Got my Bio 201 exam back today — 94%. Apparently, increasing fertility rates don’t contribute to demographic transition. Well, according to the correction noted for question #3, anyway. Doesn’t sound right to me, but there you go.

Lost has been more expository lately. I can’t believe Juliette’s boyfriend was the guy the tailies killed. No wonder she’s double-crossing Jack and the others. So, given that pregnant women almost always die on the island, I’m beginning to think that the black smoke is just the visible part of a huge network of nano-machines that keep people healthy. I think pregnancy might mess things up because the system can’t distinguish the fetus from a tumor. Or maybe the nano-things have specific orders to maintain the island’s population at a certain level. Eh, I dunno… none of that explains why it killed Eko or the pilot.

This whole Don Imus thing is pretty nuts. I guess part of it is that there’s very little news going on this week (his comments and the test results confirming the father of Anna Nicole’s baby are the only things going on, apparently). But I think it’s pretty stupid that he’s getting vilified and fired for a three-word off-the-cuff remark about a sports team when people like Michael Savage say way more bigoted things, with specific intent, on national broadcasts almost every day. Why doesn’t CNN get up in arms when Savage calls for Madeleine Albright to be hanged? Or when he says all gay people should get AIDS and die? Or that certain races have never contibuted anything to civilization? This stuff is far worse than anything anyone’s ever said about a college basketball team.

This Java game is pretty neat. You have to build 3-D objects from 2-D schematics. Which reminds me; I need to finish my SketchUp project. Blah. I’m going to go call some suppliers and arrange RMAs.

Update: Apparently the Java game is a little buggy; it doesn’t “green-circle” my solutions for figuur 3 and figuur 4, even though they conform to the 2-D views and use the given number of blocks. Oh well, it’s still a neat brain exercise.

Update 2: Okay, I figured out why #3 wasn’t showing up as correct. I had the model oriented wrong — the arrow has to point to the bottom when viewed from the top. Boy, number 10 was a doozy — took me a few tries. Here’s the solution, in case anyone’s stuck.

TotD:

What do you want done with your remains when you die?

I’ve actually thought about this a bit before today. When I die, I want my body cremated and the ashes mixed with clay, which will then be formed into discs like thick coasters. These will be stamped with a few lines of text that include my name, date of birth/death, and a unique serial number. The opposite side will have a little text explaining what the object is. I want about a hundred of these fired in a kiln, and then distributed at my funeral by my next of kin. People can do whatever they want with it; put it on a shelf, toss it in the ocean, grind it up to be snorted with cocaine, etc.

It’s a little like how they do it in Deep Space Nine. From the Wikipedia entry:

Ferengi males are neither buried nor cremated when they die. Rather, the dying male puts his body up for auction to the highest bidder and the dead body is carved up into little pieces that are vacuum-desiccated, preserved and packaged for sale as mementos of a worthy life.

Anyway, I think it’d be pretty awesome if everyone did that. Just think, you could have a little display box of all your loved ones who’ve passed on.

Another version of the death-coaster (or whatever it’ll be called) could have a solid lucite cylinder embedded in the center that would contain a tooth or some very small memento of the deceased. A lock of hair, maybe? Ooh, or you could put passive RFID tags in there — with a reader, you could download pictures, obituaries, stuff like that. There’s money to be made here, people. Who wants to invest some startup capital?

Anyway, I just got back from Meet the Robinsons. It was very mediocre. Not as good as Chicken Little (the other CG movie Disney did solo). The villain was funny though; way more interesting than the cookie-cutter main character.

A lot of the movie revolves around this evil bowler hat, but they never explain why it’s evil. That would’ve made for a better film. Also, the brief scene in the alternate timeline where it takes over the world was way cooler. Why couldn’t I have seen that movie? No doubt Disney will draw on some of this stuff for the forty-three sequels they have planned.

I made stew last night. It came out really good. Slightly zestier than I’d intended, however; for some reason, I couldn’t taste the pepper shortly after seasoning, so I added some more. It still wasn’t noticably spicy, but I figured I’d worry about it later. After a few hours of gentle bubbling, I took another taste and found the heat I’d been looking for and then some.

