Poopy Spears
I was walking this morning and I saw frozen dog poop on the ground. As I looked straight at it, I noticed that I was actually walking closer and closer to the doo-doo. It’s almost like when I’m playing against a Nidalee… I SEE the spear coming, but then I still click in the direction of it.
Not as bad as this guy though…
Fumes
And walks in this woman who’s clearly not American. From her accent, she was like Eastern European or something. Why the hell is she teaching American studies? – Astro Section
Oh sorry, should all the Americans currently studying international relations switch majors right now? You see in drawing, there’s a thing called “perspective”…
This TA is sooo annoying, she doesn’t stop with right or wrong. She says stuff like “why is that right…” – Ivy Room
Oh sorry, didn’t know you want to be made obsolete by an encyclopedia. Maybe thinking is too hard.
Some people just makes me fume.
AP? More Like AUseless.
This has been pissing my off recently: all the AP classes I took back in high school seems to count for nothing in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Yes, it does count for credit. Yes, they do “recognize” it. That’s basically it.
My five AP science courses which I got 5’s on won’t count towards my science requirements, which instead forces me to fit two silly science courses in. In astronomy today, we talked about the difference between velocity and speed, and how weight and mass are different.
Whoop dee doo…
Ripoff
The time you will spend studying this text (not to mention its cost) also is an investment
– From $300 textbook
Perfect Synergy
The past summer, I was at the REU in UMBC. The head of the math department guy preached about the future of mathematics is the intersection of mathematics, statistics and computing; I agree to a large extent. 
What I ended up working on seemed to be computing, with more computing, with very little mathematical analysis. The system of differential equations that described pancreatic cells was far too advanced for me to do some significant analysis. Heck, that’s how I feel about most of pure mathematics: the interesting problems are always out of reach from what I know.
Before this past winter break, I found a cool book called “Risk and Reward” in the math library. It’s all about the, surprisingly deep, game of casino blackjack, from the strategies to the mathematics behind the analysis. In the analysis portion of the book, 90% of all the results seems to be dependent on the a computer, but with relatively simple probability concepts.
If I ever do become a professor of some sorts, I want to be able to teach a class based on games like blackjack and poker. For projects of sorts, the task will be to calculate the probability of various conditions and to figure out the strategies from the math I provide in class. Maybe for a (optional) final, it’s to actually play the games that we studied in class…
As an exercise over the break, I took an existing program and added the functionality to “practice” the card counting went over the book. It’s based on this project which I butchered (honestly, I spent 2 days doing this… trying to understand someone else’s code is tough). To run the program, make sure Python is installed, and run Blackjack.py. Download
Her and Bioshock
After watching the movie “Her“, I can’t help but think what the implications are for technology and human interaction in the future. What happens when artificial intelligence, on the scale of Samantha, is created? Will we as a being really turn towards that “perfect” relationship with a computer instead of nurturing (and suffering through) one with another human?
Those serious and interesting questions aside, I had no idea the voice of Samantha was of the beautiful Scarlett Johansson. In my mind, I pictured someone who was quite beautiful just from the voice alone.
Same thing happened in Bioshock Infinite: the voice of Elizabeth seemed to be from a pretty attractive women (of course, the fact that the character itself was meticulously crafted to be pretty helped).
Turns out this isn’t a coincidence that a more pleasant voice goes along with a more attractive face. From paper:
Men were in strong agreement on which was an attractive voice and face; and women with attractive faces had attractive voices.
Whelp, I guess I’ll never voice a video game character.
Econometric
It seems like the math department has a vendetta against me: they won’t allow me to be a course assistant in the spring semester for two years now. Thank god I got a Takenote job this time (taking notes for econometric); how else am I going to have the funds to buy a SSD/a parka/Bicycle decks?
Also, never shall I live in the far north if I can help it; this cold inhibits everything.
Lending Club
There’s a website called Lending Club to facilitate peer-to-peer lending; I’ve been playing around with it, and lending a few people money. So far, one of the person I’ve loaned to has not paid for 4 months now.
This initially pissed me off. “This guy just took my money and ran!” But I noticed that this person’s credit score has been dropping like a rock.
Initially, this guy wanted the $2,000 loan for just home improvement, and was making a decent salary. Just makes me wonder how much of a selfish prick I am to not realize that either this guy passed, or recently lost his job; all I cared about was how do I get my measly $25 principal back.
Whoever you are, I wish you the best. (And when you can, just pay back the money.)