My 100th post

Hi, faithful readers! It's been a while since my last post. Sorry about that. Mostly that's because I knew this would be my 100th post and got a little intimidated by that. I thought I had to have something really compelling. Well I have several topics in mind that are moderately compelling. This blog could really be a mighty ramble if I let it. There are a bunch of things I could talk about. I'll list off a few of them here to get my bearings (and also so I don't forget the topics later if I choose to write about them).

-So pissed at my research methods class (and teacher)
--This could be a follow up to the post about how much she hurt my feelings after the colloquium.

-The joys and hardships of teaching
--I'd mostly talk about the hardships because those are standing out most saliently to me right now.

-An interesting philosophical rant about how the world is continuous, yet we can only understand things in discrete intervals.
--All of life is an attempt to break into intervals something that is actually continuous.
--Don't worry I'll explain this better later. This one I'm going to get to for sure.

-Feeling strained/sick and possible explanations.
--I think it's a mental thing.

-Housing for next year.

-Fuck board and fuck trying to get something done at the central level.

-Being stressed by all the different things I have to do.
--I have a lot of different things to do for each aspect of my life (co-op, teaching, school where I'm the student, finding a place to live, etc.). This is way worse than just having a lot to do in one aspect of my life and getting to chill in other respects.


Sheesh that's a lot. I could write a blog entry about any of these. I guess I'll start with stress since I'm definitely feeling that right now.

So I have about a million things to do, things that have to get done too. And I know they won't get done without me. It's just hard trying to keep track of and remember everything. I have to start looking in to getting an HDTV. It was my motion and I do want one. I'm just not thrilled about hunting around and doing the work right now. However, the sooner I do it, the better. I should probably do it this weekend to keep people's minds on it or something. I don't want this to stagnate. Also, since I'm moving out before too long, I might as well get it and enjoy it. But I really don't want that one extra thing on my plate right now.

I have to go to board in 20 minutes or so (I'll be pausing partway through this post) so that I can argue my point with all my might only to get shot down. I honestly don't think I have a proposal that would pass. But I have to try. Ugh. It pisses me off because I really think it's important and necessary and I'm trying to convince people whose job it is to disbelieve me and find a way that it is not necessary. The odds are stacked against me and it's not going to happen. And I still have to go through all the effort when I know it's futile. I want summer managers to get more comp. I'm going to propose this to the people who want to balance the budget and cut everything they can. I know it's pretty hopeless, but I have to try. I have to show that I've done the research on a central level before I can bring it to the house. And besides, this is something that should be addressed on a central level. It just makes me so mad. I might have had a chance when Jesse G was still on FiCom (Finance Committee) since he was thinking about being house manager this summer and it would be a lot better for him if he had full comp. But that lazy fuck transferred off of FiCom because it was too much work. He's such a shitty board rep. He's constantly talking about how his manager reports don't matter and no one should listen to him. He talks big about all the great stuff he's going to do, and it never happens. He got us to move our manager meetings earlier so he could screen cult movies at 10 after snack. Of course that never happened. He tried once and no one showed up because it's a fucking stupid idea. So now I have to leave Fremont a half hour earlier for absolutely no good reason.

Sigh. I don't mind Jesse really at all. I don't think laziness is really a personality flaw unless people are counting on you and you flake or something. And that's not really the case with him. I'm just angry about a lot of things and it makes it easier to blow up. It's especially easy to blow up at the guy who stole a half hour from me every week for no good reason. And I'll have reason to be angry again after the FiCom meeting in another 10 minutes when my motion gets shot down after they make me wait a half hour for no good reason. My expectations are so low. It's best that way I suppose. That way I won't feel so bad when FiCom makes the wrong decision. And then I can try to get something done at the house instead of at central level. I'll have a battle there too, but that's a fight that I think I might be able to win. It's so frustrating to walk into what I know is a losing battle. Kid of like in "To Kill a Mockingbird" where Atticus fights for the black guy even when he knows the jury will decide against them. I don't know where that high school moment came from, but I think the analogy is apt. I rarely fight losing battles. I like to win and it feels so pointless to work so hard for nothing. My time and energy are worth more to me than that. But, just like with Atticus, I think there might be some point here too. Nothing so grandiose as his point, but a point nonetheless. I'm going to pack up my notes (I can't believe I actually have notes for this shit) and be on my way. I'll continue writing when I get back.

