My answer to "life, the universe and everything"
Some one left a comment saying I was her favorite Calstuff blogger. So my friend sent me an IM the other day with this message:
yo allen – i have someone who wants to meet the “famous allen lew from calstuff”
He then goes on to tell me that his friend saw me on campus the other day, but was too shy to say Hi. What the hell? I’m not famous and I’m certainly not unapproachable.
From http://museumofconceptualart.com/accomplished/index.html:
At age 20:
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and cofounded Microsoft.
Canadian hockey player Scott Olsen founded Rollerblade, Inc.
English novelist Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, which was immediately successful.
Ragtime composer Scott Joplin became an itinerant pianist and traveled throughout the Midwest.
Despite a lack of experience, James Cagney fast-talked his way into a vaudeville dancing job.
Egyptian hermit Saint Anthony gave away his inheritance and joined a group of ascetics, eventually becoming the father of Christian Monasticism.
D. H. Lawrence began writing his first novel, The White Peacock.
Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice, her second and most famous novel.
English author Elizabeth Barrett Browning published her first volume of poetry.
Polish-born Joseph Conrad, one of the great English language novelists, began learning English, his third language.
Charles Lindbergh learned to fly.
John Stuart Mill pulled himself out of depression and found that the ordinary events of life could again give him some moderate amounts of pleasure. He decided that happiness is attained not by making it the direct goal of life, but by fixing one’s mind on some other pursuit.
Leon Battista Alberti wrote a Latin comedy that was hailed as the “discovered” work of a Roman playwright.
The Greek philosopher Plato became a disciple of Socrates.
Alexander Graham Bell taught a stray Skye Terrier to talk. By training the dog to growl on cue and then manipulating his mouth and throat, Bell could make him produce the phonemes “ow, ah, ooh, ga, ma, ma,” to say “How are you, Grandmama?”
Enter your age and find out what people did at your age. (via Yahoo Picks!)
My high school economics teacher gave me a great compliment one time. He said something to the level of “Allen has the ability to make you believe what he says. If he says the world is flat, then the world is flat.” I somehow doubt that’s true, but somehow New York Times writer Thomas Friedman is convincing people the world isn’t world with a book called the The World is Flat. Not in the Pre-Columbus sort of way, but in the sense that other countries, particularly China and India, are growing to a level that can compete with the United States.
The blog WorldChanging had a post today about Friedman’s idea, but involving the program Skype. It involved college students calling each other from the United States and China with the program. Some other people have had some interesting experiences with the program, even with people asking them to practice their English. I decided sure enough to try this by setting the program to accept a call from anyone. Turns out I got a call from a Brazilian man wanting to learn English. It was pretty difficult to work (communicating with one another) and we ended up cutting it off after a few minutes, but it was an interesting experience. I’m still looking for my next caller.
Apparently, the format for my information systems final is to make up four exam questions and answer them. I don’t know whether to be jumping for joy or screaming in fear. Probably the latter.
This just sickens me:
They had another info graphic that annoyed me too.
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1. I am kind of tired of people not being allowed to express their religious beliefs in public schools. It’s not fair. That said teachers should not be leading group prayers or any other religious ceremonies in schools. Leave that to the child and the individual to do. 2. I’m tired of people trying to assert that evolution isn’t even an explanation. There are school districts not teaching kids about dinosaurs and tectonic plates, because they don’t go with the Bible. Sure. 3. Okay, the fight over “under god” in the pledge was pretty dumb. It’s two little words and not an affirmation to anything (regardless of origin, it has become that way anyway). I’ll concede that point. 4. Again this was pretty dumb. However, I wonder how people would feel if say a Muslim code of laws were hung up in a court of law. I mean if you want the Ten Commandments up, somebody has just an equal right to put any other religious law. 5. Whoa. Nobody ever said Terry Schiavo had no right to live. That is a false allegation. It is whether she had the right to die, than live in her state. That’s a difference. 6. I don’t know where life begins, but I don’t believe that a life begins at birth only. Let’s be clear. A ball of cells is life. Whether or not it is a “human life” is another matter. And if you do call it that, just remember that nature kills off those balls of cells far more often than a person realizes (leaving a lot of “souls” in purgatory). |
(site found via Metafilter)
I’ve been applying for a variety of internships, some of which asked for writing samples. I picked these posts on Calstuff and One.berkeley.edu as my favorites.
My Informations Systems GSI gave me this cartoon. It’s not accurate in some places, but in others, it’s dead on.
After seeing The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and completely laughing out of pure enjoyment throughout much of the movie, I must say I’ve become pretty enthralled by the concepts it presents. I had never read the books or heard the radio show before, so maybe that explains why I’m so impressed. Those who had prior experience with author Douglas Adams’s universe said the movie could have been funnier. After plucking through some quotes, there are some great quotes that made it in the movie and others that didn’t.
Favorite Quotes from the movie and such:
Oh the glory that is Flickr. It can let you find just about anything, provided you take the time to put a tag on it or upload it to a group. So many cool things you can do with it too like this graph of your friends or the world map.
But you know, sometimes allowing anybody to find your photos might not be something the subject wants. Anybody else find it a little disconcerting to find out some guy had taken and posted your picture behind your back (not say that he did of course)? I mean I sure as hell don’t want to see a picture of me at IB Hoagies showing up on the Internet unless I know the person who took it. Then again this picture has met with positive reviews, so I guess if she ever found it, maybe she’d be thankful.
(BTW, she does look cute, but maybe she looks different from the front.)
