Allen Lew's Thoughts

I should be studying for finals, but Seth Godin posted this speech by Author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Congo, Lost World, Andromeda Strain) on how science is becoming more and more impeded by politics and superstitions (that’s a scary thought). It related a lot to my final for Astrobiology (biology on other planets-and yes there is none) immensely, so I didn’t lose any time reading it. Anyways, I liked what he had to say about science, but he got quite a few things wrong:
Analysis

I plugged Improv and Shakespare night in my last post. So many people were invited, some showed up and some didn’t (maybe I should have called them, but oh well). Of course, there were people who showed up who I didn’t expect, too and that was cool.

Shakespeare Night was cool. We did Merchant of Venice. The guys were right about one thing though, drama plays do tend to work better than comedies. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to act much, but all in all it was funny watching it.

Improv night was especially fun last night. Our favorite game is still “World’s Worst.” It’s just funny how well making fun of Patrick works.
Example: Worst things to say on a first date.
Response: Hi my name is Patrick.

Some other good ones:
Worst Songs to Sing at a funeral
“Move Bitch Get Out the Way”
“Zippide Do Dah”
“Ding Dong the Witch is dead”

Worst Best Man Toasts
“let me tell you, that shipping that woman over from Russia was the best grand he ever spent”

Poor Nick, he was so tired. I had to take over and host for the rest of the night. We did do an awesome “In The Year 3000” bit. It’s basically Conan’s in the year 2000 bit taken a little further.

Best ones
“The final extended edition of Lord of the Rings comes out. Total Running Length: 5 Years”
“Instead of computer algorithms, the BCS will turn to a surprisingly more accurate system: monkeys flinging poo on a map of the United States.”
“The Flying Car will finally be available. However, people will not only be complaining about bad Asian driver, they’ll also be complaining about bad Asian pilots”

Yeah that was fun.

Wow I have not wrote a cohesive post in like a month. I must be really tired. Back to the books.

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Extra, Extra, Read all about–The Problems of the Greek System: What is the matter with being Greek in Berkeley?

Wednesday, December 1

In MCB 100, the professor said to a couple of guys, ” Could you please stop laughing? You are hurting my feelings.” Wow, that’s never happened before. I wonder what they were laughing at, but I’m sure they meant no disrespect.
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Thursday, December 2

Once again, I am re-elected philanthropy chair of Alpha Delta Phi and once again I lose Vice President. Frat Bro and future Vice President Shea says I would make an awesome pledge trainer. I’ve never even considered running for it. Now that he mentioned it though…
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Friday, December 3

Five of the guys go to Tahoe. Most of the other bros can’t go since we have so much other work to do. Sean says the cabin is awesome. Err…
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Saturday, December 4

Hoam gives me boba on her birthday. Sweet girl and way too generous. She gave the frat a pie and cake, before she became a little sister and gave us all candy for Halloween. Way too nice.

Saw Cal win against Southern Miss.

Visited Justin Wong and little sister Jill. Told them we had a female border. Jill was like “what?!!!! how can she possibly leave at a frat house?” We’re wondering the same thing.
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Sunday, December 5

Saw Cal lose a shot at the Rose Bowl. Damn BCS. Screw over another Pac-10 team. Oregon a few years back, USC last year, and now this. Congrats to Utah (first non-BCS conference team to make a BCS bowl), but jeers to all the crappy teams who got BCS spots, because they won their weak conferences (Michigan, Virginia Tech, and especially Pittsburgh).
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On future days (or my shameless plugs)…

Friday, December 10th- Shakespeare Kegger: 8 PM early admission; 9 PM start time
The play I believe will be Merchant of Venice.

Saturday, December 11th- For me, it’ll either be a take home final if everyone approves, paintball, or studying. Later that night though, Improv comedy night. Again 8 PM early admission; 9 PM start time.
Come see the guys at Alpha Delta Phi make fools of themselves.

Then come the finals and going home.

Hopefully I’ll be enjoying the last month of the year.

Ken Jennings lost on Jeopardy today. He leaves having won 74 games and $2.5 million dollars. Here’s the AP take on it.

Meanwhile, the talk page on the Wikipedia article on Ken Jennings had some funny quotes. Enjoy.

Answer: “A 1997 court case made this term for African American English widely known”
Ken: “What be Ebonics?” (From Brian)

Alex mentioned that “Lawyers” (like Ken’s Dad) “make great Jeopardy contestants – they get a broad education and are trained to think quickly on their feet.”
Ken replied, “and they’re good at separating people from their money.”

