On unscientific tests
I am really glad I came here to study. Just the pleasure of running into and interacting with all sorts of varied folk makes it all worthwhile, and so colourful! Just recently, the following came up during the course of a conversation (and why do I know this guy again?):
“Dude, I’m not bi (as in curious or sexual). I just behave that way, because, you know[1], it turns my dominant (as in sexually) woman on.”
If you need to justify your longing for men with some convoluted tale involving showing your vicariously-inclined woman you really love her by sleeping with men?, you probably need to talk to someone; someone professional. This is what I wanted to scream when I heard what he said, but being the nice guy that I am, I exited with some crude joke instead.
When it comes to male sexual preferences, I have a nonchalant “your penis, your business” attitude toward it all. But, and this really still surprises me, most of my friends and associates don’t often feel this way. They voice strong feelings on the issue; very strong, and often very negative. So much so that some of these people refuse to acknowledge the possibility that homosexuality might be natural, and often blame the media or even denounce the guy as “just plain irresponsible”. In the sense that, “he wants to have fun, and not deal with real issues, like anyone getting pregnant”. Seriously people, there are a lot of ways of going about doing that, most of which don’t involve becoming gay.
While these opinions bothered me, what really spooked me were the kids on the darker end of this spectrum—the ones with the purely homophobia-induced hatred. I grasped at straws trying to answer one basic question: Why would otherwise rational and compassionate human beings suddenly turn so violent against something so trivial?—something that probably doesn’t even touch them in their everyday lives.
Being the “scientist” that I claim to be, I decided to go through with an experiment. A very crude, and very unscientific, experiment. Following in the footsteps of cool ideas like Supersize Me, I decided to go a little undercover and see what it’s like to be treated differently when people assumed I was gay; especially people who’ve known me for a long time.
Not knowing how to advertise this in real life (think about it, you don’t hear people screaming “I’m straight” or otherwise on the streets), I decided to start small and a couple of months ago, changed my Orkut profile to read: “Reason for being here: Dating (Men)”. Honestly, I was expecting some sort of huge uproar, with numerous curious folk stopping by to say hello, and find out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON! I mean, come on, some of the people on that list I’ve known for ages; surely they have to be at least a LITTLE curious.
No such thing. I heard not a peep. No one said anything. No one treated me even the tiniest bit different. Nothing. Either people don’t notice these things, don’t care, or don’t care about what I do with my penis. I honestly still haven’t reached the bottom of what’s going on. I don’t even know whether I should feel proud of the open-minded nature of these people, or hurt that they deem my life course altering decisions so insignificant.
More curious still, a few otherwise available, very attractive and intelligent friends of mine got engaged in this period—and didn’t even mention it until I brought it up! Coincidence? I think not.
Good god! What have I done?
[1] No, actually, I don’t know. Does it bother you too when people pause to collect their thoughts with a “you know”, especially when you clearly don’t know what the hell they’re talking about?
Imminent changes
Random walk
Biochemistry, or just frustration
Being more-than-slightly embarrassed, I’d been toying with numerous ways of framing the following sentence, but finally settled on just blurting it out. Maybe it’s just me, but have you noticed the extremely strong connection between your libido and appetite (or conversely, degree of fullness)? I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I really have to concentrate on something, it turns out to be more productive if I am hungry or otherwise drained. There’s just too much more scope to be distracted otherwise.
There, I went ahead and said it. It wasn’t that hard.
I don’t know, maybe this a sign of this site returning to its roots. A sort of brutal, unabashed openness reminiscent of the times when its readerbase was literally non-existent.
Lampost inverse
Everyone’s a snob
Come on, admit it. You’ll feel much better.
Warning: The following is a severe test of your attention span. You might want to grab a cup of coffee or whatever beverage it is that floats your boat before proceeding. Or just leave.
I try to be non-prejudiced and objective about most things, but sometimes, my clearly preconceived notions and biases on certain topics overwhelm my rational thought process. I proceed to flow with these elitist impulses, after which I end up feeling guilty. And I hate feeling guilty.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Maybe an example will help concretise ideas.
You know that I spend a bulk of my summers travelling, flitting from one place to the next, a large chunk of which is conference-hopping. Consequently, I’ve sat through far more than my fair share of talks; some of which have been good, some, not-so. But (and I don’t know if I am supposed to be blurting this out), while the rest of the world is probably pondering over how good the research is, or how engrossing the speaker is, my first (and most critical) judgement of the “coolness of a talk” is based entirely on how the fonts and symbols are rendered on the projection screen.
Yes, I am being entirely serious.
