IC XC

In this episode of Math Made Almost Bearable Frank Kelly explains some of the mathematical AND philosophical techniques employed by statisticians in order to make statistics almost bearable

The human population on the earth is increasing at what could seem like an alarming rate. Many people would say that if the population continues to increase that this rate that the earth will not be able to support human life for much longer! In this episode of Math Made Almost Bearable Frank examines these and similar claims about population growth and shows that things are not always what they seem!

Man it seems like the only time i really sit down to write on this when things haven't really been going that well ha ha. oh well. As most most of you know i was in that unfortunate car accident a few weeks back. i finally got around to getting a quote on the repairs and while they're not outrageous it will absolutely drain me. a word of advice, don't buy a car AND get into a car accident in the same month because it WILL be a bitch in your pocket book.

I was feeling more comfortable about what it would cost because i expected a final pay check from Heights today but today is the first wednesday in july NOT the last wednesday in june. why is that significant? because my radio career with heights was put abruptly to an end yesterday. after the higher-ups at heights (6 months ago) were absolutely convinced that God wanted them to broadcast their sermons on the radio and that they had enough money, they decided that they didn't really want to and the money just wasn't there in the first place so they dissolved the project. it was a great job for me for six months. it made things easier on my wallet for a while so that i could focus on school. it irks me though because i won't actually be getting paid for this last week of work (which will be close to double the hours that i normally put in) I'm doing for them. it's also quite a shame because july would have worked out so that there would have been three pay checks instead of the usual two =( you win some, you lose some.

I had a great time doing that job for them but i guess it's time to move on. in lieu of audio editing i'll hopefully be starting my new bartending job at Club House Inn & Suites in my interview they told me i was there number one pick for the job and that i should be hearing from them soon. it seems like a great job. just 3-4 hours a day a few days a week. just enough to get my feet wet bartending to see if it's for me.

finally, please be in prayer for my family. some of my dad's extended relatives are taking my parents (and other family members) to court. he's been lying about a lot of legal stuff that i probably can't and shouldn't get into. in any case my parents are trying to get a lawyer that won't leave them with too much debt in fees.

In this episode, Frank discusses the first half of president Garfield's proof the of the pythagorean Theorem.

In this episode I sit down with Frank Kelly to discuss what it means for math to be considered as an art, namely a performing art. Don't worry though! on the next episode we'll be right back to PERFORMING math for you as in episode one!

This is the first in a series called “Math Made Almost Bearable” One of my favorite professors, Dr. Frank Kelly and I are collaborating on this little project. The goal is simply to present short, interesting and intriguing facts about math in an approachable and engaging way. This first episode is called “Fractions and Repeating Decimals”.
Math Made Almost Bearable Episode 1

It's the last week before spring break and the hardest part is over with. Mostly i just had to get through last night's Kierkegaard class. It was actually one of the best classes of the semester. We were discussing Kierkegaard's understanding of the role and equality (if any) of women viz-a-viz Works of Love. K is a fascinating figure to me in a lot of ways. He's a big fan of paradox and is quite careful to demonstrate this existentially as an avowed platonist who is suspicious of philosophy. oh well.

I've more or less bested UNM as a longboarding course. I think i'm ready to try and hit up some ditches. Brad and I skated to my car from Frontier Restaurant last night around 10:30 pm. We went through UNM and it was just a lot of fun. campus is a blast with no people, cool night air running through your hair, and the subtle rythmic pulse of your wheels on smooth asphault *nostalgic sigh*.

Mom's having surgery next tuesday. having her entire large intestines removed because her ulcerative colitis. the quality of life she'll have after this surgery would be a downgrade for most of us but will be substantial progress toward normality for her. we're all looking forward to post-recovery time when my mom won't be house-ridden any more etc. so if you guys remember, pray for her, for the success of her surgery, for speedy recovery, and for a return to a fulfilling life for her.

Oh, and i hate the new ipod shuffle! what's the deal?! you can control it if you ONLY use their cheap-ass ear-buds!?!?! They've completely removed all major controls i.e. play/pause, volume up/down, next/last song to the head phones and off the actual ipod unit?! someone say it ain't so!

