http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Californianinja&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Californianinja en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:50:35 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/24451878/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/24451878/ Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:51:53 PDT little this time.
Unfortunately, my wide-angle lens is shot. There's fog on the inside, which I gather is not supposed to happen. I ended up getting some good macro and telephoto shots, though, and some fairly good landscapes with my film camera, which is full-frame and can fit a fair amount of horizon into a mid-range lens. Hopefully I'll be posting those soon!

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23274381/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23274381/ Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:52:30 PST inside.
It was kind of annoying, though; out of all the people giving blood while I was there, I was the only one who swooned. Apparently I didn’t have enough to drink beforehand—something which I would’ve been willing to testify to when they broke out the harpoon they were planning to stick in my arm.
But! I got juice and Fig Newtons and a t-shirt that’s thirteen sizes too large, all for just a a ninth of a gallon of precious bodily fluids.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23226153/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23226153/ Sun, 15 Feb 2009 23:30:32 PST The idea is based on the Drake Equation, originally developed by the British explorer Sir Francis Drake to calculate how many continents could be expected to contain crumpets. On this particular radio broadcast (aired on Valentine’s Day) they talked about its applications with regard to romance and finding someone you would consider a potential significant other in any given setting.
First, I basically go two places, school and home, so we’ll start with the number of people in my school:
11,541
Now, I enjoy the company of men, but don’t consider them candidates for kissing, so let’s cut that number in half:
5,771
I find intelligence attractive. That’s a hard thing to measure, but let’s say above-average intelligence, so by default that halves it again:
2,885
Ideally, a romantic prospect would be within a year of my own age. I would guess that the proportion of people at my school for whom this is true is roughly 1 in 4:
721
And of course, who ever it is would have to be physically attractive enough for me to overcome my crippling social anxiety to actually talk to them, so, being optimistic, 1 in 5:
144.
I’d certainly prefer someone with similar religious beliefs, and a recent poll suggests that 2 in 5 Americans believe in the evolution of species:
58
In other words, 1 in 198 people at my school will fit these criteria. With an average class size of…30(?) The chance of one of these people being in any one of my classes is miniscule. Also, I may be biased or just pessimistic, but it seems to me that the likelihood of one of these individuals being in a relationship already is substantially increased.
…Happy Valentine’s Day?

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23152934/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/23152934/ Thu, 12 Feb 2009 09:18:11 PST
]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22843500/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22843500/ Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:13:00 PST Let me say this first: it wasn’t the worst vampire novel I’ve read, not by a LONG shot. However, it certainly wasn’t the best. I’ll tell you why.
First, there’s the vampire portion. I’ve always found the thing that makes vampire novels compelling is the dichotomy they represent; that of human versus animal. We all find this dichotomy within ourselves, to some extent, when faced with issues of lust versus propriety, wrath versus civility, freedom versus responsibility and gluttony versus moderation. By emphasizing and exaggerating these basic human struggles, vampires are a metaphor for our own internal conflicts.
Twilight barely touches on these. Sure, there are vampires who go the ‘animal’ route, but for those who choose the ‘human’ route there hardly even seems to be a struggle. They get phenomenal superhuman powers at the cost of occasional peckishness. The blessings and the curse are held separate from one another, when they should be different aspects of the same condition.
The same simplicity exists in the romantic aspect of the book. For starters, the protagonist and her love-interest (who for a corpse, has remarkably little personality) feel nearly instant unconditional love. The problem is, that’s not how it works. That kind of love exists fairly exclusively within the parent-child relationship.
Now, it occurred to me that this kind of thing also happens in Romeo & Juliet, one of my favorite pieces of literature ever. However, in thinking about it I realized the significant differences:
1. Twilight’s author, Stephanie Someone, is not Emilia Lanier. Her writing is competent, but not scintillating. There was no point in the book that I felt excited by, or envious of the characters as one does when reading or watching Romeo & Juliet.
2. In Twilight, the characters seem resentful of their love. They act like they’re shackled to someone they don’t actually like (which I could readily understand, given their personalities). And unlike in Shakespeare’s play, in which the characters’ love has genuine negative implications, there doesn’t seem to be any reason…you know, other than the fact that the characters themselves are unlikable. They make excuses, such as the greasy vampire claiming that his presence is dangerous to the airhead teenybopper, but it seems like having a rabidly protective invincible psychic bodyguard would be less dangerous than not in virtually any scenario. It seems more like he’s just not that into her and wants to let her down easy.
Compare that to Romeo, who, unlike Edward, seems to genuinely enjoy his girlfriend’s company.
3. Some of the best writing advice I ever got apparently never got imparted to Twilight’s author:
Show, don’t tell.
Romeo/Juliet and Edward/…was it Bella? Anyway, both couples confess their unconditional love for each other. Edward and Bella express this by repeatedly saying it.
Romeo and Juliet express this by defying their families, their government, and their god to be together, ultimately downing a vial of poison each and stabbing themselves and others repeatedly to do so. This also applies to the vampirism thing; The author tells us that being a vampire isn’t fun, and gives us some half-assed reasons why not, but these reasons never seem to prevent the vampires in the book from having anything but an endless summer of fun.
4: Bonus reason. Twilight needs to skip the pretense. Teenagers don’t date each other because they’re soul mates. They date because they’re horny teenagers. In Romeo & Juliet, this is fully acknowledged (though if I met a hot girl at a party who could speak in couplets of iambic pentameter I’d probably want to marry her too). Friar Lawrence, who is possibly the coolest person ever, is under no illusions about the fact that those two basically just want to get in each other’s pants, and obliges on the basis that it might stop people getting stabbed all the time as much (he’s completely wrong, of course, but at least he tried).
But Dracula and Lucy keep going on and on about how they’re soulmates or some similar dross…look, I’m not saying that physical attraction is the only thing that motivates teens, but I find it hard to believe that in their case it’s the stimulating conversation and mutually enlightening exchange of ideas. The girl wants to jump the vampire’s bones, and the vampire…well, apparently he’s not actually that interested in sex, being way ancient. So what draws him to the human? Ostensibly it’s the fact that he can read minds, except hers, for some arbitrary reason, and the fact that he can’t tell what’s going on in her head makes her interesting. This would be an intriguing device, except that I can tell wh... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22828309/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22828309/ Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:48:37 PST But therein lies the problem, as I see it. It’s the exact opposite of how science is supposed to work. You don’t create a theory and then defend it, you come up with a hypothesis and test it, then devise the theory based on your results.
I’m not sure what would be better, but I really dislike this format the more I think about it. The ‘thesis’ that you are expected to state at the beginning of the paper should not be something you should be able to articulate until the end. If you know your thesis before you start, you’re either making a baseless assumption or you’ve already done the research. In either case, the process is intrinsically flawed.
Am I missing something here?

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22793785/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22793785/ Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:35:12 PST Don't get me wrong; I voted for the guy. I think he was the better candidate, though not by much. If McCain had had Juliani as his running mate, I would've been in quite a dilemma. And I think that Obama's inauguration reflects positively on our nation and how far we've come in terms of tolerance, though that has nothing to do with him personally. I do think he'll make a good president, but "Here comes the new boss, moderately better than the old boss" is my feeling.
Which is why I'm annoyed by his opponents claiming that all Obama supporters are a slavering horde of zealots. I think that's a vocal minority. I also think that a lot of that vigor is because of how royally screwed up things are. Of course a candidate promising change is going to be popular.
That being said, people--the news media in particular--need to move on. Yes, we have a new president. Yes, he's charming and yes, he's not white. But for the love of god, let him do his job! We don't need to know what his daughters are having for lunch! We don't need to dissect his every move and keep describing things as "an historic occasion". He got sworn in. Twice. He gave an okay speech and he's now the president. But what people seem to be forgetting is that he's not a movie star on Oscar night, he's actually got a JOB to do. And one hell of a job it is. He might fix it. I personally have no idea whether he will or not.

The fact is, he's not going to live up to some people's expectations, but Fox News needs to stop saying that as if it reflects badly on him. and MSNBC needs to stop pretending he will.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22462319/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22462319/ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 23:10:25 PST I bought a couple of his shirts because A) they're friggin sweet and B) I feel guilty about reading excellent webcomics and not supporting the artists writing them in some way, and was so enamored of one in particular that I decided to sneak out under the cover of darkness and shoot some pictures. Then I decided to photoshop the result because everything's better with photoshop. here's the end product. I also submitted it to the supplier Co-Op that sold the T-shirts, in an effort to further allay my guilt.

