ADD Extreme

Today I was listening to some Yahoo music while I was sitting at my desk at work when I heard an advertisement that got me thinking.

As a side note, I prefer Pandora but I can't access that site from Europe while at work...but when I'm on my personal laptop I can log into MIT's VPN with an American IP address and get all of the American internet that I want.  Yay!

The ad I heard on Yahoo music was John Mayer speaking for RADD...Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes Against Drunk Driving.  First off, why is it RADD and not RAAADD?  Are they too good for the extra As?  How do you think that makes those three As feel?  Do you think A's siblings make fun of her (more on why it's feminine in a second) at the Letter People's family reunion?



Next side note, do you remember the Letter People?  I know I do.  Growing up I had this pen object that you placed against a reading book and the pen spoke the letter to you.  I vividly remember Mr. S, Super Socks, from my childhood.  Thanks to the glory of the internet I was able to remember that A is actually a Miss A, A'choo.

Back to RADD...first of all, where did the Recording Artist and Athlete link up come from.  The RADD website says the organization RADD is now "the Entertainment Industry's Voice for Road Safety" and in italics says it is "formerly known as Recording Artists, Actors and Athletes Against Drunk Driving."  I guess I see the entertainment link, but still...seems like an odd link to me.  What about other entertainers who haven't recorded anything?  How about math competitors, Mathletes?



Do they count as Athletes?  Sure, you've avoided all of these tough questions by changing to the phrase Entertainment Industry, but I bet the new members still feel a little wounded and excluded...like they aren't really part of the club.

[caption id="attachment_1479" align="alignnone" width="156" caption="One of these things is not like the other"][/caption]

My actual question that started all of this is why we need all of these X-ADD programs?  Don't get me wrong, I'm as against drunk driving as anyone.  Anyone who knows me knows that I don't drink and never have, and thus have always graciously taken the role of designated driver.  My question is more about the various ADD programs I have heard of.  I know of MADD, Mothers Against..., and SADD, Students Against..., and BADD, Boaters Against..., and following a Google search I also saw AADD and CADD, Artists and Citizens Against...and who knows what other combinations.



[caption id="attachment_1481" align="alignnone" width="153" caption="If you don't know this combo then you either did not play enough Contra on the NES or were so good that you did not need 99 lives to beat the game"][/caption]



Are all of these organizations members of a governing Against Drunk Driving organization?  Maybe they should be.  Maybe we need a governing body to regulate who can be against drunk driving and how best to be against drunk driving.  They could provide better direction.




I also started thinking about what other X-ADD organizations we could see in the near future.  Maybe a simple combination to weed out the people who only have one criteria through which to be against drunk driving.  How about someone like Madona or Britney Spears, RAMADD, Recording Artists and Mothers Against...and now that I think of it, I bet they are both boat owners and probably not students right now...RAMBWNSADD, Recording Artists and Mothers and Boaters Who are Not Students Against...

Then you can start introducing new categories for exclusion.  Maybe FATGADD, Former Actors Turned Governors Against...  This would be a club that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura could join.

You might argue that Jesse Ventura was a wrestler and while that is acting it is not the same as acting in a movie like Arnold did...to which I will kindly remind you of Jesse's stellar performance as Blain (the one with the chain gun) in Predator alongside Arnold.  If you've seen the movie you know that he ain't got time to bleed.  If you haven't seen it...what's wrong with you?

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Right to Life

Today at lunch we were discussing hand washing techniques and how normal people do not wash the top sides of their fingers very well.  The face of your fingers?  Check.  Palms?  Check.  Up to your wrists or higher if your are crazy?  Check.  Maybe even the sides of your fingers as you interlock your hands?  Check minus?  But the tops of you fingers?  That is crazy talk.

This led me to exclaim that I don't wash my hands.  I support bacteria's Right to Life.

I have beef (I'm clever sometimes) with vegetarians who don't eat meat because it is "wrong" to kill animals.