If the person on the podium is not using a TeXed-up PDF with everything looking “just right” (as in gorgeous), my first reaction is to assume they aren’t “techy”, so they don’t know what they’re talking about. It might be stellar work, but my brain is already beginning to shut off as it’s concentrating on something else, like poorly anti-aliased fonts. I know this is wrong, but it’s an involuntary (even if socially conditioned) response; one that I can’t always control. And doing this sort of thing always gnaws on my insides for a lot longer than it ought to.
For the longest time, I thought I was alone in feeling this way, but as it turns out, really cool people can be this way as well (“…now I can’t stand to read papers that still do use it”). And, of-late, as I’ve been conversing with a few very different people, it’s becoming more and more clear.
EVERYONE’S A SNOB.
For instance, I was talking to the head chef at the university (of the calibre of the highly trained and skilled people who take part in those Iron Chef shows) during one of my baking expeditions. And guess what? He doesn’t eat tomatoes for over 8 months of the year. Apparently, they just don’t taste “right” when they’re off-season, and he can’t stand them.
Can you see?
Sure, it’s not in the same areas, but everyone has something that they honestly believe they’re so much better at, at which their understanding and skills are so much more refined at, … than the normal person, and clearly look down upon others from their high horses when they aren’t up to snuff in those regards.
But the thing I’ve realised is, once you’ve spent the time and gotten good at something, you probably are really more aware of what’s going on, and begin to understand the subtleties. That is just HOW IT IS. Just what is the big problem with rubbing this in the lesser mortal’s face from time to time?
Be it tomatoes, the anti-aliasing of fonts, rendering of symbols, fine wines, cheeses, quality of music recording/playback equipment, optics of the camera … anything. Deep down, everyone has something that they’re a snob about. Rather than feel guilty about it, realise that you’ve worked for it or are gifted, and this need to patronise the other folk is entirely normal; you’re almost entitled to it.
Like I keep saying, everyone’s a snob. Admit it. And let’s move on.
People around you have a problem with it?
Help them. Inform them. Show them what you know (flaunt it if need be), and they will either learn too or shut up.
It’s about time we stopped feeling guilty about the things we really should be proud of.
Addendum: My biggest issues in this regard (apart from the whole people-using-PowerPoint thing, that is) involve people using “crappy” equipment and lossy-formats (MP3) to listen to “crappy” music, and then mouthing-off about something trivial. Don’t know when a Mozart concerto transitions from an Adante to a Moderato? Well then, please shut up about the maximum bitrate of your IPod.
Out of curiosity, just what are those avenues you feel you’ve evolved to appreciate more than the average person? Food? Art? Punctuation? … Does it annoy you immensely when people constantly butcher what you hold so dear? Do you find yourself holding it against them, and regretting it later?
Feel free to chime in.
Pornographic Priestess
Tanking up
Isn’t it about time we refilled that section of the karma pot?
I write:
Hello Amanda,
I found your M-card and (what I assume to be) a keycard for your dorm on the floor in Pierpont commons earlier today. I’ve dropped it off at the information desk, so you can pick it up there.
Just thought I’d let you know so you wouldn’t worry,
wahgnube
She replies:
Thank you so much. I really appreciate you looking me up and sending me an email. I was really worried about losing it, but I am glad some one found it and turned it in.
Thanks again,
Amanda
Yes, I think that about covered it.
And yes, I understand this was yet another filler post. But this time I’m not lying when I say, “please come back, there will be some real content on here soon.”
Update: Guess who’s number 1(!) on yahoo videos for Naomi Watts sex? Oh google analytics (and our horny search-engine-using teens), how we love you.
Vertical centering
This is just a filler post. Real material will resume tomorrow. (Or is that much later today?)
There was a feature request for delineate the other day that wanted the posts vertically centered as well. You know, so they don’t look downright crappy (as in asymmetrical) at high resolutions. As it turns out, for all the talk “web designers” spew about not-using-tables and only using XHTML and CSS, there is no clean (as in trivial) way of vertically centering things using CSS.
So I resorted to much evil hackage, and voilà !
While I am at it, I might as well post a couple of other pretty pictures. Since the source for delineate was free since inception, a few people have snagged it and extended things in their own cool ways. I just post one of these interesting ideas below; incorporation of EXIF data and other general picture information along with the post comment window.
And, entirely unrelated, but too cool to pass up, here’s my new Emacs rendering super and sub script in LaTeX-Mode.

Royal thicket
Sweeping apologies save time
People usually don’t like it when I copy and paste something I wrote elsewhere. But I haven’t done this in a while, so grin and bear it. Cheers.
The following was written up in response to something written elsewhere. So you probably have to have a browse before the context is clarified.
Fact: Men often aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. (Refer to pause or any other tell-tale sign when asked “Do I look fat?”, for an example.)