Alex asked, “What are you going to do after Jeopardy?”
Ken answered: “I can now be on TV shows with other ‘C’ list celebrities.” and looked at Alex.

Written as an answer to a Final Jeopardy Question by a Ken opponent “What is same as Ken’s answer?”

Alex “Which two opponents from history would you think would make a good game?”
Ken “Thomas Jefferson and Oscar Wilde”
Alex “… Why …?”
Ken “They always say that Thomas Jefferson was the smartest President. ‘How well would you do on Jeopardy, Declaration Boy?'”

I also remember him answering some question about a historical Spanish figure with “Quien es …” They accepted that answer as well.

Some guy I don’t even know labeled this photo as a favorite on Flickr. The power of technology, allowing complete strangers to look at our funniest moments.

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Just in time for the holidays: My Amazon.com Wishlist. No I don’t expect you to buy me anything on this list (or anything at all for that matter). I just like to share these things. Send me yours; I’d like to see it.

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Coming in theaters Summer 2005: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -Starring Johnny Depp and directed by Tim Burton. One word can describe this: sweet.

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Funny Quote-Me: So I had this weird dream I was making a movie, and you were making out with Natalie Portman while I was trying to film.
Joey: See this is why I’m always telling you to follow your dreams.

Bonus Funny Quote-Me: Hmm, so that women was half Danish, half Chinese. Funny, I just met someone like that.
Louis: Dude, Kristen Kreuk does not count.

So Thanksgiving has passed and so will Black Friday soon (that’s a phrase the news media has been saying to describe the day after Thanksgiving shopping). I don’t know why, but this feels like the time just write a bunch of observations down, sit back, and think about them (yeah I’m lazy).

-My cousin, who I’m staying with this Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle in SF, drives a newer model Toyota Corolla. On one of the stickers, it says “partial zero emissions vehicle”. What does that say? Partially zero? I know it means a fraction, and it’s close to zero, but it doesn’t tell me much. I suppose it is better to say partial though than any of the other synonyms I pulled from thesaurus.com: fractional, fragmentary, half done, halfway, imperfect, limited, part, sectional, uncompleted, unfinished, unperformed.

-I think I only managed to see one “I’m thankful for…” on my friends page (granted I don’t have that many friends for my friends page to display, but still). What should I make out of that really? People want to keep it private? People don’t have much to be thankful for? People are away at home without their high speed net connections and can’t blog now? I’ll take that one. Hehe.

–The Incredibles is a great movie. Awesome premise, really funny, great action sequences. This is definitely not a typical kids movie, since the plot revolves around so many adult themes. If all superhero movies were made this way, they’d all be awesome. I would say it should get nominated for Best Picture like the LA Times article said (link expired, sorry), along with Shrek 2. However, only Beauty and the Beast is the only animated film to be nominated for Best Picture, and it may not change any time soon.

-Sleeping in a room without windows, you can’t really judge what time it is. I mean there’s no sun, so there’s way to discern night from day. Kind of eerie when you think about it.

-I would just like to remind everyone this holiday season that while shopping, take some time and do some comparison shopping. Not just on prices of goods (remember Amazon offers books at way lower prices than any book store), but remember there are substitute goods that while not exactly great, can be pretty good. Take the Creative Zen Touch, a 20 Gig Mp3 Player that has gotten pretty good reviews and is $100 dollars cheaper than an Apple ipod. Sure the Zen doesn’t have the cool design, but it’s just as serviceable and has better sound options, and a $100 dollars less, holds the same amount songs.

-By the way, I think everyone should be putting up their Wishlists online via Amazon, Half, Froggle, or whatever. It’s very interesting to see what people want, like, and are into. And besides, someone might just buy you that gift. I’ll post mine’s up soon. Hope to see your’s too.

-Still talking about shopping, I normally don’t buy things that offer huge rebates but it seems really bad that I missed this (found via this Gizmodo post): Best Buy offers MPx220s for $50–$349.99 retail, minus a $300 mail-in rebate. With features like:

# MPEG4 Video Capture / Video Clip Playback with sound
# Integrated 1.23 megapixel camera
# Bluetooth® wireless connectivity

I can only say “dang it.”

With that note, I guess I’ll end there. Hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

Let’s see I haven’t really written in this thing for a while. I guess I’ve been busy or maybe I just haven’t found anything interesting to write about. Well, this has been an interesting last few days, so I’m going to try to blog about it. I’m also tired, so I’ll going to keep it all brief.

