the one in which latenightcuppa asks things and I answer them. XP
Meme ahead!
Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random.
Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
01. talk science to me, baby.
While I had no idea when I was growing up that "mathematician" was totally a thing you could be and that it would be awesome (or that "dating a biologist" is also an awesome thing to do), science as a whole has always fascinated the hell out me. I blame/credit my PBS and library fueled upbringing. (Even now, I still have a soft spot for Bill Nye the Science Guy.) I liked the idea of knowing the world's rulesets, how stuff worked, how all those wires meant electrons were dancing through them, how there was a world of complexity in every leaf of the giant tree in my backyard.
In high school, I was okay at science but awesome at math, especially AP Statistics. (Also, the AP Stats teacher was young, fairly attractive, and a big ol' Whedon-fanboy nerd - that kind of helped, haha.) I heard whispers of these things called "actuaries" and "quantitative financial analysts" who got to play with numbers and data and get paid craptons of money for it, so I said "what the heck" and ended up a math major.
That ended up teaching me things I never anticipated - that math itself could be beautiful, that the layers of complexity go deeper than I could have ever anticipated, and that the scientific community is filled with maddening, hard working, fascinating, passionate people. (If I was a different kind of person I might be a lobbyist on behalf of the scientific community, but I guess I'll get into that in the politics section.)
And yeah, math is a science. It's the science of logic, of numbers, of rule sets themselves. (This is the sight of one Kawa cheating at this question, but not really. XP)
And it's beautiful. Not just in the "images of fractals/polar functions/polyhedra are pretty" sense, but in that a proof itself can be beautiful and elegant. From what I've heard from other scientists, the same concept happens - it's not just that fish are beautiful, they're also surprisingly efficient and complex and interesting, and that's it's own kind of beauty; chemical reactions are awesome to watch but also fascinating; etc.
A truly elegant result or proof has a wonderful flow to it; it pulls results together in a neat little package. It doesn't require much knowledge outside of some basic definitions, the assumptions you've made, and a little logic. No step is extraneous, and the result is a complete surprise. It's a little like watching time lapse videos of flowers blooming - you know that every petal is inside the bud, but watching it unfurl still makes something completely different and wonderful.
For more, including why mathematicians are obsessed with the idea that eπi + 1 = 0 (and how the heck that's true), there's a really great explaination by Surein Aziz here.
02. cake or pie?
The answer is actually "yes". But of course that's cheating, so.
I have a lot of feelings about pie crust. I hate shortening with a burning passion and so avoid it like the plague. Yes this means my pie crusts are all butter; this does mean I have to be careful. I actually keep my butter in the freezer, cut it, keep it in the freezer while mixing the dry ingredients, and work the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender like this one (but cheaper). And yes, I chill the pastry blender and the bowl beforehand too. Solid butter melts into flakiness. It's great.
The problem is, I have yet to find a *filling* worthy of my amazing crust. Trust me, my in-laws have tried every year's iteration of apple pie every Thanksgiving, and we just have not found the perfect one yet. It may be because all of my tries were in Florida, which is just not an apple kind of place, but damnit, I'll keep trying. (Hopefully this fall I'll get some proper fresh New York apples and have at it. Hopefully.) And sadly, things like meringue are off-limits to me, as are pecan pies and chess pies and anything of that nature.
Cake though - I do have some wonderful, moist, fantastic cakes on standby - a rich chocolate (with optional stout - yes as in beer - yes it's as awesome as it sounds), a swoon-worthy carrot (which is totally vegan before frosting!), a citrus pound cake heavy on the citrus. I do worry their textures will never live up to the egg-filled counterparts, though, and I can't make truly light cakes like angel food or chiffon due to the lack of access to eggs, which makes me sad. I'm always experimenting with strange and lovely flavors though, especially more tropical ones, as those are what I actually grew up with.
03. philipp lahm
I will weep into my 2010 Mannschaft away kit (with his name on it) when he finally lifts up all the trophies. ALL THE TROPHIES.
Um, anyway.
