Refraction

7 April 2009 can’t come soon enough.

Actually, on second thought, I should be gearing up for the last of my undergrad exams at that time–maybe it can. 😛 Then again, I’ll only have three, so maybe it won’t be so bad. But–then I also have to defend my thesis, which is going to be incredibly draining.

I can’t believe I missed the leaders’ debate in French tonight! To be rather honest, politics don’t interest me terribly much, but everything’s better with the addition of French. (De plus je me sens mieux après avoir entendu le français de M. Harper. Ouaiiis c’est injuste et mesquin et tout ça, mais on se moque de lui pour n’importe quoi d’autre.)

I also feel like I should write a letter of thanks to my first high school French language/English grammar teacher. Bien que je pense ne pas avoir beaucoup appris dans son cours de français, ce sont les leçons qu’elle nous a données en grammaire anglaise dont je me sers tout le temps. Comprendre ce que c’est un COD est beaucoup plus facile si on connait déjà “direct objects” en anglais.)

Something only a French prof could say:
“Do you take the bus? I take the bus. It’s lovely! From a linguistic point of view.”
Lui, c’est un homme un peu dingue (comme vous l’avez remarqué, sans doute).

A friend and I preface a lot of things with “Random:” when we’re talking online. So in that spirit…

Random: Is there anyone on this planet who thought Clay Aiken was actually straight? I mean… really. Clay fans are “reeling” from this disclosure? Get real.

Random: Guys, please do not carry patent leather bags. I abhor patent leather myself, unless it’s just a detail–I think it looks childish–but men and patent leather just do not mix.

Random: I don’t like shoe booties either. XP So take that, fashion mavens! I think the distance I now have from retail allows me to be dismissive of trends.

Random: I need to go shopping soon, I think… I’ve realized I have sweaters and t-shirts. No real fall transition pieces. Alas, this was much easier when I spent all day inside, instead of dashing from class to class.

(Yes, that capitalization is intentional.)

The only thing that bothers me about WordPress is the constant update reminders. I mean, it’s good that the developers are working on it and patching security holes and stuff, but I just really can’t be bothered to update my installation every three weeks.

Especially since any non-basic ASCII character turns into gibberish every time I do it. That, and last time, it rolled back my comments to last July. Granted, there have probably been only… five legitimate comments since that time, but still.

I had originally come here to expound upon the wonder that is “Oddray” (the July single of LOVE, aka Fukiko Nakamura, aka ex CORE OF SOUL vocalist) but I’ve kind of lost that train of thought. Still. Happy song. Makes me want to dance.

Being the Google nerd that I am (although I will admit that I have finally taken them off their pedestal and realized that just having a motto of not being evil doesn’t stop you from… actually doing evil things) I downloaded Google Chrome, their new browser.

It’s slick, I’ll give you that, but I won’t be switching from Firefox anytime soon. There are some interesting features:

1. Homepage with your most-visited sites. I actually dislike this idea very much. Seriously, I don’t need everyone who opens my browser to know that I am a GMail addict and check it frequently. Sites that I need to visit, I’ll visit–otherwise, this is rather useless.
2. No extensions. Yet. I’ve been using Adblock (and no NoScript) for so long that it’s weird to see ads on webpages. I think that since it’s a open-source application, this kind of extendable functionality is just around the bend.
3. Tab control. Reorder your tabs. Drag a tab into a new window. Drag them between windows. Remember those days when tabbed browsing was a new idea?
4. New download manager! I like it better than Firefox’s–it stays in a “status bar”, but you can call up a full (and searchable) list of downloads if you like.
5. Best feature for last: Incognito mode. Basically, any browsing you do while in this mode leaves no traces on your computer. It’s intended to rival IE 8’s “Privacy Mode,” I think. Somehow, though, I doubt Microsoft could get away with this little gem:
   

   You’ve gone incognito. […] Going incognito doesn’t affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
   […]

   • Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
   • Surveillance by secret agents
   • People standing behind you

   Cute, Google. Cute.

   (Every time I hear “incognito”, I think of that movie I watched in French class. Yes, sad, isn’t it?)

This is proof-positive, my friends, that life is WAAAAY better as a musical:

Yes, it’s “Dr. Horrible“, which I’ve been harping on about to anyone who will listen for the last few days.

