I think I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out months ago, but it’s almost April now, so I got the appointment flash-scheduled for Tuesday next week, which was the earliest possible date. Unfortunately, the naginata demonstration at the Bunka Sai is four days later, which means I probably shouldn’t do the demo. Si~gh. Datotsubo and kakari geiko practices are rare.

I probably shouldn’t even go, since watching people will make me sad.

I went winter clothes shopping yesterday at Ben’s Really Good Suggestion (no, this is not the name of a store), and doing so turned out to be a Really Good Choice. I now have more cute sweaters and boots, yay. However, apparently nobody in California wears thermals, so maybe I’ll just buy those later. I also went grocery shopping with my mom, which I haven’t done in a long time. Some interesting things I noticed:

• North Face has a boot whose color is called “Shroom Brown.” I wonder whether the typical consumer is expected to know what shade of brown shrooms are.
• An old Asian guy walked by me in the produce section of the grocery store wearing a heather gray sweatshirt that read, “Property of Alcatraz.”
• Something tells me there’s no point in buying Really Cute Luggage Sets.

I also read my LJ flist for the first time in weeks, in which time the posts listed have become far too many for me to catch up on. One surprise was that Nghi updated his LJ after giving up public posting back in January. One new post caught my eye: “The Problem of Going to Stanford is”

Okay, so it isn’t exactly a new revelation. It’s not even surprising. What was a little surprising is the sudden change in perception of the concept of chance. I remember I was discussing chances with JohnMatt/MattJohn (teehee) earlier this year — he thought “good chances” are rates of success better than 50%, while I thought 20% was pretty safe.

I won’t lie — it’s pretty stupid to think odds of 4:1 of losing are good. I wouldn’t play Russian roulette with four chambers filled in a five-chambered revolver. Likewise, when I think 20% is good, I probably don’t mean pure probability. It’s simply that I’ve been successful enough that I see 20% and think, maybe 70-80%. I can only presume that Nghi experienced similar anomalies of probability in high school.

So maybe thinking 13 of 165 as “slim to none” isn’t a result of “The Problem of Going to Stanford”. Maybe “The Problem of Going to Stanford” is a solution of some sort — a cure for us freaks who have problems evaluating probabilities.

If you read my AIM away message last night, you will know what CEAD stands for.

CEAD went surprisingly well. I discovered that the average concentration of CO₂ on an old yellow school bus is about 600ppm. I also found a great deal of amusement in some individuals’ “if you don’t understand what they’re talking about, don’t believe it” attitudes.

I generally try not to talk about things I don’t understand as if I do. It makes for far fewer foot-in-mouth incidents. At the same time, I’m beginning to see that the generalization isn’t as clear as it seems. How well do I need to understand something before I can teach other people about it? In fact, do I need to know significantly more? I’m tempted to believe that a group of people in which no one person knows much more than any other person can emerge collectively knowing much more simply by employing the Socratic method, for instance. I imagine it’s kind of like how I used to work out calculus problems with Nick over the phone, where I’d try to explain and reason out the problem aloud and suddenly figure it out before I was done explaining.

Maybe “stupidity” is forgivable. I use quotes because there seems to be a profound difference between stupidity and ignorance, and I actually mean the second. (Of course, when it comes to traffic citations, ignorance as an excuse doesn’t fly.)

I should stop before the arrogance level of this blog entry hits equivalence point and shoots through the top of your monitor. Oh, and if you see anything that looks like bruising on my hand, don’t worry about it. I was playing with some silver compounds after school today.

I wonder if that describes mine. Possibilities (that I can currently think of):

1. There is one absolute reality that everyone sees from a slightly skewed perspective.
2. There is no absolute reality — reality is made up of the sum of perspectives.
3. Descarte-ness: What reality? We may as well all be dreaming.

However, I intend to address something far more pragmatic than whether or not we are dreaming reality. I’m thinking about science, actually; in particular, the glaring differences between Mrs. Envirofanatic Art Teacher and myself. So it’s true that we don’t exactly see eye to eye on… anything, actually. But I put up with it anyway because I think it’s high time I started caring more about what people think rather than simply whether it’s “right” or “wrong” in my opinion. I want to respond with an, “It’s interesting that you think so” more often, and repress that visceral, “Gee, you’re stupid.”

After all, if there is an absolute reality, I’m probably wrong anyway, and so is she. What I’m really talking about is benzene.

Benzene. She’s been talking at me about it for ages — in short, that decomposing biomass produces it, and that it’s carcinogenic. So, to her, benzene = scary = evil = byproduct of conspiring industrial corporations. She doesn’t realize she’s talking to me — I think benzene = fascinating natural phenomenon = fun = yay! I agree that there shouldn’t be such a high concentration of volatile organic compounds floating around where a good fire can make it all go ka-boom, but at the same time, I don’t find benzene particularly scary. I’m wondering whether the attitude comes from my studying book chem too much?

In any case, I will continue to play with her mind (in the most harmless way possible) by talking about how the sensors we bought with the grant money shoot radiation at the gas samples. (Ooh — radiation = scary = dangerous = evil! Ahhhh… hahahaha.) Don’t worry about it, it’s just IR. It’s not even close to that mercury vapor lightbulb that Rosen’s roommate at Tech built last year. Supposedly it gave off a pretty purple light, but only 10% of the radiation was visible. The other 90% was mostly UV. Fun~