Then tonight I was looking at Dresden Codak, possibly one of the best comics on the web, and noticed with slight bemusement that he had a twitter. I have not seen this 'twitter' previously, and thought I'd have a look. Lo and behold, David Malaki ! had one too, and I glanced at that. There was a link on one of the posts talking about how great his fans were. I clicked on it and ended up looking at a picture of myself.
This is the coolest semi-celebrity related thing that has happened to me since Tim Russel read my sonnet on A Prairie Home Companion. I'd say it almost outstrips meeting Meb Keflezighi while surveying trails in the middle of nowhere.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22453927/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22453927/ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:38:20 PST 2. I had a baby mohawk before it was popular.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22131105/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/22131105/ Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:54:07 PST Look, when I say or type "Uh-Huh", it's an onomatopoeia, true, but it's a fairly specific one; it means the exact opposite of what one usually types as "uh-uh". Also, both of these things are fairly emphatic and specific verbalizations. The grunt here described as "Meh" is the opposite of emphatic, and also not at all a consistent noise. When I'm expressing ambivalence, I might say 'eh', 'mh', 'u-uh', 'iiih', or 'hm'. The crisp, deliberate, enunciated "Meh" seems far too...crisp, deliberate and enunciated. Putting so much premeditation into your expression of apathy seems to defeat the purpose entirely. It's like verbalizing "W-T-F"; you diminish the vitality of the expression simply by the way you express it. "L-O-L" is, of course, the posterchild for this kind of linguistic emasculation. If you're going to laugh, laugh. If you're going to grunt noncommittally, do so. And if the situation merits an incredulous rhetorical exclamation augmented by vulgarity, feel free, but if it doesn't, why not put a bit more flare into your euphemism? Is spontaneity not a hallmark of the surprise you're trying to convey? Break the rules! Shout whatever comes into your head! Jam words in where they're not grammatically correct--"Holy damn" is one I've been using a lot. Blaspheme creatively--"JesusfuckChrist!" Go retro, or borrow from other cultures--"Well that went pear-shaped!"
As for expressing amusement, consider "ha", as a well-defined onomatopoeia with only 2/3 the keystrokes of 'lol', or perhaps, "that's funny". To express noncommitment, at least shake it up. Use some of the examples listed above, or, in a demonstration of how little effort you are willing to put out to convey your feelings, I'm proposing "asdf". If you want to expand on this apathy, rather than typing "I feel sort of meh because" save keystrokes with "I feel unsure because".
I have no problem with appropriating words for alternate uses, as long as the context makes your denotative meaning clear, and I'm a huge fan of using words for their archaic and lesser-known meanings and using obscure words to convey your message. Slang makes it easy to speak fluidly, so there's not necessarily anything wrong with it, but for the love of oration, try to break the habit once in a while! Live dangerously! Add vim to your conversations and cut out the tired old lols and omgs and !!!1!...! Why simulate spontaneity when you can do it for real? Seriously, wtf people.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21930968/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21930968/ Thu, 11 Dec 2008 13:07:34 PST This morning, I bit the bullet and owned up to the fact that I was bombing my GIS course.

Well…it turns out I was a bit hasty…
See, I decided to see just how far in the can my grade was, as in, “If I ace the final can I get a D instead of an F”, but…
I’ve got an 82%. A B-.

I have never been more confused.
I mean, I was sure I was failing! The idea that I might actually pass never entered my head! In fact, the reason I don’t have an A is because I blew off the last few assignments, thinking it was impossible to pass anyway so why bother…

