today’s big thing

I’m a fan of Today’s Big Thing, which is a video blog about (surprise, surprise) the big thing on the Internet for the day. Anyway, today they shared a rather moving Obama speech that brought tears to mine eyes.

Amazing, Moving Obama Speech

Finally, a candidate that speaks my language. This country has been waiting for a candidate that won’t give us up, let us down, run around or desert us for too long.

Link

funny

Sucker punch!

Spring updates

Spring is here! Weee! It’s so warm out, after all that winter! Kevin and I planted a garden outside. We let Emmy join us while we worked, so she explored the great outdoors that is our balcony. I had to run downstairs, so I waved at Emmy from the ground. She looked so perplexed that I was downstairs! “How did you get down there?” she seemed to be asking. Anyway, our garden is just…soil and a raspberry twig. But hopefully by summer we will have all kinds of flowers, and raspberries, and parsley!

Congratulations to Lise, who is engaged! Yay! Emily says too many of her friends are engaged…but I don’t know, I still know plenty of single people.

So you know how last year, Stephy randomly wrote “wedding!” at the end of one of her xanga posts? I get it now. You can’t really tell people that that’s you life because it seems kind of lame. But … wedding planning is a lot of work, and while the daily routine is still there, the wedding is just constantly running through your head as you work out all those details. I look forward to seeing everyone this summer, in any event.

Wedding!

Puppet Pals in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise”

Happy Halloween!

This video has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a loong time:

Cheers!

Are we failing our geniuses? - TIME

Earlier this year, Patrick Gonzales of the U.S. Department of Education presented a paper showing that the highest-achieving students in six other countries, including Japan, Hungary and Singapore, scored significantly higher in math than their bright U.S. counterparts, who scored about the same as the Estonians. Which all suggests we may be squandering a national resource: our best young minds.

I think this article is bang-on here. It seems as though in our battle to focus on stragglers, we tend to abandon those at top. In doing so, we just may be loosing our future Einsteins and pioneers of tomorrow.

full article

dang, it feels good to be a simster

So, after playing ungodly hours of The Sims 2 and restructuring my own life simultaneously, I realized that being a Sim is not such a bad deal. Here are 20 reasons why being a Sim beats the real world:

• You can always sell your used items immediately and at a fair price.
• When you’re a toddler, there’s nothing Smart Milk can’t solve.
• You do not have to wait 8 months to grow out your hair.
• It only takes a few hours of practice to competently play “Flight of the Bumblebee” on a piano.
• When you get married, you can invite up to 6 wedding guests, and no one will feel sad if you don’t invite a family member.
• There are always exactly the right ingredients in your fridge if you want to cook a meal.
• You know exactly what you need to do — from the number of friends to the amount of skill points — in order to be promoted at your job.
• Damond engagement rings, wedding ceremonies, and honeymoons are all free!
• When you move out of your house, you automatically get $20,000.
• Woohooing yields 100% effective birth control.
• When you buy a bookshelf, it comes packed full of books with everything you need to know about cleaning, mechanical, and cooking. All of this knowledge, along with your diary, exists in one green-and-yellow book.
• Repainting your walls is as hassle-free as holding down the “shift” key and clicking.
• You know from Teenage years on what you want to do with your life.
• When you’re a teacher, you get to come home at 3pm.
• There’s no need to go to the hospital when you go into labor.
• All you have to do is grow up in a reasonably good mood and you are ensured a long, happy life.
• Taxis are free!
• To change an outfit, all you have to do is twirl around once and swiftly.
• Money grows on trees.
• Robots can, will, and do ultimately solve everything!!

why the thesis statement is backwards

I used to hate the phrase, “thesis statement.” In English and writing classes, it was a vague, overly-emphasized concept that stuck out in my humanities education like a sore thumb. I loathed assignments bidding my classmates and me to, “write a thesis statement,” and answer “what’s your paper’s thesis?” before setting out to do any research on the topic!

And for whatever reason, in spite of all the weight placed on this holy grail entrusted to young writers, I simply did not understand its importance. I would try to find a thesis — set out to prove that “Wilbur was highly humble until Charlotte wrote on her web, ‘Some Pig’” before finishing Charlotte’s Web. After “finding” my thesis I would sit in front of my computer, straining from word constipation until last minute panic hit me and I would write some awful paragraphs “supporting” my statement at the end of the first paragraph in an essay. This method was great at scraping me A-s, with occasional As or B+s on most papers…but it left me resenting writing. Drained of any creativity in the confines of writing a “thesis statement” every few weeks, I tried to avoid as many humanities classes as I could by taking more math classes.

Then, a wonderful kick in the face occurred during a few upper level math classes, which invariably taught me to write. Once you hit a few upper level math classes such as Analysis, a student will be asked to write a math proof. Sometimes the question is not put in the easiest way; assignments usually read, “is this statement true or false? Either find a counterexample or give a proof of this statement.” Oh, how I loathed such questions, where there was no black-and-white way to solve something!

But then, after many hours and sleepless nights, proof-writing started clicking, and my mind was molded into way of thinking that started trickling into many applications. Proof-writing is a wonderfully fulfilling process; it involves the creative steps of exploring, questioning, and then — once all the steps are laid out nicely in front of you — you neatly summarize it in plain English.