I'm really suffering with allergies lately, and it seems i'm not alone. many of my professors and fellow students are walking around with bloodshot, teary-eyed smiles. I usually feel like i'm the only one who has allergies, mostly because i never seem to have allergy-like symtpoms AT THE SAME TIME as others.

between my last post and now i've taken up Longboarding and frankly, IT'S SO MUCH FUN. I love my longboard. I look like an idiot a lot of the time, i'll be pumping and the board will get away from me or i'll finally pull my back foot up but kick the board a little so it goes out from underneath me, but so far it's worth it. I've been practising around UNM just crusing the hills and i can really see why people get addicted to things like skating, snowboarding etc. When you're picking up speed down a hill, all you're thinking about is skating, turns, and obstacles. nothing from life even matters anymore only the rushing sound of asphalt under your wheels and sharp turns. ha ha i'm getting all woozy just thinking about it. on the downside it makes walking with zdevex harder. he never wants to run so that we can go the same speed, or let me use him as a leash so i can get up hills with minimal effort. I even offer alternatives like, he could push me up the hill instead of pull if we wanted.

In other news, my intro sociology teacher quit which is a mixed blessing. she was the most mind numbing teacher i've ever had. She literally read definitions out of the book for 50 minutes. then she would try to explain the defintion in a real sociological case by rephrasing the same defintion. while this is not very condusive to real learning, it was nice having a class that require next to no effort. the hardest part about the class was getting up at 8 to make it there by 9. She frequently finished reading her definitions early and so class was dismissed early. She also canceled class 3 or 4 times. I got an email from the new teacher. i hope she's interesting. I also hope that she doesn't add to my work load too much. she's also putting the lecture notes online which will be very nice.

I turned 21 last friday. A few of my friends took me out it was REALLY fun. I didn't get smashed or anything, but the pint of 1554, long island ice tea, irish car bomb, and amoretto sour were delicious! I hope to maybe buy a new kind of beer/wine once a month and find some that I really like.

I finally got Windows XP service pack 3 installed on my apple (a.k.a. Jezzel). It kept telling my that i needed 4 more meg of space which was ridiculous as i have 20 gigs of free space. thankfully I found a fix from a link on an apple forum. maybe zdevex or dj_jonny_flash knows exactly what I did. But it's nice to not have that stupid updater bugging me all the time.

Well the family decided that the trip to Houston is a for sure. It's been up in the air with my mother being so sick recently. I'm mildly disappointed to be going. It just means 10 days of ridiculous sitting around while my uncle makes sure to get back to his job as soon as possible leaving his wife who has MS to entertain us. It's pretty much the same every year. after a few days we get frustrated (by "we" i usually mean the men in my family) and want to go home and then my uncle gets offended that we want to go. I love seeing my family but I know how this story goes. the one redeeming quality will be that I get to Karindy. Karindy was my church buddy at Biola. she picked me up every Sunday (i didn't take my car to Biola) and took me to church. We spent many a late night drinking tea in some hole in the wall asian tea cafe rocking out to Hobbits and homework. She's since graduated and is in Houston. So for that I'm excited!

I've got 2 finals and a paper left. and i'm off!

i just finished my final project for my video games class. you shoud check it out!

click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!click here!

Man I am feeling so down tonight. My whole life seems to be slipping away. I'm grateful that it's 11:30 p.m. right now and that most of this will just burn off in my sleep. Tomorrow morning I'll look back at this blog and think about how silly and irrational all of my fears are. But right now they seem so close. I feel so distrustful of everyone, all of my friends.

My comfort is that all of these sentences start with "I feel". Feelings, probably the most unreliable assessment machine I have right now. sometimes its right on but i have more reasons to be distrustful of them than not.

Sigh . . . Tomorrow (with a capital "T" for all you Torrey kids ) can't come fast enough.

