The Most Awesome Game

Captain's blog, stardate 9274.8....
My sister Mary and I often end up chatting on Skype. Unfortunately Mary tends to quickly switch from having meaningful conversations with me to copy-pasting Star Trek quotes that she gets from iGoogle, for no apparent reason. I guess she thinks it's funny. Anyway, one time she was doing this copy-paste quote thing and I came up with the brilliant idea of playing along.

Hence, Awesome Game #1: In which Mary quotes Star Trek and I am a psychiatrist.
Here's a brief sample: (NB: iGoogle gives Mary quotes from all the Star Trek series, so don't be surprised if you don't recognize some of these.)
Mary: You're in love with a computer subroutine?
Elizabeth: No. Are you in love with a computer subroutine?
Mary:  It's like being pecked to death by ducks.
Elizabeth: Well, I've never loved a subroutine myself so I wouldn't know. Is it very difficult for you? What does your family think about it?
Mary:  I think I'm in trouble.
Elizabeth: Because your family doesn't approve?
Mary: I think I'm in love.
Elizabeth: With a computer subroutine, yes, you've already said so.
Mary: On my home-world it's much simpler. You choose a mate for life. There's no distrust, no envy, no betrayal.
Elizabeth: And you feel betrayed because your family doesn't support your choice?
Mary: Didn't think I had it in me, did you?
Elizabeth: This isn't about what I think of you. Tell me more about your family.
Mary: We're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job.
Elizabeth: So you consider them "weird"?

Here's another:
Mary: Either I've become impervious to antimatter explosions, or we're still dreaming.
Elizabeth: Dreaming? So you've dreamed about being impervious to explosions. That means you feel youself to be very powerful, even invincible.
Mary: I was trying to blend in!
Elizabeth: I see. And you weren't accepted into the group.
Mary: I had not considered that...It is a risk I am willing to take.
Elizabeth: What risk are you talking about ?
Mary: The anomaly, my ship, my crew, I suppose you're worried about your fish too.
Elizabeth: I'm not worried about my fish. But I am worried about you. What is this anomaly?
Mary: Oh, very clever, Worf. Eat any good books lately?

As you can see, we're very good at this. But since it gets annoying for me, I limit our "therapy" to once a week. However, Mary found out that iGoogle also has Star Wars quotes, and decided to copy-paste some for me even though she doesn't like Star Wars. (I know! How can anyone not like Star Wars?!) Introducing...Awesome Game #2, In Which Mary Quotes Star Wars and I Quote Star Trek.
(I didn't get my quotes from iGoogle, they were all ones I remembered or found in my Star Trek notebook, so they're pretty much all from the original series.)

We only played this game once, which was tonight, but look how good we are at it:
Mary: I've got a bad feeling about this.
Elizabeth: Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist. [Spock]
...
Mary: Are you sure about this; trusting our fate to a boy we hardly know? The Queen will not approve. [Padme]
Elizabeth: I've already got a female to worry about. Her name is the Enterprise. [Kirk]
Mary: Well I don't approve. [Padme]
Elizabeth: You will cease to pry into my personal matters, Doctor, or I shall certainly break your neck. [Spock]
Mary: You Jedi are far too reckless. The Queen trusts... [Padme]
Elizabeth: Mr. Spock, the women on your planet are logical. That's the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim. [Kirk]
Mary: For a mechanic, you seem to do an excessive amount of thinking. [C-3P0]
Elizabeth: I'm a doctor, not a mechanic!! [McCoy]

Ah man...I'm such a nerd and I love every second of it.

Updating Periodically

Captain's blog, stardate 2719.5....
Did you know that all of the Enterprise's bridge crew can have their names spelled out with elements from the periodic table, but Scotty and McCoy can't? Now you know!
I shall show you, and alternate colors between different elements.
We have: CaPTaIN KIrK, SPOCK, CHeKOV, NYOTa UHURa, and HIKArU SULu. Bonus points to Uhura and Sulu for having their full names. Bonus points to Spock for having the only name spelled with just one-letter elements. Bonus points to Kirk for being Kirk. McCoy doesn't work at all, but BONeS does. Scotty doesn't even come close.

Now it's time for Star Wars!
LuKEsKYWAlKEr (Yes, I know it's cheating to push the two words together, but it was the only way. Besides, Han Solo, Leia, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader don't work at all! I had to get someone in! And also, I'm proud of myself since this is such a long name.)
PAlPAtINe
CHeWBaCCa

It takes a while to get started with these, but once you figure it out, it's elementary! *ducks rotten fruit* Yeah, sorry, that one was really lame.

