 'Robert' avez un accent français). Et après ça...je ne trouvé rien plus à faire. Alors, je m'ai retourné à mes devoirs et mes livres.
Parlant de livres, j'ai récemment lu le livre 'Le Petit Nicolas'. C'est intéressant, mais il y a quelques choses que je n'aime pas dans le livre. Par exemple, personne n'aime pas le garçon qui est le premier de la classe (je crois que ça veut dire que ce garçon reçois les plus bons marks). Et il parait bien que l'auteur veut dire qu'être intelligent est un mauvaise chose. Le livre, c'est une collection de petites histoires, et dans toute histoire ou il mentionne ce garçon il dire que personne n'aime pas parce qu'il est le premier de la classe et le chouchou. Il dire aussi que tout le monde veut lui donner un coup de poing mais il port des lunettes et puis personne ne peut pas le lui donner. Et quand quelqu'un fait quelque chose à lui ou quand quelqu'un dit quelque chose mauvais à lui, il se met à crier. Et puis, il dire que personne ne l'aime pas et qu'il va tuer lui-même. C'est terrible! Et peut-être, je vais acheter, 'Le Petit Nicolas et Les Copains' parce que c'est un autre livre pour les enfants français. (mais maintenant j'ai le deuxième livre de Harry Potter.)

plus rien

2007-08-06T17:35:00.000-05:00

j'ai trouvé une chanson des Cowboy Fringants. il s'appelle 'plus rien'. l'idée est que le chanteur est le dernier homme sur la planète. tous les autres gens sont morts parce que les anciens (nous) avaient détruit la planète afin qu'ils puissent avoir toutes les choses qu'ils voulaient. les paroles m'a fait triste. il y a la chanson (youtube)

pour les gens qui ne peuvent pas comprendre la chanson j'ai essayé de la traduire. la voilà

there are only a few minutes left in my life
for the last few hours, I've felt myself fade away
my brother died yesterday in the middle of the desert
now I'm the last human on the planet

I was told a long time ago, when I was a child
that when it seemed the world would last a long long time
when my great-grand father was alive
and when the snow still fell in the winter

that in those times people lived in rythme with the seasons
and that the end of summer brought harvest.
a pure and clear water ran in the streams,
where the deer and the moose came to drink.

But me, I've only seen a desolated planet
a sufficatingly hot and moon-like countryside
and all my friends die of thirst or hunger
like the flies falling until there are no more
no more, no more

there are only a few minutes left for my life
that last few hours I've felt myself fade away
my brother died yesterday in the middle of the desert
now I'm the last human on the planet

all this began many years ago
just because my ancesters where obsessed
by pieces of paper that they called money
that made certain men truly rich and powerful

and these new Gods didn't succomb to anything
they were ready to find their end,
to enrich themselves more they razed the earth,
polluted the air, and dried up the rivers

but at the end of 100 years some rose
and told these people that they must stop
but they didn't understand this wise prophecy
they only spoke in terms of profits

It was years later before they realized their nonsense
in the panic they declared a state of emergency
when all the oceans had covered the islands
and the floods and hit the large cities

for the following decade
there were hurricanes and then fires
earthquakes and the great drought
on every face you could read the distress

The people had to battle with pandemics
decimated by the millions by these atrocities
then the others died of thirst and hunger
like the flies falling until there are no more

no more, no more

my brother died yesterday in the middle of the desert
now I'm the last human left on the earth
in the end our intelligence has brought us
nothing but a wonderful poisoned gift

all that remains is a few minutes of life
the last few hours I've felt myself fade
I can no longer walk; I can hardly breath