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Well I didn't continue writing when I got back. I messed around for a while instead. It is now Friday and yet again I have very little time to write, not nearly enough to do all these subjects justice. But because this is my 100th post, I'm not going to post until it's all done. Yeah, this one's going to be a doozy.

So back to board and FiCom. So I was there for an hour. They didn't get to me immediately, but it was other Stebbins stuff on the agenda, so it was at least interesting to listen to. Jesse F brought a motion to reduce our parking which passed by a slim margin. So at least there's some justice.

And after listening to my proposal for a while (we had a good discussion, actually) it was voted down unanimously on account of not having enough information. If the houses were over budget, things might have looked better. But I didn't have that information. I do now. It's going to be voted on again at the next Board meeting in a week once I have a more concrete plan. I still need more information from the individual houses to form a plan.

Sigh. This is sucking up too much of my life. I have too many stresses right now to be pouring effort into something I will never see the results of. I have argued eloquently and valiantly and perhaps it's time I quit. But I don't really think I can now. It's like the last leg of a marathon. If I can get things together in this week, then the comp will actually increase for this summer. I won't be a manager this summer, so it doesn't really affect me, but I still think it's necessary. Yeah... *reminisces* Last night at FiCom, someone said this might be necessary for Stebbins, but they weren't sure this was something coop-wide that should be brought to FiCom and board. I think I responded to that really well. I spoke about how I thought bringing this motion to board was probably futile and a waste of time and no matter what the outcome, I was going to bring this to my house afterwards, but I still thought it was necessary and I thought it did apply to more houses than just mine. I said it all in a really quiet voice too, the kind that makes people listen closer. Afterwards a couple people thanked me for bringing the motion and snapped appreciatively (only in the coops). They were all really nice actually and it keeps me from being too bitter about the situation. It also makes me really want to keep pushing since a lot of people explicitly expressed that they thought there should be a change. I wasn't able to get something through since I had no motion (a rather overwhelming obstacle), but I was at least compelling. Hopefully I can be compelling when the actual voting happens.

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Ok. I had to stop at the point above to go to Fremont for the weekend and I didn't do any writing while I was there. So now it's Monday. And I've lost my train of thought. Luckily, I can go back and reread where I was. One moment...

Ok. To follow up with changing comp, not much has happened since Friday. This is a little concerning since I still want to meet with Dave before Thursday, but hey, whatcha gonna do?

I think now that I'm a little less incensed about board, this is a good time to segue into another one of my topics. Perhaps the best one would be how much I hate my research methods class. I really really hate it. Norma pushes us to come up with a research question when I don't even know yet what I'm interested in researching. The rational side of me says that I'm not exactly going to have a better idea later if I don't push myself to think about it now. But on the other hand, if I get pushed to come up with something I'm not passionate about too soon, then that just means all my work will be for nothing since I'll end up scrapping it all. A lot of the 2nd years told me they scrapped the question they started with and had to start all over. A couple people even started their master's project this semester. They had to use other people's data instead of collecting their own though. Which I wouldn't mind honestly. But anyway, I saw the point in choosing a specific research question and getting some practice with it. Maybe it was short sighted of me, but I chose something I am interested in, but unfortunately is a little hard to collect data for. Actually, it's not that hard to collect data for it. It's only hard to collect observational data. It works fine with interviews and surveys. So of course, she gives us an assignment where we have to collect observational data relating to our thesis. What a waste. It's busy work and I know it. My research does not lend itself to this form of data collection at all. I'm just being told to waste my time to practice a method of data collection I may never use. It's really frustrating. Yeah it's great to get some practice, but it's also a waste of time if I have no motivation or reason to do it. And then when the time comes for us to do surveys (something I might actually be able to use for my research), she has us work in groups to come up with out survey. Why was that necessary? Now I'm pretty much guaranteed not to get the question I want. So there's no way this is going to be helpful to me. So once again, I have no reason whatsoever to be motivated. For the interview assignment, I guess I'm a little more motivated for that. But I still don't really care. I know it's just a little practice for me to realize how shitty transcribing a 10 minute interview can be. You know, I was willing to take people's word for it. Everyone says it sucks. I believe them. Really I do. So do I have to do this bullshit? Sure do. Sigh. I hate this class. And now I have like a month's worth of work to do because I just haven't been able to get the motivation to do anything for the class for about a month. Yeah, I dug myself into a hole, but I don't regret it that much. It just means I'll rush the assignments when I finally do get around to them (thus devoting a more appropriate fraction of my time to this debacle of a class).