Hey look! A post that's not about Star Trek!

Captain's blog, stardate 1027.4....
No Star Trek-centric post today, I promise. I had a chem test on Monday. I did OK on it, not great but not bad either. I never do all that amazing on assignments or tests. Then again, I don't really care what my grades are except in math, so that would explain a lot.

Tests remind me of a good topic for you all to be aware of: test-taking superstitions! I'm very superstitious, but only for fun. All my superstitions are ones that I came up with myself, so you can reassure yourself that I'm not blindly following others.
How to Have Good Luck on Tests
1) Put a small braid in your hair, and (preferably) pull the rest of your hair back. I shall illustrate.

That picture is from me being Anakin Skywalker last Halloween, but it demonstrates the proper hairstyle. The braid is traditionally worn by Jedi padawans to designate their status. It's good luck because it means the Force is with you. The Force is very useful on tests. Particularly physics tests (I'd apologize for making so many jokes at the expense of physics, but it's their own fault for using every letter and a whole bunch of common words to stand for things...)






2) Wear a yellow shirt!
There is actually a sliding scale of which shirt colors are best to wear on a test day. Yellow is best, followed by green, blue, most other colors, and finally red. Red shirts should be avoided at all costs. If you have ever seen the original Star Trek series, you know why. (The people who die always have red shirts. Well, almost always, there are a couple exceptions.) Yellow (and, on occasion, green) is the color of Kirk's shirt and he is one of the luckiest individuals ever. Blue is worn by science officers and thus is probably helpful on science tests, though I haven't tried it.
3) Eat apples. This is a brand new one that I made up only yesterday. It does not have a source, it's just because I like apples. A lot. Actually, if you do want a source, watch the new Star Trek movie. Kirk is eating an apple while he takes the Kobayashi Maru exam. (He passes. Duh.) Therefore, by application of incredibly flawed logic, apples will help you pass tests!

Well, I didn't lie when I said this post wasn't about Star Trek, cause it wasn't. It was about superstitions. I never said I wasn't going to mention Star Trek, now did I?

Aaaaaaanyway, got a whole lot of homework to buckle down to. See y'all later.

I Have Been Assimilated

Captain's blog, stardate 8239.2....
Being assimilated into college life takes a while but I think I've done a pretty good job. Just ask my mom because she came to see me today and it was amazing. She said I was doing great and everybody missed me, and we walked all over Harvard Square and all over Boston and talked to each other and had a totally awesome time.

She even helped me plan my lesson for SAT Prep tomorrow. I'm going to be focusing on vocab questions so she suggested I talk about important prefixes to know and how to break words down so you don't need to memorize too many. I picked out some practice questions from the study guide and also made up some of my own which were way more exciting than the book ones. To wit:

1)      The means in which words are ----- on the SAT creates the impression that the test-writers are trying to hide -------.

(A)   Concealed .. bias      (B) Obscured .. obscenities         (C) Presented .. solutions             (D) Divulged .. profanity        (E) Explicated .. comprehension

[The correct answer is B. And the sentence is totally true. It looks like all the sentences were full of curse words and the test writers hid them with dashes.]

2)      The dispute over whether Kirk or Picard was a more ----- captain has raged for decades, ----- fans and turning them against each other.

(A)   Efficacious .. consolidating          (B) Inept .. abetting        (C) Competent .. polarizing         (D) Mercurial .. mitigating    (E) Mundane .. petrifying

[The correct answer is C. By the way this is a very important point of contention.]

3)      The SAT is quite ----- and  features pointless questions which fail to test ------.

(A)   Paradoxical .. ingenuity         (B) Intriguing .. perspicacity         (C) Inadequate .. perusal              (D) Abominable .. prescience  (E) Deficient .. aptitude

[Answer: E. This is completely and utterly true. Even I admit it and I teach test prep for the stupid thing. At least I get to use lots of vocabulary words, which is fun, so it's not a total loss.]

But I know when you all read the title of this post you were hoping for Borg references. Well, I shall not disappoint! Enjoy two of the lamest Borg jokes ever invented, by yours truly.

Q: What do you call a Borg who beats around the bush?
A: Circumlocutus of Borg.
[Circumlocution is a cool word. In related jokes, a Borg who speaks very clearly would be Elocutus of Borg.]

Joke #2 coming right up:
The Borg assimilated a high school student who ended up having to take physics. At first he did very well thanks to the knowledge of the rest of the Collective. However, when he took a test on circuits, he did very badly. The first question was "What is the voltage across a resistor in a circuit?"
The Borg's answer was:
The voltage is the product of the square of the current across the resistor, the inductance, the electric field, the force on the circuit, the potential energy, and the time elapsed.
Voltage = (Current)(Resistance) = (Current)(FUTILE) = (Current)(Force)(Potential Energy)(Time)(Current)(Inductance)(Electric Field).