Besides the fact that he's, you know, one of the best and smartest defenders currently playing - I just kind of like the guy, I guess. I like his insistence on being painfully honest, even with uncomfortable truths. I like his drive to do something for the betterment of humanity through his constant charity work. I like his complete devotion to Bayern and the German NT. I even find his terrible taste in music endearing.
Oh yeah, between the belief in justice, the weird music taste, the animals, and the Nintendo games - I keep weirdly imagining he and my fiance have similar personalities, or at least would get along, which is a bonus.
I may or may not have visibly swooned when I found out my fiance was a defender in elementary school soccer camp. Sure he was in the center instead of the wings, but still...
04. a novel that changed your life
If I hadn't already cheated with the "math is totally a science" thing, I'd cheat on this one, with the "graphic novel is totally a novel" thing and say Ghost in the Shell, because I will always be obsessed with it. I will merely say "since you like badass women you will love Major Motoko Kusanagi".
But hey, since we're on the topic of cyberpunk (which is my favorite kind of sci-fi), let's talk! While I read it relatively late in my life (i.e. my freshman year of college), I'm gonna say Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for two reasons: the book itself, and the circumstances by which I read it.
I'm not a cryptographer, let's be clear here - some of the details went over my head. It did give me a very healthy amount of admiration for what crypto is and what it's capable of, and the power of prime numbers (something I had already guessed in my tiny bit of math knowledge, but crypto really wrings them for all their worth.) But the plot(s) - the idea of computer security changing everything, of the complex web the Internet and crypto and defense and finance weave - was awe inspiring. Also as a queer scientist I can't help but love anything that features Alan Turing and is sympathetic to his situation, so. I went from Cryptonomicon to his other works (i.e. The Diamond Age, which is also great for having great ladies in it), and from there to all the other speculative fiction fantasticness that is all over my Nook Color today.
Which brings me to the second part - how it happened. As I said, freshman in college - let me note that I went to an all girls' liberal-arts focused high school where I was a black sheep. So college - college at a tech school, surrounded by people who wanted to be scientists and engineers (and who were mostly men) - that was a pretty crazy transition to make. And one guy a few floors above me in the freshman dorms was a big part of what made that happen.
No, it's not Adam, and they weren't even really friends. But this guy was one of the first real nerd folk I met, and his knoweldge was deep and wide. I mentioned my GitS fangirling, my swooning over cyberpunk, and he lent me his very battered copy of Cryptonomicon. I read it cover to cover in a matter of days, and it exposed me to a wide world - not just of crypto itself, or even of the Western cyberpunk tradition, but of fellow fans outside the internet. Of a place where it's not ~weird or ~awkward to like these things, where people can like and respect someone who cares about speculative fiction in all its forms.
He was one of the people I eventually dragged to the first Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy meeting that semester - where I met Adam again - and we know how that went.
05. chelsea fc
I will admit in 2006 I basically jumped on the Ballack bandwagon gleefully into Chelsea FC...and then lost touch with football for the next few years (see above with Nerd Society). When I came back to football, it seemed natural to follow them again, even though I was angry at Micha's agent and he wasn't part of the club any more anyway.
And yeah, sometimes I shake my head and wonder why I put myself through this - the allegations of racism, the sheer weirdness of Roman Abramovich, the facepalm-worthy CL final a few years back. And unlike most of my fellow Chels on my f-list, I have no connection to London, to the Bridge - I've never even been to Europe.
But other times, they win and my heart soars for them. They fight their hardest and I find myself pulling for them. They act adorable together ( example 1, example 2, example 3) and I squee with the rest of my fellow Chels. (And let's face it, for all the craziness our club puts us through, Chelsea fans on the Internet are quite often some of the sweetest and best behaved. I think we kind of have to be, with the abuse the rest of the world puts us through...)
So now I can't see myself rooting for any other club in England. I think it's really proof positive of "the club chooses you" - as well as of the idea that once the club has been chosen, there's no turning back, for good or for ill. So here I will stay, keeping the blue flag flying high.
Oh, and before you ask - if/when Bayern and Chelsea meet, I'll sob and cry and flail - and hopefully watch one of the most entertaining matches the world could ever make.
06. p-p-politics
Ugh, I actually kind of avoid talking politics on here. But um.