-Very cool alumni luncheon we had with the frat. We went down to Alfred’s Steakhouse in San Francisco, for a very good meal. Got to talk to some cool alumni. These things always make me think about my own future though. It seems interesting at how they look back on everything and how different things were. Unbelievable.

-Big Game this year was a lot of fun, though the game went on way to long with the all the penalties. I did get to go crowdsurfing though (being lifted up on your back and then carried by the other people in the stands in hopes of making it all the way to the top). It was also cool walking onto the field (there were so many people, I couldn’t really rush the field) after the game and almost meeting J.J. Arrington, the running back. Very cool.

-Loosely related to football, I’m honestly surprised by the amount of people who don’t know the fight songs. I admit, I stumble on the words a lot, but it’s amazing how people don’t know them. There’s even the song the band never plays that every Cal student should know and that’s the Cal Drinking Song. We sang that song in front of some alumni (not in a frat), and they just looked at us funny. Sad.

-Do not see National Treasure starring Nicholas Cage. Interesting concept of a hidden treasure buried by a secret society, but it was just pulled off badly. Way badly

-On a more positive note, this week is shortened for the Thanksgiving holiday. Very cool.

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Extra, Extra, Read all about–The Amateur Revolution-How the collective intellect of individuals are putting their heads together to solve some grand problems with the world.

I’ve been using a Yahoo Photo Album to put up pictures for a little while, but the limitations of the site have been getting to me. Mainly, it was not being able to use the album with the journal. I’ve now begun the process of moving over to a Flickr album at http://www.flickr.com/photos/fine_al/. I’ll give it a try for a little while and see how it works out. I’ve only got like 10 photos on it so far, so it’s not much to see though.

Me with Justin (left) and Jeff (right)

So it’s no surprise really that the hot button issue of the day is the election day followup and how there will now be four more years of Bush. People all around Berkeley in classes, email discussion forums, and my friends page are all talking about all sorts of things. Rather respond to all of these things individually, I decided to make this one long entry. Sit back and take a look.

-First off, I’ll say this straight out: I voted for John Kerry mainly because he wasn’t George W. Bush. Bush is a bumbling fool with barely a command of the English language (though this video “What’s happened to George W. Bush’s speaking skills after 10 years” shows he wasn’t always this way), who lead us into this phony war for WMDs in Iraq that weren’t there. That was good enough for me to get him out. Kerry maybe a flip flopper, but Bush is equally one as we see in this Flip Flop catalog. Anyways…

-I’ve heard a lot of talk about moving to Canada. One of my friends wrote:

Who wants to join me and move to Canada? I don’t think I will be able to survive another 4 years…Vancover decriminalizes weed, drinking age is 19 and whistler is beautiful, so why not?

Of course, they should realize that the taxes are heavy compared to the US, the health care involves long waits, and well it’s Canada. CNN had more to say on the matter here (found via Fark).

-Well short of that, California succession seems like a topic seem people suggest to rid themselves of Bush. There’s a sizable group on Facebook that’s “entertaining” the possibility. Taking a look at the electorate map though, we see that while most of the major population sectors of the state like the Bay Area and Los Angeles supported Kerry, if we measured the actual size of land that voted Bush it would have been larger than the portion that voted Kerry. Granted most of that land is desert, mountains, and Yosemite, but nonetheless, try succeeding from the Union without the part of California with the all the food, water, and most of the natural resources (of course, we’re about as serious about doing that as we are about moving to Canada now aren’t we).

-Finally, four more years of Bush? The president who ruined our economy right? Not quite. Remember the economy was going down hill before Bush took office. After all, the dotcom boom went up in smoke, Kenneth Lay laid waste to Enron stock holders along with few other unscrupulous businessmen and companies (*cough* Halliburton), and other problems sprang up. And then came 9/11 which screwed the economy up more. However, an econ professor here at Berkeley named Brad DeLong writes here about how presidents really only “influence but do not control the economy–that most of what happens is the economy following its own path.”

That’s of course not to say that Bush couldn’t helped the economy more. As one commenter points out, “they have *plenty* of control over tax policy, the waging of wars, (through Fed appointments) loose vs. tight economic policy and fiscal policy.” A war on Iraq hasn’t been good for the economy and neither have the tax cuts during the war (before the war, they made sense though). Oddly enough though, the stock market seemed to like it when Bush was winning. As Reuters states, when Kerry looked like he was going to win Ohio and Florida, stocks went down in the health care and the defense sector. I know they represent Bush’s corporate interests, but unfortunately they play a large part of the economy.

Alright, friends that’s some thoughts on your thoughts.

(Also, I found this video (Quicktime) of Bush flipping the bird)