My claim is simple.  At what size / complexity does the organism in question loose its right to life in your book?  You don't want to eat beef, that would be killing a cow.  Gotcha.  How about a chicken?  Still too big?  Grasshopper? Come on, a grasshopper doesn't even have a vertebrae.



How about a mosquito?  What did you do the last time a mosquito bit you?  You squished it, that's what you did.  OK, lets say you are that crazy person that picks up a daddy long legs up (ripping off three legs in the process) in your bathroom and sets it down somewhere outside.  Even if you ARE that crazy person, I bet you washed your hands the last time you visited the bathroom.

[caption id="attachment_1469" align="alignnone" width="180" caption="God bless the US education system"][/caption]

At a minimum, you took your monthly shower with environmentally friendly soap and put on environmentally sound deodorant (that doesn't really work).  Do you know how many bacteria you just sentenced to death?  Millions!  What about their right to life?  What is the difference?  Where do you draw the line and why there?

For that matter, what is the difference between animals and the vegetables you eat?  Those plants were alive before you killed them to eat them.  I fail to see the difference.

[caption id="attachment_1466" align="alignnone" width="230" caption="Bear Grylls also fails to see the difference!"][/caption]

and since we're on the topic of Bear Grylls

[caption id="attachment_1468" align="alignnone" width="217" caption="Lord of the Rings Reference for those who don't get this."][/caption]

Busy, Busy, Busy!

Busy, Busy, Busy! I know that numerous times I have told incoming students that you don’t have to worry about the time or effort level required to graduate at MIT, and most weeks of the year I stand by what I said…but these past two weeks have been hell for me. I will be out of the country for the next two weeks and between preparing to leave, completing my obligations as a member of the international plant trek team tasked with organizing the trip, mid-terms, and all of the normal activities and school work I have…I was actually busy. For the first time in a long time, and my first time in Massachusetts, I had to turn down a chance to play hockey…and with descent players too, not just some C-league intramural team. That one hurt. I HATE turning down free ice time. I’ve had a number of topics that I have wanted to blog about, a number of movies that I have wanted to watch, and a computer game that I have been desperately waiting for the release of (Empire Total War) and I did not have time for any of these things.

The game combines overall campaign strategy/country management (think the boardgame Risk) with military strategy 101 (think lines of units, reinforcements, and flanking)

I CANNOT believe that Empire has been out for two weeks and I have not played it more than 6 hours. To quote Vizzini (Wallace Shawn) from Princess Bride, “Inconceivable!”

I can catch up on some of the blogs as I travel in Europe (downtime while on planes, trains, and automobiles) but I can’t run Empire on my laptop. I can barely run Empire on my home computer and my laptop has no graphic processing capabilities. When I bought the lappy, I did not want to tempt myself with the ability to play computer games in class (turns out at Sloan, you pretty much can’t have your laptop out…but I did not know this at the time).

Blood Pumping Awesomeness!!!

Nothing...absolutely nothing else in the world...gets my blood pumping like Rocky IV.  Somehow that movie captured the entire range of human emotion while singlehandedly winning the cold war against the USSR.  Every time Rocky Balboa landed a body blow on Captain Ivan Drago...somehow...somewhere...a brick fell from the Berlin wall.  After grossing $127.8 million in the United States and $175 million outside of the US (thank YOU NATO countries) it is no wonder the Berlin Wall came down.  The timeliness is just too convenient.  The movie released on November 27th 1985 and by November 9th 1989, (after dominating the theaters and following that with an amazing VHS release)...obviously, the wall was structurally unsound.  All of the the scenes that you may have seen on TV of the wall being torn down were probably staged by the US government to hide the true power of the Rocky Franchise and Hollywood.  Reagan (being an actor, he understood the power of American movies) even staged his famous speech where he challenged Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall".  Now I love Reagan as much as any other American, but lets be honest...it was easy for Reagan to make such bold claims considering the damage the Italian Stallion had caused.