Cher Monsieur le site web d’Archambault :

Vous ne marchez pas très bien. Il se trouve qu’il faut cliquer sur les liens au moins deux ou trois fois pour accéder aux pages suivantes. Je ne sais pas s’il s’agit du logiciel qu’on emploie ou si vous n’aimez simplement pas les anglophones.

Je ne veux qu’acheter deux dictionnaires. Ça ne devrait pas être difficile…

Je vous prie d’accepter, Monsieur, l’éxpression de mes salutations distinguées.

Une cliente frustrée

ETA: Okay, I take it back. Archambault, you are awesome! I love that you will send me a free Bescherelle with my dictionaries. Never mind the fact that I have never used a Bescherelle in my life. I also love that you are selling Le Petit Robert 2009 for just over half the price of the university bookstore. AND WITH FREE SHIPPING.

This story about teachers in one school being allowed to carry concealed firearms scares me. A lot.

But then again, what do I know? I’m just a bleeding-heart-liberal Canadian.

I have just wasted the past two hours of my life watching What the Bleep Do We Know?! I’d heard about this movie sometime after its initial release and got interested because, well, it purported to be a movie about quantum physics. And reality. This was about the time of my Matrix phase, so it seemed like a perfect fit. I never did get to go see it in theatres, but when I saw it on the library shelf the other day…

Well, it seemed harmless enough at the time.

First of all: Yeah, I harp on about misrepresentations of science a lot. I know. I can’t help it. And no, I’m not a physicist. But I have had to suffer through my share of physics-thinly-veiled-as-chemistry courses, which gives me a decent enough base to tell you this:

Most of what is in that movie is complete and utter bunk.

To be fair, it’s not all bad–things like Feynman’s path integral are adequately treated–but it’s the wacko, Rhonda Byrne Secret-like propaganda that gives me the shivers.

Look, physical reality exists. It’s kind of funky that atoms (and by extension, all matter) are mostly empty space, but when a supposedly insubstantial rock hits a supposedly insubstantial you, it still hurts. It’s not because you think it hurts. Frankly, this quantum-new-age-solipsism really, really bothers me. If reality were as simple as willing it into existence, the world would be completely different.

[edit: I will concede that the “observer effect” is not really something I fully understand, but you can’t transpose quantum-scale phenomena into the world we perceive.]

The experiments with the labelled water are actually a perfect example of “You will find what you seek, if only because you’re completely blind to everything else” which is emphasized at length in the first part of the movie. The photos look like snowflakes to me, so I think they’re of frozen water… and you know what they say about snowflakes! No two alike. You could easily find a “Love” snowflake in the “I will kill you” water and vice versa.

I need to look up that Washington, D.C. study which supposedly reduced crime rates by 25%, but somehow I doubt that claim can be substantiated.

But the most grating aspect of the film was the presentation of JZ Knight–channeling “Ramtha”–as an expert. It got to the point where everytime she was onscreen, I muttered, “What are you talking about?” The tipping point was when she talked about how we have wonderful technology these days–“antigravity magnets and zero-point energy”–which prompted a quick, “WOMAN, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT ZERO-POINT ENERGY IS?!” (Hint: it’s not a technology we’re going to be harnessing anytime soon.)

I also have issues with electrons “winking into and out of existence”. Remember, I’m a chemist(-in-training). Despite what anyone else will tell you, much of chemistry is concerned with what those flaky electrons are doing at a given moment. Electrons are the basis of chemical bonds. Chemical bonds define molecules. Molecules define… well, you get the picture. The idea that they just arbitrarily disappear is a little much. If the filmmakers are trying to get the point across that we don’t really know whether an electron is a particle or a wave (hint: it’s both!), they needn’t have resorted to such misleading statements.

Then again, I’m not really sure what the point of this film was. Promotion of positive thinking? Inspiring Rhonda Byrne to write The Secret? Persuading the general population that JZ Knight is really Ramtha, whose theories have been validated by academics?

Scientific accuracy aside, all the random CG sequences were quite annoying, and seemed to serve no purpose other than the wow the viewer (and possibly lull them into ascribing more authority than deserved to the film? Hmmm.)

Anyway. I didn’t know bleep, but at least now you do.

The one and only webcomic I read regularly is xkcd. (There’s a reason why I keep going back: it’s just that good. Most of the time.)

So when Vienna posts this tweet, I’m strangely pleased to find that we have something in common.

I wonder, though, what she thinks of the title-text in the latest installment: ‘I’m nothing without you’ is a fucked-up sentiment.