derivatives

seeing me at the gym, you might not know that i'm at my lowest weight since high school. knowing where i am is nearly meaningless unless you know where i've been. and how much work it's taken to get here. describing this point isn't enough - you need to know the slope of the tangent to this curve.

maybe calculus is my favourite branch of math because it's about the rate of progress. when you take the derivative, you are a historian and a prognosticator. you care about the big and medium and small pictures, all at the same time.

i love that.

blog mocking art imitating life

i track my starbucks visits. not the number or frequency, but the locations. i know i'm not the only one! which makes this even funnier: that is priceless.

help me get this monkey off my back!

FACT: Vervet monkeys use different alarm calls to warn each other of nearby predators, depending on whether the danger comes from land or from the air.


LSAT QUESTION: Which one of the following, if true, contributes most to an explanation of the behavior of vervet monkeys described above?

A: By varying the pitch of its alarm call, a vervet monkey can indicate the number of predators approaching.

B: Different land-based predators are responsible for different numbers of vervet monkey deaths.

C: No predators that pose a danger to vervet monkeys can attack both from land and from the air.

D: Vervet monkeys avoid land-based predators by climbing trees but avoid predation from the air by diving into foliage.

E: Certain land-based predators feed only on vervet monkeys, whereas ever predators that attacks vervet monkeys from the air feeds on many different animals.

LSAT INSTRUCTOR: Why do my students always want to argue with me about this question?!?!

lsat 101: conditional statements

welcome to lsat 101!

today we'll be covering conditional statements. consider the following:

if it rains, i will bring an umbrella.
this means that if you see me without an umbrella, it must not have rained. let's symbolize that:

rain -> umbrella
~umbrella -> ~rain

now this one:

"only experts can recognize a phony work of art."
that means that *if* you can recognize a phony, *then* you must be an expert.

recognize phony -> expert
~expert -> ~recognize phony

now, if you're like me, you watch "glee."
(like m -> watch "glee")

and this week they sang "only the good die young"
if you're even more like me, you immediately think of the conditional statement this billy joel tune implies:

die young -> good
~good -> ~die young

miranda abroad

thanks to the wonders of television and film, we've all probably heard police officers informing a suspect's of his/her miranda rights as the latter is arrested. thanks to a landmark case in 1966, police are required to say something along the lines of:

"you have the right to remain silent. anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. you have the right to speak to an attorney. if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed to you. do you understand these rights as they have been read to you?"

that most common formulation is, of course, american. it's also not the only permissible description of those rights - i.e. if the cop goes off-script, as long as the above is clear and the suspect is asked whether he/she understands, it counts as legitimate mirandizing. so what about here in canada? in my cursory research, this caught my eye:

"while section 7 of the charter guarantees the right to remain silent, canadian law does not entitle the criminal suspect to have counsel present during the course of an interrogation. once a suspect has asserted their right to counsel, the police are obliged to hold off in attempting to obtain evidence until the suspect has had a reasonable opportunity to contact legal counsel, however suspects do not have the right to have counsel present during the questioning.

"also, in canada even if the suspect emphatically asserts his decision to remain silent, the police may continue to interrogate him." (from wikipedia) so, they can keep asking, he just doesn't have to answer.

in germany, "though the courts may not draw inference from the complete silence of the accused in any stage of criminal proceedings, inference may be drawn if the accused is selectively silent." (also from wikipedia)

while grateful that i live in a country that values these basic rights, i think it's fascinating how each state tweaks the details.

lawpunnery!

you know you've been reading a lot (too much?) about scotus decisions vis-a-vis the establishment and free exercise clauses of the first amendment when you get a hankering for lemon shebert.

good grammar can improve airport security!

while waiting in a long, long airport security line at lester b. pearson international airport today, i saw a sign warning unruly passengers that they may "be denied boarding and/or prosecuted."

oh, and/or. apparently, you're not as straightforward as i imagined you to be.

