Pseudo-philosophy?

Have you ever had a day where you don't feel completely human? I don't mean in the sense that you're a god or some transcendent cosmic being like some motivational speakers suggest. I mean in the sense that you're some robot, or monster, or A.I., or alien; something pretending to be human and doing fairly poorly at it. Is this normal? Faulty, any help here?

To Berkeleyites:

That military power and "imperialist nature" you're always talking about? That's what allows us to get a U.S. Navy CVN with its attendent amenties to Haiti in 24 hours, lets us land choppers loaded with humanitarian aid rations in the same time (or just not even land--winch systems are always fun) and get the USNS Comfort out of harbor and into action in five days instead of five weeks.

Random Thoughts #12

How would blackjack be different if you played with a tarot deck, major arcana at all? Major arcana = face cards = 10, or major arcana = value of card (so Magician is 1, Heirophant is 5, World is 21...woe to the Fool (infinity, or zero)!). And don't forget that each minor suit has a "Knight" along with "King, Queen, Jack", so by the first set of rules you have 16 + 22 = 38 ten cards out of 56 + 22 = 78 deck. Almost half the deck is ten cards! Would you play?

Thoughts on Avatar

The Last Airbender no, James Cameron's film.

The Universe of Mine (Get an apple pie ready)

School's out for winter (not Winter), Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, blah blah blah.

That universe I keep making oblique references to in other posts? Let's put it down here.

Random Thoughts #11

What if they gave a war and nobody came?
--Popular Vietnam-War era sentiment.

What if they gave a war and only one side came?
--Valkri's (and a hundred other people in my made up fictional universe) rebuttal.

Random Thoughts #10

I haven't gotten karyotyped or anything, but Klinefelter's syndrome would explain A LOT.

One Heck of a Voice Box

I've been on something of a Kaito binge the past few days. Here's one where his voice mutates into a saxophone! (Amongst other things)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps7daa3_Qgs&feature=related

Shineba Iinoni!

Synthesized J-pop from a man whose tastes include Original Rags and older music! LE GASP!

But I really like the tune. For some reason it feels like a nice "suck it!" to all the death metal I listen to off the dorm speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqcfew2JCes&feature=channel_page

You wake up an hour late because you've hit the snooze button every five minutes.
You had two tests today, which you're pretty sure you botched.
You have a big research paper due next week, and you've only just begun.
And the speakers of the dorm play horrible tunes 16/7.

Sometimes life just sucks, and your retreat is childish fantasy.
I've got one now, and I'd like to share it with you!

I-wish-you all would die! I wish you all would die!
I wish that every last man would just drop dead!
I wish you all would die! I wish you all would die!
In a land so far away...!
(I don't know how that translates in Japanese, but hey, why not?)

We are for Social Justice!

We cannot sanity check our figures!

Back in high school, the local advocacy club ran a poster campaign intending to draw attention to the problem of world hunger. Problem was, they couldn't agree on a number of people affected--I saw figures citing "deaths from hunger-related causes" ranging from 8 million, to 10 million, to 12 million, and one unfortunate soul made a poster consisting entirely of the line "30 million people a year die of hunger" repeated...when no less than thirty feet away was a poster citing a smaller figure.

Now in college, I run into another poster campaign, this time for rape and violence against women. I'm not in a position to check some of their figures (31% of women report being sexually assaulted by a significant other in their lifetimes--that's 46.5 million, but since it says "in their lifetimes" and doesn't give an explicit definition of sexual assault, I'll have to take it at its word). One poster, however, caught my eye. It said "One woman in the U.S. is raped every two minutes", and cited as its source the U.S. Department of Justice.

Quick multiplication tells us that 1 woman per minute = 30 an hour = 720 a day = 262800 a year. A quick Google search for the U.S. Dept. of Justice turns up a figure that conflates rape and sexual assault and gives a figure (trending down) of just over 200000 for 2008. Another search for the FBI places "forcible rape" for 2008 at just under 90000. Depending on how generous you are, the number given by the poster is either 20% off or 200% off, which doesn't speak well for the advocacy group.

Same place, different time--an advertising group claiming environmental holiness. Its claims: Americans waste 96 billion lbs. of food per year, and 25% can feed 4 million a day. Implications--each American wastes about 10/11ths lb. of food per day, and your average person eats 3 tons of food a day.

Does claiming you're working for a good cause free you of the burden of checking your numbers or something?