So please don’t hinge your state of mind (degree of happiness?) on and by passively mulling over everything he has to say (or doesn’t say, or things you “sense from his (in)actions”). For all your keen senses (yes, I admit they exist and try my best not to offend a radar I cannot sense), I think there are times when women forget they are primarily strong, independent, intelligent people (with their own clear opinions) and more-than-deserving of being cherished.
I know I wrote this in response to some random woman’s worry about whether some random guy fancied her. But I address it to all womankind, as a reminder of their individuality and an apology toward them for all that men (including I) have done (and preemptively, for what we will do).
Men are basically stupid. It isn’t worth over-analysing their their (lack of)words/(in)actions, and you probably won’t feel much better if you do.
On a forcibly-related note, my medical insurance providers just sent me a letter stating gender reassignment surgery is now covered under my plan! Oh joy of joys!
And just when you stop being sure what’s a joke and what’s not, you start feeling queasy on the inside.
As a follow up
For all my bitching, I think it’s ironic that the new image thumbnails you see on the right (→) (now moved to the sitemap) are pretty buzzword compliant. They’re rendered dynamically (DHTML), using delineate’s feed (RSS) which is neatly categorised (tagged), via a cron job (asynchronous? XML, almost AJAX?) and parsed using fucking[1] Python (Python) to generate strict, standards compliant code (XHTML) and styled using stylesheets (CSS).
Is there anything else people want to pile on there? I abhor javascript, so for my sites, AJAX (if and when it shows up) will probably not go beyond AAX.
<Dr. Weird> Gentleman, behold! Web two point oh! </Dr. Weird>
[Representative MP3 for those who don’t watch enough TV.]
[1] Yeah, screw you too.
The plague of the meta-bloggers
I absolutely hate the fact that there is an entire meta-blogging industry out there run by these so-called experienced web gurus. These are the supposedly “early” (circa 2004) adopters of technology, and they pretty much get off on writing about writing, or writing about technology that makes weblogging possible (or easier). They’re the alpha bloggers and all the women flock to them. These are the kinds of people who use words like Web2.0 and AJAX and think they sound intelligent.
They pretty much seem to get off on this and don’t see the need to come up with any interesting topics of their own worth talking about, or even giving the rest of the world a peek into their lives. No, their entire post history reads like a giant help-the-clueless-newbie tutorial.
What is the intarweb?
How to blog?
What is blogging?
How to install blogging software?
How to customise blogging software?
How to draw an audience?
How to optimise your site’s position on a search engine? (Now these are the sleaziest of the lot)
And on and on…
You know what, just shut up. There are people out there who’ve been entrenched in technology for far longer. Things like maintaining a web page are not hard to do. And even if someone reaalllly technophobic needs to maintain a journal (on-line!), I don’t know, for survival, they have services like blogspot that even my grandma can find herself and use.
Get it into your thick skulls that you aren’t needed. Please stop mooching off the pseudo-celebrity status you’re so hung up on.
(As I intelligently get away with a meta-meta-post. A post about people who post about posting!)
On extended stays
“Though intellectually stimulating, working on fundamental theories can often feel like a thankless task. Results which don’t align with common experience and intuition we’re sceptical of and eager to dismiss, and those that do seem apparent and consistently underwhelm.” — Me, 2005
Rather than be one facet of my existence, being in grad school now seems to be what defines me. I don’t really have a problem with this per se, but sporadic comparisons between life as it stands and life as I envisioned it being by now usually cause some distress. This recently came to the fore yet again, when I was forced to answer a variant of the question every senior grad student dreads to hear—”When are you finishing up here?”
Like everything else in this unnecessarily-hurried part of the world, my landlords were beginning breathing down my neck concerning my leasing decision for 2006–2007. As in, the year after next!
In all honesty, I don’t know what I’m going to do a few minutes later. And besides, for all I know, I could get hit by a truck by 2007. But anyway, I mulled over it since they wanted an answer. A short while ago, I reached a decision, signed my lease (yes, it’s freaking insane), and had a very long (and somewhat awkward) conversation with my parents about my decision to spend another year in grad school here.
And by “another year”, I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m messing with the initial master plan. The grand total at the moment seems five years, as it was initially. It’s just, at some point, it looked like I could be out in four. It’s still entirely possible, but then I thought, what then?
I really like what I do here, and have a ton of ideas as to what else I plan to do. I have little planned on what to do next, besides I’ve assumed it’s going downhill from here since it can’t be better. So what’s the point? What’s the rush? Why not spend a little more time and do a good job, as opposed to a job that’s good enough?
And oh, in these time-scales, the hotness-meter ought to be in the 27,000–30,000 bracket by finishing time!
I quickly jotted down a road-map of what I’d intended to do and planned to learn in the remaining time, and got it OKed by the higher ups. I will con this place out of a couple of master’s degrees and a doctoral degree in more than one field yet.