absonant

20100120

a grid fixes it

Stumbled upon this today. I always loved doing these as a kid.

There are 5 houses in 5 different colors standing in a row, the first house being the leftmost house. In each house lives a man of a different nationality. The owners drink a certain type of beverage, use a certain kind of transportation, and keep a certain pet. No owners have the same pet, use the same method of transportation, or drink the same beverage.

The Brit lives in the red house.
The Swede keeps a dog as a pet.
The Dane drinks tea.
The green house is on the left of the white house.
The green homeowner drinks coffee.
The person who rides a bike rears birds.
The owner of the yellow house drives a car.
The man living in the center house drinks milk.
The Norwegian lives in the first house.
The man who rides a scooter lives next to the one who keeps a cat.
The man who keeps the snake lives next to the man who drives the car.
The owner who walks drinks beer.
The German takes the train.
The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
The man who uses the scooter has a neighbor who drinks water.

Who owns the fish?

20100111

Balkans Blitz Facts

It's so good to be back home! I'll do a more detailed update on everything soon, but for now, some numbers.

883 Photos taken.

Sleeping Location Stats:

2 nights at airports

2 nights on a ferry

4 nights on trains

2 nights at hostels

1 night at Nathaniel's parents' home

2 nights at hotels while travelling with N's parents

Traveled in 4 airplanes, 12 trains, 2 buses, 1 ferry, and 1 car (excluding the 2 trains to/from SFO).

Traveled through 9 countries, though only really visited 8 of them.

Entered and exited the EU 3 times.

Used 5 currencies.

Read 794/1069 pages of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

There are probably many more enumerable things from the trip, and even more that are uncountable.

20091227

pinballing

And now, after the holidays, Nathaniel and I leave on a trip to South-Eastern Europe on Monday. Our plan is to hit Rome, Venice, Zagreb, Sarajevo, Split, Podgorica, Belgrade, Sofia, Istanbul, Athens, and Corinth (route map) in two weeks. Insanity.

20091221

paper art

Recently Google Chrome came out with beta releases for Mac and Linux. In playing around with it, I set my theme to be a design by Yulia Brodskaya and then continued to investigate her artwork. I really like both paper art and illustrative styles, so enjoyed looking through her work, which is wonderfully color and diverse in style. I might be imagining Slavic influences because I like Russian Lacquer Boxes so much, but this kind of intricacy and color are themes I've seen among the work of some Slavic artists. Her work reminds me tangentially of some things by Brittany Lee, who often works with paper.

20091216

puishment and gender

I read this BBC article on punishing women a few weeks ago, and since then, I've been thinking about the nature of punishment. This is a hard thing to philosophize about because in an ideal world, everyone would behave themselves in the first place. How much can we abstract away before we lose the realism of the situation?

Back to the article, though. I tend to be hesitant about simple declarations that men and women are different, especially when there isn't much elaboration. I acknowledge that men and women can behave differently, but I like to know the specifics of that behavior so that I can think about how much of that comes from the society in which they live and how much is due to potential inherent differences.

To be fair, I don't think the intent of the article was to be a rigorous argument. I could poke many-a-hole in it if it was, but then I'd probably go on to poke holes in my own arguments, anyway, so I'll leave that for now.

As per the article, Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the following:
We have to be sensible and humane in getting offending down in men and women, and we have to have different, but firm, approaches.

And the Ministry of Justice stressed:
[O]nly vulnerable women rather than ones who are "serious or dangerous" should be punished in the community.

I agree that punishment should be sensible and humane regardless of gender. I suppose the reason this article ruffles my feathers is that men are vulnerable in prison too. They are raped and beaten. So why focus on the gender distinction if you aren't going to support it with any further details? I'd rather them consider punishing all vulnerable prisoners in the community. Is that too scary for the public?

20091212

Done. Cooked. Finished.

All my graduate applications are now in! I just have to play hall monitor for a bit and make sure my transcripts, scores, and recommendations arrive, but that should be straightforward. Yay!

20091208

cold

It's really cold in SF/Berkeley this week. The prediction is that temperatures won't hit above 50F. Usually I like colder weather, but the bay area is ill-equipped to deal with it. For instance, there's no heat and very poor insulation at work. Imagine typing at 40F. Not my favorite thing. However, the frost last night made everything very pretty this morning!