Sadly the history books won't properly document how the cold war was really won (though, the Versus channel does its best to show Rocky I - IV at least once a week) and America will continue to believe that we won the war through diplomatic, military, and economic pressure on the Soviet Union...luckily some of us still remember what Stallone did for this country (not to mention his contributions as Rambo rescuing POWs in Vietnam).  I leave you with a picture of Rocky draped in an American flag and the chorus to Hearts on Fire (the song that plays during the classic Rocky workout and mountain climbing montage).



hearts on fire
strong desire
rages deep within
hearts on fire
fever's rising high
the moment of truth draws near

Note: This post is what happens when I start homework at 1 AM (having successfully put it off all day) that I don't want to do...I should be writing an Executive Summary for my Applications of Technology class and instead I'm blogging until 2 AM...which means I'll be up doing homework until 3 AM.

Sad, Sad Halloween

So I forgot to follow up on a previous post about my Halloween costume disaster.  So I really like Halloween and dressing up.  My favorite part is making a costume.  I'm not saying buying a costume is bad, but I enjoy making the costume as much as I enjoy wearing it out.  My senior year of undergrad I made a chicken wire/papermache  Mr. Potato head.  That costume had changeable face accessories.  It was awesome.

[caption id="attachment_270" align="alignnone" width="110" caption="Go on and say it, I could have reused the costume the next year and gone as poo "][/caption]

Anyway, I wanted to do something special this year and I had a good idea.  Voltron!  For those of you who don't know, Voltron was a terribly awesome 80's cartoon.  Basically, in every episode the evil King Zarkon tries to find a way to conquer the planet Arus...which requires him to somehow defeat Voltron.  So Zarkon sends a robobeast monster to Arus and shoots him with a laser that makes the robobeast incredibly big.  The components of Voltron fight the evil robobeast monster Zarkon has sent and they are always unable to beat it...so someone decides that they need to work together and form Voltron.  At that point, it is game over for the robobeast and Zarkon.  Voltron is unbeatable.  I'm pretty sure Voltron could beat up Chuck Norris...or at least give him a run for his money.

Still confused?  What exactly is Voltron?  Voltron is an awesome human shaped combination of 5 massive mechanical lions.  It doesn't have to make sense, its from Japan.  Here are some pictures of Voltron:



[caption id="attachment_272" align="alignnone" width="150" caption="The toys that I had.  This shows the 5 individual lions and how they form together to make Voltron"][/caption]

So anyway, I spent a good portion of my SIP week making a Voltron costume.  I started with white 1/4" foam board.  I cut out pieces and glued them together to make the arms, legs, head, and a chest plate.  I'm not going to lie...it looked amazing.  I took a good deal of time bracing all of the pieces I glued together.  The hands were the most difficult part.  Voltron's weapon of choice is a large sword, so I needed to be able to grip a sword with my lion-head hands.  For this to work I had to I create lion-head hand with a movable jaw.  I did not get it right on the first try, but eventually I got it and it looked great.

I know that parties are not the place you want a costume coming apart, so I had to make my costume as party-proof as possible.  All of the pieces were very sturdy.  You could pick up any piece and shake it hard...and nothing came apart.  The rubber cement was holding all of the foam board together well.  At this point, the only problem remaining was that everything was still all white.  Anywho, I bought some acrylic paint and tested it on a few small pieces (this part is key to my mistake).  So the next day I check the small painted pieces and everything looked GREAT!  After that, I went about painting all of the major pieces of the costume and set everything out to dry.  The next day I came out and inspected the pieces...I had major structural problems.  The paint warped all of the foam board and any pieces longer than six inches long bent enough to rip the rubber cement joints.  For some of the smaller pieces like the hands and head, this was not a very big problem.  These smaller pieces were a little warped and no longer fit together well (you could see inside at the corners) but they were holding together.  The shoulders, legs, and chest/back pieces were a different story.  There was at least an inch between some pieces that had previously been glued together.  This made a majority of the costume beyond repair.  At this point it was late in the week and Halloween was just a day away.  I spent a few hours trying to salvage what I could but in the end I had to admit defeat.  I learned in economics that you can't consider the sunk costs (all my hard work) when making your future decisions....there was just not enough time to complete everything...plus, I did I want to spend a significant amount of more money.  I think I spent about $120 total on foam board, a special straight edge razor and other cutting accessories, and of course, the wrong paint.

