Assorted Thoughts 51: Humor Delayed By Summer Field Season Edition

• Everything I know about urban planning I learned from SimCity.
• Apparently small children are like orangutans. As soon as you look away they try to disassemble their habitat.
• You call it breaking and entering.  I call it farming XP.  Thanks, video games!
• Given how many people leave sporting events before the end to "beat traffic," I've found the best way to beat traffic is to actually watch the whole thing and leave after the end, because the parking lots are already at least half empty.
• I really need to create a "socially acceptable" playlist for whenever people might walk in on my music.  I'm tired of living in fear every time shuffle is on and a song ends.
• I'm pretty sure Florida is actually an evil wizard's plot to turn me into a sweat golem.
• Support group for those who abuse zombie-creating viruses: Necrotics Anonymous.
• In Florida, the members of the Mosquito Control Board are elected officials who campaign for the position.  I can't decide if that's a triumph of direct democracy or its ultimate failure.
• Seriously, what the hell can they possibly disagree on?  How do you differentiate yourself from the other candidates?

Assorted Thoughts 50: I Had A Bit Of An Idea Backlog Edition

• I will all too regularly forget to apply sunscreen, which is a problem when doing research on boats in Florida.  When that happens, I just treat my charred skin as a burnt offering to the Sun Gods, hoping to earn their favor in the shape of not getting melanoma.  If that's not how this works, it should be.  Gods love burnt offerings, right?
• The proper number of clips and straps on your dive gear is equal to N + 1, where N is the number currently present.
• Manatees are somewhat cute and beloved by millions. They are also slow, stupid, and regularly hit by boats. I'm sure there's a life lesson there, even if I'm not sure what it is.
• Is an excess of mangroves a call for manscaping?
• When traveling, I carry all my hygiene equipment (shaving supplies, hairbrush, toothbrush, etc.) in a Magic: The Gathering bag I got at a gaming shop.  The irony amuses me.
• There is such a thing as being too grounded in reality.  I don't even get superpowers in my dreams.  I have to pretend that I have superpowers in my dreams.  Kind of sucks.
• I also just had a dream where I was moving back into the dorms at my undergraduate school, only to get really confused halfway through when I remembered I graduated already and should be at a school on the other side of the country.
• Apparently I am on the lazy diet.  We currently don't have any easily-prepared food in the house, so I'd rather skip breakfast and go straight in to the lab than spend a few minutes cooking an egg and not being hungry.
• Florida is helping me answer the age-old question of "How much sweat could a Ben sweat sweat if a sweat sweat sweat sweat sweat?"
• Unfortunately, the answer appears to be "All of it."

Assorted Thoughts 49: Work Work Research Work Eats My Life Edition

• Could you clear-cut a bonsai forest with an ordinary lawnmower?
• Apparently the Marines are now advertising on the iPhone Scrabble application. I'm not convinced they know their audience.
• It's kind of amusing how in some respects grad students are lower on the lab totem pole than undergraduate minions. Our minions get these weird things called "days off" and are, on occasion, paid better than we are.  But then again, we do get to tell them to do stuff that we decide on.
• Technology is amazing.  The internet allows me to ask inane questions of anyone anywhere on the planet!  While I could easily look up what time it is in Japan, it's way more fun to send a message to someone I know who is living there asking what time it is.
• Getting told "You should start a blog!" causes some serious deer-in-headlights reactions from me at this point.
• If you're ever considering a business plan that involves selling ice cream from unmarked vans with ice cream truck music blaring from mounted speakers, stop it.  Saw one of those vans recently and it was the creepiest thing ever.
• If ever there was a machine that should be robust to violations of the directions, it's a coffee maker.
• A hellbender is a kind of salamander.  It is also an awesome name for a metal band.
• I recently started up the dictionary app on my iPhone, and it asked me both to allow it to send me notifications and to allow it to use my current location.  Exactly why does a dictionary need to notify me of anything?  Late-breaking changes to the definitions I use?  And what the hell does it want with my location?  It's a freaking dictionary.
• Hades was really worried when his dog started to have trouble walking, so he took it to the vet and was devastated to receive a diagnosis of Cerberus palsy.