Many thanks to physicists for assigning every letter in the alphabet to some physical property or another so that my horrible physics joke could exist.

Coincidences

Captain's blog, stardate 1893.2....

What do you know? Turns out I do have some entertaining news to share with you! Guess I was just too tired before to remember it.

Anyhow. Coincidence #1: On Sunday, I was eating my supper in the dining hall, as per usual. I had a salad, which is nice because I like salad if it's not just lettuce and dressing. So anyway, I was eating my salad and thinking that there was a pretty good variety of food in the dining hall. I was comparing it to the food at home and noticed that there had never been any hamburgers in the dining hall, whereas we have those every so often at home. So I was thinking "Hmm, I wish there would be some good hamburgers for supper around here..."
And then, the very next day, that's what was for supper in the dining hall.
They plan these things out more than a day in advance, so either whoever decides the menu predicted what I would want to eat on that particular day, before I even knew, or...the dining staff plants subconscious suggestions in the minds of everyone who eats there so that they'll want whatever's on the menu! How insidious!

Coincidence #2: This one doesn't involve evil dining hall staff. Also, the setup for this one is really long but totally worth it. So, I was tired today (as you might have noticed from my previous post's lack of coherence) and during math the professor was taking a long time to set up a problem that wasn't that hard (he was trying to explain the physics behind it). Hence, I got distracted and started to think about really random stuff. Namely: the similarities between Harry Potter and Star Trek, in particular the 2009 movie (because I'd been thinking about that movie earlier in the day). Seriously, think about it. Kirk=Harry, Spock=Hermione, McCoy=Ron, Nero=Voldemort. So I got to wondering what would happen if the Star Trek characters re-enacted the plot of the Harry Potter series. I was just wondering who would take on the more minor roles. In particular, I was wondering about Viktor Krum, who has to be involved with Hermione (Spock), which led me to think maybe he could be Uhura.
Now, most Harry Potter fans could tell you that Viktor Krum is famous for using a Quidditch move called the Wronski Feint. Just as I was thinking this, the professor introduces a concept called...a Wronskian!!
I kid you not.

Isn't that awesome? By the way, if you have more Star Trek 2009/Harry Potter correspondences, leave 'em in the comments.

Lessons from Physics

Captain's blog, stardate 6968.4....
OK, newsflash! The college that repeatedly told me would have a really intensive workload actually *gasp* wants me to do work! Inconcievable!
I barely got any work done on the weekend, due to a combination of having to do other things and wanting to have a little fun. Now I'm desperately struggling to keep my head above water...wait, that's a bad metaphor because I can't tread water.
ABRUPT SUBJECT CHANGE TO DISTRACT EVERYONE! My physics teacher said the other day: "In cases like this, you have to ask yourself 'what would a positive charge do'?" So I shall ask myself: What Would a Positive Charge Do? The answer, according to physics, is "move towards a region of lower potential".  But everyone wants to have the potential to do great things, so why move to a region of lower potential, especially if I'm feeling positive about myself at the time? According to physics, if I want to move towards higher potential, I'd have to be negative about the situation, which I have tried, and it doesn't work! Curse you, physicists! Remind me never to take advice from you again!
Of course, don't forget that positive and negative charges move towards lower potential energy, so pretty soon I won't have any energy either! (Well, I will, but it will be kinetic energy and I don't need that! I'm a student, not an athlete!)
Let's see what else we can learn from physics, shall we?
a) If a charge (me) is placed in a uniform field, it will move in the direction of the field if it in positive and in the opposite direction if it is negative. This is not true, I'd go towards a nice green field no matter what. It's better than boring old sidewalks.
b) Positive charges are repelled by other positive charges. Not true, everyone wants to be around people who are positive!

Conclusions: Physics is silly and everyone should just stick to math. (It's OK, physics, I love you anyway.)

MIT Quote of the Day...

(Captain's blog, stardate 5028.8)
"We are not mathematicians, we're physicists. We want to actually solve something in a finite amount of time." --My physics professor

In physics today we learned Gauss's Law, the first one of Maxwell's equations! Since my physics professor is so good, I actually understood it this time around. Physics is so awesome, you should all take it when you go to college. It's way better than high-school physics classes.

Anyway, enough gushing over how ~*AMAZING*~ college is; it makes me sound stupid. Also, it's very rude since no one reading this is in college, and I'll end up making people feel left out. My sincere apologies.