goodbye humanity, goodbye humanity

la semaine dernière

2007-07-28T16:17:00.000-05:00

Je n'ai pas écrit rien depuis une semaine. En partie c'est parce que j'ai commencé à assister un cours intensif. Chaque jour de la semaine du travail (lundi à vendredi) le cours commence à neuf heures et finit à cinq heures. Je dois aussi faire mes recherches. Tout ça dure beaucoup de temps. Je prends encore de le temps au langue, mais pas autant. Bien, il y a une semaine j'ai acheté le premier livre de harry potter (en français), c'est intitulé 'harry potter à l'école des sorciers'. Je croyais que ça serait plus facile à lire que le seigneur des anneaux. Et, bien sûr, j'ai eu raison. Je ne les ai jamais lus en anglais...je ne sais rien sur harry potter, sauf que beaucoup de gens le détestent parce qu'il est sorcier mauvais (ou parce qu'il est sorcier bon, et cette chose est mauvais même d'imaginer.) En tout case il y a des gens qui le détestent et je n'ai jamais entendu un bon raison pour ça. Après je le lis, je ne sais pas si j'achèterai le prochain livre ou un autre livre. Peut être j'achèterai un autre livre d'albert camus ou le livre, le petit nicolas. Je vais le découvrir.

le pasteur

2007-07-19T20:38:00.000-05:00

Notre pasteur a décidé d'aller à Wyoming pour y habiter. Le samedi dernier il l'a dit à la congrégation. Je l'aime très bien et il peut très plus bien prêcher que les autres gens à l'église. Ça va être un peu mauvais parce que nous n'aurons pas de pasteur pour quelques semaines et alors ces gens (qui ne prêche pas assez bien que lui) vont prêcher. Mais nous allons survivre. Hein, le samedi dernier il a dit quelque chose que j'ai trouvé un peut intéressante, ou un peut brave bien que ça soit son dernier samedi là. Ça n'est pas très bizarre, mais il a dit quelque chose comme, 'Appelez-lui réchauffement climatique ou réfroidissement climatique, mais le climat de la planète change,' et il a dit aussie, 'Les riches s'enriche plus et les pauvres deviennent plus pauvres.' Le fait qu'il a dit ces choses était si profond à moi que j'ai oublié tout les autres choses qu'il a dit.
Sidenote: Je dois te dire que les Adventistes sont très conservateurs. Souvent on me dit qu'il n'y a pas de changement climatique. Ils me disent toujour des horreurs de la gauche. Ils me disent toujours que la guerre en Iraq est super. Ne me mal entends pas, je connais beaucoup d'Adventistes qui sont politiquement à la gauche, mais d'habitude nous sommes très silenceux, surtout dans le Sud. (Et D'habitude ce sont les anciens qui disent ces choses à la droit; on les laisse dire ce qu'ils veulent et on sourit doucement.)
Eh bien, ça me choke parce qu'il a presque dit, 'Je suis à la gauche.' Je croyais que les gens
allaient le tuer, mais c'était sans summit; rien n'a passé.

le petit prince

2007-07-16T16:32:00.000-05:00

L'autre jour, j'ai fini de lire, 'le petit prince'. C'était la deuxième fois, et j'aime beaucoup l'histoire. De temps en temps je veux le lire en anglais, mais j'aime l'idée de ne jamais lire ce livre en anglais, seulment en français. Il y a des autres livres que je n'ai lit qu'en français: La Cantatrice Chauve, L'étranger. Je n'ai pas l'étranger avec moi à Texas puis peut être je vais lire La Cantatrice Chauve une fois de plus, ou trouver quelque livre à la librarie.
Cette fois-ci était la deuxième. Bien sûr cette fois j'ai entendu beaucoup plus que la première. Mais je suis un peux paresseux quand je lis. Par exemple, si il y a des mots que je ne connais pas, mais je peux entendre la phrase sans ces mots, d'habitude je ne les cherche pas dans une dictionnaire. (Je n'ai vraiment pas de dictionnaire, et je lis dans mon lit. En général, l'internet n'est pas dans mon lit, et ça me fait plus paresseux.) La personne qui avait le livre avant moi, a écrit le sens en anglais de quelques mots à coté d'eu. D'habitude je n'en tiens pas compte. Mais de temps en temps dans une page il y a un mot beaucoup de fois, mais le sens est à coté de la quatrième ou cinquième fois mais pas des autres. Ou dans une autre page il y a le sens d'un mot à coté de chaque fois qu'on le voit. Ou dans page 71, quelqu'un a écrit le mot 'perhaps' à coté de le mot 'peut être', je croirais qu'on connaissait le mot 'peut être' avant de la 71, la page 94 a le mot 'be' à coté de le mot 'être' (bien sûr on le connait avant de LIRE). Je crois que je ne comprends pas comment les autres gens apprennent.

est-ce qu'il est vraiment americain?