Assorted Thoughts 48: Oh Hi Florida, You're Really Warm Edition

• Are people in permanent comas fair game for vegetarian cannibals?
• Dear diary: Today my genius for humor was again unappreciated.
• Best convention double-booking ever: the Chihuahua Fancier's Society and the American Association of Deinonychus Breeders.
• I'm going to school in an area with the highest concentration of military power and installations in the world.  Needless to say, if the nuclear apocalypse comes, it's basically Target #2 in the United States.  Frankly, I think it's a bit comforting to know I'll be one of the first ones to be vaporized.  I'm pretty sure I'm not up to the task of fighting mutants for my survival, and I'd rather be fine ash floating across the wasteland on the breeze than having my guts torn out by savage quasi-humanoid monstrosities.
• Star Wars EU and sword & sorcery crossover: Game of Thrawns.
• Something I'd like to see: a chromed-out lowrider with massive subwoofers blasting NPR.
• I kind of want to set up an email account using the address 192.168.0.1@gmail.com and use it to send people creepy messages.
• Unfortunately, on further research, you need a letter in the address.  And as usual, I'm not as funny or creative as I thought, since people took a bunch of similar ones already.  Still open is 192.168.O.6@gmail.com, though!
• As a grad student, you rapidly learn that the best way to shop for office furniture is to go to Hall-Mart.  Walk down the hallways and see what people have left out without a name on it, then grab it and run.
• I definitely think that those biologists who study swallows must have a really rough time due to all the Monty Python jokes.
  

Assorted Thoughts 47: Guess Who Never Seems To Update Edition

• My latest genius idea for making my fortune: combining Choose Your Own Adventure books with Mad Libs.
• A song that wasn't popular in the '80s but should have been: "Gargoyles Just Want To Have Fun."
• It's hard to avoid the conclusion that your lab is filled with nerds when it's noticed that three of you are humming the National Geographic theme while cleaning the wet lab.
• Kermit the Organ Frog: It's not easy being spleen.
• What is lich?
• Baby don't turn me, don't turn me, no more.
• Subtitled for the nerd impaired.
• Did you hear about the rules fetishist? He got off on a technicality.
• I recently seriously changed my meds up for the first time in around a decade.  This is pretty cool, because it means I don't need to be doped to the gills to vaguely approximate a human being.  I'm really rather miffed, though, because apparently it broke my one superpower.  Since it has un-borked my metabolism a bit, I can no longer sleep forever.  Being able to zonk out for 14 hours at a stretch without effort was something I actually enjoyed.
• The platypus is one of a very few venomous mammals.  Male platypuses have a venomous spur on their hind limbs.  Being stung by a platypus is apparently not fatal, but might hurt enough to make you wish it was.  If I have to die at some point, I'd want to be stung to death by a platypus.  Both to be able to say I was the one person to get killed by being stung by an egg-laying mammal, but also so that anyone who saw my obituary or tombstone (because you'd better believe that would go on the tombstone) would have to lie awake at night wondering what the hell I had done to that platypus to earn such a fate.

Assorted Thoughts 46: Poor Sad Cubbies Edition

• This is the saddest ad I have ever seen, and I'm not afraid to say, I got something stuck in my eye while watching it.
• Vladimir Lennon: the only member of the Beatles less appreciated than Pete Best.
• Runners up: Paul McCarthy, Mandingo Starr, and George Harrison Bergeron.
• This joke got by with a little help from my friends.
• I think part of the comprehensive exams before a school lets you graduate with a degree in biology should be a test where you have to prove your worth.  You have to pet or otherwise touch three out of five harmless, but possibly gross, organisms to show you've mastered your fears of the natural world.
• "When you can touch the millipede in my hand, it will be time for you to leave, grasshopper."
• You know how if you run up a bill in a restaurant that you can't pay, you might be able to wash dishes to work it off?  Well, what happens if you're in Vegas and you can't pay at the brothel?
• Old robotics engineers don't die, they just become obsolete.
• How are the Ghostbusters like vampires?  Neither will cross the streams!
• Closed captioning for the mythologically impaired.