There was no way the large painted pieces would make it out of the house.  In the end, I gently balanced the pieces of the costume on my body and snapped a few pictures.  Literally, when the pictures were done, I stepped forward and all of the large pieces completely came apart.  No exaggeration, one step was all it took.  I was sad, but in the end I did have fun making the pieces...and I am proud of how well everything looked before I painted it.  I wish I had taken some pictures before I painted...but I did not expect such a disaster.  I did record all of the dimensions (designing on the fly took much longer than constructing the parts) so maybe sometime in the future, I'll take another shot at this costume.  Maybe this time, I'll do my homework on which paint to use. :-)

I'm making a sad face in all of my pictures.  Woe is me.  I could not attach some of the detailed pieces (chest plate, back-wings, leg and head accessories) because of how warped everything was.  I also had not yet purchased my face paint, shirt, or pants...so I'm not fully dressed up.

[caption id="attachment_275" align="alignnone" width="112" caption="The detailed attachments were painted but not yet glued to the legs or head, so the legs are white on the front and the head is lacking the signature ears"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_276" align="alignnone" width="112" caption="Here you can see the movable jaw on the hands so I could hold my sword.  you can also see how how the yellow leg is separated at the seam (near my knee)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_277" align="alignnone" width="112" caption="Lisa and I making a sad cat face"][/caption]

In the end, I was sad so Lisa and I stayed in and passed out candy to the little kids in my apartment.  Oh well, maybe next year.

Oh bloggy blog

So...not much is going on here.  The semester is in full swing and the work load is starting to ramp up.  So far, it is not too bad.  The fun time for me and scheduling is lunch time.  Lunch time is about the only time that everyone in a group is free, and so everyone thinks that it is a good time to have a meeting.  Problem is we are all in multiple groups.  On top of that, I have a professor who has to miss some lectures and he also thinks that lunch time is a good time to have make-up sessions.  As far as school work/homework/reading goes, nothing too serious yet.  Silly OP project is looming out there but otherwise all is well in Whovillle.

I would have plenty of free time if EA had not released Spore.  On top of that, Rock Band 2 is coming out as well as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.  On top of all of that, my XBOX 360 died (2nd time in two years...and I still would recommend XBOX360 over PS3!).  I am very sad to say that I do not have enough time to play all of the video games that I want to.  Stupid school...getting in the way of my video game playing.

Engineering classes are fun.  They feel natural.  I feel bad for the PhD students sitting next to me in Industrial Chemistry and Chemical Process Pathways...this one guy today kept asking me questions about the material..and I did not have the heart to tell him that I have no idea what is going on.  It's not to say that I can't comprehend the material...but it has been some time since I had Organic chemistry (or any chemistry for that matter) and I really have to think about what the professor is saying.

Some McKinsey guy (Gene Zelazny) came and gave us a presentation on presentations today (no, that is NOT a typo).  I can say that I did not fall asleep once...so he rated very high on the interesting scale.  Of course, everything he said seemed so logical and simple...but at the same time (like so many things that should be common sense) people don't always act logically.  For example, as he was presenting he would hit the period button after you read his slides.  Apparently, the period button turns your PowerPoint to a blank screen.  When the screen goes blank, you look at the presenter and stop looking at the screen.  Makes sense...but no one does it.

Cliff Notes: If you ever have to do a presentation in a business setting, you are going to need his (Gene Zelazny) books.

Clone Wars movie

So I just got back from Star Wars: The Clone Wars the movie and I have to say mediocre at best.  It just felt too childish, as did the three newer movies.  I don't mind that Star Wars caters to kids but it also be inclusive of adults.  At least The Force Unleashed looks good which will satisfy my Star Wars craving.  Lucas Arts has been disappointing me with it's lack of a new flight simulator (X-Wing and Tie Fighter are some of the greatest games ever and we've had nothing worth playing since X-Wing Alliance which is mediocre at best).  I would also love a sequel to Republic Commando.  That is all.