this is your brain...

... and this is your brain on drugs.

I didn't know glass cookware existed; obtaining this is my new aspiration in life.
(Image credit: Breaking Bad: Season 2, Episode 10: Over)

This show is easily the darkest thing I've ever seen on television. Battlestar Galactica had its moments - Cally getting kicked out of the airlock was a definitely a dark point in the inkwell that was that show, but Breaking Bad definitely surpasses BSG in its moments of cruel depravity. Where other television shows have their characters find themselves amidst hard times and eventually dig their way out, this show has its characters just dig deeper. When the going gets rough, this show gets rougher.

Damn.

secret santas

Through the reddit secret santa I've discovered that as far as internet footprints go, mine isn't all that big. I've only got three usernames for everything I do on the internet, and only one of them (brawr) is public. My facebook has its privacy settings cranked to the absolute max and my profile picture is currently this little puppy:

Pugs really are the most retarded little things ever they remind me of this classic SA quote:

Gatekeeper posted:
I can't believe there are poeple who don't buy pugs. It's like having my own happy little retard to play wth, only I don't have to worry about sending him to a special school or buying him loose clothing that will fit over his diapers or keeping him from accidentally squeezing babies to death and burning down my house. Just a tiny, entertaining retard who eats only a cup of food a day instead of endless amounts of chicken nuggets and Captain Crunch, and who shits in the yard instead of all over the toilet seat and bathroom floor and walls. Who doesn't want their own miniature low-maintenance retard? I love having pugs. I would have easily paid double, maybe even triple for them.

I'm happy that I'm at least decently elusive. A quick Google search of my name still yields Java programs that I wrote in 9th grade and other useless things that prove my existence, but nothing that you could really use to find me, cut my head off, and take over my life. A big part of the fun in the reddit secret santa was the entire process of stalking your giftee. You get nothing but their screen name and shipping address, and it's up to you to find the right gift from there. It's up to you to peruse comment histories, submissions, subreddit subscriptions, and Google/Facebook/LinkedIn the name and address for anything else. My giftee was a lurker who registered just over a month ago and had a blank comment history, so no fun for me. My secret santa on the other hand, had a year of moderate usage to go through. A few days before the gift shipment deadline, he contacted me anonymously to see if he was on the right track:

I hadn't planned on making any contact, but in an effort to try and get you something you will enjoy, I've done the usual level of stalking. You keep yourself fairly quiet on reddit, but so far i've worked out that you like starbucks, geeky things and possibly you're gay for Barrack Obama, or at least you like his policies. Maybe you just got caught in the wake of the elections and went blog crazy. nevermind

I think this is you, http://imgur.com/eSF75

i also belive you used to smoke but now quit, (I nearly got you a pipe until i dug further)

I will keep stalking but let me know if i'm heading in the right direction

with love. your SS

A love for geeky things and a possible man-crush on el presidente is about as common among redditors as a love for bacon and narwhals, so no surprise there. The photo is the giveaway for the starbucks clue, and I recognize it as a facebook profile picture from about a year ago. It's been long since taken down though, so I imagine he found it from either a Google cache of my facebook profile's public page, or LinkedIn or someone has mirrored anything connected to my name.

That being said, props on discovering my former smoking habit, I have no idea how you figured that out. I must've said something in an AskReddit thread or something. Nice find!

A week later, he made a post and showed me these images:

i wonder what he got me

All the past we leave behind

I saw District 9 yesterday, which apart from the somewhat heavy-handed apartheid references, was completely forgettable. Considering the movie began production as Halo: The Movie, I suppose it wasn't too bad. However, the best part of the entire experience wasn't the 112 minutes of film, but this 62 second ad beforehand:

Levi's O Pioneers! (Go Forth) advertisement
Director: Cary Fukunaga

It uses excerpts from Walt Whitman's Pioneers! O Pioneers! Here's the transcript from the ad:

[Pioneers! O pioneers!]
Come my tan-faced children,
Follow well in order, get your weapons ready,
Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes?
Pioneers! O pioneers!