In Which I Attempt To Incite A Nerd Riot

One of the more common, and depressing, things people argue about on the internet is whether Star Trek is superior to Star Wars, and vice versa.  This is so often the subject of nerd-rage that Wikipedia has an article on the topic (though sadly, the talk page is mostly devoid of rage.  If you ever need to see meaningless pedantry in action, though...).  Usually, so far as I've seen, it focuses more on "Who could blow up whose ship?" and less on "Would I really want to live there?"  The sad truth is, when you look at it that way, there's a clear answer.

The Star Wars universe is one of endless possibility.  You want a wild planet filled with witches who ride giant monsters?¹ Sure!  How about a cyberpunkish cityscape?  Got that!  Technocrats?  Yep.  Cocky smugglers?  Oh yeah.  Basically, the Extended Universe has gotten large and absurd enough that anything you can imagine is probably canonical at this point.  It's hard to deny the appeal of Darth Vader, the Force, and lightsabers (just don't mention the midichlorians).  However, the downside of all this is that you will die.  Seriously.  Do you have any idea how often in the Extended Universe there are "Rocks and/or aliens fall, the entire planet dies" scenarios?  A billion deaths here, a trillion deaths there, pretty soon you're talking serious misfortune.  Grand Moff Tarkin using the Death Star to obliterate Alderaan was freaking child's play compared to the Yuuzhan Vong.  Odds are, you're not going to be a badass Jedi, you're going to be the poor sap murdered in a bar for looking at someone wrong and nobody will ever care, even when your body turns up in the local cafeteria's steam table.  Let's also remember this is the universe where slavery is reasonably common, local squalor is really squalid, and organized crime gangs don't just run parts of Mexico, they run the whole freaking planet.  It's like when the RenFaire nutballs generally forget that the laws of probability dictate that they're not going to be riding in on their mighty steed and saving the pretty princesses, but instead will be farming mud and plague and being nailed to a pole if they ever poke their heads up.

On the other hand, Star Trek's universe basically is a bunch of hyper-advanced species who all generally live decent lives.  The starting premise of the humans is that everyone got together and has a benevolent technocratic government ruling peacefully and giving everyone a fantastic standard of living.  Whee.  I could deal with that.  Hunger and illnesses are minimized or cured, there really doesn't appear to be nearly the seedy underbelly of society that exists in the galaxy far, far away, and even if you do end up dying horribly in one of the occasional devastating wars that wracks the universe, odds are that a series reboot or a time recursion or alternate universe handwave will make it all better.  Sure, things might be marginally less exciting² and you might have slightly fewer options to do whatever the hell you want and get away with it, but I think that's a fair trade for stability, safety, and living well.  I'd rather be on a five-year mission in a top-of-the-line, science-and-kickassery-ready vessel that has all kinds of creature comforts than be stapled into an armor suit that doesn't stop handgun fire and then die horribly when the ship I'm stationed on gets blown up by a bunch of plucky rebel terrorists scum, all the while not having proper safety equipment like guardrails or shielded exhaust ports.

To sum up, let's compare a few things here.  Who wins?

1. Badass starships.
• Gonna have to go with Star Wars here.  Trek gets points for effort.
2.  Utterly annoying aliens.
•  Um.  Call it a draw.
3. That one character everyone wants to be when they grow up.
• This one is another tie.
4. Hugely detailed backstory.
• Star Wars, far and away.
5. Would I ever want to live there?
• Absolutely Star Trek.  Space socialism wins the day.