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Ok. So things got a little out of hand with this post. It is now April 24th and I see that I started this some time ago. Sorry. Right now I'm going to finish it. I'm going to just leave the rest of this hanging (perhaps updates on the above will come later), but for now I'm going to move into my last piece of this blog post- the idea about discrete vs continuous. It's an interesting idea I've had in mind for a while.

Now for some background: something discrete is something you can count. For instance, the number of cars you have. Let's say you're ridiculously rich and have an enormous number of cars. Even if it's a huge number, it can still be counted in discrete units. Perhaps for a more realistic example, you can look at grains of rice. There may be so many of them that you would never bother to count them, but they're all still individual, countable units.

Something continuous, on the other hand, is something you cannot separate and count. For instance, water cannot really be separated and counted (or any liquid for that matter). It all blends together. It may form droplets, but those droplets aren't really separate. You can't isolate a droplet unless you remove it from the rest of your liquid. And as soon as it touches that liquid again, that particular droplet is lost.

Now those among my readers who know what a liter is may protest that liquids can be measured in discrete amounts. We can measure their volume. This is an interesting point I'd like to revisit, so let's keep it in mind.

Now that I've laid out the distinction between discrete and continuous, I'm going to make the claim that continuous things are much more complex than discrete ones. The idea of something continuous where you cannot make divisions into groupings or categories is very difficult for people. With a bucket of water, you cannot distinguish one part of the water from another; it's all one big mass.

But perhaps you could say the same about the rice since every grain is the same. So let's look at a situation similar to the rice (i.e. discrete) where not every "grain" is the same. I might as well choose an example close to my own heart, video games. There are a discrete number of video games in the world. I wouldn't even think of counting them, but I know that it would be possible to count them and tell you the number of existing video games. Now these video games can be easily divided in categories. There are cartridge games vs disc games. There are playstation games vs Wii games. There are games titled Super Mario Galaxy and games titled Super Smash Brothers Brawl. They can be very clearly counted and very clearly categorized. There is no video game that is in both categories. If it is Mario Galaxy, it is not Brawl. If it is a cartridge game, it is not on a dvd disc. Things can get a little messier when you try to classify them into genres, but I would say that classification is based upon the content of the game (which I claim is not discrete from the content of other games) and not on the physical game itself.