I'm registered independent; the two party system leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So I'll talk issues instead, I guess.
I believe in government helping people, but I also believe in supporting the human enterprise. I don't think these things are contradictory - but then again, I'm queer and Catholic and a scientist, what do I know. (I do disagree with the Church on some things, but agree with everything in the Nicene Creed. I don't think it makes me a bad Catholic, much like how disagreeing with the government but agreeing with the Constitution doesn't make you a bad American.)
I (somewhat selfishly) care a lot about education, scientific funding, and tech issues like net neutrality. I wish there was a way for every student to get a well rounded and high quality education. I kind of wonder if it'd ever be possible to have an alternate high school mathematics curriculum available that went towards discrete mathematics and graph theory (useful in, say, computer networks) instead of trigonometry and calculus, though I know the non-computer engineers would complain. I wish that there was a way that research funded by the government was freely publishable while still going through the full extent of peer review. SOPA/PIPA/ACTA scared the crap out of me. I like how Web 2.0 independently came up with a solution to the Napster ~crisis of the past by creating easy to use legal sources, but I also worry about Apple's apparent monopoly over the music market, Netflix's apparent monopoly over the streaming video market, etc.
I wish there was a way to fund healthcare without screwing anyone over - including already overworked public hospital medical staff. I wish health care included proper treatment for mental issues, ranging from depression to gender dysphoria. I wish someone, anyone, cared enough about transphobia and trans-targeted violent crime to start a movement about it. I wish the rest of the LGBT community would notice that their T siblings are dying while they campaign for gay marriage.
07. bunnies
Unlike dogs and cats, I'm not allergic to them, a fact which is kind of amazing! Which of course means Adam and I will totally have at least one when we are married and all domestic; we will probably train it to freely roam in house, as that's more Adam's style than having one caged.
And since you've given me the opportunity, I will finish this post with a picture of Speckles, an adorable dwarf rabbit owned by my in-laws. Staying in a room with Speckles is how I figured out I'm not allergic to them. I will note this picture was from when Speckles was very young, and it's much bigger now, but still, eee!
Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random.
Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.
01. talk science to me, baby.
While I had no idea when I was growing up that "mathematician" was totally a thing you could be and that it would be awesome (or that "dating a biologist" is also an awesome thing to do), science as a whole has always fascinated the hell out me. I blame/credit my PBS and library fueled upbringing. (Even now, I still have a soft spot for Bill Nye the Science Guy.) I liked the idea of knowing the world's rulesets, how stuff worked, how all those wires meant electrons were dancing through them, how there was a world of complexity in every leaf of the giant tree in my backyard.
In high school, I was okay at science but awesome at math, especially AP Statistics. (Also, the AP Stats teacher was young, fairly attractive, and a big ol' Whedon-fanboy nerd - that kind of helped, haha.) I heard whispers of these things called "actuaries" and "quantitative financial analysts" who got to play with numbers and data and get paid craptons of money for it, so I said "what the heck" and ended up a math major.
That ended up teaching me things I never anticipated - that math itself could be beautiful, that the layers of complexity go deeper than I could have ever anticipated, and that the scientific community is filled with maddening, hard working, fascinating, passionate people. (If I was a different kind of person I might be a lobbyist on behalf of the scientific community, but I guess I'll get into that in the politics section.)
And yeah, math is a science. It's the science of logic, of numbers, of rule sets themselves. (This is the sight of one Kawa cheating at this question, but not really. XP)
And it's beautiful. Not just in the "images of fractals/polar functions/polyhedra are pretty" sense, but in that a proof itself can be beautiful and elegant. From what I've heard from other scientists, the same concept happens - it's not just that fish are beautiful, they're also surprisingly efficient and complex and interesting, and that's it's own kind of beauty; chemical reactions are awesome to watch but also fascinating; etc.
A truly elegant result or proof has a wonderful flow to it; it pulls results together in a neat little package. It doesn't require much knowledge outside of some basic definitions, the assumptions you've made, and a little logic. No step is extraneous, and the result is a complete surprise. It's a little like watching time lapse videos of flowers blooming - you know that every petal is inside the bud, but watching it unfurl still makes something completely different and wonderful.