And another quote of the day, from a question the 18.03 class got asked today:
Alice jumps out of a plane with a parachute [we had just learned an equation for this] and 20 seconds later Bob jumps out with an identical parachute. Will they have the same speed at any time before they reach the ground?
1) Yes.
2) No.
3) Not enough information.
4) I don't know.
5) 42.
(I chose "42", by the way. The real answer is "No".)

More Classes!

Captain's blog, stardate 2643.3...
So. Yesterday I had classes. Maybe I should talk about that. Righto, here goes.

I got to sleep in, because my first class (math recitation) isn't till 11am. Some of you high school kids might not know what recitations are. If you do know, go to (*). Else, continue reading. (I have a tendency to think "else" instead of "otherwise". Too much time messing around with calculators, I think.) As you probably know, most introductory classes are very large. To make sure everyone can keep up, the class gets split into recitation groups. Each group has its own recitation, typically taught by a grad student/TA. During recitation, we review what went on in the lecture, get questions answered, and do practice problems.

(*) Good for you, you know what a recitation is. So yeah, I had math recitation, and it was pretty cool but kind of silly because what we did in class was mostly review, so we reviewed review. (If you analyzed a theater critic's writing and then went over what you'd written, you'd be reviewing a review of a review of a revue!)

Right afterwards was chemistry recitation, pretty much the same deal of reviewing review. It will get better though.
I have swim class right after chem recitation, so I rushed over to the sports center and asked where the entrance to the pool was, only to find out that phys. ed. classes don't start until next week. Yay.
Then I had Shakespeare class in the afternoon; we are reading The Tempest and have to finish it by Tuesday, so that should be fun! An excuse to do some reading! Oh gosh, I'm going to have to write English papers eventually....
I auditioned for the concert choir and got in, so that should be extremely fun.

And that's pretty much all that happened yesterday (other than me doing problem sets, which you probably don't need to hear about.)

*Sneak peek at what's happened so far today*
"Physicists are like babies; they still smash things together." --My chemistry professor

What my college tuition is paying for: Hundreds of Ping-Pong balls, to be thrown at styrofoam balls suspended in the air as an imitation of the Rutherford gold-foil experiment!

Chem professor: *does calculations* Based on the number of balls which rebounded, the radius of the styrofoam balls is 1cm. It's amazing, it comes out right every year.
Everyone: Yeah, when you do all your calculations with 1 significant figure...

Me, thinking: If we still had IDs called OSIS Numbers, like in high school, then my ID # would be a MITOSIS munber!

Something to Blog About

Captain's blog, stardate 1618.0...
I need to keep in the habit of blogging so that I'll be able to do it for when I'm at college.
However, not much is happening! How to resolve this dilemma?
My options:
1) Blog about something none of you really care about, thereby practicing my blogging skills but alienating all of you guys.
2) Don't blog about anything, thereby getting in the habit of not blogging and alienating all of you guys. It would, however, give me a chance to do math homework or work on my Star Trek musical.
3) Post a link to something cool, which is done on other people's blogs occasionally, thereby not practicing my blogging skills, but still making it seem like I wrote something. But I don't have a link to something cool. Perhaps one of you will think this is a cool link. (My mom is gonna be confused.)
I doubt that got me out of my blogging duties, so let's see if I have any other options.
4) Blog about what is happening in my life right now, which is nothing super-exciting until I leave for college on the 26th. However, trying to make something funny which is actually quite mundane could be a good exercise in writing.
5) Find some way to crash everyone's computer until I come up with a good topic for a post, so that they won't notice I didn't post in the meantime. (I'm grasping at straws here.)
6) Post a bunch of links to addictive websites (TvTropes, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) so that you will be sufficiently distracted to not think about whether or not I've posted. This has the advantage of not being illegal like #5.
7) Find something cool to do, then do it, then blog about it. (I'm going to Six Flags on Tuesday!)
8) Discover the secrets of the Long-Distance Jedi Mind Trick and convince all of you that I have, in fact, posted something interesting and informative. (I just rolled a Bluff check on an online die-rolling simulator and got a 20...so that might have actually worked...)
9) Come up with a convincing sob story to explain my lack of posts, thereby getting out of posting for a while without alienating you. Alternatively, pretend that I will be without Internet access for a while due to circumstances beyond my control.
10) Come up with a long list of options, explained in a hopefully humorous tone, and pass it off as a blog post!

Ooh, let's see if I can come up with a Limerick Summation!

There's nothing cool for me to say
Because nothing cool happened today
Instead I'll explain
Which choices remain
And end up with a post anyway!