Songs To Study By

Conclusion: I should not consume caffeine based pain killers

Sometimes I'm "that" person. I take to statics with fond memories of vectors from my trouble causing multivariate days and my appreciated too late linear days, allong with a bystanders view of euclidean geometry. This is to say: I draw a mean triangle and think I know more than I actually do.

So when the problem is posed in such a way that it forces one to make one of two conflicting assumptions, I cant help myself.

And when I find that the solution most people will be bringing in makes both of those conflicting assumptions.... something in me can't resist.

I'm 2 pages in on a 4 page detail of why said assumptions break the problem, steadily on my way to the conclusion that the problem statement is ill posed, when I realize what I've done. Ive taken caffeine based pain killers, at night, my resting heart rate shoots up to a conservative 100 beats per minute and my hands are too shakey to write clearly.

I am forced to succumb to a different conclusion: I should not consume caffeine.

That said...I have an explanation. I just hope its correct and not a caffeine + exhaustion based misinterpretation of the problem.

The Devil Wears A Suit And Tie

He has been reported multiple times. He has a known track record and some young women are lucky enough to be warned to avoid him...

Others are not.

He invites the younger of the college girls, particularly ones with rough home lives, depression, anxiety, self doubt, anyone who is vulnerable or *has a reason to drink*. And then they get drunk and him and his friends take advantage of them.

He does not know who I am.

About a year ago, I stood with another pushing a door open against the cold beconing in two young women. They had made it out of one of the "parties".

We had acquired information about the "party" and one handed under the table I had passed just enough on to an SRA. The party was "not found". The young women had made it out on their own. We snuck them in through the side door of our residence. They would likely have had to leave school if caught.

As we got them warmed up and sobered up (blankets, soda, water), one of them told us half sobbing what happened, the other sat in near silence and said she was fine. They got out before the night was over, but others don't.

Once I saw a man standing outside, a tall almost iconic image of a businessman, smoking a cigarette, wearing a suit. And then he turned and I saw his face and some cold reality hit me. He looks like he owns this place. He does.

May hell be real & worse than any literature imagines & may his cigarettes send him there.

“Reality ...is FICTIONAL” -(Rainbow Kitten Surprise)

As the days pass and the news gets continually worse as restrictions come and go like the push and pull of the tide (or a sine wave), I find myself in a daze, feeling like this reality is closer to some distopian fiction than anything that could have ever been real....but it is. 

I find myself listening to music and dancing in my cubical of quarantine, because “Because there's nothing else to do” (Pulp, Common People). I danced classical ballet for many years, but lately I’m finding I need music that is far louder and more psychedelic. With that in mind... here’s a few songs that feel oddly fitting right now.

 “American Hero” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise

Because man does Reality seem Fictional Right Now

“Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads

How did we find ourselves here, I’m just “Letting the day’s go by”

“Common People” by Pulp

“watch your life slide out of view And then dance [...] Because there's nothing else to do

Anything by Tame Impala Especially 

“It might be time”

“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards (Artic Monkeys Cover of this is good too)

“The Less I Know The Better”

“Yesterday” by the Beatles 

My God, How is this not dystopian fiction? How is this not just a book I can toss aside? 

Stay Home if you can my friends. 

Dance in your dorm rooms. Binge watch television from your couch. Work out till you have abs as good as Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then watch Angelina Joe Lee in Tomb Raider, then play some Tomb Raider. Skype your best friend and play two truths and a lie. Read the Martian (Andy Weir)... Twice, then Watch the Movie, then study aerospace engineering. Read “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams), complete edition (duh), then pretend you’re an alien for a day. Whatever you do, be safe my friends.  

“Torrefaction” and the Potato Principal

There comes a point at which my mind no longer wants to absorb new information and I become extremely distractible. Junk food and music become the primary motivators for staying at my desk. This is the point at which I consider my mind a fried potato. 

Tonight that point was hit with the word “Torrefaction,” which describes a process of heating a biomass fuel in an inert atmosphere (like nitrogen) to make it into a more efficiently burning source. Pretty cool right?