So now we have a discrete group of objects and can see that it is easy to divide up and classify in different ways depending on how you want to split up all the video games. So now let's look at a continuous group of objects that differ and see if we can divide that up at all. Probably one of the simplest continuous groups is color. A finding which has been tested by people studying perception of color all around the world is that there is a core idea of most basic colors. For instance, there is a core red. There is a particular color that people would say is more red than other shades of red. A dark burgundy color might fall into the red category, but it is not the core, prototypical red. So let's consider our categories to be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, black, and white. This is actually more basic color divisions than most people around the world make. But we could make more divisions still. Let's say we came across a shade of gray that was perfectly in between black and white. Which category would we put it in? If we couldn't decide (and since the categorization would be arbitrary if we did), we could create another category, gray. There. Problem solved. But what if we found something perfectly in between green and blue, perhaps some sort of teal color? Well we could create another category, teal. Unfortunately, for any division I could make into categories, I could also find something in between those two categories. It might get so fine grained that I would stop caring, but I could still find it. There are no obvious divisions in between colors. You might look at a red color and say it was nothing like a greenish blue, but even though there are differences, it is difficult to draw boundary lines in between them. Sometimes in frustration, we create other categories like teal or gray, but those are unfortunately arbitrary as well. In fact, there are so many difficult to classify colors, that our language has developed a construction to deal with that. If something is in between red and orange, but looks a little more orange than red, we say it is reddish orange. If it fell on the red side of our arbitrary boundary, we would say it was orangish red. If it fell in between so closely that we were unable to tell which category it was, we would create a new name like teal.

So now we have looked at a continuous category with many different objects and found that it is difficult to divide up. So why do we divide it then? That should be obvious to most people. We need to be able to talk about and refer to different colors, so we created other words for them. If I want to paint my house a pale blue, I have to be able to tell someone. If I want someone to cut the red wire and not the green one, it is exceedingly important that I tell them which color to cut. So these categorizations and divisions are arbitrary, but it doesn't make them any less necessary for functioning in life. This is why continuous things are much more complex than discrete things. No matter what we are dealing with, if it has significant variation, we will need to be able to talk about that variation. When the thing we are talking about is discrete, it is easy to divide it up and discuss without ambiguity on any instances of that sort of object. When we are dealing with something continuous, we can still divide it up such that our divisions will work for quite a few cases, but there will always be items that fall in between our boundaries and are hard to classify simply because they are continuous.

Perhaps this is a good time to bring back the example of water divided into cups and liters so that it can be measured based on volume. It is very useful to be able to measure water, or any liquid. How else could we package drinks fairly? How else could we cook in the right proportions? But those divisions are slightly arbitrary as well. If you filled a measuring cup to the 2/3 mark with milk, you would say it was 2/3 full, but it probably wouldn't be exactly 2/3 full. You could get an eyedropper and add one more drop of milk and still claim pretty accurately that it was 2/3 full. You could probably add 50 more drops without breaking a sweat. In fact, the cup could be 3/4 full and you probably wouldn't care. You might just say it was close enough and go on with your cooking. 2/3 is a category as well and since it is dividing something continuous, it is hard to be perfectly precise. Perhaps you could have an exceptionally well calibrated machine to measure the precise volume, but even that would only be accurate up to a certain number of decimal places. However it is probably accurate enough for our needs, and since our needs were the only reason we made the arbitrary divisions in the first place, it's not really a big deal that it's not "perfectly" accurate.