I put a ton of crap in this batch. Some dirt cheap round steak, mushrooms, half a yellow onion, a yellow bell pepper, three-quarters of an acorn squash, a can of corn, a lot of carrots, two potatoes, a couple handfuls of green beans, lots of fresh cilantro, a can of diced & peeled tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic, and a quart of this stuff. I need to get a bigger pot… all the stew was gone by noon today.

I spent most of my free time this afternoon taking apart Xboxes and doing cable stuff with our home theater setup. Amazingly, I ended up with something that actually works (though the problem wasn’t what I expected). So now I have one working Xbox and one broken Xbox with a modchip. I think I’m going to try eBaying the broken one. The modchip isn’t compatible with the working box (it’s a 1.3 and the other is a 1.0) so I’m leaving it in there. Getting it out would be a huge hassle anyway.

TotD:

What do you think of your fellow IMBCers?

I love reading personal blogs, but so many people update too irregularly (or let the sites die) and I lose interest. That’s why I like the IMBC so much. We have a lot of new people this year; this is the first IMBC for 58% of the ’07 participants. Sadly, no one has achieved Posyden-like infamy yet. (Though I think StillHonest had a good shot at that sort of epic outrageosity before he dropped out.)

Re: my fellow IMBCers: I like ungsunghero, though a lot of his posts are about sports (a topic I’m clueless about). Zombie Jesus is interesting. I kind of wonder if he’s actually that angry in real life, or if he just decided rants would be easier to write. Regardless, he’s usually fun to read. Finley likes sushi, so he’s cool by default. Tim, of course, was my favorite poster in last year’s contest. Alas, his bloggings are much too far apart when he’s not competing. Instant Rice is fatally awesome, if only because of this. Plus, he’s blogged about ghosts, zombies, computers, mutant Somalians, sinful cats, and thermite. How can you not want to read that? Amy’s blog is basically about what it’s like being a fashion student in southern California. Definitely not the sort of subject I’d normally seek out, but it’s good because it’s so different from what I’m used to. Beefy’s blog is pretty much the same as it’s always been, but now there’s more tour stuff. All the traveling stuff is kind of interesting.

Okay, time to go play Burnout: Revenge with Brett.

Weird weather today. This morning it was actually sunny albeit quite windy. Then around 3:00 it started raining. Around 5:00, the rain turned to hail. Then it cleared up a little bit and the wind stopped. I snapped this picture of my car:

I went to that MIS meeting. I thought it was going to be one-on-one, but there were 14 other students there. They gave us free pens–

Mid-post pseudo-update: Okay, I left the house halfway through this entry to go see Grindhouse with Brett. OMG. Definitely the most ultra-keen movie I’ve seen this year. It’s a double feature, right? At this point, it’s hard for me to accurately judge the first film. I definitely liked Tarantino’s better, but it was so spectacular that I can’t quite tell if Rodriguez’s was “meh” by comparison, or if it was really was so-so. I think I’m imagining it only in-context, because I seem to remember being pretty pleased with it at the end of the first 80 minutes.

But Death Proof (Tarantino’s feature) was something else. I can’t believe how great even the “boring parts” were. Even the stupid girl-talk was fascinating. And the car chase! I’d heard people singing the praises of the amazing car chase long before I saw the movie, and I thought, “Pff, I hate car chases. At best, they don’t detract too much from the movie’s real substance.” And the clips I’d seen didn’t wow me: Oh, a black car ramming another car with some scared girl clutching to the hood. Whoopdeedoo. But it was actually extremely awesome. I love how Tarantino tells you who everyone is long before the action starts — the bad guy drives a black car, the good guys drive a white car. She’s a stuntman, he’s a stuntman. And even after the oh-so-obvious foreshadowing, symbolism, exposition, and so on, he still surprises you.

The best moment in the movie, maybe in the best moment in the entirety of film, is when Kurt Russel pauses and smiles right into the camera from across the roof of his black Chevy Nova.

I was really looking forward to today’s TotD, but thanks to that three-hour movie I’m dangerously close to the post deadline. So I’ll try to sum it up as succinctly as I can.

What are your thoughts on the afterlife?

