Gabealpert's Blog

Gremlins

gabealpert — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:17:05 +0000

Well it’s looking increasingly likely I won’t be getting my data back, my computer has started working but I haven’t been able to access any information from my old hard drives. I’m heading to the DoIT help desk today to see if they can help but the situation is looking increasingly bleak. I’m going to try and contact people today and get what notes I can but I am wondering if this will affect my grades on the final. In addition, I can’t find my ipod, I think electronics hate me recently, I think it’s gremlins, they’ve moved off of airplanes and now are screwing with electronics, mine in particular it seems. On the lighter side, I had a wonderful thanksgiving, I got to see my parents and my pets, it’s funny, I was happier to see my pets cause my parents didn’t really seem gone, as I talked to them often through the phone and texting. My pets were also happy to se me, it’s nice seeing that they remembered me. I also saw most of both sides of my family and it was great to see all of them after having missed Rosh Hashana with them. Anyway, wish me luck at doIT!

Thanksgiving!

gabealpert — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:37:20 +0000

I am so excited, after the next few days, I get to go home for the first time in 3 months for thanksgiving! It’s going to be awesome! I’m so excited to see my family, and my pets, and my house, and everything. I really wish I didn’t have so much work to do in the mean time, oh well, wish me luck everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!

Computer Fail

gabealpert — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:37:49 +0000

This has to be some sort of cruel joke, just a week or so after we finished that “no social networking” assaignment, my computer breaks. One hardrive is broken and the other has a corrupt operating system. And, at best, I won’t have things up and running until thursday after a good deal of work, at worst, I’ve lost all of my notes for the year, -sigh-. That and everything else I’ve done for school this year. Just having this happen after watching a movie about living without a computer is just really, poignant. I don’t want to say ironic cause it’s not the opposite. Anyway, at least I’ve got the computers in the technology learning center in my dorm, otherwise, I’d just be completely screwed, I just wonder what to do about notes, as my handwriting is such that taking notes by hand may be a non-option.

Dual Shootings

gabealpert — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:37:09 +0000

I was disturbed by reading about 2 shootings that happened recently. One was a man in Orlando who shot 6 people and a soldier in Fort Hood Texas opened fire on a large number of his comrades. I wonder if these two shootings had anything to do with each other or if it was just a coincidence, I’ve heard about “copycat” shootings and I have to wonder about this, but I’m going to hope this is just a terrible coincidence and these will be two isolated incidents.

Steven Pinker

gabealpert — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:48:59 +0000

I saw an awesome lecture by steven pinker today. He, for those of you who don’t know, is a cognative scientist who studies linguistics. He explained many of the interesting peculiarities of language such as “Why are curse words offensive and why do we use them?” ”Why do we say we are underwater, when we are, in fact surrounded by water? And why can a House burn up and down at the same time,” and “Why do we use euphamsisms” I might explain from what I remember of what those are but it’d be much better if everyone just read his book. I think I may attempt to do so after having seen the lecture. Also he showed a great example of whats called the “stroop test.” Which is where you are asked to say why color ink in colors are printed in, it’s fairly easy, as long as the color ink is the same as the color the letters spell. But when “black” is spelled in red ink, or “yellow” in blue ink, it takes you a second to think of what ink color it is because of the word. He found the same thing occurs if the letters spell curse words. This was important cause it shows how our reaction to curse words is involuntary and how we can’t ignore it even if it is irrelevant, as it is when you’re trying to say the color of the letters composing the word.

Cosmos

gabealpert — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:07:48 +0000

I started watching the documentary mini-series “Cosmos” by Carl Sagan. So far I am amazed. While some of the effects look dated, because well, they are, they still manage some excellent looking visusals. This is to say nothing of the interesting subject matter. But more than anything else, I am impressed by the mood generated by the documentary. The ability of it to generate a sense of wonder is just amazing. I absolutely love the combination the music and visuals that really show how awe-inspiring the universe is. To anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it, I highly suggest you start watching. The only thing I can think of that detracts from it is Carl Sagan’s voice, which sounds kind of like a mixture of Barney the dinosaur, and William Shatner, which, while incredibly funny, can sometimes make it harder to take seriously that it should be.

Gaddafi Duck?

gabealpert — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:42:33 +0000

For those of you who didn’t know, on september 23, 2009, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi address the UN general assembly. He was allocated 15 minutes for his speech, but yet he managed to somehow speak for 96 minutes. And what a speech it was, I was just flabbergasted at the insanity of it. I have not been this amused by any insane international leader since Hugo Chavez went and called George W. Bush the devil and said his presence brought with it the smell of brimstone. Gaddafi, seemingly competing for title of ”nuttiest world leader” he accused the UN security council of “terrorism,” which is quite an awkward thing to say when adressing people, many of which are on the security council. He also accused corporations of creating and spreading the swine flu in order to sell more vaccines, something that makes me think he’s watched “Mission Impossible” a few too many times. But strangely enough, he reffered to Obama as “our son” and did so multiple times. All I have to say is that I can’t wait to see what the birthers do when they latch onto this. Seriously. But the most amazing thing was that, in the middle of the speech one of his translators walked off and had to be replaced, I cannot figure out though if this was due to him speaking for so long as to actually wear down the man’s voice to nothing or simply than no one could even be made to put up with that amount bs. Such other jewels from the speech are accusations that Europe “hates the jews,” alleged that Jack Ruby was an israeli and was involved in some sort of conspiricy with the Kennedy assasination, and alledged that the killing of martin luther king was in fact a conspiricy and there should be a panel to figure out who killed him. For more of this craziness, check out this site: http://www.btinternet.com/~davidbeaumont/msf/gadafi.htm for a transcript of the speech.

