The critics are raving, "Three shots and a joint!"

Some friends and I were watching Coach Carter tonight (which, incidentally, was an enjoyable if formulaic film), and we devised a more interesting film rating system. Nothing with stars or thumbs or articles, or silly stuff like that. Rather, we were rating the previews by how intoxicated/etc. we'd need to be in order to see the movie.

Some were just, "Well, we'd rent it when we were slightly tipsy." Others were straight out "wasted." Yet others required us to be stoned on anything ranging from marijuana to heroin, and one even rated ManCandy to say he'd need to be "drunk, stoned and comatose" to be willing to watch.

I think we have a winning idea, here. *grins*

(I should mention that to my knowledge, no one in that group has been anything more than moderately drunk, and has never abused another substance other than caffeine and sugar. But it was an amusing idea, regardless.)

Uhmmm.... right, sure

One can learn the oddest of things in conversations with people you thought you knew.

There's an acquaintance of mine in one of the conglomerated Tech buildings at my school (she works on the same floor as one of my jobs). We normally exchange a few pleasantries, and go on our separate ways. A few days ago, though, we happened to be standing together waiting for our respective tasks to complete themselves, and she started talking to me about this wonderful book she was reading. It was called "Talking to Heaven" by James van Praagh.

This man is a "medium", and, according to James Randi, a fraud.

The woman in question is a scientist. And she believes this shit.

Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, over. Anyone care to explain? Believing in things that can't be proven is fine; I do it myself. But believing in things that can actually be disproven... that just seems silly. I'd love to understand this.

A better solitaire

I've never understood the fascination people have with playing solitaire on computers. It's a ridiculously simple game that requires little in the way of cleverness. A much more interesting (and addictive) card game is Freecell.

Yes, that Freecell. The game that comes packaged with every copy of Windows, yet inexplicably few people actually play. The game requires quite a bit of forethought, ordering of objectives, and prearranging of card locations. One must carefully think out *each* move, so you don't end up one space short of being able to win the game.

I used to be decent, but not really good at Freecell. A year or two ago, though, I decided to make a concerted effort to play the game well. As a result, my win percentages have gone up rather nicely. One trap I've fallen into, though, is fatigue. After a few games of Freecell, my brain gets lazy, and I stop rigorously checking every move to make sure it will work. Eventually, this catches up with me and I lose a game. Hence, my modest-yet-still-decent 85% win record.

More importantly, this fatigue factor limits the number of Freecell games I play. I know that people can play Solitaire indefinitely, wasting away large chunks of time. Freecell's fatigue factor makes it an ideal "blow off fifteen minutes to play a few games", but not a black hole that will suck up hours of time.

Integration as a double entendre

I've always been amused at profession- or subject-specific humor. Some of the jokes, such as lawyer or priest or engineer jokes, tend to have a grain of truth, and are amusing to hear. The best ones, though, are those that only make sense to people who have studied a specific field. A couple of examples from my current applied PDEs (for the numerically challenged, that's partial differential equations) class:

When discussing the sifting property of the Dirac Delta function, my professor mentioned, "Well, now you'll ask, what if t0 is at one of the limits of integration? Uhm... well, applied mathematicians like to say that in polite company, we don't discuss that possibility."

(...Which is hilarious if you know about the trouble in defining the Delta function, as heuristic definitions have gaping holes that are inconsistent with normal mathematics, but full definitions are hideously difficult to understand.)

Another one is involving his "motivation" for why we're even bothering to study PDEs (although most of us needed no motivation, seeing as how we've taken some combination of advanced fluids, heat transfer, quantum mechanics, etc.). He said, "So, where do differential equations come from? I suppose this is sort of like teaching sex ed for differential equations." To which I promptly whispered to a classmate, "When two variables love each other very much..."

*chuckles* I'll spare you the rest of the horror that I cooked up in my head, but it used a lot of horrible puns and made-up euphemisms. Math is fun.

India break Lima, India, Victor, Echo, over

One fun past-time is to look up all of the various radio "alphabets" that have been used over the years. The sheer variety - even evolutions inside large organizations (typically military ones) is fascinating to observe. The most commonly used alphabet is this one:

Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey Xray Yankee Zulu

But the variations are truly astonishing. Often small groups make up their own... seemingly for fun, if nothing else. C'mon, go ahead and try it. It's rather difficult, actually, finding 26 different words that sound distinct, are short, and start with 26 different letters. (For an additional challenge, try doing the same in a different alphabet/language.)