Because I Think My Friends Would Want To Read This
How many condoms CAN fit on a penis?. Who thought of this, really?
How many condoms CAN fit on a penis?. Who thought of this, really?
When I was really young (think 3 or 4 years old), my parents had instilled in me a great amount of self esteem. I felt very capable. I thought that if something could be done, I could do it, and I could probably do it better than other people. Better than other people my age, anyway.
I was able to more or less maintain this belief until I reached first grade and had to be in Phy Ed. You see, I have never been a physically fit person. I couldn’t run very fast, I couldn’t throw a ball well, and I couldn’t really hit a ball either. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t do any of those things that came so easily to my classmates. On top of that, I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of them.
Don’t get me wrong, I cared that I wasn’t any good at baseball and soccer and basketball and… every other sport imaginable. I just didn’t care about the sports themselves. I didn’t care how to keep score in tennis. I didn’t care what the rules where in floor hockey. I had a hard time telling my feet that they shouldn’t take more than one step while I had the basketball in my hands.
I did care that every day we had Phy Ed, I got to see that I wasn’t as good as everyone else.
Eventually I resigned myself to the fact that I was terrible at virtually any physical activity, and just tried my best. In Phy Ed, that usually got me a decent grade. I tried damn hard.
The strange thing is, in other classes, you don’t usually get credit for trying. In math for example, if you try really hard on an assignment or exam, but you don’t get any of the answers right, even if you get partial credit, there is no way you will pass. I assume that is why they break up math classes starting in elementary school. If you’re not particularly good at math, you end up in the ‘slow’ class, where you get extra help. If you take to math really quickly, they have an advanced class so you don’t get bored while the teacher explains things you already understand. It makes perfect sense: each student can learn in an environment most suited to their abilities.
Why couldn’t they do the same in Phy Ed? The only thing worse than knowing you suck at something is annoying everyone around you with your incompetence. The gym teachers always tried to divide classes into teams fairly, so that some of the non-athletic kids, and some of the students with a high physical aptitude were on each team. This way, no one team had an unfair advantage. Also, those kids who knew what they were doing got to be annoyed by those of us who, try as we might, couldn’t gain any points for our team.
I wonder if the gym teachers thought that the wimps would gain confidence from being on a winning team? At any rate, we either got in the way, or just didn’t do much of anything. I didn’t learn a lot in Phy Ed. In fact, I mostly learned how to try enough to get a good grade, while trying not to get in the way of anyone who might know what they’re doing.
I can’t help but wonder what gym would have been like if there were different class divisions. I of course would have been in the equivalent of the ‘slow’ math class, but I would have been with other people who failed as often as they succeeded, and maybe now I wouldn’t have such a strong aversion to physical competition. Or a total lack of confidence in my ability to throw/run/catch/jump/etc.
Quite some time ago Pharyngula posted a discussion forum for the choice of a freethought symbol, most of which have sort of an atheist theme. I’m hoping that he’ll pick the Affinity symbol, but I’m starting to think that he’s not planning on picking anything, so I may just go ahead and put that one up on my site until a time ever comes where a more universal sign of my beliefs is available.
I had a rather strange dream last night. I don’t remember most of it, but I do remember that poor Wrenbigren gained a bunch of weight, and was about 300 lbs. At that point she didn’t want anyone to come over and see her and wouldn’t return my phone calls.
Wren, if you get fat, I’ll still love you just as much, but I hope for your sake that that doesn’t happen. If anything, I’m guessing you’ve lost weight again since moving to Vzla.
Yesterday Ethan and I had Duff and Megan over for dinner, which was a garlicky pasta concoction that was not very healthy but really tasty. We ended up hanging out until it got rather late, but it was good to actually socialize with someone. Last fall we were regularly hanging out with Metasteph, but she seems to have dropped off the face of the planet lately, so nights have gotten a little monotonous.
I dove right back in to work this morning. Tim and I are working on a new search for the website. Tim has of course been doing most of the work, since he built the whole thing from scratch, and I’ve only been working there for a week, but I feel like the work I’ve been doing has at the very least sped things along by allowing Tim to focus on one thing at a time. Anyway, we’re hoping that the new search for Seattle will be up and running by the end of the week. Only time will tell, but unless we hit some snags, it will probably be right on time.
I keep reading interesting things on Get Rich Slowly and it makes me badly want to have garden. For now I’ll have to live vicariously through Jessi and Chris’s garden, as well as my parents’ vegetable garden. We did sign up for the same local produce share this year, but we chose a different pick up site, which will hopefully be a shorter drive from our apartment. It’s too bad we can’t take the light rail to any of the pick up spots. That would be way convenient. I’m already looking forward to having a pile of ripe, delicious, heirloom tomatoes on hand all summer. It will be a great reprieve from the tasteless produce we get at the supermarket.
I am happy that a vaccine was found for the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and that women who take the vaccine can greatly reduce their risk of ever getting cervical cancer. I’m also happy that some states are mandating the vaccination of young women. I don’t understand, on any level, why they don’t also mandate it for young men. I know they can’t get cervical cancer, but men can spread it to women who are not vaccinated. The biggest risk is that most people who have it never know. There are rarely any symptoms, so a man who is infected could easily transmit it to all of his sexual partners while the illness runs its course, and no one would be the wiser.
Unfortunately, society is happy to place the burden of responsibility on the female half of the species, because, much like other consequences of sex, the female bears the brunt of the problem. She can’t run out on herself if she gets pregnant, either, so she is more likely to be spending money on birth control than her male partner(s).
The only responsible thing to do is to require the HPV vaccine for everyone (in a single age group or otherwise) or no one. Saying only women have to get vaccinated because they have worse symptoms later on in life is no excuse. Don’t let men spread a disease just because they won’t get cancer.
I started my new job today. The drive is kind of long, but it’s kind of pleasant. It’s just smooth sailing without much traffic for the most part. I’m really hoping that the job itself will be cool. Today I just got familiar with the software I’ll be working with, so I didn’t get a chance to actually see some code, let alone write any, but hopefully tomorrow I’ll start getting my hands dirty.
Okay, I have now overhauled everything. I will probably add back in some non-‘blog’ content in the next few weeks, and Ethan has made it clear he wants to pick and choose a skin for the site too, so that will probably come back in the near future. Now anyone who wants a feed of my site can actually get one (though I’m not sure who would want that) and I have a technorati link. We’ll see if they can actually figure out one post from the next.
Last night, courtesy of PZ I found this really fascinating genetic algorithm simulation.
I do have to warn you, it’s difficult to stop watching it once you start. Ethan and I actually sat and watched a simulation for about an hour last night. I don’t know why it has such a hold on me…
Recently we got new Internet service, and when we switched, I discovered that we would have to have our router set up in another room. This is somewhat inconvenient since neither Ethan’s nor my computers had wireless adapters, so we simply haven’t been able to connect to the Internet on them for about a week. Of course, being computer geeks who can’t stand being off of our computers for any length of time, we ordered some wireless cards right away. They arrived yesterday and as of last night, we can both connect to the Internet once again. Also, I can access my shared files on my computer from the laptop. I’m quite thrilled.