1 I am ashamed to admit I knew the name of this planet off the top of my head.^↩

2 All I'm saying is that if this is significant enough to earn a page on your fanbase wiki (shut up, I know about the movie, that was just one thing and it has its own page, my point still stands), your universe might be a bit lacking in zest.^↩

Assorted Thoughts 45: I Still Think It's All Your Fault Edition

• I think I'm a video game savant when sleepy.  I get much better at a number of games when I'm only barely conscious to the point of not thinking or really seeing much beyond the screen.
• Some people get blackout drunk and do stupid things with their credit cards.  For me, it's not alcohol that does it.  I still don't know what exactly happened, but I ended up on ThinkGeek and suddenly my wallet was lighter but an awesome package was on the way.
• Based on his erratic voting record, I'm convinced Anthony Kennedy treats the Supreme Court as a giant game of D&D.
• "I rolled a 5 on the d20 of Justice.  Guess this law fails its Con save." 
• For all the griping you hear about how awkward and awful the federal government is and how much better local regions can do things, it's remarkable how much simpler the federal tax forms are compared to the states' versions.
• On a related note, apparently you can use your Facebook login to do tax preparation with H&R Block.  That seems like quite possibly the worst idea ever from a variety of standpoints - not the least of which is security.
• One of the better ideas I've ever had was to use an image of the One Ring as the icon for my folder of tax stuff.
• The best grocery store special I've ever seen: hefty chunks of cake for $1 each labeled "Oops We Baked Too Much."

Assorted Thoughts 44: Cannot Think Of Ideas For Lists To Save My Life Edition

• I feel that along with playing devil's advocate, it's sometimes worth playing dumbass's advocate.  I think it is one of the few ways to really understand the Republican electorate.
• From the "I'm Really Not A Serial Killer, I Promise" files: when it comes to souvenirs from travels, I'm much more excited by interesting dead things than I am by pretty postcards.
• I judge people who post about psychology papers they've read.  PSYCHOLOGY IS NOT A SCIENCE.
• Things you learn while stuck waiting at a railroad crossing: the iPhone's Siri is "not much of a storyteller" and "doesn't know many good jokes. None, in fact." I am not making this up.
• A lab mate recently told me that when I come in to the lab in the morning, I look like I've just crawled out of a laundry hamper.  That's sadly a pretty apt description of my general state of being, though I prefer the term "artfully disheveled."
• Or I suppose "permanently rumpled."
• There's really nothing like driving (or worse, walking) through the bar scene downtown on Friday night to give you some empathy for the temperance crusaders.
• My new excuse for being bad at socialization will be to tell people that my lack of social skills is the result of being raised by a pack of computers.
• Design decisions I question: building a bathroom with an automatic faucet, automatic urinal, and manual-flush toilet.
• My recipe for a Ph.D. prospectus:
• 2 parts interest
• 1 part nothing better to do
• 3 parts hopes and dreams
• 4 parts frustration
• Mix together, adding anguish to taste.  If not bitter enough, add alcohol as needed.  Have a bottle of social life nearby, but do not add to mixture.  Spread lightly on a Word document, allow to congeal for approximately 3 years. Serves very few.
  

Assorted Thoughts 43: I'm Definitely Kicking Myself For Missing A Meaning Of Life Joke Opportunity With Edition 42 Edition

• If you look through the recent uploads to Photobucket, you'll see a surprisingly high proportion of them are baby pictures.  I wonder if this is just the logical conclusion to the MySpace era of posting self-pictures in varying states of undress.
• As a corollary to that, if you're posting baby pictures on Photobucket, I don't think you get to have that kid anymore.  That's not where you post real-person pictures.
• Q: What do you call the section of hell reserved for foot fetishists?  A: The Shire.
• It's just a problem when the foot fetishists are also furries.
• A site to scar even the most hardened hacker: leetspin.
• There are very few articles of clothing more likely to cause me to judge you than an "anime freak" t-shirt.
• I saw an entry in a gas station condom dispenser for "assorted novelties." Problem was, it was branded Pandora's Box, and knowing what I do of Greek mythology, that is not a good thing. 
• Fun game: name of firework or name of sex toy?
• There really aren't many sights and sounds more disturbing than flashing lights and blaring sirens at the tank farm next door to wherever you are currently standing. 
• For some reason, the TV in the university counseling center waiting room when I was there recently was on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Hearing Pat Robertson talk about porn is not an experience anyone should have to live through. 
• You know it's been a long night at the office when you get in the car to go home to grab a few hours of sleep and NPR's Morning Edition is on the radio.
  