Consider, for example, the following proof from an old Number Theory homework set. Notice how no sentence is wasted; each explored step takes me closer and closer to the conclusion we make in our “proof” statement:

And this is how I learned how to write. I learned that writing is a logical proof: you explore, experiment, and each sentence becomes one step closer to the insightful conclusion you are about to make. That conclusion is your thesis. Don’t set out to prove a thesis first; as you think, experiment until you prove your newfound thesis.

Similar to the above proof, the thesis statement isn’t meant to be some clean sentence at the end of the first paragraph of your five-paragraph paper. Instead, it is this polished result that you obtain by getting your hands dirty, and then unraveling it out until finally — you have it, in one beautiful statement or two. As you explore your topic, you venture into the unknown, and with each logical step and creative measure, you have pulled from the dredges of the unknown something that you and your readers will love and appreciate for all its glory. I guarantee it.

Sure, this method takes a little more little more research and thought than a nicely packaged handout that your teachers would like to show. But trust me, if you prod it, if you polish and polish some more, if you really put some thought into each paper and sentence you write, that thesis will shine. And you will soar in all your writing assignments from hereon out.

pump up your iPod

I would like to share a Podcast I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the past few weeks. It is called Podrunner by dj steveboy and consists of upbeat, continuous exercise music set to motivate listeners throughout their daily exercise routines.

Because the beat is so constant as well as interesting, each Podcast keeps me focused on my run as well as interested in my routine for an entire hour. Sometimes when I play my favorite tunes on a loop, I feel either weary of them from hearing the same song for the 100th time, or I want to stop and walk during more lulling tunes. Podrunner forces these occasions to vanish, simply by the nature of the mixes. The songs are pretty fun, since they are the latest mixes found in clubs and whatnot. I enjoy a chance to appreciate a branch of music I wouldn’t normally listen to, and their fresh mixes avoid that weary feel from my own library.

Running is, by its nature, a typically solitary activity, with no one around to set your paces or help adhere to your goals. In some ways, Podrunner is that sought-out exercise buddy, that personal trainer you always needed to keep the adrenaline. Each mix sets a goal for a number of Beats per Minute after the hour, and it is somehow comforting to know that the entire audience of 3 million downloaders just might be running to the same tunes you are hearing.

Anyway, do check it out if you’ve been finding yourself short of New Year’s Resolutions, or just need some new tunes to run to. There are usually new mixes every week, depending on the dj’s availability. Kudos to his success.

Geez, I miss Calvin and Hobbes….

Calvin’s dad answering questions, quoted from various Calvin and Hobbes books by Bill Waterston.

Q. Why does the sun set?
A. It’s because hot air rises. The sun’s hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets.
Q. Why does it go from east to west?
A. Solar wind.

Q. Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets?
A. That’s all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire.
Q. Where does the sun go when it sets?
A. The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff. That’s why the rocks there are so red.
Q. Don’t the people get burned up?
A. No, the sun goes out as it sets. That’s why it’s dark at night.
Q. Doesn’t the sun crush the whole state as it lands?
A. Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun’s just about the same size.
Q. I thought I read that the sun was really big.
A. You can’t believe everything you read, I’m afraid.
Q. How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
A. Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just that the world was black and white then. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Q. But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
A. Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Q. But… But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
A. Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the ’30s.
Q. So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
A. Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Q. Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don’t understand why time goes slower at great speed.
A. It’s because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn’t take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you’re going west.

Q. Why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?
A. If your lids weren’t closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and stretch the optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you’d have to point them with your hands to see anything.

Q. How do bank machines work?
A. Well, let’s say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine there’s a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
Q. Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
A. Exactly.

Q. What causes the wind?
A. Trees sneezing.

Q. Why does ice float?
A. Because it’s cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes to the top of liquids to be nearer to the sun.
Q. Is that true?
A. Look it up and find out.
Q. I should just look up stuff in the first place.

Q. How come you know so much?
A. It’s all in the book you get when you become a father.

thanksgiving weekend & drive from Tucson to Los Angeles

So, I had a nice Thanksgiving in Tucson. My mom made me tofurky this year and let me take home the leftovers. We saw The Fountain, which was fabulous. Go see it!!! And I got to hike and mini golf with friends; how lovely :)

The only unfun thing was the drive in and out of Los Angeles on the I-10E. This year we tallied in with a complete deadstop on the I-10 starting near Rancho Cucamonga by around 4:30pm or so. I understand it wouldn’t have made a difference if we left any earlier, but rush hour probably didn’t help. Getting out, we bypassed by taking the 15 to the 60, which in retrospect was probably a good move since it was under construction for the most part. I’m not sure if it made too much a difference going out. Indio was by far the worst for getting in on Sunday afternoon; I think it took us three hours to get from Indio to LA, which is just awful considering it’s only about 100 miles or so. Well, that’s Thanksgiving for you…I think we did better last year by leaving on Saturday instead of Sunday. If I could, I would have left Wednesday morning at dawn to avoid traffic, but it’s kind of crazy to put companies and schools under pressure to get an entire week of Thanksgiving off or something…then we’d just all have the same problem on Friday afternoon. Let’s just all not work; then we won’t be doing things at the same time and avoid having a term like Rush Hour altogether.