This is so surreal.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21824635/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21824635/ Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:48:13 PST Okay, I understand that any television is a medium driven by entertainment, and that in order to keep running the news networks have to compete to get people to watch their advertisements.
That being said, after a few minutes of CNN, I found myself missing the monotone, deadpan presentation on NPR.
All of the networks seem to be locked in this tech-centric arms-race that they’re all far too excited about. Wolf Blitzer’s got this bizarre little ‘hologram’ toy that makes it look like reporters on location are actually in the studio…sort of. They make it fuzzy and flickery so that it looks like the one in Star Wars.
I’m at something of a loss…I mean, what’s the point, exactly? Why have a reporter on location if they’re just going to be in the studio anyway? Wolf Blitzer told me I’d never seen anything like it on television before, but…well, I have. In 1977 there was this movie where they did pretty much the exact same thing. True, that was just special effects, but here’s the thing, IT’S STILL JUST SPECIAL EFFECTS. The fact that in the past 30 years we’ve progressed to the point where we can do extremely basic special effects in real time does not really impress me. Come to think of it, The Daily Show (which is a fake news show) makes reporters in the studio appear to be on location virtually every night, so why is it supposed to be a big deal that the real news shows can do the reverse? For that matter, on the radio they can be talking with a correspondent on the other side of the globe and it sounds like they’re right there in the studio. For some reason this does not change the quality of the news they deliver.
The other thing that’s currently got all the anchors over at CNN inappropriately aroused is this big touch screen thingy. It’s a touch screen with some clever programming so that they can slide stuff around on it like that actor in that movie about the future I never saw.
So…you’ve got a big ol’ screen with an unusual interface…yippee. I mean, my computer has a touch screen. It’s effectively useless. Granted, I don’t have fancy programs that take full advantage of it, and it’s probably not as sensitive as theirs, but…I like the little touch pad below my keyboard. It’s precise and effective. What I like even more are trackballs, which I’ve literally been using since I was in diapers and which are probably the most intuitive link between organic and synthetic entities we’ll have prior to the singularity. More importantly though, what the hell do I care if they’ve got a good user interface on their computer? Is that relevant to the news? On the local news channel they’ve got this lady doing the weather who’s got a magic green screen that lets her fly around California and make temperatures pop up and show brightly-colored clouds whisking repeatedly across the pacific and they never even mention it. They brag about the fact that they’ve got assloads of radar stations gathering the data, but not about the green screen, maybe because it’s old, simple technology.
I don’t think either of these things would really bug me that much if CNN wasn’t convinced they were blowing my mind. As it is, I feel like they’re making fun of me every time they gush about the wonders of their mystical screen or their ‘hologram’. I half expect them to start extolling me on the virtues of their fantastic camera obscura devices that can transfer the very effigies of journalists to my tele-vision box, or try to convince me that they have eldritch shamanistic powers by conjuring fire with a lighter. The tech should make delivering the news more effective; it shouldn’t distract from it.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21662407/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21662407/ Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:25:41 PST I have only this to ask: Gay people, what exactly do you imagine you’re missing?
Let me explain. There was a commercial I saw recently by e-harmony in which they showcased some questions of which they were evidently were quite proud. Not wanting to be unfair to the service, I registered an account with them to see if their questions really were as uniformly asinine as they were made out to be on this ostensibly promotional advertising (when confronted with their account creator, I felt prompted to also make a new email address, EvansSpamDump@gmail.com—I imagine I will be using this quite a bit in the future).
Sure enough, their questions were at best bizarre.
Many of them are so close to being valid that it’s perplexing that they didn’t just go the extra ten feet to making them make sense. Let me give you an example. At one point you are asked to rate your physical appearance in a number of areas on a scale of one to seven, one being “not at all”, four being “somewhat” and seven being “very well”.
These categories include Stylish, Attractive, Overweight, Sexy, Healthy, Athletic, and Plain.
What.
I’m having a hard time understanding how any of this makes sense even from a grammatical level. What exactly does being Very Well Overweight mean? Does being Very Well Athletic also make me Very Well Healthy? Also, what if I am Not At All Attractive but Very Well Sexy? Why are these not mutually exclusive?
Next, they ask you how important it is that your match be physically attractive.
Wha—? How are they rating physical attractiveness here? They never ask what I consider physically attractive in a mate. Is straight sevens considered a perfect score? I wouldn’t think so; there’s only one group of people I can think of who would fall under Very Well Athletic and Very Well Overweight, and they’re sumo wrestlers. Alternatively, do they rate a high level of physical attractiveness as being as similar as possible to the answers you gave about yourself? I’m sorry, but on a subjective level, six-foot mesomorphs are not my ideal women.
Going further, they ask “About You”. These questions are perplexingly vague and ultimately meaningless, it seems. Also, what does it mean if I Very Much Take Time Out For Others but Not At All Love To Help Others?
The next set are questions of Self Description. Why are these all on scales of one to seven? And what does it mean if I am both Very Well Dominant and Very Well Submissive? Also, they ask me to rate my level of spirituality…wasn’t that covered back in the religion questionnaire? In any case, how does one rate that objectively? I find myself aligned strongly with the ideals of Epicurean Philosophy; does that make me Very Well Spiritual or Not At All Spiritual?
It was at about this point that it realized that the fact that I’d been answering “4” to every single question meant I might not be totally invested in the process. I changed one answer to “5” and thus satisfied their high standards for quality.
These Self-Description questions continue on like this ad infinitum, with a vast number of qualities that are either redundant or contradictory, depending on how you answer. Some of them are paradoxical in and of themselves; if I were Not At All Self-Aware, would I know it?
Once again, there are bloody hordes of these questions. Next, we get a chance to talk About Your Feelings. These are, for the most part, as indistinct and pointless as the other questions in the survey, but I did find the last one unintentionally hilarious: I marked a seven for “lotted Against”.
Section 8 (Important Qualities) includes one of the questions I was originally dumbfounded by in the commercial. It asks you to rate what’s important to you in a partner on, of course, a scale of one to seven. The specific question that made my jaw drop on the tube was #2: “My partner’s energy level”.
Okay. So…If I rank that a seven, “Very Important”, what exactly does that imply? It is Very Important that my partner have an Energy Level? I find that, in general, most people do. It doesn’t ask for any clarification about what energy level you mean. Someone with a narcolepsy fetish and a cocaine fancier might both rate their partner’s energy level as important and mean completely different things by it. There are tons more of these, but I do feel the need to point out #15 on the next page: on a scale of 1 to 7, how important is it to you “Knowing that my partner is usually to blame when things go wrong”?
…Oh yeah. That’s a basis for a healthy relationship.
Then we g... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21590871/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21590871/ Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:20:46 PST Not humorous, of course, especially not while they’re happening, because no matter how incongruous, non sequitur or illogical they may be, nothing unexpected can possibly happen in a universe that ultimately exists in and is controlled by your imagination, and humor is based entirely on the unexpected. In fact, I usually find my dreams, when I can remember them, to be boring, tedious and wearisome. But what I mean is not so much our actual dreams; not the fevered hallucinations we experience while sleeping. I dream about medieval kingdoms with massive emperors striding around in red cloaks. I dream about getting in train crashes, over and over again in a single night. I dream of Ronald Regan’s hyenas chasing me out of his pirate ship/library for stealing books. I dream about young women with whom, in the waking world, I share only friendly and entirely platonic relationships, yet who in my subconscious nocturnal imaginings often reach a level of intimacy I find profoundly discomforting. When I was young, I dreamt constantly of Halloween monsters, werewolves and vampires and goblins and ghouls, and a massive cat, black as a singularity’s event horizon.
This is just jumbled crap, my hard-drive defragmenting.
The dreams we almost always mean when we use the word are the pleasant ones, the ones we have when we’re awake. These are the dreams we run through our minds again and again. They’re like drugs, spinning comfort from nothing, leaving nothing but aching need in their wake. The hollow desires we entertain, the half-formed musings, the ‘if-only’s…
We dream reliving the past. Of going back and making things right. We dream of other presents, presents in which we are other people, in other worlds—superheroes, adventurers, or even just handsome, or in love. A present where she cares back.
We dream of the future…a future, perhaps, in which we don’t dream about going back and making things right…a future in which there is no need.
We dream of a world in which she needs saving, if only so she can see the lengths we’d go to to save her…
But then, perhaps Queen Mab hath been with me,
She is longing’s midwife, and she comes
In shape no lesser than the world that is as vast as we can perceive,
Drawn by the racing of idle minds
Her chariot is an empty hope, housed within an empty head,
Her spokes are of song,
Her whip is of books, her lash of film,
And in this state she gallops by day
Through lovesick minds, and they straight dream of love,
Over the bodies of the weak, and the straight dream of strength,
On the feet of the clumsy, and then they dream of grace,
Through the souls of the meek, and they dream of inheritance.
This is that very Mab that plaits the thoughts of those awake at night,
And bakes the deadlocks in confused wonderings,
Which, once untangled, only more confusion bodes,
This is the hag, when all lie in the dark,
That burdens them and learns them first to long,
Making desire an unseen passenger in their carriage,
This is she—
Whoops, sorry, lost my train of thought.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21412734/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21412734/ Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:25:04 PST
]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21327360/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21327360/ Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:31:04 PST
]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21306536/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21306536/ Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:48:37 PST
1. GIS is more fun than beer.
True/False

The funny thing is the teacher aparently thought that the test was 25 questions long.

Gotta love that test software.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21179120/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21179120/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:53:57 PDT As I read it, I couldn’t help noticing it seemed oddly familiar, and then I realized: I developed this exact model for a space-time relationship in my head while jogging along the side of a mountain this summer. Exactly the same—though my model was designed to contemplate the human perception of chronology and consciousness.
This kind of thing happens to me with startling regularity…