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

O you youths, Western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

Have the elder races halted?
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied over there beyond the seas?
We take up the task eternal, and the burden and the lesson,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

We debouch upon a newer mightier world, varied world,
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march,
Pioneers! O pioneers!

They dropped the fourth stanza, which talks about the Elder Races and their Eternal Burden, as well as the first line of the fifth, "All the past we leave behind". I get the feeling that Levi's wanted to emphasize youth and free spirit, but still have a good, healthy sense of America.

Either way, I liked the ad; I've thought about it much more than the movie that I paid $8.75 for. It's one of my new favorite advertisements, along with the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man. Speaking of that ad, this xkcd comic makes me feel guilty, particularly the second and third panels.

Man, two xckd comic posts in a row. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

Because I can't draw a hypercube.

I'm in my third year at UC Riverside, working on getting a degree in Computer Engineering. I've noticed a difference in the way classes are set up at UCR compared to other schools in the University of California system, and I think it's due to the fact that until recently, UC Riverside was the bottom of the barrel school. Also, all of the points I raise are from random coffeeshop conversations with friends at other schools, and my own observations about class here. 

Until UC Merced opened and spun up to full operations, UC Riverside was the school that would accept you so long as you met the minimum UC requirements (a 2.8 GPA, iirc). The other schools were competitive, and despite saying on their website "Minimum GPA: 2.8", the average accepted applicant GPA would be much higher. I remember reading somewhere that the average GPA for UCLA incoming students in 2006 was a 4.2. Take AP classes, kids.

I think that as a result, the general student body at UCR remained uncompetetive. The average class grade in freshmen-level classes is closer to 50% than 75%, but professors are passing everyone because they don't have tenure and don't want to get fired due to bad student reviews. This only becomes a problem when students are taking classes that are in a multi-part series, such as Math 9A-B-C (calculus) or Physics 40A-B-C (calculus-based physics). If a group of students only average a 50% in Physics 40A, then Physics 40B needs to either cover more material, or is dumbed down as a result. And it's always dumbed down.

The resulting ripple effect means that by second or third year, when students are taking say, Math 46 (differential equations), although we all have met the required prerequisites, they don't actually have the base mathetmatical knowledge to take the class. Then, if they pass, they have only the most basic knowledge of differential equations and all of our engineering classes suffer as a result. The ripple effect continues.

Eventually, the gap between required knowledge and actual knowledge grows to such a size that classes become designed to fail. Here's an example: A class is taught by a professor who speaks almost no english and is impossible to understand. The TA either has no idea how to do problems or simply doesn't even show up to discussion. The textbook is vague and unhelpful, and was only selected because it was authored by a professor at the same school. Students taking the class have next to none of the actual required background knowledge to take the class.

What do you expect to happen? Students either drop the class or fail. The second (or sometimes, third) time around, students pass solely due to the fact that they've blindly felt their way through it a couple of times before. And this continues for four to six years, and we get our diplomas.

It's a double-edged sword. While it's an enormous relief to learn that the 53% you scored on a midterm is a B-, it's infuriating to go to class every day and watch your professor mutter in an alien language and scrawl foreign symbols on the chalkboard that you don't understand.

Attn: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report

First, let me say this. Jon, Stephen. I am a huge fan. I've been watching The Daily Show since Indecision 2004 and I've been watching The Colbert Report since it started in 2005. You guys are great.

That being said, I think the time has come for one of you to rename your shows. You see, I pirate all of my episodes of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. And frustratingly, my computer sorts my files by name alphabetically, as seen here:

Clearly, there is a problem. The Daily Show airs before The Colbert Report! A name change is definitely in order. Suggestions:

-A Daily Show (bring it back!)
-The Bailey Show

Regards,

Alex