There's no way around it. I am a blogtard. I'm way past being able to look smart with this last post and now I'm just trying for not completely stupid. Frickin pictures, frickin margins, is it really that hard to understand what I want without me telling it in html?
I've fixed and republished this thing sooooo many times. I know there has to be somebody watching this unfold, and I'm sure they are laughing at me.
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I was thinking last week that I should probably get to writing another entry in this thing before I'm waist-deep in fall semester and too preoccupied with the, um, magic of everyday activities to bother with keeping thoughts that aren't answers to some problem. Also, it won't hurt to bury some of the last entries I put into this thing with some fresh material. I'm looking back on some of the crap I wrote last month and seeing the merit of taking the link to this McBlogg off of facebook.
For some reason that may or may not have to do with three of my classes, I've been thinking about statistical significance lately. Is 95% confidence enough for the amount of results that we're taking as gospel? If you've read about what one hundred studies have just found every year (that are significant on the p<0.05>level but not on the p<0.01 level), you can expect 1-5 of them to be bunk. So, don't believe everything you read. Including this, I guess.
Speaking of questionable findings, one of my roommates somehow convinced the other six of us to take the Myers-Briggs test and send him the results back, because it would be fun or something. Ah, the Myers-Briggs. Fascinating stuff; too bad it's horribly overrated. I think there's definitely something that's widely appealing about getting all the stuff that is personality boiled down to four binary variables. But we're totally fooling ourselves if we think we're even remotely consistent in attitude or behavior from situation to situation. I can be really laid- back or completely driven, it just depends on when and where I'm being looked at. I know people who really love the test, and I'm sure they'd try and defend it by saying, "But it just tells you what your general disposition is- the way you're hard-wired." Nay, I say. Not that test. The MB asks specific questions, that people are most likely answering with specific instances and past events in mind, and getting general results back. It's totally skewed to give more weight to recent actions, too. My roommate Phil Hintz thinks he's a fieldmarshal because he took the test after coming back from work as a shift leader at Pizza Hut. Yeah, sure. Phil Hintz is the most diplomatic, happy-go-lucky, don't-worry-about-it-I-might-pull-through-it's-just-a-flesh-wound kind of guy I know. And this is just one of many examples where the MB misses the boat. Now, if there was a way to make people take the thing the right way, I might put some more stock in it. But as it stands, there isn't, and I'll continue to think of it as horoscopes for the educated.
BTW, I have to point out that my roommates are all great, every last one of them. It's amazing how little conflict we have for having seven dudes in not that much space. Having seven dudes sharing one bathroom is a setup that's almost too ridiculous for a reality TV show. Technically, we have a downstairs bathroom too, but none of us is really brave enough to use it regularly. I call it the penalty box. There's talk of a home improvement project, and for once in my lifetime I'm actually interested, even if it is empirical evidence that I'm getting older. I don't know if this is a good first thing to try though. Behold the challenge:
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And even though I think 'they' are idiots most of the time, I'll give them that much. So, having defined the problem thoroughly, it's time to move on to formulating a solution. This is where I'm stuck. I can't just move on to the experimentation phase; I'm afraid I might buy $400 dollars worth of stuff that *might* do something for it, and then break it in installation or find out it doesn't work like I hoped it would. Thus we learn that the scientific method CRASHES AND BURNS when it comes to improving your rented space.
I saw a random banana peel on the ground today, and initially I wasn't sure if I should look at it as a safety hazard or a potential comic moment. After pondering this question for maybe five or ten seconds I decided that I had never actually seen or even heard of anyone slipping on a banana peel before, and there was a nonzero chance that a squirrel might choke on it if I just left it there. And so inertia won out at that point, backed by the rationale "unless we come up with some awesome plan, we only have about thirty years to choke squirrels with banana peels, because some rather useless fungus is driving the Cavendish banana into extinction." Click on me if you care.
Last on the docket: I really hate planning events. I realize why I don't ever initiate things that involve lots of people. I'm working on trying to organize a night of prayer for my church(es, I suppose), and just feeling swamped by it. It's gonna involve a lot of being an adult to finish that job, which is another way of saying I'm going to have to do some stuff that I don't feel like doing. But, my prediction is that it will be worth it (which makes sense seeing as how I haven't thrown in the towel yet). I've heard way too many clever ideas lately for how we can make the Church a more loving place, but sadly none of them involve giving more individual and corporate attention to prayer. I mean, look at what we as Christians are- do we honestly think we can think our way around the problems that continuously sideline us? What we really need is actually for God to do something, folks. So, my point here is that you should help save the world and come to the night of prayer,