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21164838/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/21164838/ Sun, 26 Oct 2008 02:21:43 PDT This is largely due to my stabs at psychological self-examination, and I’ve noticed a lot of similarities between the two.
Firstly, Let’s examine the famous though experiment commonly known as Schrödinger's cat.
Schrödinger's cat, let’s call him Buford because that umlaut is hell to type again and again, is put in a box. This box is mad impregnable. X-rays can’t get in. Neutrinos…avoid it, I guess. At any rate, there’s a ridiculous Rube Goldberg device involving uranium, a hammer, and a bottle of neurotoxin in there that has exactly a 50% chance of killing Buford. Such a device is impossible, of course, so let’s simplify things and just give Buford a Peacemaker with 3 loaded chambers and a last cigarette.
So, Buford lights up, spins the cylinder and plays one round of Russian Roulette. The question is, is Buford alive or dead?
Well, we don’t know, do we? He’s in a box. It’s soundproof, so we can’t tell if the revolver banged or just clicked.
The idea is, we don’t know if he’s dead or not dead until we open the box, at which point we will see either Buford looking very suave with a cigarette and a revolver clasped in a tabby paw, or half his kitty face will be sprayed across the inside of the box.
The point of the thought experiment is that until we open the box, we don’t know and therefore our feline friend is both alive and dead.
I find this to be a truly fascinating line of reasoning, because, it seems to me, it’s entirely made-up. Despite the popularity of the experiment, no one has ever actually done it, because it’s inherently inhumane and, significantly more relevant to scientists, no matter what the outcome is it fits the hypothesis. Since our observation collapses the wave-form, there is no way we could observe the superposition predicted.
I only find any credence in the theory because the guys who came up with it know a lot more about maths than I do, and I have to assume there’s some mathematical evidence for this model of resolution for quantum uncertainty. I am, however concerned that the line of reasoning was something like, “We don’t understand how randomness works so maybe it works like this”.
Obviously, this goes from science to philosophy, or, more distressingly, religion. There seem to be other worrying parallels—I mean, a hypothesis with no possibility of proof or disproof? Come on, you may as well start passing out pamphlets talking about how the cat may or may not have died for your sins.
Now that that’s off my chest, it’s time to draw the segway to self-serve psych analysis. One interpretation of the Schrödinger's cat mindfuck is that observation is actually the determining factor in whether or not the cat is dead. At which point, if one were overly skeptical, one might ask, “Why doesn’t Buford’s observation count?” but let’s not go into that right now. Self-examination seems to be one practice in which observation cannot help but change that which is being observed. Thinking about my thoughts is probably one of the most absorbing mental exercises I’ve ever engaged in for precisely that reason. How do you determine if something is the underlying cause of your emotional problems, or it only seems to be because you believe it is? This skepticism leads to uncertainty, which may or may not negate the effect of the belief…it’s an impossible feedback-loop. Placebo effects are built into the examination.
As another example, I watched some videos on psychoanalysis recently, and firstly I’m starting to sympathize with the scientologist view of how profoundly awful the affects of psychologists on society have been (though that’s not to say the science itself is either good or bad—just the uses to which it’s been put). At any rate, after watching these TV shows, was able to construct the idea that my Ego was virtually powerless against my Id. It fit my behavior fairly well, but here’s the thing, I didn’t really start noticing the full extent of this until I learned the terminology. So is it actually a valid theory, or did the observed supporting evidence for it stem from my belief that my Ego was a tiny bowler hat perched atop my giant hippopotamus of an Id?
So…um…I’m thinking about seeing an expert in this stuff. I can’t say I like the idea of being the kind of person who goes to see a shrink, since I’m frankly of the opinion that virtually all of my ‘emotional issues’ are whiny bullshit that stems, ultimately, from being slothful and spoiled, but…
I’ve had exactly zero success working through my issues n my own. I thought actually having to work for a living and take care of myself, even for a short while, would instill some kind of work ethic, teach me the consequences of laziness, but there were several times I had no food and no money to get food a... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/20325960/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/20325960/ Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:57:06 PDT The second night, as I lay contemplating my impending frigid death (my sleeping bag is ingeniously designed to save weight by not having any insulation on the bottom but instead having a sleeve into which you can slide an air mattress--which I left at my apartment), I suddenly heard a noise outside.
It sounded remarkably like a water bottle tipping over. Now, considering that it's extremely unsual for a water bottle to spontaneously flop over in the middle of the night (as they usually sleep standing up, like horses) I instantly came fully awake and strained my ears for any other noise.
Some time later--impossible to say how long--I heard my brand-new bear canister--the one containing our precious oatmeal and peanut butter, move.
"Oh shit!" I said, "Connor!"
"I know!"
Now, despite his admirable vigilance, it turns out he didn't know. Neither did I. What we thought we knew was that there was a gender-confused black bear named Broody trying his/her damnedest to get at our GORP. Broody is a bit of a nuisance around Thousand Island Lake, apparently, and loves camper food. We actually found some bear feces containing at least three visible shipping bags. Eew.
Like a well-oiled machine, Connor reached over, grabbed his video camera, hit the night-shot and passed it to me as I unzipped my half-useless sleeping bag and slithered out the door of my tent, expecting to see a big pile of hungry, hormonally imbalanced ursine glaring at me in the LCD panel of the night-vision camera.
But there was nothing there.
Nothing. The dim light cast by the stars hanging in the moonless sky revealed only the bear canister, unharmed and apparently untouched. Nothing the size of a bear could've escaped with that kind of speed and stealth.
I crawled back into the tent and began shivering with cold and puzzlement.
Mostly cold.
The next morning, I was even more perplexed. We had two water bottles on that trip. One was in our tent. The other was standing innocently upright where we had left it before going to bed the night before. Nothing, in fact, was knocked over. I asked Connor if it had been real or if I had just dreamed the whole thing, but he substantiated the whole event--the water bottle being knocked over, the noises from the bear canister--everything. The video on the camera ruled out the ever-present possibility of simultaneous identical hallucination. Only one clue was to be found: Poop. Two small pellets of blackish, pebble-shaped scat. Fresh, too--less than a day old, judging by the consistency.
I recognized it immediately, or at least, immediately after I looked it up in my field guide: Porcupine.
So we were attacked by ninja porcupines. Not something that happens every day.
Also, the old neighbor lady wants to give me a parrot. A Senegal Parrot, apparently. I know nothing of parrots, but I would like to train it to sit on my shoulder and say "Yo Ho Ho." Anyone with experience with such things could greatly help me by advising me on whether to accept her offer or not.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/20032633/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/20032633/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:08:48 PDT So it looks like I'm out $225 that I'm not getting back. Lesson learned, I guess.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19998035/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19998035/ Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:42:06 PDT Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Why should I fear death?
If I am, then death is not.
If death is, I am not.
Why should I fear that which cannot exist while I do?

--Epicurus: seriously awesome dude, 431-271, BCE




I’ve always had a surprisingly clear memory of my early life, and I am reminded now of an occurrence which transpired in first grade—I was six years old. One of the other children in my class was wandering around, asking kids if they believed in God.
He soon approached me, and when he asked, I considered the question for a few moments before responding with a hesitant, “…yes…”
“Then you’re a Christian!” he responded smugly, just as he had to every other affirmative response, and he tottered off to share this revelation with somebody else.
At that point, I was vaguely annoyed because I was pretty sure that this if/then statement was a logical fallacy. Admittedly, this was because I thought he meant I was a Catholic—which, I was dimly aware, was only one facet of some other, bigger religion. What that was, I wasn’t really sure.
What I find astonishing is that I believed in God then in almost exactly the same way as I do now—that is, I thought that God and I had very little in common and in terms of a personal relationship, he probably didn’t have time for (and I didn’t particularly desire) anything more than a nodding acquaintance. The only real difference between my beliefs then and my beliefs now is where I feel the hypothesis of God falls between likely and unlikely.
Prayer wasn’t something I did on any kind of regular basis. Oddly enough, the only time I ever remember praying, I was asleep—though I didn’t know it. I had just had a terrible nightmare, and believed I had woken up. I knelt at the side of my bed, elbows on the mattress, hands folded (lacking practical experience, I decided to imitate the technique I’d seen in Disney movies) and said a simple, straightforward prayer asking that God prevent such nightmares in the future.
It was at that moment that the monster burst through the door and I realized, with a sense of weary resignation, that I was still asleep (that happened a lot in my nightmares—a sense of ‘here we go again’ when a werewolf or vampire or ghoul or witch or specter turned up, and I realized I was having a nightmare and reluctantly submitted to the frigid terror I assumed was appropriate in such situations…although on one occasion when I was seven, I just grabbed a pile driver and beat the shit out of my entire second grade class…Freud would have a field day).
Sorry, ridiculous digression. The reason I bring this up is because I recently watched a number of programs dealing with belief, the lack thereof, and terrifyingly fanatical ten-year-olds.
One was hosted by a man who I have more and more respect for—Louis Thereaux. He went to stay for a while with the Westboro Baptist Church. These people are psycho. Significantly worse than the white supremacists I talked about before, and that’s saying something. If you’re not familiar with these people, they’re completely obsessed with sex—homosexuality in particular. They believe that God hates America for condoning homosexuality. Their craziest trick is picketing soldiers’ funerals on the basis that God is killing our troops because of his aforementioned crippling homophobia. What’s really amazing is that their picketing isn’t trying to save sinners or win converts, which in a lot of ways makes sense because they’re some of the most obnoxious human beings in existence. In fact, they don’t seem to have any purpose at all, as near as I can tell. They just really, really like telling people they’re going to hell. They take ‘holier than thou’ to a ridiculous level.
Another was the documentary Jesus Camp, which covered an Evangelical Christian camp where pre-teen children are taught what to think. They’re told on a daily basis that they’re sinners who must constantly beware every temptation as a satanic trick and serve God utterly. They speak in tongues, sob their eyes out because they haven’t served god faithfully enough, and degenerate into convulsions. I have a lot of respect for the restraint shown by the filmmakers, because I’m not sure I could’ve resisted the urge to chloroform the delusional bastards running that place and rescue those kids.
The third was a documentary on the history atheism, and this one surpised me, too. A lot of the people featured were truly brilliant philosophers whose opinions I found amazingly insightful, but many talked about how they hadn’t really thought about God or his absence until later in li... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19980605/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19980605/ Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:12:03 PDT Both were hosted by Louis Thoreaux (pronounced “Louie Theroo” or thereabouts) and were documentaries about racist groups. One was about white power advocates, the other about black power advocates.
Racism is obviously a tricky issue, but I’ve got to say, both of these groups got me quite close to angry.
Now, obviously, I cannot profess to understand what black power advocates have experienced, what they’ve gone through in their lives that convinced them of what they believe. Being so far disconnected from any racial conflict in places like New York, which might as well be Cape Town, London, Vancouver or Sydney, for how different its culture is from that which I’ve experienced all my life, I can’t make a definitive statement as to whether or not things are as bad as they say.
But I can say this for certain: the reactions of many influential extremist members of the black power community are absurd and dangerous to themselves and others.
Civil disobedience is inefficient, difficult, and requires ridiculous amounts of patience. But like democracy, the only thing worse is everything else. Encouraging armed revolution, instigating violent attack, and here’s the big one, stating that there is a profound difference, on a fundamental mental level, between black people and white people, is wrong. That’s the kind of thinking that is responsible for every societal disadvantage minorities suffer, and it is fantastically untrue.
I can, on the other hand, say, without fear of reasonable contradiction, that I have a pretty good feel for how a white male is treated on a daily basis. I know about the trials and tribulations of my people (can’t think of any off the top of my head), and I know for a fact that there is absolutely no justification for the views of these white supremacists. They are undoubtedly the most misguided people I have ever seen. And what makes it worse is that they think they represent me, because I am white. (As an aside, that’s not nearly as bad as the fact that there are probably many black power advocates who also think skinheads represent my views—I suspect that’s part of the problem.)
I also watched a program recently hosted by one of my personal heroes, Bill Nye, which sought to expose race as a myth. It was proven that there is almost no genetic difference between the races, and therefore, race doesn’t.
Well…there’s not a lot of genetic difference between me and an orangutan, but physiologically…the difference is obviously pretty pronounced between the higher primates and the lower ones, such as myself.
Race does exist. Humans have physiological variation just like any other species. You’re unlikely to see an Inuit on the US. Track and Field team this or any other Olympics, because the physical requirements to survive in the Arctic Circle don’t lend themselves well to wind-sprints. That being said, Kenyans probably wouldn’t flourish in Alaska in a primitive, survivalist setting—when it’s winter ten months of the year, you want to be short, stocky, and really good at storing fat.
By the same token, if I lived in Sub-Saharan Africa, I would fry, but if a population of zulu suddenly found themselves living in Norway, vitamin D deficiency would probably be a noticeable problem.
The fact is, there’s a reason Europeans have historically subjugated other races: They got damn lucky. When it all comes down to it, the resources, geography and climate of Europe have no equal when it comes to fostering a technologically advanced civilization. Innate intelligence or inborn personality traits have nothing whatsoever to do with it. There’s no appreciable difference between any race in terms of their average intelligence or trends in behavior.
And with that in mind, I submit that, given the chance, any other race would’ve done the same damn thing.
My great-great grandmother was a Mohican, a Native American, and suffered a lot of racism. No less, however, than her husband, an Irish immigrant—white, but still discriminated against for his appearance. My great-grandmother, who I actually had the pleasure of knowing, was an Okey, a German from Okalahoma who moved west with the dustbowl and picked cotton for a living. My grandfather was an Irish kid in New York, and discriminated against because of it; he was born the day the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began.
Their lives really, really sucked. But the past is just that—the past, and the malicious, even evil people who discriminated against, indentured, hated, swindled, and (back in Ireland) even enslaved or killed my ancestors are all dead.
By the same token, No one is alive today who traded slaves. The conquistadors are long gone, and animosity on the part of black power advocates because of the past evils of men with white skin is groundless. By all means, be angry at racists; I am... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19937134/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19937134/ Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:22:37 PDT Well, more like a Love/am-rather-annoyed-by relationship.
Here’s the thing: South Park is really funny. I like really funny things. Not only that, but it’s relatively socially conscious, and uses satire as a commentary on political, social and religious hypocrisy, as well as many other hypocrisies in other categories.

