kicking puppies is bad » cool stuff

is it worth 17,666,215 gummi bears?

nahgems — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:29:44 +0000

I have a difficult time conceptualizing large amounts of money. When dealing with large amounts (like the recent bailout) I find converting amounts to more meaningful units is helpful. In theory, this occasionally prevents me from spending ridiculous amounts of money on stupid things. If I realize that buying a shiny scooter with flames on it will cost me a milkshake a day for the next two years, perhaps I won’t actually by the shiny scooter. Actually, it doesn’t work at all – but it seems like it should. I still spent ridiculous amounts of money on a limited edition “atomic fireball” stella and a 1982 Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man pinball machine. But at least I knew how many gummi bears I was losing in the transaction.

I just entered a contract to spend 17,666,215 gummi bears on a house. That is a LOT of gummi bears. I would have to eat 683.2 gummi bears (~ 7 lbs) every day until I turned 100 to consume that many. Even I might have difficulty consuming that many gummi bears. I absolutely adore this shiny house and can’t imagine living somewhere else, but buying in California is costing me a LOT of gummi bears. Stupid California housing prices.

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www.pimpthisbum.com

nahgems — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:44:53 +0000

I try to do good things, but generally I have very little impact. Someone way smarter than me did something very cool: http://www.pimpthisbum.com.

I wish I was smart enough to do something that actually had a large measurable positive impact on the world. I sometimes feel like the things I do to make the world better have very little impact. The girl I tutored still had to repeat first grade. Is she better off? I don’t really know. I mean, I clearly didn’t turn her into a rocket-scientist, a brain surgeon or Noam Chomsky.

http://www.pimpthisbum.com

nahgems — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:40:55 +0000

I try to do good things, but generally I have very little impact. Someone way smarter than me did something very cool: http://www.pimpthisbum.com.

Do chicks dig (giant Argon inflated) nuts?

nahgems — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 22:29:44 +0000

I lose friends rapidly. And one of the reasons is that I lack basic social skills. Apparently sending text messages that ask, “Are giant nuts pretty?” is outside of social norms. But I’m bad at texting. I didn’t have the energy to go into more detail that might have helped to explain why I was asking. Although, I guess more detail, like ”Are giant Argon inflated puffy nut sacs pretty?” probably wouldn’t have been any more socially appropriate. Anyways, clearly I haven’t quite mastered the whole “social interaction” via texting thing yet. Not that I have really mastered any social interaction. This is probably why I blog instead of talking to real people. But I swear, in context, it was a completely rational thing to text.

Back to topic: One of my Mech. Eng. friends was at work (standing by a tank of Argon) when his boss came up and said, “I saw the craziest thing at Folsom Street Fair” (note: any story that starts with this line will probably be entertaining). His boss proceeded to explain that at this event, men were inflating their nuts with Argon. This sounded painful, and not altogether sane (or true) to me. But this factoid was checked out on the internet (which never lies) and then quickly circulated within our friend group, because it is freaking hilarious.

This led to a conversation about whether gay men found giant puffy inflated nuts attractive. Which led to a conversation about whether women found giant puffy inflated nuts attractive. But I was the only woman present (as is often the case when you get a group of tech geeks together). And I am a statistician. I wouldn’t trust a sample with n=1, especially when that “n” is a known outlier. I mean, I’m not the girliest person in the world. You should never trust a girl who likes math and hates shopping. So I decided to add some “real” girls to the sample. And that is where the slightly awkward text messaging came in.

Anyhow, the conversation moved on. There were more important things to consider than whether people thought Argon inflated nuts were pretty. After all, Argon is a noble gas. And noble gasses have a very cool property: they fluoresce. A fluorescent light is just a tube is filled with a gas containing low pressure mercury vapor and argon, xenon, neon or krypton. And it lights up when you pass electricity through it, right? So the conversation turned to the very exciting question of ”If you taser someone’s nuts, while they are inflated with argon, would they glow?”. Of course, the practical mechanical engineers in the room had to point out the problems with this. Stupid mechanical engineers. Mechanical engineers can suck the life out of a party like an electrolux vacuum (as their advertising campaign so clearly stated, electrolux really sux). Luckily, the topic was not quite dead. Instead of discussing if (under “normal nut inflating conditions”) someone’s Argon inflated nuts would glow, we began discussing what conditions would be needed to make someone’s Argon inflated nuts glow.

So really, it all comes down to this: I think that MythBusters should do an episode on a questions we truly care about: If you tazer someone with Argon inflated nuts, can they glow? I mean, that is a much more interesting question than if bread lands butter side up.

The first day of Christmas…

nahgems — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:13:19 +0000

I got pink fleece footed PJs with monkeys on them for Christmas. Who knew they came in big-people sizes. Aren’t you jealous?

My family opened Christmas stockings last night. Yes, I am 27 and still get a Christmas stocking. I remember watching one of those Christmas movies when I was little. Everyone ran downstairs and started checking tags on gifts to see which presents belonged the them. I thought it was so weird, because Santa always color coded our gifts. The red presents were always mine, and the green ones were my sister’s. When I think about it, my parents were pretty smart.