For more, including why mathematicians are obsessed with the idea that eπi + 1 = 0 (and how the heck that's true), there's a really great explaination by Surein Aziz here.
02. cake or pie?
The answer is actually "yes". But of course that's cheating, so.
I have a lot of feelings about pie crust. I hate shortening with a burning passion and so avoid it like the plague. Yes this means my pie crusts are all butter; this does mean I have to be careful. I actually keep my butter in the freezer, cut it, keep it in the freezer while mixing the dry ingredients, and work the butter into the dry ingredients with a pastry blender like this one (but cheaper). And yes, I chill the pastry blender and the bowl beforehand too. Solid butter melts into flakiness. It's great.
The problem is, I have yet to find a *filling* worthy of my amazing crust. Trust me, my in-laws have tried every year's iteration of apple pie every Thanksgiving, and we just have not found the perfect one yet. It may be because all of my tries were in Florida, which is just not an apple kind of place, but damnit, I'll keep trying. (Hopefully this fall I'll get some proper fresh New York apples and have at it. Hopefully.) And sadly, things like meringue are off-limits to me, as are pecan pies and chess pies and anything of that nature.
Cake though - I do have some wonderful, moist, fantastic cakes on standby - a rich chocolate (with optional stout - yes as in beer - yes it's as awesome as it sounds), a swoon-worthy carrot (which is totally vegan before frosting!), a citrus pound cake heavy on the citrus. I do worry their textures will never live up to the egg-filled counterparts, though, and I can't make truly light cakes like angel food or chiffon due to the lack of access to eggs, which makes me sad. I'm always experimenting with strange and lovely flavors though, especially more tropical ones, as those are what I actually grew up with.
03. philipp lahm
I will weep into my 2010 Mannschaft away kit (with his name on it) when he finally lifts up all the trophies. ALL THE TROPHIES.
Um, anyway.
Besides the fact that he's, you know, one of the best and smartest defenders currently playing - I just kind of like the guy, I guess. I like his insistence on being painfully honest, even with uncomfortable truths. I like his drive to do something for the betterment of humanity through his constant charity work. I like his complete devotion to Bayern and the German NT. I even find his terrible taste in music endearing.
Oh yeah, between the belief in justice, the weird music taste, the animals, and the Nintendo games - I keep weirdly imagining he and my fiance have similar personalities, or at least would get along, which is a bonus.
I may or may not have visibly swooned when I found out my fiance was a defender in elementary school soccer camp. Sure he was in the center instead of the wings, but still...
04. a novel that changed your life
If I hadn't already cheated with the "math is totally a science" thing, I'd cheat on this one, with the "graphic novel is totally a novel" thing and say Ghost in the Shell, because I will always be obsessed with it. I will merely say "since you like badass women you will love Major Motoko Kusanagi".
But hey, since we're on the topic of cyberpunk (which is my favorite kind of sci-fi), let's talk! While I read it relatively late in my life (i.e. my freshman year of college), I'm gonna say Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon for two reasons: the book itself, and the circumstances by which I read it.
I'm not a cryptographer, let's be clear here - some of the details went over my head. It did give me a very healthy amount of admiration for what crypto is and what it's capable of, and the power of prime numbers (something I had already guessed in my tiny bit of math knowledge, but crypto really wrings them for all their worth.) But the plot(s) - the idea of computer security changing everything, of the complex web the Internet and crypto and defense and finance weave - was awe inspiring. Also as a queer scientist I can't help but love anything that features Alan Turing and is sympathetic to his situation, so. I went from Cryptonomicon to his other works (i.e. The Diamond Age, which is also great for having great ladies in it), and from there to all the other speculative fiction fantasticness that is all over my Nook Color today.
Which brings me to the second part - how it happened. As I said, freshman in college - let me note that I went to an all girls' liberal-arts focused high school where I was a black sheep. So college - college at a tech school, surrounded by people who wanted to be scientists and engineers (and who were mostly men) - that was a pretty crazy transition to make. And one guy a few floors above me in the freshman dorms was a big part of what made that happen.