That being said, it’s fantastically vulgar, and I honestly sometimes wonder if the writers even read the script before putting it into production.

I’ll give you an example. South Park did an episode ridiculing A.A.—Alcoholics Anonymous. I think it was called “Bloody Mary”, although I could be wrong. The premise is that one of the characters drives drunk and is sent to AA by a court-order. They immediately convince him that his raging alcoholism is completely out of his control and that if he ever wants to have any hope of recovering from his disease, he has to embrace the Christian God as his personal savior.
The rest of the episode is spent mocking Catholicism and derisively making fun of the idea that Alcoholism is a disease.
Now many of you may have guessed that what annoys me here isn’t the idea of them mocking the Catholic Church. Not that I particularly support religious intolerance, but the Catholic Church itself, as an institution, is probably not going to suffer that much because of a cartoon.
No, what really annoyed me about this episode in particular, but also in many others, was their use of something I can only think to call “associative negativity”. The only places I’ve seen it displayed more blatantly are in political propaganda and Ayn Rand books.
Let me explain. When I say “associative negativity”, what I’m talking about is a narrative technique that takes something which may be morally neutral or even positive, associates it with unrelated, negative characteristics, and thus portrays it as negative. For example, in “The Fountainhead” Ayn Rand portrays the unfortunately named character Elsworth Toohey as someone who believes in putting others’ welfare before your own—obviously commie-hippy bullshit. To enforce the view that selflessness is evil, she reveals that this apparently generous and conscientious man is also megalomaniacal, manipulative, and borderline-psychotic with lust for power.
It works the other way, too; using the same example, the protagonist of “The Fountainhead,” Howard Roark, is portrayed as being infinitely creative, charismatic, downright sexy and generally a tall glass of awesome despite the fact that he’s got a level of narcissism, sadism and selfishness that he makes cats look altruistic and benevolent. Rand thus portrays advanced sociopathy as a positive trait by associating it with long, flowing hair, talent with architecture and rock-hard abs.
Going back to South Park, we see another example of Negative association. Since many aspects of Christianity don’t make sense, and AA is somewhat Christian, AA must be straight up retarded, right?
The most aggravating aspect, from my perspective, is mocking the idea that alcohol addiction is a disease. The man sentenced to AA after his DUI imitates chemotherapy patients by shaving his head and feebly trundling around in a wheelchair, claiming that he can’t stop drinking because he’s sick and it’s out of his control.
HA! HAHA! How funny! Those crazy Christians, trying to convince us that their mystical religious hocus-pocus is the only way to cure this “disease”!
Except it’s not religion that tells us drinking is bad for you. Hell, the bible seems to be pretty in favor of wine and alcohol in general.
Science tells us that addiction is a disease. Psychologists, biologists, and neuroscientists all agree that addiction, including addiction to alcohol, is a diagnosable and treatable illness.
Now, not everyone who drinks or does drugs is addicted, and it looked like South Park made some effort to make this distinction, but then got bored with that and decided to make fun of AA instead. At the end of the episode, they argued that, basically, drinking too much was nothing more than a lack of moderation and people who went to AA meetings were just self-pitying pussies copping out of their failings and blaming it on a disease.
The fact is, positron scans of addicts’ brains show that drugs and alcohol really can damage your brain so that you aren’t really capable of deciding not to abuse them. Dicipline and willpower have nothing to do with it. In fact, if you do just stop drinking, cold turkey, after a long period of heavy addiction, THE WITHDRAWL CAN KILL YOU. It’s rare, but the fact is that alcohol withdrawal can be fatal without medical treatment. That sounds like a disease to me.
Another example is when they make fun of Al Gore and compare global warming with a fic... ]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19536429/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/19536429/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:05:51 PDT
Firstly, I agree that Leger did a remarkable job as the Joker, but honestly, I've seen crazy done much, much better. That was not what made the movie for me. If you ask me, the best actors in that whole flick were the guys who played Twoface, Commissioner Gordon and The prisoner on the ferry.
I've also heard people say it was too long. No, your attention span is too short. Don't rush art.
Thirdly, I've heard at least one person say that they didn't like the ending.
...I honestly don't think I've ever been more excited at the end of the movie...it was...it was phenomenal. It was everything I want from Batman and more than I would feel justified expecting. I hope you all don't get your hopes up needlessly, because to be honest, that's just the kind of thing I love anyway, and I wouldn't expect others to like it as much as I did, but...holy hell, that and the dude on the ferry MADE THIS MOVIE. It honestly would've been an okay superhero flick without them. With them, it's the best I've ever seen.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/18445023/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/18445023/ Thu, 22 May 2008 10:05:43 PDT The big news is, I just finished my photography 1B class. We went over my portfolio, and it was kind of amazing to see how much I've improved. I've got a lot of older shots that, in spite of my best efforts, are pretty good, but the quality of the printed positives was negligible. I've made strides, I feel, in obtaining proper contrast, and I'm even starting to use dodging and burning to greater effect. Now here's the fun bit: I've got two camping trips for the summer planned straight out of the gate; one this weekend, and a milestone trip to Yosemite for the first week of June. And the photo lab is closed (I believe) until fall. So come fall, I'll have more film to develop than I'll know what to do with, and certainly more than I'll be able to print satisfactorily. Gonna have a lot of film in my freezer.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17840951/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17840951/ Sat, 19 Apr 2008 21:55:32 PDT
They've put now put my information up here.