i'm pretty sure this particular sign used "and/or" wrong, because it implies that there are two possible punishments for being unruly: (being prosecuted) OR (being prosecuted and being denied boarding.) thaaaat's fairly silly. if they're going to prosecute you, i really doubt they'll let you board! but that's just my gut talkin'.

the sign should probably read: "unruly passengers may be prosecuted and/or denied boarding." subtext: being a jackass won't help you get on the plane faster. not even if you're a cabinet minister.

don't you dare let yourself believe that this issue doesn't apply to you! pondering such grammatical nuances has effectively diverted and distracted me as i've stood in long, long airport security lines. were it not for those distractions i may have become unruly!

and we all know what happens when you become unruly in an airport. or we would, if the sign was clearer.

:)

from way across the ocean, my little sissy asked me why i was smiling. in response, i offer this partial list of my reasons for glee:

- haircuts
- sushi
- defenses and convocations
- job postings and auditions
- pub trivia successes
- a mom who takes care of me when i sacrifice part of my finger to the mandolin* gods
- a boyfriend who listens and is teaching me when to stop talking
- friends who have big! changes! going on in their lives
- the impending return of little sissy and her husband!
- seeing nyc for the first time soon
- big sissy's wedding in june!
- cats
- diet coke
- phone calls with michelle
- apples and peanut butter
- a pink sweater
- dibs

oooh... dibs! see ya!

* the vegetable slicer, not the musical instrument

how to succeed at pub trivia - an introduction

i need feedback on this lesson, please!
----------------------------------------

before you can hope to succeed at pub trivia, you must first understand what success means in a pub trivia context. now, there may be some people who show up to a bar on a weeknight with no intention of answering any questions correctly. and there may well be others who will refuse to accept "gangster's paradise" as the title of coolio's song from "dangerous minds" because, actually, it's "gangsta's paradise." but the vast majority of attendees strive for an evening that is filled with lots of check marks in their answer booklets and plenty of fun with friends.

in short, success at pub trivia means having fun and getting questions right.

1) your team: you will be spending about two hours huddled over an answer booklet with two or three teammates. remember: the more well-rounded your team is, the more likely it is that you'll be able to handle questions on such diverse subjects as history, sports, pop culture, language, geography, and religion. on the other hand, you will be spending two hours with these people! recruit a team that is defined by camaraderie, diversity, and an ability to resolve conflict quickly.

speaking of teams, which north american cities have more that one major league baseball team?

2) your prep: read the newspaper, browse wikipedia, play sporcle, and watch "the simpsons," if you enjoy doing those things already, but remember that the point of pub trivia is to make use of the seemingly useless - hence trivial - facts your brain has clung onto. ideally, playing the game makes you more curious and more present to the mundane details of everyday life. it does not require you to pursue an additional degree.

speaking of research, the library in alexandria is the oldest in the world, but it is no longer active. in which country would you find the oldest active library in the world?

3) your answers: talk it out with your team, but err on the side of going with your gut instinct. if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. but if you ignore your instinct and it turns out that instinct was right, it may ruin your evening.

speaking of your gut, crohn's disease was first documented not by the american gastroenterologist from whom it takes its name but in 1904 by a surgeon from which european country?

4) your guesses: there will often come a time when neither your collective knowledge bank nor deductive reasoning produces an answer in which your team is confident. usually, there's no penalty for guessing, so here are my tips for that. mara-approved guesses come in two species: a) wild and b) tame.

a) the wild guess is so crazy that whoever is marking your booklet might think you were joking. on the other hand, if it turns out you are randomly right, your grader will be very impressed
b) the tame guess, while possibly wrong, will never inspire anyone to judge you or assume you are an ill-informed twit. if it's about a female american poet, and you have no idea, you might as well guess emily dickinson.

speaking of questions requiring a guess, what is halle berry's middle name?

my third and fourth points demonstrate that there's a close relationship between the two prongs of the pub trivia fork: it's hard to have fun when you keep kicking yourself for not going with your gut or when your ego is bruised. follow my tips and you'll prevent those catastrophes.

what you must remember, however, is that it is possible to have fun even when you don't win. in the final analysis, there are no tricks to getting every answer right. as my mentor in pub trivia once said, "there's no such thing as easy questions or hard questions - there are only answers you know and answers you don't." succeeding at pub trivia means allowing yourself to celebrate the answers you knew and the answers you pulled out of the air... and being surrounded by people who won't dwell on the answers you missed.

highlight the following to find out the answers to the trivia questions!

