let's stumble towards success and pack some snacks for little breaks

The marshmallow study continues, with now-middle-aged participants still reflecting their four-year-old willpower. (PDF download of the study.)

I'm told that when I was about four, I participated in a study at the local university. The researcher asked me a series of questions, and I was supposed to answer them while playing with toys as some sort of distraction. Partway through, I put down the toys and asked to see the clipboard with the questions on it. The researcher bemusedly handed it over, and I read through and answered the questions, explaining that it was easier for me to process them when I read them myself. My mother sat on the other side of a two-way mirror, making a valiant effort not to piss her pants laughing. I have no idea what the study was about, but I'm pretty sure my data were excluded.

It makes me wonder how I would have handled the marshmallow test, had I been a participant at the age of four. I would have earned my second marshmallow easily, because I would have spent the fifteen-minute wait lecturing Dr. Mischel about his choice to use a candy containing gelatin and demanding to know whether he was aware of the processes involved in producing that ingredient. I would have then stormed away in a huff, possibly after destroying both marshmallows in a display of symbolic protest.

These days, I just criticize the experimental design and try to figure out the point of the study before debriefing. I am a terrible subject for scientific studies. Really, really awful.

GUYS GUYS GUYS! Jesse just turned gomichan into a fiction archive, so all his stories are in one place instead of scattered around on six different websites! Here is the masterlist with all the links, and here is an explanation of his adorable little chibi warning system.

I would tell you where to start reading, but I cannot actually pick the best story, because they are all the best. Jesse is my all-time favorite author, has been since I discovered him ~6 years ago. All I can say is just read everything. And don't just look at the "homosexual relationships" warning and dismiss it as original slashfic--I personally know at least two straight dudes who started reading "The God Eaters" under duress and then couldn't stop once they got into the story. Jesse writes about boys kissing, but he also writes a lot of fantastic action/adventure and he is a master of plot.

...I might have to go reread the one about stormchasers now. omnomnom actual well-researched science. ♥_♥

I'm pretty happy right now. Today was a good day. I didn't actually do any writing, but I did a lot of pre-writing thinking, and that always makes me feel like I've accomplished something. I like accomplishing things in my own head. It's like when I used to cozy up with a friend for a sleepover and share secrets late at night, except without the complications of social interaction.

I talked to Gerry on the phone for a while. Life has been hurling giant balls of manure at his head, as usual--seriously, the guy has just about the worst luck of anyone I've ever known--but he was just as cheerful and wisecracking as always. I don't tend to spend much time missing people because my friends are so widespread that it would result in a lot of misery if I did, but I actually miss the hell out of Gerry, so it was great to connect with him.

I got stopped by two different groups of religious folks on the way to the grocery store, which was weird since I've only ever seen that happen downtown since I moved here. The first group was the standard "hey, how you doing, ever heard of Jesus?" type, but the other guys were awesome. They weren't spreading the word, they were accosting people on the street for a trivia quiz about Aurora Avenue, which they asked permission to film and put on their website as part of an effort to clean up the neighborhood. I only missed one question (I guessed that "aurora" meant "light," not "dawn") and won four dollars and fifty cents in quarters. Yay, bus money.

I spent the afternoon curled up under a blanket making icons, which I haven't spent much time doing lately. Seashore is not as awesome as Photoshop (sadly, Dr. K resisted my attempts to persuade her to put the copy she bought for the lab on my laptop instead of her desktop) but it's good enough for most of the basics. lisaecksteincom linked to this three-part series on characterization, and that led to more pre-writing thoughts. I have this crazy notion in my head to write a screenplay for a musical based on Jonathan Coulton songs. It's been a while since any original characters have grabbed my attention like this. I'm not at all sure it will go anywhere, not least because I have zero experience with playwriting, but I'm having fun with it.

I've been working on making my sleep schedule more sane, and I have commitments outside the house every day this week. I think both of those things are contributing to my good mood. I always forget how much of a difference the sun makes, even though I hate it while I'm out in it.

selinker came up with this awesome idea: write a novel in a minute. I gave it a shot, and here's what I came up with:

Napping With The Fishes

“I’d like to be your friend, Billy, but friends don’t do this to one another.” Madison eyed her terrified victim coolly. “Friends don’t promise each other fruit snacks they can’t deliver. I’m sorry, Billy.” She gestured to her henchmen. “Boys… tickle him.”

A minute, it turns out, is not very long! (I watched "Brick" a few days ago, which might explain a lot here.) If you want to participate, check out selinker's Wired Decode post.

In that last post, I picked Muse for the "favorite band" question, which reminded me that I had some Muse in my iTunes that I hadn't really listened to, so I went and listened to it, and I found "Undisclosed Desires."

This song makes me want to cry, and spin poi, and have sex, and curl up on the floor with my friends in a dark hot room talking about nothing. It makes me lose myself in vague, disconnected thoughts about thalamic function and neural rhythm patterns and the limbic system. It makes me wish I had a really good sound system and no neighbors. It makes me really, really want to see Muse in concert again.

Here's me, if you have any questions. So far, people have asked about a) my open relationship and b) salt.

shoutingboy linked to an Abstruse Goose comic on Facebook, and I clicked through and ended up reading the whole archive. It's very xkcd-esque (although here's what the creator has to say about that). It's more math-oriented, so there's a slightly higher percentage of strips I don't get than in xkcd, but I've been enjoying it anyway.

A few of my favorites:

SETI Finally Receives a Signal
LiveCommentJournal
What's in a Name?
Family Reunion
Alice and Bob (all together now: n'awwwwwwwwwwww)
Electromagnetic Leak
Traveling
Artificial

HOLY POPSICLES I WANNA GOOOOO

Yo-Yo Ma performing music based on an "exploration of human consciousness" written by Antonio Damasio, one of my current top choices for grad school advisor. And then a discussion moderated by Jonah Lehrer. And tickets, before they got completely snapped up, were only $25. If it wasn't sold out, I swear I would make the trip to New York on Sunday just for this, screw my final exam the next morning. And yes, I checked eBay already.

God, I hope there'll be video.

1. Ucaoimhu wrote an AWESOME cryptic crossword based on my weird-ass dream.

2. vito_excalibur wrote an AWESOME poem dedicated to Randall Munroe and entitled "I Fucked Your Mom."

Give them a hand, for they win at life.

Pi time!

Yes, it is 3/14, which is Pi Day. In honor of the occasion, I'm reposting that video of Sophie's a cappella quartet singing pi. If you didn't watch it when I posted it a few months ago, you should now. And if you did, you should watch it again, because it seriously rocks.