(End edit. We now return you to our regularly scheduled gloating)

Those of you who are lonely Midwestern liberal democrats, in actuality or in spirit, may listen to A Prairie Home Companion, a nationally broadcast variety show on public radio. My father is a chronically lonely Midwestern liberal democrat, and thus I often listen to it with him. Last week, I heard they were holding a sonnet contest, so I decided to enter. I wrote a 14 line poem in iambic pentameter with the proper rhyme structure, submitted it, and held my breath for the next seven days. Now, on the application form, they asked for a phone number at which I could be reached during the broadcast, so when I didn't receive a call I shrugged and got on with my day--hell, I didn't really have much of a chance anyway. As it turns out, the people running the contest disagreed with me because it FUCKING GOT READ ON THE AIR. Of the FOUR THOUSAND sonnets they received, mine was one of the 32 finalists who will apparently get some book or something, but the point is, I GOT MY POETRY READ ON NATIONAL FUCKING RADIO.

If you don't believe me, check
this out. Scroll down to the...er...the bottom, actually, and there's my name, bitches. Hell. Yes.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17724070/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17724070/ Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:57:52 PDT
“Empathy:

A man who is beaten and starved, and who knows the feel of shackles and whips and bars—this is a man who possesses strength within. Such a man often knows and feels the suffering of man.
But a man who is numb to other men’s suffering, a man who can’t see the thoughts of his peers, a man whose mind is as closed as the bars of a jail, who can say that such a man is free?”

“Friend, you think you’re scandalous. You think you’re special. The truth is, you’ve got nothing but a dream and an ego.”

“Things always sound better in the mirror the night before. You’re smooth and charismatic, and everything works perfectly. Then, the next day, you try to start a conversation and she says something unexpected like, “Hi,” and suddenly, you’re not Romeo, you’re not Casanova. You’re you, and you’re kind of a nerd. Welcome to reality.”



Just some gems of wisdom from my eleventh grade english journal. I wanted to post them as art but realized that they weren't, so I just put them here.



]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17643410/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17643410/ Tue, 01 Apr 2008 22:36:51 PDT
Science is fun. this is, at best, an understatement, but I feel that sometimes we lose track of how amazing our world really is.
today for example, I got about five pounds of dry ice and just went to town with it. First, I marveled at its ability to cool my computer. Then I breathed on it, delighting in the mist produced by the moisture in my breath condensing. That was just warm-up, though.
When I got home, I made the obligatory concussion grenade out of a water bottle, and exhibited stupidity I didn't imagine myself capable of by misinterpreting the pop of the label snapping as the bottle expanded for the actual breach, moving up for a closer look, and ultimately winding up very surprised when it detonated not three feet in front of me with a bang that I felt more than heard.

All that was kind of mundane, though, and I found true gratification in something far more innocent: Bubbles.
Now, I didn't have any bubbles, being as previously mentioned eighteen years old, and not, let's say, six, but I still remembered how to make some from dish soap, water, and a paper clip. Unfortunately, the paper clip bubble wand is about as effective and useful as a ceramic hammer, but I managed to get a few off, and oh, what glorious bubbles they were.
First they sank down to the point where the CO₂ became denser than the air in the bubble and, achieving equilibrium, it just floated there, stationary. That part I expected, and it's why I made the bubble stuff. What I didn't expect, however, was that the bubbles would freeze.
Nonetheless, they did. First the bottom got foggy as it solidified. Then the top began to grow rigid, but, at the same time, the gas inside cooled and became less volumous, so the top caved in. The bubble sank to the bottom of the container and sat there, a partially spherical shell so thin and delicate it would melt with a single breath of warm air.

That's fucking awesome.


Also, You wouldn't believe how many times I've gone through
this. I love xkcd.



]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17614783/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17614783/ Mon, 31 Mar 2008 21:51:53 PDT totally groovy record player, and before that, my less groovy and now lost Mp3 player. Hell, I even made a makeshift taser out of a disposable camera once. But two events in recent days have made me question my understanding of the arrows of Zeus. First, we installed a new washer and drier, which are quite nice, but before we got it plugged in, my little brother was playing around with it, spinning the drum. It turned on, blinking and beeping. He stopped in surprise, and so did it. He started spinning it again. It started up again. Somehow it was able to generate electricity from the drum spinning. Thing is, it takes a specialized motor to do that, so unless my washing machine is some hypothetical future clothing sanitizer from space and has regenerative breaking like hybrid cars do, I'm stumped.
The second thing happened today when my mom and I were working on wiring the brakes for an old trailer. We'd gotten them working for our old truck, but the new one had a different adapter. However, no matter how we changed the wiring up, trying all nine combinations, they wouldn't work, and, what's more, they'd give bizarre results depending on which wires were and weren't connected. For example, if only the ground and left turn signal wires were connected, then the left turn signal would cause both tail lights to blink, the right would have no reaction, and the brakes would work properly. This seems to indicate that the wires were both connected to the left turn signal, but if you simply connected the right turn signal wire, then both turn signals would cause both tail lights to blink simultaneously, However, and here's the weird part, applying the brakes would cause only the left brake light to come on. This, as near as I can figure, is impossible.
I am entirely confused.
I guess I'll go play with my washing machine.



]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17480039/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17480039/ Sun, 23 Mar 2008 18:07:19 PDT Here's a link to the image, done for a limited liability corporation which the guy who employs me for ranch-hand work is involved in. Much of the project is hush-hush, but the basic idea is to build a zero-emission sports car. Very sexy. I went out and took some pics of his solar panels for the base, because there are no good stock images of photovoltaic cells here or apparently anywhere else on the internet. I should fix that.

However, that's all beside the point. The point is that I got paid for doing something I wanted to do for free. That sounds like a good place to start a career to me.



]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17309647/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17309647/ Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:50:40 PDT Yes, the newest piece of my stereo is, paradoxically, also the oldest piece.

AND IT IS AWESOME.
I've been sitting at my desk all day listening to Paul Simon, Elton John, and Jesus Christ, Superstar (Yes...I listen to Jesus Christ, Superstar...I'm agnostic, not deaf). Seriously, it OWNS. If only I could find some good Sinatra...I've got one album, but it looked like it was strapped to a cat's scratching post with barbed wire.

The technical fix worked great. No problems with the power supply, and the turntable itself is very cool. By my dad's calculation, it was one of the last ones to come out before they started using CDs, and it's got all kinds of neat features, like an auto-stop mechanism that lifts the arm off the disc and stops the table when you reach the end of the record.



]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17237142/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17237142/ Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:04:37 PST
That being said, you guys have my permission to be incredibly smug because you fucking called it.

Yesterday I was chilling around town with my mom. I had a bus to catch in an hour or so, but nothing to do until then. She had mentioned several days earlier that she wanted a camelback, or "hydration pack" for those of you who trip out on the difference between kleenex and tissue. Anyway, I suggested we go to Sierra Adventure Outfitters in Lodi, a small mom-and-pop operation with high-quality products. I got her a Deuter, because, honestly, any other camelback is just silly, and we proceeded to check out.
"Wow," the casheer said, "This is a good one."
"yeah, Deuters are the best. The valve in the nipple is great. I've used mine a lot and it never leaks."
"You're fairly experienced, then?"
"Yeah. This summer me and a couple of buddies did a 45 mile hike from Mammoth to Yosemite."
"And how old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Huh. Er...are you looking for work?"

Holy crap. Sierra Adventure Outfitters. I didn't even know they hired people. He said to bring in a resume...this is literally one of the few places I would rather work than REI. I mean...it's enough to make a guy question the existence of God.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17217383/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17217383/ Thu, 06 Mar 2008 21:49:10 PST *tasogare51. She's a long-time friend and always there to provide constructive criticism. She's also quite diverse int talent, so here's three samples of what she does:

I know this girl, and the coloring is spot-on. I envy the skill with the tablet exhibited here.


