12-17-03 9:07 PM

Well, its all over. First semester I mean.

I completed all of my finals with what seems like reasonable success, although I did not match my straight 100s on the math and physics midterms. Oh well ... I think I did well enough.

Well, being that I don't really want to talk about school anymore, I have to convey the story of the most amazing item I have ever found. To quote many many idiots: EVAR!

So, Jedwin and I were walking through Chinatown in the driving rain - don't ask - and I see something in a pile of garbage on the side of the road that catches my eye. I look closely, and cannot believe what I am seeing. In the garbage - remember, in Chinatown - is an huge empty drum labeled MONOSODIUM GLUTAMATE / MONO GLUTAMATE DE SODIUM / PURITY 99.0% UP / NET WT.: 100 LBS. Yes folks, it seems that the lovely people of Vedan Enterprise Corp. of Taiwan manufacture huge fucking drums of MSG, the toxic food additive, and sell it to filthy death mongers in Chinatown who put it in your food.

I was so amazed at this find that I promptly emptied the rotting garbage in it, and took it home. So now it is mine ... as soon as I get in reach of a digital camera I shall post pictures.

It really is unbelievable that this object exists. Ridiculous.

The moral of the story, is, of course, don't ever eat Chinese food. It is MSG soaked dog flesh.

In other news, for those of you who care, I'm going to be skiing from the Friday to next Thursday, so ... um ... don't talk to me and such.

12-8-03 12:14 AM

Well, I am supposed to be writing my term paper for Con West right now, being that is due in about 11 hours. However, I took a substantial break from this to brows an interesting site that I stumbled across while perusing nypost.com. The site is called www.overlawyered.com, and, predictably, deals with the need for reform in the legal system.

The most interesting sections, at least for me, are those dealing with political correctness and those dealing with sexual harassment. For the latter, there is a section called "Fear of Flirting", which chronicles the various ridiculous laws, lawsuits, and ruling pertaining to this particular issue.

Other than the obvious conclusion that the current state of affairs is ridiculous, I have come to believe that if anyone my age wants to find a lifelong mate, they must do so NOW. Let me explain.

The reason that I have come to this conclusion is that I believe that the best way to meet a person with whom you will be happy is in a professional or intellectual environment; if you meet a person in an environment specifically set up for the intermingling of singles, chances are that you will really be meeting that person's facade, and will not be able to draw any meaningful conclusion about that person themselves. However, if you meet a person in an environment where their primary concern is something else, the chances of what you see being what you get are greatly improved.

However, the current state of harassment law basically makes it illegal to attempt to kindle a relationship in the workplace. Advice givers of all sorts tell us that if we are enamored with a person, we should approach her, since the worst thing that could happen is that she will say no; however, these days, that no might very well be accompanied by a successful lawsuit. After all, by definition, if she says no then your proposition was an unwanted sexual advance.

Therefore, once you venture into the professional world, the only place where you can safely approach a person in search of a romantic relationship is in a place expressly designed for recreation - the image of a bar or party comes to mind. However, since you are only getting a very superficial impression of the person at such an event, the relationship that ensues is unlikely to be fruitful; perhaps this is the reason that most relationships are frivolous and short-lived.

The point is: being that transition into the professional world inevitably leads to a decreased probability of establishing a meaningful, long-term relationship, I suggest that we should use our time in the academic world to do so. While we still benefit from seeing members of the opposite sex in non-contrived situations we do so without the accompanying risk of litigation that will manifest itself in the professional world.

As a corollary, if you are lucky enough to find, at this relatively early age, someone with whom you would be comfortable spending your life with, logic would behoove you not to forgo this person in search of someone better. Even on the off chance that there really is someone out there much better for you, the legal system of our country dictate that you will not be able to find this person, being that the only places that you will be looking will be trashy singles bars.

Cheesy? Yes. But underlying logic that is hard to argue against. Besides, this is only a general, statistical type of analysis; it is just something to keep in the back of your mind, not something on which to base individual decisions.

12-3-03 7:27 PM

Due to some ridiculousness which I am about to expose, I received an A- instead of an A in genomics.

You see, one of my final papers got a 25/50. That's an F, for those of you who don't get it. Why did I get an F on half of my final? Well, unfortunately, my genomics professor, who has otherwise been excellent, severely disappointed me by completely failing to grasp my argument.

The point of the paper, as it were, was to write a "letter to the president" about scientific issues, and to make recommendations about what should be done to help the state of science. To understand the rest of my argument, you really have to read my paper. It's pretty good, and classically "Henry", so I think you'll enjoy it. I'll write the rest of this update on the assumption that you have read it.

Well, as you can see, the point of my whole paper was that, to help the state of science, we need to reform the fiber of our society so that it becomes unacceptable to have an indefensible opinion about something, and then go debate your side of the issue. Albeit in a polemical style, I satisfy the requirements of the prompt. However, my professor failed to grasp this. Her argument for failing me was that I did not make any constructive suggestions about specific issues (global warming, genetics, etc.).

But I obviously could not have made such suggestions in the framework of my argument! According to my thesis, I cannot give recommendations about specific scientific issues for hte very reason that I am not an expert in those specific issues; to do so would have been blatantly hypocritical. (By the way, I do realize that according to my argument I could not have written the paper itself in good faith, because I don't have any scientific evidence to back up my assertions; however, I had to take the liberty of declaring myself an expert in at least one thing, just so that the paper could be written ... after all, it wasn't really a letter to the president.)

The point is that, regardless of how she justified her argument, my professor failed me on this assignment because she found my argument offensive and incomprehensible, not because I failed to complete the assignment.