Thoughts on Child Protection Legislation in Ireland

[BBC] via [Boing Boing]
I'm not going to summarize the article above. That's been done enough. Just read it, poke around the issue for a while, then come back and read what I have to say.

On Regression to the Mean.

   It's been almost a full year and a half since I wrote On Grades. On that time, I've come a lot further than I imagined possible then. I managed to patch up my mediocre grades and scored 5s on all 6 APs I took that march. I won the State Siemens Award for Oregon (Dad - if you ever read this, thank you for believing in me when I didn't believe in myself). Somehow, my sub-par GPA didn't keep me out of MIT, a school which I'd already given up all hope of attending (I still catch myself once or twice a week wondering if there's been some mistake, or I applied to the wrong MIT somehow, or if I'm just downright bonkers. It's been more than a half year since I was accepted.).
   There are some bit of the On Grades pessimism that still apply. I am still living in a very small pond, and I am about to be thrown into an ocean. I am certain that at MIT I will not be in the to 10% as I am here. I probably won't even measure up to the average student. I still lack diligence. I lack experience, and I'm too used to running into tests and quizzes unprepared, counting on my logic and intuition to get me good scores. That will not, cannot, work here.
   Most of all, I'm afraid of how I might react when I'm faced with a challenge that will take more intelligence than I possess to overcome, while surrounded by people who may very well see obvious solutions. I'm afraid of being thrown into an environment where so much of my self identity will be so common place, because to at least some degree, I rely on that to drive me.
   I have hope. I was easily out gunned by some people at SUMaC last year, and it just made me work harder. What I have considered my identity has changed in the past, and as it does I generally become more comfortable. Perhaps being in an environment where I'm no longer near the top of the pack will give me an opportunity to find an identity that's more healthily linked to my academics. Despite my fears, I really can only look forward to being surrounded by people who share the same sorts of enthusiasms as myself.
  I have one more week left here, and then it is time to fly away from this little valley behind for the time being. Despite my constant complaining, I'm going to miss everything about it.
  ~Ninjinuity

An open letter to Google.

  Here we are, only a little more than a week after I've deleted my facebook, and I can't help but feel the temptation to go back and stop the process. Only my lingering anger, and the time I invested in getting my data out are keeping me from doing it.
  At the heart of why I'm writing this (still pointless) apostrophe to you. At stake here is your cleanup of Google+ accounts with false names. I wish there was some sort of official statement I could link to instead of that article, but I can't find one. Basically, those users who either have used pseudonyms on Google+, or have multiple Google accounts, seem to be at risk of being locked out of (in some cases at least, though accounts vary) the rest of their Google account. I admit, this is especially disturbing to me because I technically fall into both categories (if you're from Google, please read on as I explain why I believe this is a technicality.).

Why I'm leaving: An open letter to facebook

Dear facebook,
A few years ago, in a fit of rebellious teenage rage, I joined facebook. I knew my parents didn't want me to have an account. I knew "all" my friends already did. I wanted to fit in.
 Since then the idea of social networking has grown on me; I've come to know and love my facebook profile and it's not an easy decision to leave. What's triggered my decision to jump ship is simple: you won't give me my contact data back. I wanted some numbers to put on my phone and some gmail addresses. Your APIs wouldn't give them to me.

How to liberate your phone book from facebook

This is a quickly written, hacky script for personal use. For the time being, this script will only work on 99 friends at a time (Amusingly, facebook thinks there are 100 on the first page, but you're welcome to count. There are 99. Buggy programming FTW!). I'm playing with a workaround, but don't hold your breath. In the meantime, you can do the following to take your friend's phone numbers back into your own care:

I only wish you could dream.

May God us keep From Single vision & Newtons sleep.
—William Blake

   Science is amazing. Think about it, take a look around, and hopefully you'll see what I mean. Heck, don't take a look around. Stare straight at these words on this screen, and realize how incredible it is that we can control electrons to such a degree we can make them take these words from my screen onto yours. It's something almost laughably absurd, it's absolutely ludicrous, but it's reality, the reality we live in because of the generations of scientists who first messed around with amber and cat fur. We owe our modern standard of life to the generations that sought not just to live in, but also to understand the universe and to the people who wrenched every drop out of our collective knowledge and back into the bucket of tools we have to confront and observe the natural world.

Life...

...Isn't at it's best right now. I've come down with a nasty crud, and I have a ton of homework to try to get my GPA to a 4.0 before the semester finishes. Luckily I have a break after tomorrow. I'm just gonna ramble for a while, and see if it makes me feel better. Feel free to skip this one.

For once, a productive debate on Facebook!

I had quite an interesting debate last night, in Facebook of all places! It hasn't quite come to any sort of close yet, but I figured I would post it here anyway. It all started when I posted this XKCD cartoon on Facebook. A few minutes later Mike commented, saying that he disagreed with the premise of the cartoon. This led to the following impromptu debate.