Great shading is one of the things I've always wanted to have, and this picture in particular shows Tasogare as a natural. Excellent job all around.


Photography is really where I think Tasogare shines, and this is a perfect example. This should be in a National Geographic. The texture, the sense of location, of the culture...it's phenomenal. Straight up amazing.


I'm always kind of puzzled by the slightly worrying mind of ~Dorry-fied, and her art is no exception.

This is merely an example of the dizzying stuff she posts. I don't understand, but I like.


"Artistic Genius" is not a phrase I toss about unduly (largely because I have a hard time spelling "genius"), but ~Albinto fits the bill. Seriously. I first ran into her art in a competition, and thankfully she was in the graphic arts category while I was in literature, because otherwise I would've been in trouble.


Doesn't this look familiar. How embarrassing would it be if she became a pop-culture phenomenon?


"Jaw-dropping" is all I can say.Posture, shading...everything.


What an amazing still-life. The lighting is just excellent, and the components are very nice.

Though I would love to feature everyone, I'm losing ground fast in the battle for conciousness, so I'll end with a piece by ~WoodFire0, another old friend, but one who I haven't seen in far too long.

I love California in the spring for just this reason. So good.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17197244/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17197244/ Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:19:59 PST That is crap. I mean, one clear shot for a job I could not only get with ease but would actually enjoy. Once again, crippled by procrastination and apathy. I am extremely frustrated with myself right now.
REI. No joke. They were putting in a branch in Stockton and I could've worked there. I mean, the employee discount alone would've helped significantly with my financial situation. Good god, I'm so tired.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17156609/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17156609/ Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:30:34 PST Walking alone down an empty country road at 3:30 in the morning.

I was at a party and had forgotten a sleeping bag, so I decided to go home to sleep. It wasn't too far to my house (one of the few times in my life it wasn't) so I just grabbed my hat and started walking. There wasn't a single car the whole way back. It was pretty cool, especially with all the stars and the wind and everything. Pretty sweet.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17050697/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/17050697/ Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:57:43 PST I jest, of course. I have realized that the idea is to express some things about yourself and the things you believe in. However, some people don't really seem to think about what they're saying...here's a good example:
Er...you do? That's cool. Isn't that a bit recursive? Why exactly do you support animated stamps? Do they need support? Are they going through a tough time? same thing here:
I mean, I have nothing against cute things. Some of my best friends are cute things. One might more accurately say "I like cute things" or "cute things make me happy". But it gives one to wonder, how many cute things do you support, at a given time?
Also, the point of these is to give people a rough idea of who you are, yes?
If this is an integral part of who you are, you need to spend some time away from the internet.
As for this...can you even use these outside of DA?
If not, it seems rather odd to give the URL.

Now granted, There were a lot of pretty cool stamps I had to sift through to find these little gems, but still, all of these had at least 350 fav's. Makes you worry about the state of things.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16891047/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16891047/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:54:14 PST
I don't like turning journals over too quickly, but I'm pretty psyched about this. See, my mom got me a new bow, and I say with all enthusiasm that it scares the bejesus out of me. It's an ancient mass of plullys and cables, and is kind of worrying to look at. I've never worn safety equipment for archery in my life, except once or twice for scout camp when it was mandatory. With this bow...I don't know if I have enough safety equipment. I'm the only one in my family who can even draw the damn thing, and I'm rather afraid to fire it because if this thing catches me a blow on the inside of the elbow it's gonna sting like hornets in your underwear, but I did get one shot off without losing my arm, and it went 222 yards. A nice round number, but I think with a longer arrow and more finely tuned angle, it could go further. The upper end for estimates on the range of average medieval longbows was 249 yards.
Sweet Jesus. I got me a superweapon.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16889394/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16889394/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:48:46 PST Of course, that's not what Valentine's day is really about. Valentine's day is about some poem a toff wrote about the feast day of St. Valentine on May 2, but which was mistaken for the feast day of St. Valentine on February 14. Turns out there were about 11 feast days of St. Valentine at one time or another.
Of course, what Valentine's day is really really about is the sale of candy, flowers, and greeting cards. Oh, and diamonds, but that only started in the '80s.
Of course, what this valentine's day is about is me, moving furniture and not having a chance to enjoy my Thursday off. Oh, and generalized existential angst with an emphasis on the romantic because, you know, it's festive.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16514454/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16514454/ Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:49:37 PST I feel old.

This is wierd, because I'm rather not. Still, I recently went out and bought a new copy of one of the best games ever made, a staple of my childhood, starcraft, and realized that it's 10 years old. A decade. It's ancient--my computer can actually run the thing, for god's sake. Then a friend of mine and I were discussing the utter lack of good games made from movies. We realized, however that there was one. The best racing game ever made: Star Wars Episode I Racer. We dug out the old disc and started playing again, and I realized that, other than the graphics seeming to have deteriorated over the years, I was right: It is the best racing game ever made by mankind. It's almost 9 years old, and I remember when it came out. My friend's new Dell XPS can't even run the damn thing because his video card is too fast.

I also saw a reference to Ghost Writer, a TV show I used to watch sometimes. Now, I remember when that was the epitome of television. I was extremely young when it started airing, and remember thinking of it as a show for kids older and far, far cooler than myself. Now I check out the videos on Youtube and realize it's actually a horribly written show featuring a multi-racial cast of spectacularly bad young actors, early 90's fashion (Dear god, we wore what?) and, to my immense disbelief, Samuel L. Jackson as the main character's father. No joke.

Also, a 7th grade white girl in buckskins freestyle-rapping will forever endear Ghost Writer to me somwhat.

This sparked a curiosity in some other old TV, like Wishbone, which I watched RELIGIOUSLY. To my immense relief, it wasn't actually badly written, but still, when did the actors get so young? They were all so much older than me...

Let me get my dentures in for a second and then I'll start ranting...there we go. Okay, Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, Pod Racer, and Age of Empires (II) have been making me think recently, and not just about the fact that I should probably be in a retirement home by now. They've been making me think about the lack of good games. Oh, sure, there's Oblivion and assassin's creed, and a bunch of others that are pretty good. But the games listed above should have folk songs written about them.

Baldur's Gate played like a really good novel. It was enthralling, and the ultimate evolution of the sad creature that is table top gaming. Imoen was like a little sister. A little sister who stabbed people in the head.

StarCraft was like the kind of SciFi movie that makes you want to find some aliens, just to shoot them. It's right up there with Star Wars and Star Treck in terms of Science Fiction in popular culture, and the odd Space-Redneck motif seems to be like a spiritual ancestor of Firefly. Oh, and let me just say, I would marry Kerrigan, and Raynor would be my best man. Show me another RTS that has characters like that. (the russian battle cruiser captain guy could preform the ceremony.)

In terms of game play, Age of Empires II is the only RTS that can beat it. A lot of my early knowledge of and interest in history came from that game.

Pod Racer beats every other racing game ever made. It gave me a severe case of stockholm syndrome, kicking my ass again and again and making me crawl back for more. Something about a tiny little cockpit being hauled along behind two huge, gloriously unstable turbine engines just calls to my Y chromosome.

I guess what i'm saying is that games these days just aren't what they used to be. When I was your age, you had to take a bus to school, and RPG characters were tiny amorphous blobs, not amazingly hot japanese girls with improbable hair. So let that be a lesson to you young 'uns.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16040095/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/16040095/ Sat, 22 Dec 2007 07:22:48 PST feels all spiky...

