Fun at Troels' house

I look so Danish... not.

making the list for Thanksgiving dinner

Troels' new blanket. I think he likes it. :)

yep, he does.

awww... what a cute couple.

Yay, goldfish crackers!

JM... enough said.

eating...

eating...

Morten made this food. We owe him. :)

Copenhagen highlights

a list :)

potatoes(til mos eller bage kartofler) 6 kg.
corn
tomatoes ca. 6 stk.
letuce, 1 hoved iceberg
cucumbers, 2 stk.
carrots, 1 kg.
rolls (frozen) 2 poser
soda 6 x 2 l.
eggs 6 stk.
apples 5 stk.
icecream 2 l. billig vanilie is
cream ½ l.
party poop(er) 5 stk.
flour 1 pk.
brun maizena jævner 1 pk.
oil 1 fl.
butter(bagemagarine) 1 pk.

this was made by the whole collective. i don't take credit for the weirdness. or at least not all of it.

having a good time in denmark. wish you were here.

jeg er i danmark

hej alle sammen saa er jeg i danmark. det er bare saa fedt.

Good science

Robert L. Park identified seven indicators that a scientific claim lies well outside the bounds of rational scientific discourse. "Of course, they are only warning signs," he cautioned, "even a claim with several of the signs could be legitimate."

Without further ado, here they are:

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.
So true. The media loves hype and generally doesn't love (or in scientific cases, isn't capable of) close scrutiny. I love the example he gave for this one: "...the claim made in 1989 by two chemists from the University of Utah, B. Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, that they had discovered cold fusion -- a way to produce nuclear fusion without expensive equipment. Scientists did not learn of the claim until they read reports of a news conference." This is why physicists even today have a hard time taking the U seriously. No offense to anyone that goes/went there.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.
Hahaha. I love this one. Usually it's the government. Or in the case of perpetual motion machines, it's oil companines. :)

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal.

5. The discoverer says a belief is credible because it has endured for centuries.
This is what we have Mythbusters for... :)

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.
Guess I better start being more social.

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.
Cough*cough*stringtheory*cough*cough. Ahem...

So they say...

They say "All is fair in love and war."
Sometimes I think they're not so different.
Except you can get arrested for war crimes.
And there's no Geneva Convention in love.

--JM during one of her
existential phases

:) yay for friends

You know a person knows you well when they randomly send you 2 links to news articles and you already happen to have both of the articles open in Firefox tabs... :) :)

Brilliant

Movies

Well, it's the moment you've all been waiting for... yes, the blog post where I sporadically list some of the movies I love, in no particular order, while probably leaving out a lot of important ones that I can't think of at the moment.

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog - One word: obsession.
Star Wars - I've loved Star Wars since I was a little girl, and I always will.
Hoodwinked - hill-airforcebase... everyone I've introduced this movie to has looked at me like I was crazy for the first 20 mins or so, and totally loved it by the end. I think it's the goat that really gets them. :)
Ladyhawk - I absolutely adore this movie.
Lord of the Rings - What can I say, this was just a beautiful piece of... film. Plus I've loved the books since I was about 10 years old, and contrary to the norm, the movie actually did them justice in this case.
The Rescuers Down Under - This movie just makes me happy. And it makes me laugh.
Opportunity Knocks - I've seen this one way too many times, but it never gets old.
Down With Love - I probably shouldn't like this movie, but I can't help it. Don't judge me.
The Great Mouse Detective - :)
Dumb and Dumber - I just can't stop laughing even though I've seen this many many times.
Oceans Eleven - I really enjoyed this movie, don't know exactly why. It was fun.
Back to the Future - Beautiful. What can I say.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off - Really, who doesn't love this one?
Stardust - another movie I adore.

Bedroom entropy

I've often thought that my bedroom makes a good barometer for how I'm doing in my life. If it's clean, I'm doing well; if it's a mess, I'm probably stressed out. Considering that you can hardly see the floor at all right now... yeah.

APD

I have a little thing called "Auditory Processing Disorder." I don't usually like to be extremely public about this fact, but I've come to realize that it has probably had a big influence on my personality, so I guess I should come to terms with it.

According to Wikipedia, who is always right,

Auditory processing disorder [is a condition] which refers to difficulties in the processing of auditory information within the central nervous system, such as problems with: "...sound localization and lateralization; auditory discrimination; auditory pattern recognition; temporal aspects of audition, including temporal integration, temporal discrimination (e.g., temporal gap detection), temporal ordering, and temporal masking; auditory performance in competing acoustic signals (including dichotic listening); and auditory performance with degraded acoustic signals."