I hate to inform my loyal readers, but all of this discussion so far has only been the buildup to my main point. I've given an example of continuous and an example of discrete without going into which might be more common. I believe continuous categories are far, far, more common than discrete ones. Since we divide both into sub classifications, there may be some things which we might think are discrete, but are actually continuous. In fact, I think most people just take for granted that many continuous things are discrete without realizing they're actually continuous, or perhaps glossing over some of the hard to categorize cases that are usually the first sign that something is continuous. This lack of realization is a real problem. It leads people to reason incorrectly about certain categories, as if the divisions were set in stone and not really a continuum. The most glaring example to me would be people. Yes, there are a discrete number of people right now, but if you consider all the variation there has been over the years dating back into prehistoric times and all the variation that will come from future generations (in theory, an infinite amount), the group of people starts to look a lot more continuous. Everyone has noticed that there are some pretty significant differences between people, so we had to make divisions and classifications to find a way to speak differently about them. Sometimes we divide people based on nationality. Sometimes we divide them based upon gender. Sometimes we divide them based upon race. Many people would say "Either you're French or you're American or you're Japanese and that's that." It is a decent classification. It applies to most cases. But there are some cases that clearly don't fit, such as a person with dual citizenship. With this classification, you also lose all of the variation within a category (as with any categorization really). The same can be said of race. There are many people of mixed race. You can classify a person one way or another, but the division will always be arbitrary. There was a rather famous court case in Louisiana some time ago (perhaps in the 60s or 70s?) where a woman who thought she was white was categorized by the state as being black for having 1/32 of her heritage be black. Which category was she? Most would say that she was white since she herself had not even know about her black ancestry. All of her friends were white. She was outraged at the classification. But the state of Louisiana had decided where the line was to divide the races, and if I remember correctly, they held firm. Clearly, divisions were very important to them. They were important enough for the state to keep records of everyone's heritage dating back to every person's great-great-great grandparents. Some would say the state's division was incorrect since this woman should not have been classified as black, but no matter where the division line had been, it would have been arbitrary. The division line was placed at 1/32 based upon the state's (probably racist) needs. There was a time in US history when Irish people were not white. They were new immigrants, not yet established in the country, and their ways were different from the people already here. So the division line was set with them being on the other side of white. As time went on, more people came to America who were even more different, the differences between white and Irish people started to look less severe. People no longer needed to clearly distinguish Irish from white, so Irish started becoming more and more a part of white. Very many people would claim that racial divisions are merely describing the world, but they do not. The world is not discrete; it is continuous. Any divisions we make are false divisions based upon our needs.

The false divisions are not limited just to people. We classify everything in this manner. Biological divisions between species can be very arbitrary. You may say, either you're a mammal or a bird or a fish or whatever, but there are many cases where those distinctions are not clear. Duck billed platypuses and echidnas are egg laying mammals. Penguins are birds that swim. Dolphins are mammals with no fur (at least none that I know of). Venus fly traps are carnivorous plants. There are debates among people who classify animals about whether it should be based upon their ancestry (what a species descended/evolved from) or whether it should be based upon what can mate and breed with what. And if it's based upon breeding (which I believe is the more standardly accepted classification), what about the case when species A can breed with species B and species B can breed with species C, but species A cannot breed with species C? All of these difficult to classify cases exist. Biologists get together and decide on how these things should be classified, but these classifications do not really exist. Yes, there are differences and yes, it is useful for us to be able to make the distinctions, but the differences are not really there. It is one continuous spectrum. We place boundaries based upon what we need as humans to interact with and speak about something that has variation. Even something presumably obvious like gender has variation. Most people write off that variation as freak incidents, perhaps because they don't want to think that such a neat, discrete category could actually be continuous, but it is. There are transgender people, hermaphrodites, and some would even classify gays as breaking the categories and say that that's an instance of men acting like women and women acting like men (I think comments such as "They're not real men" might be an instance of this). But the classification line, even in a case that seems clear cut like gender, is arbitrary. It is placed based upon people's needs. There have been many cultures where gender, and especially sexuality, have meant different things. Lines have been placed elsewhere, or in some cases, not at all. Who places these lines and how is a more complex question, perhaps to be saved for another blog post, but the truth is, I don't know. The important idea for this post is that the world is not discrete. It is broken up arbitrarily into categories and people do not always realize just how arbitrary those categories are. I think it's important for people to at least be aware of the nature of the world and how our attempts to classify and understand it are not really complete nor accurate. From these misconceptions about reality, a lot of misunderstanding and strife spring up. A little more awareness might help stem them, even if only a little bit.


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So that's it. My 100th blog entry. I was going to make it just that continuous/discrete argument, but then I thought it might not be long enough. Looking at it now, I can see that it would have been, but I don't exactly want to go back and erase what I did before, or place it into another entry. The date wouldn't be right. And besides, people have waited so long for another blog entry, they might as well get a big one. I will be far more reasonable in the future and not have such a lengthy entry. Thank you for reading all the way! I hope you liked it!