Assorted Thoughts 42: Over A Year In And Still Only 600 Pageviews Edition

• I recently spent at least 30 minutes doing surgery on a mechanical pencil.  That might sound weird, but this is a pencil that I've had for six years now.  It got me through my undergraduate education, so it's special.  That probably doesn't make me sound less weird.
• Another thing I legitimately have nightmares about: hooking up with vacuous women.
• I like how I don't have to violate my personal ethos about not following celebrities on Facebook, because enough people I am friends with reshare George Takei's posts that I get the full effect anyway. 
• While everyone else in the department seems to be getting sick, I've so far remained untouched.  I can only assume it's because any bugs that do get in my system die horribly under a deluge of coffee, Dr. Pepper, and Mountain Dew.
• In any multiplayer online first-person shooter, the worst people on the server are almost invariably the snipers.  This is for one of two reasons: either they're way too good at the class, making the game broken and unfun ("Oh hey, I'll look around the corner to see wha- dead.  Let me try another route!  Walk past this window... and dead.  Can I leave the spawn?  Look, and dead.") or they are blithering idiots who don't realize that you can't just hide and snipe forever (missing almost every shot), but instead need to actually try to capture objectives.
• Sir Campsalot is the bane of my existence, not because I hate campers per se, but because I actually try to do shit and they just hang around and be useless.
• I find that a good rule of thumb is that if the internet is making a site out to be a big thing and it's awesome and everyone should do it, don't. This is especially true if CNN is profiling the site.
• I want to put together a computer statistical package called Unethica.  What you do is input all your data and press one big button marked "FIND ME SIGNIFICANCE."  Then the program throws every statistical test known to man at the data and spits out the most significant result it can find.  If it can't find anything significant at all, it just displays the dog from Duck Hunt and plays a loop of mocking laughter.

Assorted Thoughts 41: I Have Neglected This For Two Whole Weeks And I Feel Terrible About It Edition

• The yard and bathrooms of a house rented by three graduate students both serve as intriguing examples of a tragedy of the commons.
• The only way to describe my state of mind upon seeing someone with steampunk goggles upon their person is "barely contained homicidal rage."
• The best possible measurements are those of undulation rates (in hertz).
• I would probably kill my firstborn for a p value of less than 0.001.
• My oceanography professor said that for modeling purposes, you can think of the ocean as a "series of cubes."  It was hard not to cackle uncontrollably.
• Great name for an indie band: Beatnik Stats Club.
• My proposal for a World Peace Day: turn off the ability to comment on every website.  That single act would be the greatest contribution to civility in discourse since we realized that you didn't have to punctuate your speech using sharp rocks.
• If you're going to cross the street wearing big headphones, you deserve anything that happens to you.
• How to finance your time machine research: 
1. Go back in time
2. Invest in Microsoft
3. Use proceeds to fund research into how to go back in time and invest in Microsoft

Assorted Thoughts 40: I'll Probably Have To Think Up A Themed Post Sooner Or Later Edition

• I recently was relieved to discover that I am not the only one who has nightmares related to breaking my computer.  It's still rather telling that such nightmares are invariably the scariest I have.
• A car in the supermarket parking lot had a bumper sticker reading "Treat me exactly like you would the Queen."  Knowing what I do of British tabloids, I have to wonder if that level of casual denigration, blatant mockery, and incredible scrutiny was quite what the car owner intended.
• I watched or listened to basically the entirety of the South Carolina Republican debate.  I think I learned my lesson, which is to say that if I feel like doing that ever again, giving myself a splenectomy with a rusty grapefruit spoon will be less painful in the long run.  Where did I leave that spoon?
• All the candidates were blatantly pandering to the Republican primary electorate, dominated by the key "Utter Psychopath" demographic.
• Four years of Latin in high school has left me able to do four things with the language: demand a kiss, rob a bank by use of siege weaponry, be slightly more able to interpret the root words of scientific names, and give a sarcastic modification of the gladiator's salute when the professor enters the room to deliver an exam.  Your call on which is more useful.
• There's a lot not to like about American Apparel, but you kind of have to admire a nominally clothing-oriented company that gives so few shits that they will post images that can only be described as soft-core pornography with nary a warning on their website.
• Mountain Dew bills itself as "low sodium" on the cans.  It's nice to know there's at least one way it probably won't kill me!
• I really wish there was a way to find enough data to run a correlation analysis between the presence of Infowars/conspiracy theory bumper stickers and Ron Paul stickers.  I mean, it's obviously there, but if only I could do it with scientific rigor.
• Some other grad students here work on ticks.  I like this, if only because it leads to some entirely too easy pun opportunities.  It is, after all, a ticklish subject.