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15913641/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15913641/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 06:43:05 PST
It took me 6:35.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15911226/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15911226/ Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:39:16 PST





*Honestly, fuck the quadratic formula. The answer "x=[5+(27)^.5]/6 , [5-(27)^.5]/6" DOES NOT HELP ME IN LIFE.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15860942/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15860942/ Sun, 09 Dec 2007 10:31:27 PST Why, you ask? Has Evan finally realized that to succeed in life, he needs to take a few risks and try to follow up on them?
No. The catch is, I want to take 3 PE courses with the college, plus some extracurricular. Not so big of a deal, but the three I want to take are Fencing, Weight Training and Cross-Country. All that, plus Karate.
Now, you'd think that'd make it easier for me to become a full-time student with all the extra units, but the thing is, to be on the cross-country team, I need to take at least 12 units of non-athletic classes. Meaning that fencing and weight training just don't count.
That and 2 semesters of lounging around doing homework (and not homework, of course. Mostly not homework, actually) is really taking its toll. I just went out and ran a mile, and it took me 6:44. I used to be able to do 5:57. Almost a minute slower than I was this time last year. I must work out more. Which means I have to do more schoolwork. This is a recipe for disaster. Especially since, between Cross-Country and Karate, I would have almost no time in the evenings to do said schoolwork. Life's a bitch.

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15772738/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15772738/ Sun, 02 Dec 2007 23:39:04 PST
I know, no shit, right? Everyone here likes art, and many of the people here do it for a living. However, this is difficult for me, because I have the strange and twisted misfortune of being both a hyper-logical, slightly cynical secular humanist and a wistful, nostalgic daydreaming hopeless romantic. Now, you may not think that these two aspects of a person's nature can coexist peacefully, and you'd be right!
Because on the one hand, the independent teenager backpacking social liberal hippie side of me says that I should move to Alaska and do freelance writing while working on my photography, while on the other hand, the encyclopedia-reading fiscal conservative morally responsible Eagle Scout side of me says that the other half is a delusional lowlife with fantasies of self-reliance and artistic talent, and that if I ever, EVER want to make something of myself, I've got to get a college degree in something sensible and work on a steady job for a few years before I can try to supplement my income with writing.

It's a classic and annoying battle of head versus heart, and my future is the war zone. Much to my chagrin, Heart appears to be winning most of the major skirmishes. As I said above, I think I want to be an artist, which is a problem because, 1) I don't want to be the kind of stereotypical hippie teenager who wants to be an artist, because they almost always FAIL, and, 2) I suck pretty royally at art.
Okay, that's the cynical part talking. Truth is, I'm not bad. I'm better than average, if only barely, and what makes me special, as Mr. Rogers would define it, is that I am slightly above average at pretty much everything. Problem is, I'm not really good at anything, and to make a living at art, you have to be freaking amazing.

So I think I need to get amazing, and get there fast. I disagree with virtually every aspect of Ayn Rand's personal philosophy, with both halves of my personality, but if there's one thing I think she got right, it's that you can't learn originality by studying what's already been done in a classroom. Writing and photography definitely seem to be my best bets for an artistic career at this point, and I'm not sure if classes could help me with either. I am a good writer. I'm not being conceited, it's just true. In terms of sheer ability to work with words, I have a vocabulary and knowledge of grammar that make me superior to most of the writers on this site or elsewhere (let's face it: some of you dont know how to use apostrophe's). So the main thing I need to work on is producing interesting, original work, and here we come back to the Howard Roark view of college. As for photography, I don't feel like I've really learned anything in my class yet, other than the actual wetworks of black-and-white. I know about light levels, and something of composition, and it just seems like the things that make a photograph really good are just too ephemeral to teach in a schoolroom.
Oh yeah, and School sucks. I would really, really like to just say 'screw it' next semester and throw myself at my writing, and maybe train with my uncle, who's a photographer.

Any thoughts?

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15729688/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15729688/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 02:38:10 PST seven now) would probably say that this includes a lot more than I could cover in one journal entry, and you'd be right. But specifically, I'm talking about recent trends in art.

It seems like every time I log on to this borderline pornographic wonderland, I see something which is, rather euphemistically, in my opinion, called fan art. Now, I can see the allure of recreating a favorite character with a different artistic style, a different interpretation on the story line, or even a bit of satire. I myself have two pieces in my gallery which could be construed as fan art, both of which SUCKED royally, took me about 20 MINUTES EACH and beat out almost everything else in my gallery for popularity. I want to be angry at somebody for this, but I'm the one who drew them, so I'm having a hard time.
That being said, what I don't understand, as per the title of this journal, is the need to fundamentally, and with an air of earnestness and sincerity that borders on the sane, alter intrinsic parts of the story, change the characters (usually, it seems, their sexual preferences) and, in general, rape the original work utterly. This seems especially pronounced in the genera of blatant copyright infringement called "fanfiction". I'm sorry, but doesn't the title "fan art" imply that you liked the original? Then why change it? Certainly, there may be things you think could've happened differently, or maybe you thought that a character would be more believable or interesting with some variations on their personality. If this is the case, I would strongly urge the would-be perpetrators of fan fiction to consider something called 'making it up yourself'. Yeah, I get it, it's harder than just modifying an already successful and wildly popular template, but isn't it more worth it? I mean, no one's asking you to develop an entirely new archatypical personality, just challenge yourself a little bit.

The second thing I don't understand is all of the truly bizarre ostensibly erotic art on here. I must say, the lack of creativity exhibited by the fan artists is more than made up for by the vivid, feverish and extremely worrying imaginations of this crowd. Don't misunderstand me, I find the human body to be an extremely beautiful thing, both female, and, in a vastly different context, male. That being said, the key word is human, not grotesquely bloated bubble creature. Let's be candid here. Are large breasts attractive? Yes. They're almost as attractive as small and medium-sized breasts. Anyway, just because someone likes large, expressive eyes doesn't mean they gaze wistfully at pictures of camels. What I'm saying is, If your intention is to represent the human form artfully and creatively, that's cool. If it's your intention to make a 14-year-old suburbanite with a bad case of adolescence go red in the face, that's called pornography, and I'm not sure if it requires enough skill to be an art.
A bizarre trend in this vein that I've noticed recently is to do with pregnancy. A lot of people say pregnancy is a beautiful thing, and in certain ways, I definitely agree. There's no question that the creation of new life is truly wondrous, and I can even see how it could be considered sort of sexy, in that only girls can do it and it's therefore vaguely mysterious and intriguing to us guys, but from what I understand, it's really rather unpleasant at best. It's definitely a big part of being human--hell, of being a mammal--but how do we get from that to crudely drawn cartoons of amazingly buxom women with bellies that suggest they're carrying the incredible hulk and his twin brother to term? I mean, sweet jesus, can't we portray anything without exaggerating it beyond reason, or does subtlety and grace not get the old hormones stirred up enough?

Speaking of which: Inflation art. I...I don't even know what to say about this, because I literally have no idea what the thought behind it is. Is it a satire on the "ideal" woman, a counterpoint to the super-skinny image we so often see, or is it actually supposed to be attractive? I mean...I can't say I find it so, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I could go on, but it's almost 3:00 in the morning, and frankly, this probably comes off as ignorant ranting anyway (It is, just so you know). I will end by saying that there are a truly surprising number of amazingly talented and creative artists on here who consistently turn out inventive and beautiful art, So it leaves one to wonder: Isn't life too short for Naruto Yaoi?

]]> ~Californianinja http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15400221/ http://Californianinja.deviantart.com/journal/15400221/ Wed, 07 Nov 2007 01:16:32 PST How are you?
I'm fine. My brain's pretty strung out on fatigue right now, as you could probably tell by my strange rhetorical question. I just spent the past lots of hours being artistical on illustrator, and right now I'm waiting for Photoshop to rasterize the file so I can add the finishing touches. What am I working so fervently on?
Thank you for asking.
I'm working on a comic book. More accurately, a collection of comic pages.
"But Evan, you can't draw! Trust me, you've got a whole gallery of basically crap artwork. I've seen it. You draw like a monkey on crack having a stroke. Why would you make a comic book?"
Well, that's a good point. The reason I'm doing this is because I can't draw. It's pretty much practice. So listen up, you watchers...all...six...of you, It's up to you. I'm going to mark Advanced Critique on every one of these pages, and I want you to tear them apart. Rip into me. Point out every flaw, even if it has nothing to do with the comic. Point out character flaws and personality defects I'm afflicted with. Make fun of my fashion sense. Ridicule my personal philosophy. If you're feeling particularly nasty, you might even tell me what you actually think about my art.
I'm glad we had this discussion. The picture is done. It's horribly distorted. I mean, more so than it was when I drew it. I just know I'll have fun figuring out why. Now get some sleep. It's a quarter past 1, for Christ's sake.

]]> ~Californianinja