I finally beat LOZTP! it took almost exactly 46 hours, but i did it. the last three hours were probably the hardest to get through. I was getting sick of navigating temple after temple and i just wanted to finish the story. But i finally did finish the story which is happy. and now i can just concentrate on the little animation thingy i'm making for the final project. I don't think i want to play another zelda game for a long long time. it was the first zelda game i've played, and it looked alot more RPG like than it actually is. it really is just a puzzle game. sorta like tetris with a plot, a pretty good plot.

I watched Across the Universe on wednesday. i give it two and a half stars. alot of it just felt like a moulin rouge rip off for way too much of the film. I enjoyed almost every song. I mean some of those versions really caught my fancy. I think Julie Taymore was just in over her head. The Beatles are so iconic, so multigenerational, it would be a huge project for anyone. The first half of the movie was better than the second half in my opinion. I caught the slow decay of the characters that mimiced the sort of slow personal decay that the beatles went through. yes love, drugs, more love, some heart break, and a serene sort of end (You're breaking up the band YOKO!). The first half seemed to have a little more plot and the songs fit in nicely. by the end it just seemed like they were looking for any ol' excuse to throw in another song. i was getting tired of watching it and i knew there were at least two songs or so that i hadn't heard yet. You can make a movie set in the 60's and 70's look as psychadelic as you want, but it sure doesn't make you an artist. you can even add all kinds of visual metaphors with creepy mermaid looking things and . . . you're still not as artsy as you want your friends to think you are. this is my only known experience with taymor and am totally up for giving her the benefit of the doubt, but ATU wasn't a favorite and i don't think it will go down as a classic. great music though.

been working on my final project for my video game class. i'm pretty excited. it's going to be a zero punctuation style review of LoZ twilight princess. this is going to be alot of fun. it doesn't look to be too hard it'll just take a goodly amount of time. time that i should spend sleeping. . . like right now.

I just found out that my favorite cigars ever, Flor De Selvas which i purchased for $5 per box in Honduras run upwards of $9 per cigar her in the states. yeesh. i guess i just have to think of it as an investment. . .

maybe an investment for my next paycheck

I will not be dissappointed if John Mccain becomes president. I will not be exstatic either. but at least he doesn't take himself as seriously as Sarah Palin does. It is vital (for reasons that i might right about later) in my opinion that a politician be able to laugh at himself. John Mccain can. And for this have a great deal of admiration and respect. Too bad Sarah Palin wasn't as cooperative.

The weather is cold. Not too cold. I miss a place I've never been to. I miss a love I've never known. I serve a king who knows me, but I don't know him. I am unlearned and lonely. I have intimate friends. I have a life worth living. Lights in the trees outside remind me of holidays past. I try not to remember holidays past. I am sitting in an arm chair. Warm on the outside. Cold on the outer side. I miss you. Sometimes I hate you. I wish you still cared about me. I know and am learning to understand. One day things will be better. What if they're not? I hope they are. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I have all these things I don't deserve? Should I make myself suffer more to make sure I'm worthy of them? Thoughts get complicated fast. Thoughts get longer fast. This is not poetic. I need to live the "Jesus Prayer". I am tired. What if I don't get into a good grad school? No one to blame but myself. Reading is nice. I miss alot of things. And alot of people. The things don't miss me back. Maybe the people don't either. Don't think like that. I should go home? Where is that really? I know where I am sleeping tonight.

I still have a great many lingering complaints about Orthodoxy. A friend of mine at UNM is in the process of flirting with Roman Catholicism right now. We have a good many conversations. On a given day you may hear us shouting back and forth to one another,

--“FILOQUE!”
--“NON-FILOQUE!”

or metting each other with our given Paschal greetings

--“Christus resurrexit”
--“Alithos Anesti”

or vice versa

“Christos Anesti”
“Vere resurrexit”

We do this in one sense to distinguish ourselves from our own personal “flirtations with apostolic traditions” (his words). In another sense we’re celebrating unity. You see, we’re both great supporters of Ecumenism even though we have little claim or little at stake to either the Orthodox or Catholic churches.