I’m working on understanding some Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) techniques for something I’m writing and hence came across the word. 

Today began at 9am with some light physics (literally physics regarding light)

Continued on with some dynamics that took way longer than it should have

Came back around to TGA hit “Torrefaction” and now my mind is burnt toast. 

Aside from interuptions for food, hygene and laundry (bothersome repeated tasks we’ve yet to find ways out of) today has been dedicated to engineering and yet here we are nearing midnight, still with more to do and a fried potato of a mind. 

Martian Laundry Gone Wrong A window into the Martian Laundry Experience:

1. Put clothes in washer

2. Put Soap in Soap Slot & Quarters in Quarter Slot

3. Come back to mysterious puddle and open soap slot

4. Put soggy clothes in dryer and more quarters

5. Come back to soggy clothes that smell funny

6. Throw anything not absolutely vital to the week back in the laundry bag

7. Decide to hang pants

8. Discover you do not have a strong enough rope

9. Braid together several feet of plastic bag

10. Hang pants and spray with disinfectant

Alternative Method for same results:

1. Throw pants over chair, spray with disinfectant

2. Pour some water on your laundry bag

3. Throw some quarters out the window

This method is a more efficient means of achieving almost wearable pants, soggy funny smelling shirts, and losing quarters. 

“He's told us not to blow it Cause he knows it's all worthwhile”

We are curvature.

If one thinks of life as a series of moments with good and bad wrapped into them, then is would life be worth living if the net sum of the good - bad was bad?

My initial gut feeling was yes, but as in mathematics we cannot just say things are so because of a gut feeling. After all, one could argue that my intuition says so, because the net sum of my moments has been positive.

Consider net happiness as being approximated by the riemann sum of the given good or bad of a set of adjacent short periods of time. Now take the limit of this as the change in time approaches 0. In short, I invite you to consider happiness as the integral of some curve. Where the curve is defined by f(t)=lifes instantaneous happy levels (positive or negative) and the area underneath which is net good/bad.

This is similar to how the integral of position with respect to time is displacement aka net change in position.

Now determining if life is worth living should be a nice integral of a function (which for most would be continuous) and a simple little apple of the fundamental theorem of calculus.

But consider this:

1. We dont know the bounds, so unless a nice little trick or assumption comes in we cant apply FTC. Also of one factors in considerations of life after life on Mars then this becomes an improper integral from 0 to infinity. If you believe that you are reborn then the bounds become negative infinity to infinity. Both very improper.

2. We don't know the function, so we cant integrate it.

3. Even if we could integrate it, we couldn't solve for C, so integrating f(t) as an indefinite integral would be pointless.

So what do we know?

We aren't very good judges of if things are getting better or worse at any given moment so we only have a very rough guess at the rate of change.

We aren't very observant, so we can only notice a few things at a time.

We really only know the moment that we are in, and not where we are going, and what's more I'd like to purpose that our lives are affected by more than one thing.

I purpose that we experience at any given moment the second derivative of the function of life, which is not simply f(t) but rather, a function of infinite (as many as necessary) variables. We know not where we are or where we are going, we dont know how the future will change us. We simply know where we are and have an idea of whether allong a particular direction we are concave up or down.

Life is a n'th dimensional hyperspace and we experience it as the curvature allong whatever path we trace allong whatever level surface we happen to have focused in on.

Aka, we experience life as the curvature (k, second partial derivative) of one level surface of it's n'th dimensional hyperspace.

So we don't know, but just the mere thought of riding allong this hyperspace brings a certain kind of satisfaction, and a unique quest for knowledge.

Injustices on Mars: 200 years of Backwards Thinking

Several young women have expressed to me in the past week their frustrations with improper treatment and I would like to speak here regarding the attitudes that are unfortunately still present in the universe.

A student looking who dreams of designing hospitals and other places of healing that have a more positive affect on the mentalities of their inhabitants. 

A mechanical engineering student pursuing her education far from her family, looking to improve the world she lives in, whether that be her home country or America.

A freshman nursing student, who came looking to obtain a top tear education, that would ultimately provide a pathway to help those who need it most. 