1) there are three such cities: the los angeles angels of anaheim and dodgers, the new york mets and yankees, and the chicago cubs and white sox.

2) egypt - st. catherine’s monastery in the sinai is home to the oldest active library in the world!

3) poland - his name was antoni lesniowski

4) halle - her first name is maria.

the great cola challenge of 2010: yes, we can or bottle!

what do you get when you combine eight types of cola with two nerds? a homemade cola taste test, patterned after the pepsi challenge!

idris and i are both loyal fans of coca-cola products: he's committed to the classic variety, while i have a mild addiction to diet coke. but would these preferences hold true in a double-blind taste test?!

we acquired a bottle or can of each of the following: pepsi, diet pepsi, diet caffeine-free pepsi, cocacola, diet coke, coke zero, compliments cola, and life brand diet cola.

using eight identical glasses and twice as many post-its, we achieved this:

i numbered the glasses and then, in private, wrote down which type of cola each number represented. i then left the area while idris rearranged the glasses and labeled them with letters. he also kept his code-key to himself.

in order to ensure that the test results were untainted, we did the taste-testing separately.

as we sipped from each of the glasses we tried to answer the following questionnaire:

a) which was your favourite?
b) which was your least favourite?
c) which was sweetest?
d) which tasted most like chemicals?
e) which ones were diet/zero? (5)
f) which one was caffeine-free?
g) which ones were coca-cola products? (3)
h) which ones were pepsi products? (3)
i) which ones were store brand? (2)

our answers were all over the map. we both correctly identified three of the five diet drinks, and i picked out the diet caffeine-free pepsi. diet pepsi fooled idris, while coke zero fooled me!

(i also knew which one was the store-brand cola, but that was a cheat: it was purchased last and was noticeably warmer than the others. by the time idris drank, the difference in temperature was probably negligible.)

while neither of us did a bang-up job of figuring out which drink was which, we did eventually each choose a favourite. the results, after this drumroll....



idris chose coke and i chose diet coke!

tada! sweet vindication!

word to the wise: if you want to recreate this, i'd suggest sticking with fewer options. the tastes are actually quite similar from cola to cola, so eight is, well, more than enough.

also, if you can swing this, buy cans and keep them all in the fridge for 24 hours before embarking on this adventure. that way, you can't cheat and when you're done you won't be swimming in quite so much pop you never intend to drink.

plans for the future: this might be worth repeating with other combinations. for instance, i arranged a quick follow-up test with just the colas, and idris was then able to distinguish between the coca-cola, the pepsi, and the store brand cola. you could also do one with kosher coke and regular, the former of which uses cane sugar while the latter uses high fructose corn syrup. or coke, diet coke, and coke zero. but, i repeat: the fewer samples, the better read you'll get on the differences between them.

joyful, joyful...

i know this is terribly novel, but i may be addicted to glee. this undoubtedly comes as a shock, given that i cry *every* time i watch sister act. (granted, this show is more in the style of the sequel.)

anywho, it's superclever, the music is sweet, and jane lynch is a genius. i especially dig that rachel works out to "break my stride" because, as some of you may remember, i do, too.

additionally, i need to work out a normal sleep schedule.

and so, goodnight unto you all.

putting my red queen face on

this hallowe'en, inspired by tim burton's new take on alice in wonderland and countless youtube how-to videos, i decided to recreate(ish) the look of the red queen, as played by helena bonham carter.

enjoy the step-by-step!



two hours later, all made-up, i just added a regal costume (all stuff i had in the house) and a red wig. oh, and a crown and a card-deck purse i made myself!