2007-07-15T10:43:00.001-05:00

J'avais envie de faire la sieste, mais mes draps sont dans la machine à laver. Alors, j'ai décidé d'écrire sur un homme de mon église. Je n'aime pas utiliser les noms vrais, donc on va lui appeler morse. Il est un bon ami. Le mois prochain il va habiter avec jr et moi. La chose sur laquelle je voudrais écrire est pourquoi il me semble comme il n'est pas un americain. Ne me comprends mal pas; Il aime les états-unis; Il aime les politiques; (Je lui ai parlé beaucoup des politiques); Il est vraiment americain (que je sache :)). Mais il y a un seul ennui. Il ne connait pas les choses que tous les americains connaissent.
Un jour, il y a quelques mois, on parle du film, 'Superman'. Je ne me souviens éxactement pas dont on parlaient, mais quelqu'un a dit quelque chose stupide comme, 'C'est comme Superman a dit, "je suis Clark Kent."' Tout le monde riaient, mais après quelques secondes morse nous a demandé, 'umm...qui est Clark Kent.' Tout le monde a quitté de rire et il y avait une silence. Nous nous sommes demandé, 'A-t-il vraiment demandé cette questionne?', 'Est-ce qu'il ne connait pas Superman?'. Et quelqu'un a finalment dit, 'umm...Superman est Clark Kent. Clark Kent est sa veritable identité.'
Après ça on a decouvré qu'il y a beaucoup de choses comme ça, qu'il ne connait pas. Par exemple je lui ai demandé, 'Qui était avec les 7 nains?' Eh bien sûr il ne connaissait pas. Après quelques secondes j'ai dit, 'umm...bien que ses péchés soient comme cramoisi, ils seront aussie blanchs comme la neige.' Et il a dit, 'ohh, Blanche Neige?'.
L'autre jour on voulait regarder 'Transformers'; il ne les connait pas. Mais il m'a surpris parce qu'il connait les tortues ninja.
C'est une jeu pour jr et moi. Nous lui demande s'il connait quelque chose comme ça. De temps en temps je veux lui demande de quelque chose dont presque personne ne savent rien. Quelque chose comme, 'Est-ce que tu connais "Bubble Man"?' (Bubble Man est quelq'un de la jeu MegaMan) parce que je sais qu'il ne sais pas s'il le faudrait le connaître. Peut être je suis méchant, au moins ça me fait rire.

les politiques

2007-07-14T14:59:00.001-05:00

La relation entre les politiques et moi est pleine d'amour et de haine. Je les trouve très intéressant. Qu'est-ce qu'on doit faire avec Irak? est-ce qu'on doit surtout quitter Irak? Est-ce que le soins socialiste de santé un bonne idée? Même le fait qu'il me semble que les chrétiens est parfaitement trompés par la droite (je le trouve très dégoûtant). Mais il y a une chose qui me dégoûte (maintenant) plus que tout. C'est comme les politiciens utilisent mon langue à l'intention de tromper. Par exemple les mots 'pro-choix' et 'pro-vie'. Je les déteste parce que l'impression qu'il donne à quelqu'un. Le premier voulait dire que la droite veux vous vole tous vos choix. C'est comme la questionne de l'avortement est vraiment une questionne de tous nos droits. De l'autre coté il y a 'pro-vie'; ça veut dire que l'avortement est toujours meurtre sans aucune questionne. Tous les deux m'inquiètent parce qu'ils ne laissent pas de pièce pour un entretien de la questionne.
Il y a aussi les noms, 'patriot act', 'cut-and-run' et beaucoup plus. Tout me fait malheureux parce qu'on l'appelait comme ça pour éteint le débat.
L'autre jour je parlais à morse sur ce thème-ci, et il m'a dit qu'il avait justement lu un livre sur l'histoire de notre constitution. Il me disait que dans la naissance de ce pays il y a les uns qui voulaient que les états unis seraient sous un seul gouvernement puissant et les autres qui voulaient que chaque état aurait toute sa propre pouvoir. Bien que le mot fédéraliste soit antonyme de ce que les fédéralistes voulaient pour les états unis, ils s'appelaient 'fédéralistes' parce qu'ils savaient que la plupart de gens ne voulait pas ce que les fédéralistes voulaient. (j'espère que cette phrase a un sens). Donc on a choisi les 'fédéraliste' parce qu'ils avait seulement choisi ce nom, et ils ont cru le nom. Alors, le leçon est qu'il n'y a pas d'espoir pour notre pays, et je n'aime pas les politiques...