Three intelligent young women who are both capable of and motivated to change the world for the better. All of them have overcome obstacles to ultimately leave their homes and families far behind to come study on Mars. These young women, are students deserving of our highest respects and yet I am anguished to hear of the unkindly and demeaning way in which they have been treated in this particular community. 

Our first student in seeing a freshman struggling, became somewhat of a mentor for this student. She shared with him advice she had learned on the subject he struggled with, and surviving school in general. He in turn treated her as something to be obtained, and saw it fit to text her with questions that... did not pertain to studies. 

Our second student, living in a whirlwind of learning about both engineering and other cultures and yet smiling through it all. I think we all have much to learn from her. This young woman came to me to discuss engineering. She wears a ring on her left hand, worn as a way to deter young men. She expressed that someone was speaking to her that “wanted to be more than friends” and was not deterred by her expressed lack of interest. So, having learned that a ring worn on the left ring finger is an American indication of being committed, she began wearing one. 

She is committed. Committed to her studies and herself. She is clever and I hope her promise ring keeps its promise of deterring those who don’t listen to her. That said, this is an approach I have seen used before in this community and elsewhere with mixed effectiveness. The unfortunate nature of this approach is that it only deters those who have enough sense not push unwanted attention on those who are committed to someone. The issue here is not that people are expressing romantic interest, but that they are not respectfully heading requests to discontinue certain behaviors. Another unfortunate drawback to this method is that it deters people whom one might actually be interested in getting to know.

Our third student, excited in the days approaching college, started talking via social media to another student. They talked almost every day and she was excited to have a friend at school who had been nothing but kind and respectful. Her ‘friend’ began to express interest in taking her to a school event. She hoped that her ‘friend’ would meet her in the library so they could talk. This is when he expressed that he didn’t have enough time to bother for a conversation and made implications that suggest he was only kind to her at first in hopes he would get to be with her for what many do after this particular school event. She has found other accompaniment for the school event. 

These young women have shown exceptional strength in not allowing idiots to affect their studies, but they shouldn’t have to. This kind of thing happens everywhere and time and time again these young women will have to show strength in the presence of the universe’s worst, but these attitudes are not consistent with the direction the world is headed. I have omitted from this writing things that were said that I feel more specific than needed in this context. I find this behavior particularly ridiculous as the organization approaches 200 years, pledging pretty words of honor, respect and dignity, while preserving ideas that should have died in the last 200 years. 

Additional Statement:

Other events have also elapsed in the past week that lead to me writing this particular piece. The female representing figure was removed from a gender neutral single stall restroom, leaving women to have to find an alternate restroom on the other side of said building and leaving few options for those who do not fit the binary genders. Meanwhile an individual originally dismissed for predatory behaviors was allowed to return.  

I would also like to point out that these occurrences do not only happen to women. In this sometimes stiflingly traditional culture, I have seen objectification and mistreatment of a great diversity of people in a diverse number of forms. I would like to suggest this is not the kind of diversity that we should encourage.

I would like to formally conclude with a request. Students, Mentors, Creators, Be Respectful to the best of your ability, and when the best of your ability isn’t good enough, Get Better. Most of all it is important to Try.

Please Don’t Be Ashholes. And don’t say things worthy of Vogon poetry. 

An Exercise in Unpacking & Havin' More Fun:

Imagine this:

Your shuttle, a lovely blue craft old enough to vote, returns you to mars late enough in the sol that it is already dark and you can feel the cold of the atmosphere in spite of your insulative layers.

Alone, you must unpack your craft and the extensive resupply materials it contains. Because you are alone you cannot leave the craft docked in front of the mass housing unit and since nearby docks are taken you must dock up hill from the housing unit.

How then do you get the supplies into your personal chamber???

Well, if you're me...

While wearing full insulative equipment you drag one of the carts up the hill, load it with the supplies, increasing its mass significantly. Then you push it and a rolling desk chair toward the hill, hop into the rolling desk chair and hold on.

I may be many things, but I'm certain I had the most fun in unpacking.