and then i went off to my very important date!

life and pi

have i mentioned that cori and james are getting married in two months? on march 14th? which is pi day? so, here's my thing: which of the following corollaries is the funniest?
a) their wedding is gonna be rad!!!
b) see? commitment is irrational!
c) their marriage will last forever, never repeating itself... new adventures always around the corner :)

do they give awards for this?

i just used logarithms to try to determine how many israelites escaped during the exodus/how many kids people had back then. the problem is, you need to know one of those for sure to figure out the other.

anyway, math and bible do mix.

and mara is a geek.

to turn that into an update: mara is still a geek.

unsure

saw soulpepper's production of "the real thing" on saturday; it's shaping up to be a tom stoppard summer. i may have to reread "arcadia" before leaving toronto.

parents are flying away to cairo for ten days. get this: my mom told me what to tell the papers if she dies in a terrorist attack. not kidding. i'll post that once she and dad are back in canada.

before you get yourself into legal trouble, note well: billy blanks owns the rights to the phrase "now you know." i know this because i read the copyright and trademark information on my tae-bo tapes. and now you know. D'OH!

quote de jour (from stoppard, bien sur):
don't write it, just say it.

unquantifiable

"so, how much do you *really* miss calgary, mara?"

"so much that when i passed the 10 volume set of gerhard kittel's theological dictionary of the new testament, i gave it an affectionate caress."

or maybe that just means i'm more of a geek than most of us realized.

edited to add:
never mind . . . i may have given a berenstain bears book a similar affectionate caress. maybe i'm just longing. not because this is so bad, but because in life i just can't seem to have all the good in the same room at the same time. and sometimes that's hard.

"Hips don't lie, but Men and Beasts do" ~ lewkhira

in timeline, paul walker says, "we've got 650 years of knowledge on these guys. if we put our heads together, there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to get out of here and home in 20 minutes."

after all, what does the past have to teach us, anyway? we are by definition more progressive, more advanced, more inclusive, more intelligent, better equiped to do anything. but it's not just arrogance, you know?

there's a resentment that builds up, too. we inherit problems and feel try to atone for the sins of our fathers, and are so bitter against them for leaving us such a legacy.

what, you could have done better? look around! we do it over and over. every generation inherits a fallen world and, just to make sure, we all take turns killing it all over again. we have no moral high ground to stand on, friends. so, if it's not actual superiority, why this attitude?

in everything that rises must converge by flannery o'connor, a young man in the urban south deeply resents his mother's racism. why does her son respond with such violent contempt? the real reason?

he had wonderful memories of the old farm house he'd spent a childhood weekends in. for generation upon generation it had served as the home of plantation and slave owners. that was his family legacy . . . until the world grew up and they eventually gave up the property.

he lost something he loved, simply because it had been gained and maintained through dispicable means. the horror of southern treatment of blacks effectively tainted the most beautiful part of his childhood.

he hates his mom because he desperately wants the gift . . . but can't stomach accepting it because of how it was bought.

"he never spoke of it without contempt or thought of it without longing."

procrastination loves company

ahem.

i feel compelled to supply the world with a report (complete with pictures) of the events of this morning:

i was awakened at 6:45 by my cell phone alarm, and then re-awakened five minutes later by the incessant ringing of our doorbell. the ras were buying everyone (read: the 25 people who got up!) breakfast, so kat and i hurried to get dressed. the wake-up procedure was assisted by me playing "taps" on my euphonium,with mixed success (read: i don't know how to play "taps", actually!)

smitty's not having been warned of their impending doom, we ended up waiting over an hour for food, so i missed ethics class. and, while i heard (from kat, who chose class over breakfast) that the discussion was interesting, i don't know that i mind having missed it. it's been getting on my nerves, and not for the reason ethics classes are supposed to. :)

anyway, i resolved to spend the remainder of the day focussing on my essay on jonathan edwards, whom i adore. (resolution #2: stop falling in love with dead guys. seriously.) BUT i was stolen away from my much-loved essay (which wept bitterly at my departure) and dragged to canadian bible society and pilgrim's. to drool over copies of the septuagint and be inspired to learn hebrew and latin because, well, i think my geek rating may be slipping.