. . .

Persons with APD often:

• have trouble paying attention to and remembering information presented orally; cope better with visually acquired information
• may have trouble paying attention and remembering information when information is simultaneously presented in multiple modalities
• have problems carrying out multi-step directions given orally; need to hear only one direction at a time
• appear to have poor listening skills, and need people to speak slowly
• need more time to process information.
• develop a dislike for locations with background noise such as bar, clubs or other social locations
• prefer written communication (e.g. text chat)

It appears to others as a problem with listening. Somebody with APD may be accused of "not listening".

Holy cow, so anyone that knows me probably knows that pretty much ALL of those descriptors fit me. It's a little scary.

Wiki also points out that "those who have APD tend to be quiet or shy." ha. interesting.

Another thing I read somewhere else is that people with APD "tend to ignore people, especially if engrossed." I do this. Especially when I'm reading a book. If I am concentrating on something, and you come up to me to ask me a question or something, make SURE you really have my attention before asking. Otherwise I will probably mumble some one-word yes/no answer and not remember the entire thing 5 minutes later.

Well, probably the hardest thing to deal with for me is the fact that I don't learn from lectures. I just don't. Sometimes I will get something out of them, but for the most part, I leave class knowing little to no more about the subject of the day's lecture than I did went I went in to class. This causes me difficulty in keeping up with my classes sometimes. In the past I have talked to my professors and asked if they could give me lecture notes beforehand, or tell me what sections of the book they were going to cover in advance so I could read up on the material before the lecture. Sometimes that helps--just having seen the material before. I haven't tried doing that here, because I really hate to ask for special treatment. But maybe I should.

Also, I have a hard time answering questions in class. I realized finally that this is because I usually don't understand the question that is being asked enough to be able to formulate an answer on the spot like that. Plus I get nervous when I'm put on the spot anyway. One time in a math class my professor asked me to come up and do a problem on the board, and I refused. I just flat out said no. I think he was mad at me for it. But I didn't know how to do the problem and I would have just stood up there holding the marker with a blank look on my face.

Ok, actually I was wrong when I said not learning from lectures is the hardest thing about it. The hardest thing is that fact that people don't believe me when I try to tell them about it, and they think I'm making it up, or just making excuses for myself, or whatever. In one of my classes we talked a lot about "hidden disabilites" and how those are so much harder to deal with because people can't see them. For instance, if I were sitting in a wheelchair and I said "I can't walk," very few people would be like "Really. I find it hard to believe that you can't walk. If you would just stand up and try..." But when I say, "I have a really hard time with lectures and I can't process the information," the first response is usually "well, maybe you should just concentrate more and take notes..." blah blah blah. Ok, now I sound like I'm whining, which was not my intention. I was just trying to raise awareness. :P

I'm going to hit publish now, though I'll probably come back and edit this later. Enjoy.

Just pointless ramblings

I have a few random and completely unrelated things to say, so excuse the disjointedness of this post.

I have a friend who is a little OCD about his blog posts and actually reads them and edits them a few times before publishing them. His posts are generally very well thought out and put together. Then there's me who write random crap and hits "publish" without even proofreading. heh.

Aforementioned friend wrote a post about Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, and mentions me in an offhand sort of way... using the word "insufferable," I believe. In case I've not mentioned this before on this blog, and I know I haven't, because I just checked, TIME magazine listed Dr. Horrible on its Best Inventions of 2008 list!!! It came in #15. This greatly increased my love for TIME magazine. Which I guess isn't too hard since I really didn't have much love for them before. I subscribed for a while and ever since I unsubscribed, I've been getting emails and junkmail saying "TIME wants you back!" hahaha. Since I was such a dedicated reader and all.

I realized I forgot to eat breakfast this morning, but now it's almost lunch time, so I'll just write that one off and have lunch soon.

A few of my readers picked up on my subtle (or perhaps not so subtle) reference to Dumb and Dumber in my last post. Ryan was apparently quite surprised that I like the movie, probably because last time we watched a movie together I whined about it a lot and kept saying how picky I am about the movies I watch. Which is completely true. But Dumb and Dumber definitely makes it on the the list of movies I would watch again. I've seen it quite a few times, actually. Someday I should list my favorite movies. But I'll save that one for later. I hope the anticipation doesn't kill you.

3 more weeks...

Apparently Copenhagen is as excited to see me as I am to see it! A friend snapped this picture for me today:

Isn't that just sweet of them. :)