A few weeks ago, I heard the following C.S. Lewis quote on a really old (circa 1995) episode of This American Life (I’m paraphrasing here, as I can’t find the actual quote ATM):

When you die, you go on being yourself, but moreso — you become the purest form of you. For the rest of eternity. For some people, that’s heaven. And for some people, that’s hell.

To me, that sounds very true. I think that when we die, we all go to the same place. There’s no physical pain. People can spend the rest of eternity living out their little solipsistic fantasies if they like, but the real function of the place is to enable totally free, clear communication. Everyone has their own will and can’t be restricted by others, so they all become whatever it is they’ve always wanted to be. In a way, you have to answer to everyone you’ve ever hurt, but so does everyone else. There’s probably a lot of pain at first, but after some great length of time, I think everyone would settle into a peaceful coexistence. I’d go on, but tick-tock, right?

Ugh. Worked all day today. First thing in the morning I had to get up for this remote desktop/phone-assisted walkthrough, calibration, and testing for the portable equine digital X-ray system. In the process, I may have given myself and a couple housecats cancer. Which is to say, we took a lot of test shots. Then I went and did computer work for someone in Finley for several hours. That was actually kind of fun since part of that time was helping her buy a flat-panel television that her husband could play internet poker on. (We settled on a 32″ Vizio — very nice.) She also gave me a busted Xbox she had lying around; hopefully I can use the power supply from it to fix my busted Xbox.

TotD:

What would you do with a million dollars?

Tax-free, I assume? 15% would go to friends and family, broken up according to shares (two shares per nuclear family member, one share per extended family member provided I’ve seen them in the last ten years, one to two shares per close friend, and a quarter share per acquaintance). 5% would go to a few charities of my choosing (this percentage would increase with larger windfalls; at the $50 million mark, I’d establish my own charitable foundation). I’d spend 30% on a modest house (like ~1600 sq. ft. or so, adjusted for location) somewhere nice, like Bellevue, Jackson, WY, or… I dunno, Minnesota, maybe? I’d have to research that and do a little traveling. Maybe Federal Way — there were some really nice gated communities in the southern part.

20% would go into a trust fund I couldn’t access until 2025 (just in case I start making really bad decisions). That’ll be nice if I find that my priorities have shifted dramatically by the time I’m forty-three. Of course, I’d get a top investment firm to manage it. 25% would go into a simple trust that I could access; this is what I’d live off. I’d manage at least part of that one myself (and treat it like an actual job).

The remaining 5% would be split up thusly: Nine parts education, one part mad money (for parties, toys, and a trip or two).

I think that’s a pretty good plan. For larger amounts, the percentage spent on a residence would go down — something like:

X = 250,000 + (Y/20)

Where X is the amount allocated for the purchase of a home and Y is the total windfall after taxes.

Today’s TotD (from Tim):

If you were a superhero, what super power would you want, and why?

Great topic — I’ve been looking forward to this one since it was submitted. Originally, I was leaning towards controllable insubstantiality. But then I talked to Brett and he said he’d want mind control, so I started thinking that might be my favorite option. I think most people would pick flight initially, but that’s pretty pedestrian — half the superheroes in the comics can fly. And it’s not that useful compared to other powers; for getting around, teleportation would be way better. Shapeshifting (like, to mimic other people) would be pretty cool. I guess it depends on what you want the power for. What would you most want to do with it? Get rich/famous, destroy your enemies, boff supermodels, save lives, live forever, rule the world, know the truth behind every secret…?

Becoming rich and famous would be a given with almost any super power. The first part would be especially easy — just demonstrate your ability for the James Randi Educational Foundation in their million-dollar challenge. Fame would quickly ensue as you made headlines world-wide as the first-ever fully confirmed superhuman/psychic/whatever title they stuck on you.

I also thought about something like Light’s ability from Death Note, or the “culling song” from Lullaby. I don’t think I could deal with the ethical implications, but for sheer power it’s pretty up there.

After thinking it over for a while, I finally decided on “time-stopping” (is there a real name for that?). It’s really cliché, but it has so many applications. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look up Temple Fugate (from Batman: The Animated Series), the Clockstoppers movie, or the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XIV. I’m sure it’s been featured in a lot of other movies and TV shows, but these are the first examples that sprung to mind.

Okay, time to go install Windows on a bunch of computers at the clinic.