and, can i add, ross and i laughed at deaf people. at least, at their bibles. apart from clarifying that we meant no offense, i refuse to give details, as they might somehow mitigate our behaviour. suffice it to say, it doesn't much matter how we behave in bible bookstores, since everyone else knows about Jesus anyway. and since we only behave ourselves when witnessing is an issue, we're in the clear. phew.

kevin having been kind enough to drop kat and me off at home, i lay down for nap. logical. but it didn't work, despite the fact that i was - and am - exhausted, and i found myself working on my essay for an hour. then i came here, to the computer lab which is my second home. inspired by ross's avatars of his friends, kevin and i proceeded to play for an hour and a half.

so, this is me, kat, ross and kevin. for the record, the ross pic is kevin's creation, and he had every right to be wasting his time making avatars.

unlike myself.

if you're looking for the same kind of fun - and here i'm talking about the avatars, not mocking the deaf or perusing God-related books - go here.

assorted loves

A. ROMANCE
as part of our continuing pursuit of the official title of most single people on the planet - a goal we take very seriously indeed, i assure you! - my dear friend skoch and i decided to come up with lists of "significant other non-negotiables", to narrow the field as we each search for our soulmates or whatever.

now, skoch's list ain't online yet - i'd be surprised if he's written one down, actually, given how busy he's been with . . . stuff. in any case, i have busily been composing my lists. why the use of the plural, you ask? well, you see, there are various categories of criteria, perhaps more depending on what sort of geek you are. i'm a geek of the highest order, but i still only managed to compose four separate lists. here, then, are two of them:

negotiable:
1) knows the names of all the members of the seaver family, including the foster son
2) can sing any of the four "solos" in the monstar theme song from "space jam"
3) is giddy about greek
4) has read something by victor hugo or jane austen, and doesn't mind talking about it
5) knows pi to seven digits
6) buys flowers for his mom for "no special reason"
7) comes up with a story/joke/question to liven things up when conversations die
8) makes good sand castles
9) knows what the "cone of silence" is
10) regularly quotes: a) invader zim b) st:tng c) "adventures in odyssey"

non-negotiable:
1) knows what captain jean-luc picard's favourite beverage is (swoon if he enjoys it himself)
2) owns the soundtracks to at least five movies
3) plays with numbers for fun (double swoon if he does is without even noticing)
4) knows what the integral of 2(pi)r is, and why it's relevant
5) can rhyme with delicacy and creativity
6) has read "le petit prince" and loved it
7) picks movies to watch based on cast/director/producer/writer, and not plot
8) owns a t-shirt that he "made" himself
9) knows the next three books he plans to read
10) regularly quotes: a) scripture - but only if it's done humorously b) himself c) me

B. FRIENDSHIP
speaking of skoch, back in the fall he started a "band" called "divided". obviously, it's stellar. so, please listen to his stuff. he and josiah are amazing . . . and half the res is involved in their back-up vocals and instrumentation. btw, "joy" is my favourite song. "just a friend" is also super, even though it's pretty much a cover . . . with some uber-interesting edits.

lest you think skoch is the only friend i have (:P) i should mention: lately, my friends have been simply awesome. deniss is one of them. he listens to me and takes me for walks when i'm crying. janet is another one. she tells me when i hurt her and helps me love her better. friends are great.

C. FAMILY

'nuff said.

dalmations?

you know i love stealing stuff from other sites and blogs:
frederich buechner, whom i love, said that your call is to: "the intersection of your own deep gladness and the world's deep hunger." isn't that beautiful? i stole it from this article about life dreams. this seems to be a theme for me this week.

oh, confession for today: totally made up a guestlist for my wedding. isn't that NUTS? it easily had 70 people on it. and that's with some paring down! the "will cry if they're not there list" was much shorter. i. am. a. geek.