MG published an entry (wether intentionally or not I’m not sure) with responses to some unorganized thought’s I have published in the past summarizing in brief why I have chosen to not go through with a “conversion” to Orthodoxy. It is not my intention to respond to MG at this time but rather to simply note some of my observations. This is not a highly organized academic criticism just thinking out loud as it were. I also gladly welcome responses and dissenting thoughts.

This is how it seems to me the conversation is going.

The Catholic (and by the Catholic I mean the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox/ et. al. who consider themselves members of the true visible church as verified by apostolic succession among other criteria.) says something like this in conversation with a non-Catholic (By non-Catholic I generally mean protestant and/or Evangelical. I realize there are a great many people who are not apart of an “apostolic tradition” who do not consider themselves Protestants, like myself, but because of the kink-fetish we have in the West with classifying things, especially people, “non-Catholics” could be generalized to mean what The Catholic means by “protestant”.)

C: I am apart of the true Church.
N: Well I’m apart of The Church too.
C: Oh yeah? What do you have?
N: I have The Holy Spirit.
C: Yeah? We have that. And . . .?
N: . . .
C: . . .
*Both Walk Away*

And this is where the conversation ends. Of course there are a great many nuanced articles written about the validity of Apostolic Succession, Tradition and Holy Scripture, Grace in and out of the Church, among others things. And I admit that this is an oversimplified (and in some ways bastardized) summary of the arguments, but it is nevertheless all I can hear in my mind when someone asks me to clarify the different positions. And I can not justify conversion for me or for my aforementioned friend if this is what it boils down to. Of course the Catholic will respond that there are a great many highly important truths to be won or lost based on the outcome of this very conversation and that of course it boils down to much much more than what I have claimed it boils down to. What if Christ isn’t present in the Roman eucharist, or in the Eastern eucharist? That’s a pretty important question isn’t it , especially for The Catholic (for the Romans, for the Byzantines, and the two together)? What’s more, what if Christ is present in the bread and wine I take every Sunday (as I pray He is)?

Does this conversation really end? I know it’s ended for my Orthodox friends. I know it’s ended for my Roman Catholic friends. So?

Yesterday was a pretty sucky day. I woke up just a little later than i needed to get to my math class on time. and traffic was moving just a little slower than it usually does. I made it to school mostly on time, but i parked at a meter instead of my usual parking place at the BSU. I got to class just as the Professor did. I hadn't gotten my most recent test back since I missed class the day that he handed them back. prof said i could come to office right after class to get it. that couldn't happen due to the constraints of the afforementioned meter. oh well.

my mom called me up after class to let my know that my father and grand father could really use my help "right now" closing the pool. I left school where I was enjoying a conversation among other things with some friends to help. I got home right at noon, then just sat. until 3:30 when it was time to put the winter cover on the pool. I was really frustrated that I had been inconvenienced (prideful i know) for mostly nothing. After sitting for a couple of hours not doing anything I asked when they would actually be needing my help. I was met with demeaning shouts among other things. I wanted to leave. i even gathered up my stuff. After praying for a little while i decided that I should just grow up and help them anyway. So i did. One of my family members, the one who had shouted the most hurtful things, apologized. I just rolled my eyes. They laughed it off.

Every time I start to think that maybe my family is changing. maybe something is actually helping and we can have a good relationship something like this happens and I get so angry. I tell myself again to never trust them for anything, to just keep my head as low as i can until it won't matter anymore.

It wasn't like this in california. When I didn't have to actually interact with my family on a daily basis, things were great! We called once a week a gave an update. I just remembered all of the really great things that my family has done. When we're apart we don't get in eachother's way. But as soon as we gain any sort of proximity to each other (we have been in close proximity to one another my whole life save one fall semester so long ago.) things go down hill. I keep trying to swallow my pride, but the hardest part is not swallowing my pride, rather, it's being met with absolutely no reciprocation (a great source of frustration for many of my (seemingly) strained friendships). This is not an excuse. it's still my job to do things as well as i can, to be as humble as I can be. it's just harder than it sounds. and it sounds pretty hard.