Assorted Thoughts 39: Upon Further Reflection, It's Probably Really My Fault Edition

• Idea for a horror movie: Dracula, Ph.D.
• Things I have said: "Hookers are not tauntauns!  You cannot hollow out a hooker and use them as shelter from the cold!"  In context… no, still not really a sane thing to say.
• Has anyone ever seen Jeffrey Dahmer and the Cookie Monster in the same room together?  Just something to think about, I guess.
• I'm starting to work with ArcGIS for a class and it is, to quote myself, "a big pile of lots of things." I was struck by the fact you can bookmark favorite help topics. Perhaps it's my background of never reading manuals and tinkering until things work, but maybe if you have to look it up so often you should just REMEMBER THE DAMN THING AFTER THE FIRST COUPLE TIMES. 
• Is the damage from an undersea earthquake near the Grand Banks classified as being due to an act of cod? 
• Field hockey is apparently the blondest sport ever, to judge from my university's team.
• I suspect there is a market for a Swiss Army vibrator.  However, I also suspect Victorinox and the Swiss Army itself might have a thousand few cease and desist orders lying around just looking for an excuse.
• The word "killdozer" really needs to be used as a verb more often.

Assorted Thoughts 38: Everything Is Wrong And It's Your Fault Edition

• The fact that it's easier to buy green chile from Albuquerque in Damariscotta, Maine and mail it to Norfolk, Virginia than it is to find said chile in Norfolk is a depressingly good example of absurdist comedy.
• The Ex-Files: I Want To Bereave.
• If someone were to watch nothing besides ads on the evening television news, they'd certainly be justified in assuming that there's nobody in the country under the age of 60.
• Memo to drug companies: if your ads spend less time promoting your product than warning of all the horrific side effects, they're not good ads.  Stop making them.
• What with the Citizens United decision and super-PACs, electoral finance is now basically one giant episode of "Whoever wins, we lose."
• My grandfather recently got perhaps the most intimidating fortune cookie ever printed.  The fortune read "Tomorrow Morning, Take a left turn as soon as you leave home" and I'm really not sure if there's a non-sinister way to interpret that.
• While it's a slanderous exaggeration to say I would sleep through everything, it's probably fair to say I would be unconscious for the majority of it.
• There are few things more satisfying than managing to talk your way onto an earlier flight home without a change fee.
• I actually like the fact that my laptop produces an insane amount of heat.  I use it as a portable space heater and electric blanket.
• There are some ads on the radio for what I presume are Trojan Bare Skin condoms.  However, every time I hear it, I think it's referring to Bear Skin condoms and I really don't think that's a very good use of bears or at all conducive to safe sex.

Grab Bag 3: I Forgot This Needed A Title Before Posting And Didn't Notice for Two Weeks

• Nerds in movies never get good quips, because they're seldom brutally murdering security guards.  However, they have been known to hack the internet, so next time you're out hacking the internet as part of some nefarious plot, here's a quip for you to use: "QWERTY THIS, MOTHERFUCKER."
• "Mountain dew" is a term used for moonshine.  However, when I hear a bluegrass song extolling the virtues of mountain dew, I'm afraid I have rather different mental images.  ZERG RUSH KEKEKE.
• Really, at this point I should probably just rename this blog "Mountain Dew Appreciation Station - Now With Occasional Jokes!"
• Old people dancing: it's all fun and games until someone breaks a hip.

Games that sound much more fun than they actually are:

• Taser tag
• Bowling with nitroglycerin-filled pins
• Rabid lion taming
• Kindergarten boxing
• ICBM darts
• Dance Dance Elocution

My New Year's resolution list, in its entirety:

• Try not to die.