l'homme dégoutant

2007-07-13T15:55:00.000-05:00

Prends garde, j'ai peur que cette histoire ne veille pas utiliser correctement les temps. Je veux essayer de l'écrire, mais il y a quelques parts en quoi je ne peux pas décider quels temps on doit utiliser. Alors, je t'en prie d'être gentil.
Cette histoire concerne l'homme qui partage un bureau avec mon colocataire. Bien que je l'écrive en français, je ne veux pas utiliser son vrai nom. (il y a deux niveaux de codage). Mais je sais qu'il ne sait pas lire français, donc on écrit son nom avec les primières lettres de chaque nom dans la phrase prochain. "L'avion a volé en haut de l'Afrique et la Rome, mais son origine était la Normande." Je sais que le lecteur ne connais pas cet homme, mais l'idée de la phrase dernière me fait rire. Bon, le semestre dernier il et mois nous avions un cours ensemble. Le cours finissait ver sept heures et demi, et donc de temps en temps on mangeait après. Une fois j'avais besoin d'uriner et il urinait à le même temps, mais je me suis rendu compte qu'il ne s'a pas lavé les mains. Après avoir uriné il a quitté les toillettes et il m'attendait quand je me lavais les mains. C'était une décision innocente (peut être), mais nous sommes allé manger tout de suite. Quand nous étions au restaurant, il a tenu une bouteille de une condiment, a donné de la condiment sur le doigt et l'a mis dans sa bouche. Ça c'est dégoutant pour deux (au moins) raisons. Qu'il ne s'a pas lavé les mains est la primére, et puis il a donné son doigt dans sa bouche. Mais l'autre est qu'il a touché la bouche de la bouteille (ou l'ouverture de la bouteille?) avec son doigt après avoir uriné. Je ne peux plus utiliser les condiments. Eh bon, l'autre jour je parlais avec mon colocataire et il m'a dit que cet homme lui a dit qu'il ne se lavé jamais les mains. Il a dit, "je douche, ça suffit." Pense en les choses après quoi on se lave les mains, et il ne se lave jamais les mains. C'est doublement dégoutant! (et je ne vais jamais encore utiliser les condiments!) Je ne savais pas qu'il y a des gens comme ça. Peut être j'ai beaucoup à apprendre. Peut être, les gens qui ne se serrent les mains avec personne ont un peu de sens. Eh bon, qu'est-ce que c'est la morale de cette histoire? Je sais pas. Peut être c'est qu'on doit ne pas toucher les mains de quelqu'un.

Addition: J'ai justement découvré qu'il a une petite amie. Et maintenant il doit se laver les mains (au moins quand elle est près). Maintenant il fait le ménage. C'est la première fois qu'il a fait le ménage chez lui depuis longtemps (plus d'un AN).

un message très court

2007-07-12T18:54:00.000-05:00

L'autre jour je parlais à un homme. Nous parlions d'une femme noire, sa famille (noire), et son petit ami (qui est noir aussie). Il voulait dire quelque chose mauvaise sur eu. Donc avant de l'avoir dit il a dit, 'je ne veux pas les dénigrer, mais...'. Ça me fair rire, parce qu'il a littéralment dit, 'Je ne veux pas noircir ces noirs, mais...' Haha...je suis stupid. (la conversation originale était en anglais).

