(1) I fixed my car by replacing the voltage regulator; the mechanic who'd looked at it had said the alternator was bad and wanted $380 to replace it. The regulator was $25, bought online, and I spent $18 on a multimeter for testing. I rock.
(2) I went to the gym to play basketball today, and couldn't hit a shot. Frustrated, I decided to shoot some threes after everyone had left. I hit 47 of 100. Then I decided to see how I'd do shooting just from the top of the key - straight on. I hit 60 of 100 threes from there. Francis, my boy, get ready. :-)
And one thing I'm not: My dad whupped on me in Scrabble while he was up here visiting. :-) I think he won 7 of 9 games, and held me under 300 in a few of those. Too much defense. (Defense? Scrabble? You betcha. He was killin' me.)
Despite losing at that, and losing at poker, and watching the Sixers get absolutely walloped by the Celtics, it was a really fun visit. :-) We saw an absolutely fantastic concert, Friday night: Baaba Maal, at the Somerville Theater, a ten minute walk from my place, in Davis Sq. posted by Miles 4:00 PM
Back when I was in high school, I won a trip to Space Camp with my science fair project. The day I won that trip was a pretty good day; I still remember parts of it as clearly as if it were yesterday.
I got an email out of the blue, today, from my old & dear friend Cristin.
It was wonderful to hear from her, and hear that she, like me, is still scrabble obsessed. She has an awesome life in NYC which, aside from the scrabble obsession, is completely, totally different than mine.
First consider the strongest hypothesis based on prior research, that HIPS is the neural instantiation of a domain-specific mechanism for representing abstract numerical magnitude. The results listed above seriously challenge this hypothesis. Indeed, they indicate that if HIPS is engaged by non-symbolic number processing, all of the following must be true: I) there must not be domain-specific modulation of activation by task difficulty (Experiment 3), II) number representations for non-symbolic stimuli must be activated in a task-independent fashion (Experiment 1), yet III) not cause response interference (Behavioral results from Experiment 1), and IV) not show adaptation for repeated numerosities (Experiment 2). This new set of constraints seems possible – though perhaps unlikely - when considered alone. However, the existing literature claims that symbolic number processing does elicit activations modulated by difficulty (Pinel et al., 2001), does respond in a domain-specific fashion to numbers and display task-dependent localization of activation (Eger et al., 2003), does cause response-interference (Pavese and Umilta, 1998) and does display adaptation effects (Naccache and Dehaene, 2001). In light of these opposite characteristics, the theory that a single representational system with its locus in this region of parietal cortex underlies both symbolic and non-symbolic processing seems unparsimonious at best.
Now, that's an excerpt from the manuscript Nancy & I just submitted to Neuron. I'm extremely excited about the fact that I've just submitted my first "first author" paper. But I'm not exactly cool like Cristin is. People read or hear or see her shit, and they vibe, they grin, they laugh, they feel. People read my shit and, for the most part, just glaze over. Oh, well. I dig it. :-)
Now that I've been humble for a moment . . . I submitted! Woo-hoo! Done! Free at last, free at last, free at last! And while I really should get back to being productive and, say, move forward with scheduling for my new study . . . it's hard not to just bask in the glow of completion for a little while.
If I could take a break for a week, and do anything I wanted to, what would make me feel relaxed, happy, and fulfilled?
Whatever the answer is, my addiction to information is NOT it. My addiction to games of information (scrabble, fantasy baseball) is also not it. And yet, in the free time that I do have, these addictions are how I tend to spend my time.
I would just like to state here, for the record, that I am not in fear of another terrorist attack, I'd be happy if we cut the homeland security budget, and I'd be happy if we cut the national defense budget. Yes, still. The SCLM appears convinced that any substantive opposition to the elements of Bush's campaign theme - that we need stronger defense and greater security - is politically intractable; that while Democrats may be served by trying to refocus people's minds on the economy, they can't be served at all by saying Bush is wrong.
The fundamental thing is that I'm not convinced ANY of the homeland defense spending is anything more than a placebo. Not that I'm an expert, or that you should take my opinion too seriously, I just haven't been sold, ever. The absurd random airport searches (while undercover U.S. agents testing the system almost uniformly succeed in smuggling weapons aboard planes) are just the tip of the iceberg. Really, what can you do that's going to stop a determined terrorist? Going after them at the roots, yeah, I can understand that. Maybe even the legitimacy of invading Afghanistan (which I was originally strongly opposed to), on the grounds that finding and prosecuting Al-Qaida members in that country would have been impossible with the old regime in place.
But above anything, I think the best thing for us to do, as a nation and as individuals, is to say "Fuck these punks; the only thing to fear is fear itself, and we've faced far worse; let's get on with our lives here."
I've said it before, I know, but it just boggles my mind that I feel like no-one out there shares my attitude.
Onion headline proposal: "Volvo car accidents overtake the 9/11 attacks on the list of leading causes of death amongst 18-45 year olds over the last five years." Which is a statistic I just made up, but I'm sure is true. Checking . . . since about 41,000 people die in car crashes each year in the U.S., then if 1.5% of those accidents involve Volvos, my stat would be true.
Uh, so what I'm saying is all the homeland defense money should be spent on hiring highway cops to give speeders tickets and arrest drunk drivers? I dunno if I'd actually support that, but I'm fairly sure it would save more lives.
(1) I ran my first pilot subject on a new training study!
(2) I posted an item on eBay for the first time (my iPod)
Still waiting to hear back from my ole' MIT advisor on my draft article. I was hoping it would be submitted this week; I guess that's looking a little doubtful. Bummer. Nothing I can really do about it, though.
I went and voted, in person, for the first time ever today. Okay, yes, that's lame seeing as I'm 25, but I was doing the absentee ballot thing before. Anyway, the thing I was most impressed by was the total lack of security or verification in the process. The just asked for my address and name - no ID or anything. So, what's stopping an enterprising individual from grabbing a phone book and hopping from polling place to polling place, and voting a dozen times or more?
Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths 
Tuesday, March 30, 2004