Vaccines

gabealpert — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:33:07 +0000

It’s flu season again and with the flu comes flu vaccines. I’m currently looking to sign up for the current one. Vaccines have been in the news recently due to the new AIDS vaccine announced recently. Apparently, it has a 33% effectiveness rating, a rating much much higher than the current 0% boasted by our current non-existant one. Hopefully this new thing will pan out in larger studies as it only was announced with a much smaller study involved.

The one thing that makes me angrier than anything else would be those that talk negatively about vaccines. First off, is the argument that vaccines cause autism, this argument not only has no biological plausibility but has been debunked mulitple times. Even so, here is the general logic. People will take their kid to be vaccinated and around that same time, the child will begin to show signs of autism. The link between the two is the idea that thiomerosal, a mercury based preservative (to stop unwanted bateria and fungi from growing in the vaccine) that was used in vaccines caused mercury poisoning and resulted in the child developing autism. Alarmed by the idea that mercury, some types of which, in large doses, can accumulate in the body and cause poisoning, was in vaccines. Poor communication by the government about the specifics of this caused people to be misinformed and became quite alarmist.

The problem is, there are several things wrong with this. First, and most importantly, is that the amount of mercury in thiomersal is far below any health organizations idea of what is a toxic amount. Secondly, people eroneously confused methyl mercury, which is excreted from the body very slowly, and therefore more likely to build up in the body and cause problems, with ethylmercury, the type of mercury contained in thiomerosal, which is excreted much faster and therefore much less dangerous. Secondly, autism generally becomes recognizable in children, you guessed it, around the same time vaccines are given to children, this causes many people to come to the logical, but completely erroneous conclusion, that the vaccines were related to the autism rather than it being a coincidence.

Unfortunately, many people, still believe in this myth and there have been multiple cases of children dying of preventable diseases because of lack of vaccination due to concerned, but misguided parents. For a good article about this issue check here http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/13/1278 with the new england journal of medicine. In addition, this vaccine furor continues even now when, in the US thimerosal has

Another unfortunately thing about people’s attitudes against vacciens is that, in the case of the flu, they don’t need to take them. They think “i’m healthy, the flu won’t hurt me,” and for some of them, this may, in fact, be true. The problem is, each person who doesn’t get a vaccine comprimises what is called “herd immunity.” Herd immunity is a term referring to the effect that if a large majority of a population is immune to a disease, any one case of disease will be unable to spread as the infected person will be surrounded by people that the disease cannot transmit to causing it to not be a problem. So, even if you are not an “at risk” person for the flu, like a child or pregnant woman, get it anyway, because by not doing so, you allow the flu to spread to people who may be hurt much worse by it than you will.

Homesickness

gabealpert — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:35:33 +0000

I always found it funny that when I’m away from home the things I miss most are my pets. I love my family very much, but my pets aways seem to be the things I miss most. I think it’s because I can’t interact with them any other way than being in person with them due to their inability to speak over the phone. I wonder who else thinks the same thing. Well, sorry for the short post, zero people who are reading this, but I don’t really have much in terms of inane ramblings this week. Oh! Wait, I just remembered, Iran is trying give venezuela some sort of uranium mining hints and such, it’s really strange because Hugo Chavez, despite being crazy, has never really been crazy in any way that comes across as anything more than extraordinarily amusing, whereas, basically all of Iran’s government, is also insane, but insane in a “I really hope they don’t go commit mass murder if I turn my back on them for 5 seconds” kind of way, just seems strange as they seem to have nothing in common other than disliking america, and I think chavez even kind of likes obama.

The Rock Revolution

gabealpert — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:43:05 +0000

I would like to dedicate this blog entry to the good people at Harmonix (makers of Guitar hero 1 and two, as well as rock band 1, 2 and The Beatles) and to a much lesser extent, the people at Neversoft (makers of of Guitar hero 3, World Tour, and 5). I am constantly surrounded by music I cannot stand, often from semi-musical rap and hiphop groups that seem to believe shouting swear words, threats, and boasts into a microphone is music. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that about the entire genres of rap and hip-hop, just a very large portion of it seems to be consistent with the stereotype of glorification of criminals, sexism, violence, and anti-intellectualism. So it is because of this that I say thank you to the good people at the above companies.

Over the last few years I’ve seen a huge spike in interest in a lot of music that I, personally, consider to be very good. Not only has much of the classic rock of the 60′s and 70′s been saved but as has many great metal bands and alternative rock bands been given huge boosts with such games as “Guitar Hero: Metallica” for example. These games have arguably sparked quite a revival in rock, a genre that seemed to have been atrophying through the gangsta culture promoted by MTV (the one thing I will say, in the interest of being fair, celebrity death match, an incredible show, is also on MTV). Whilst I will say I dislike much of the music choices in many of the newer guitar hero games by neversoft, my problems with the choices of songs are due to different in taste, not some underlying phiolosophical issues with it like I have with many rap and hip-hop artists.

With the recent addition of “Beatles: Rock Band” I am ever more pleased with the rock band series as the beatles are my favorite band ever. It seems really that these games, which are widely availible, have an interesting style, and are easy to play, have brought back rock into the forefront of society once again…where I daresay it belongs.