c'est une drôle de langue

2007-07-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

C'est une chose en quoi je pensais hier soir. Je me souviens quand j'ai commencé à étudier le français. Quand on me parlé du partitif pour la première fois, on m'a dit, 'ATTENTION! Prennez garde quand vous utilisez ces mots-ci! Si on dit, je mange le sucre, et pas, je mange du sucre tout le monde pensera que vous avêz mangé tout le sucre du monde entière! Et nous ne le voulons pas, n'est-ce pas?' C'étais très drôle à moi. Oui, j'ai compris que la grammaire est importante, mais je croyais qu'ils sont un peu trop dramatique. C'est presque comme ils m'ont dit, 'Si on dit, je mange le sel, les pauvres d'Afrique auront peur qu'ils ne mangent encore du sel. Ils auront peur qu'ils ne souffrent un mort le plus terrible!' Eh, bon, ça me fait toujours rire. Mais après ça, j'ai appris quelques phrases de plus. La première est 'tout le monde', sans dire, 'tout le monde veut dire tout le monde' je ne sais pas expliquer cette phrase, mais je crois que tu le comprends. La autre est 'toujours'. On peut l'utilise quand on veut dire 'encore' avec emphase. Bien, ces phrase me fait rire parce qu'ils sont exactement ce qu'on m'a averti au commencement.

le mauvais anglais

2007-07-09T19:27:00.001-05:00

le autre jour (sabbat dernier) j'étais à l'eglise et l'on qui parle a dit une chose que j'ai trouvé interessante (cette phrase est trop long, donc j'ai peur qu'il ne sois mauvais). bon ben, il prêchait de le prier et il a dit qu'il n'importe pas si on utilise les mots grands ou on ne les utilise pas. immédiatement je m'ai pensé à moi-même qu'il n'importe pas si on utilise le ancien anglais moderne (?early modern english?)....attends, je dois t'écrire que je n'aime pas le KJV parce qu'il utilise une langue si différente de la langue d'aujourd'hui. ce n'est pas la grammaire qui me detresse c'est les mots. maintenant je ne veux pas les énumérer, donc on doit avoir confiance en moi :)...alors, à ce moment-là je me suis rendu compte que quand on prier en ancien anglais moderne (aam), on l'utilise rarement correctment (j'ose dire qu'il ne se passe presque jamais). je dois me justifier. je sais qu'il y a beaucoup de gens qui comprend la grammaire de le KJV, et je comprend qu'ils peuvent l'utiliser quand ils prient, mais je doubt qu'ils utilisent les mots correctement. suppose qu'en priant on dit, 'bless this food'. par le mot 'food' ils veulent dire 'nourriture'. mais en aam le mot qui veut dire 'nourriture' est 'meat'. alors si on dit 'bless this meat', je sais que tout le monde le comprendraient comme 'viande' et pas comme 'nourriture'. bien sûr j'ai des autres exemple, mais je crois que tu comprends ce que je veux dire. ben, je sais que ce n'est pas interessant (je rends compte que je ne sais pas quand on utilise 'ce' ou quand on utilise 'il'...je dois l'apprendre), mais il m'interesse et ça suffit.

le premier

2007-07-09T18:05:00.000-05:00

hmm...qu'est-ce que je dois écrire? je crois que j'ai quelque chose à dire, mais je me limite un petit peu parce que je l'écris en français. est-ce que tu te demande pour quoi j'écris en français? possiblement pourquoi je suis un petit peu "anal". je crois que si j'écris un blog je dois au moins m'apprendre quelque chose. donc j'ai decidé de l'écrire en français (si on n'aime pas mon motif, on ne doit pas le lire...et probablement je ne te connais pas, donc à mon avis ce n'est pas grave si tu ne le lis pas). le seul ennui est que je n'ai presque rien à écrire (au commencement, j'ai menti (<-- je viens de chercher le mot "avoir menti", et le programme appelle le tense, "present perfect". je crois que ce n'est pas correct.)...bien, au commencement, j'ai menti; c'était pour l'effet). hmm...je en pense...peut être je peux simplement écrire pourquoi je veux écrire. je vais le faire.