No, it's not Adam, and they weren't even really friends. But this guy was one of the first real nerd folk I met, and his knoweldge was deep and wide. I mentioned my GitS fangirling, my swooning over cyberpunk, and he lent me his very battered copy of Cryptonomicon. I read it cover to cover in a matter of days, and it exposed me to a wide world - not just of crypto itself, or even of the Western cyberpunk tradition, but of fellow fans outside the internet. Of a place where it's not ~weird or ~awkward to like these things, where people can like and respect someone who cares about speculative fiction in all its forms.
He was one of the people I eventually dragged to the first Society of Science Fiction and Fantasy meeting that semester - where I met Adam again - and we know how that went.
05. chelsea fc
I will admit in 2006 I basically jumped on the Ballack bandwagon gleefully into Chelsea FC...and then lost touch with football for the next few years (see above with Nerd Society). When I came back to football, it seemed natural to follow them again, even though I was angry at Micha's agent and he wasn't part of the club any more anyway.
And yeah, sometimes I shake my head and wonder why I put myself through this - the allegations of racism, the sheer weirdness of Roman Abramovich, the facepalm-worthy CL final a few years back. And unlike most of my fellow Chels on my f-list, I have no connection to London, to the Bridge - I've never even been to Europe.
But other times, they win and my heart soars for them. They fight their hardest and I find myself pulling for them. They act adorable together ( example 1, example 2, example 3) and I squee with the rest of my fellow Chels. (And let's face it, for all the craziness our club puts us through, Chelsea fans on the Internet are quite often some of the sweetest and best behaved. I think we kind of have to be, with the abuse the rest of the world puts us through...)
So now I can't see myself rooting for any other club in England. I think it's really proof positive of "the club chooses you" - as well as of the idea that once the club has been chosen, there's no turning back, for good or for ill. So here I will stay, keeping the blue flag flying high.
Oh, and before you ask - if/when Bayern and Chelsea meet, I'll sob and cry and flail - and hopefully watch one of the most entertaining matches the world could ever make.
06. p-p-politics
Ugh, I actually kind of avoid talking politics on here. But um.
I'm registered independent; the two party system leaves a sour taste in my mouth. So I'll talk issues instead, I guess.
I believe in government helping people, but I also believe in supporting the human enterprise. I don't think these things are contradictory - but then again, I'm queer and Catholic and a scientist, what do I know. (I do disagree with the Church on some things, but agree with everything in the Nicene Creed. I don't think it makes me a bad Catholic, much like how disagreeing with the government but agreeing with the Constitution doesn't make you a bad American.)
I (somewhat selfishly) care a lot about education, scientific funding, and tech issues like net neutrality. I wish there was a way for every student to get a well rounded and high quality education. I kind of wonder if it'd ever be possible to have an alternate high school mathematics curriculum available that went towards discrete mathematics and graph theory (useful in, say, computer networks) instead of trigonometry and calculus, though I know the non-computer engineers would complain. I wish that there was a way that research funded by the government was freely publishable while still going through the full extent of peer review. SOPA/PIPA/ACTA scared the crap out of me. I like how Web 2.0 independently came up with a solution to the Napster ~crisis of the past by creating easy to use legal sources, but I also worry about Apple's apparent monopoly over the music market, Netflix's apparent monopoly over the streaming video market, etc.
I wish there was a way to fund healthcare without screwing anyone over - including already overworked public hospital medical staff. I wish health care included proper treatment for mental issues, ranging from depression to gender dysphoria. I wish someone, anyone, cared enough about transphobia and trans-targeted violent crime to start a movement about it. I wish the rest of the LGBT community would notice that their T siblings are dying while they campaign for gay marriage.
07. bunnies
Unlike dogs and cats, I'm not allergic to them, a fact which is kind of amazing! Which of course means Adam and I will totally have at least one when we are married and all domestic; we will probably train it to freely roam in house, as that's more Adam's style than having one caged.
And since you've given me the opportunity, I will finish this post with a picture of Speckles, an adorable dwarf rabbit owned by my in-laws. Staying in a room with Speckles is how I figured out I'm not allergic to them. I will note this picture was from when Speckles was very young, and it's much bigger now, but still, eee!