The St. Nick Six (No Cash Prizes, Part Deux)

As you might recall, I ran the "Saint Nick Six" last year, a 6k, christmas-themed fun run that the nearby St. Joseph's church/school put on every year. I did it again this year with the same group of people and it was a lot of fun. Some might say it was even more fun. Gary and Tim didn't throw up this time. Monika and Amanda decided to do the 6k run instead of the 3k walk. I went from 7th out of 7 in my age group (20-24) to 8th out of 10 in my age group (25-29) and improved my time from 35:07 to 32:24 (roughly 8:45/mile?). I placed 95th out of 130 male runners compared to last year's 73rd out of 90 male runners. The race is getting pretty popular, apparently. Enough metrics. Here are some pictures:

This is the group of use before the race.

This is the race starting, and I'm wearing antlers and four little bells attached to the safety pins on my number-tag thing.

Coming up to the finish!

Celebrating as I cross the line!

Then celebrating with Amanda after she crosses the line.

Yaaaaaay! Ok, I should probably go back to working on finals and stuff.

But before I go. I should share the one mishap of the day. Gary made a mistake with his tag, rendering his time unrecorded. He then took off his shirt to celebrate the big finish. So, the only record that he finished the race is:



Bahaha....

pence/cents

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151144133110665&set=a.235978145664.135781.207730000664&type=1&ref=nf



A MEDIATION BETWEEN HER MAJESTY AND THE FREE STATES

Concerned dual citizens have been made aware that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II made some passionate demands in response to the Declaration of Independence. Due to the timely demise of its original authors, the Declaration and its supporters have criticized the timing of the Queen’s message, explaining that one of her predecessors may have been more suited to challenge the Free States’ independence on such terms. Those who speak on behalf of the Declaration of Independence feel that the Queen’s spirited, but essentially peaceful, list of demands would have been much preferred over the bloody events of the late eighteenth century.

In the interest of both parties, a mediator has been selected from among the duel citizens to address the Queen’s major demands and make appropriate recommendations. In response to the overall demand that the Free States return to monarchic rule, it is the opinion of this moderator that such a demand is meaningless because the existence of monarchic authority is unclear. Congress will not be disbanded. It is this mediator’s hope that both countries will appreciate the exquisite inefficiencies of their respective political systems. Now, to the more particular demands:

1. The standard use of ‘U’ in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour,’ and ‘neighbour’ will be adopted if Oxford University re-instates the standard usage of the “Oxford comma.” The official adoption of the spelling ‘doughnut’ will be accepted if a) American retailers are allowed to spell it anyhow they durn please, b) British retailers begin to serve more than one flavor of doughnut, and c) British retailers give the recipe for jelly/jam doughtnuts to American retailers, who don’t have a clue.

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2. American schools will attempt to discourage young people’s use of ‘like’ and ‘you know’ as well as the related phrases ‘kind of like’ and ‘sort of like’ if British people admit that their younger generations have just as many linguistic problems and that adults in both countries have their fair share of over-reactions to linguistic degradation. In addition, both countries must promise to recogni[s/z]e that there is no such thing as a monopoly on linguistic accuracy that isn’t artificially imposed.

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3. July 4th will be celebrated as a holiday in both countries, but in the United Kingdom it will be known as “Thanksgiving.”

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4. The use of guns, lawyers, and therapists as all-purpose problem solvers will be abandoned in the US. Similarly, British people will increase the number of conflicts that are addressed directly rather than resort to biting sarcasm and indignant silence. Much to the approval of both nations, all such methods will be replaced with fattening foods and candor. Also, American may substitute the shooting of grouse with the shooting of The Famous Grouse (or similar).

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5. The shooting of grouse or The Famous Grouse aside, everyone will take a serious look at violent crime statistics in their own country.

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6. Only “All Way” four-stop-sign intersections with be converted to roundabouts. All roundabouts in England that are surrounded by smaller sub-roundabouts will be converted into ANYTHING ELSE because that is the worst design for an intersection. Recommendations for converting to metric measurements will wait until the UK actually finishes transitioning to the metric system. Americans are, however, interested in what a ‘stone’ is, and how a normal person can weigh 10 to 20 of them.

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7. The USA will adopt UK prices on gas, but will not call it ‘petrol’ because ‘gasoline’ is categorically more accurate than ‘petroleum’ in the identification of fuel used for most vehicles.

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8. All arguments about chips, crisps, and fries will be outlawed. British people will admit that they love catsup. All copyrights for the spelling ‘ketchup’ will be forfeit and the spelling ‘catsup’ will also be outlawed.

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9. All arguments about beer will be put on hold until British people try some American microbrews and distribution rights for said microbrews are expanded.

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10. Hollywood will indeed be required to occasionally cast English actors as good guys. (The splitting of infinitives will be considered acceptable usage.) American actors cast as English characters and English actors cast as American characters will be limited to actors who are deemed worthy, such as Hugh Laurie and almost no one else.

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11. Confusion about the sport ‘football’ will be carefully explained in the first year of school, and everyone will live with it. Criticizing American football for being wimpy will only be allowed from professional rugby players. Those who criticize the wearing of pads in the context of the confusion over the name ‘football’ will be forced to recount every time they ever saw an association football (soccer) player take a dive when the nearest player never touched them.

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12. Americans will be forced to play cricket in grade school, though they will not be expected to understand the rules, and Britons will be forced to play Rounders in a diamond with a hardball, gloves, and foul balls.

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13. Americans will tell who killed JFK if Britons teach them how to make their chocolate smooth.

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14. Britons will accept American participation in the European theater of World War II as partial payment for taxes owed. The remaining taxes will not be paid because Americans really don’t like paying taxes, but we’re all glad that Hitler didn’t take over the world.

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15. Americans would love to learn all about tea time, but refuse to believe that ‘tea’ should be used a general term for the dinnertime meal. American recipes for homemade chocolate-chip cookies will be circulated throughout the UK. Surprisingly delicious British store-bought cookies/biscuits be exported en masse to support the newly instituted tea time.

St. Jo's County Fair

About a month ago, I went to the St. Joseph's County fair -- an activity that might have left me feeling very American, but the experience was so foreign that it was quite the opposite.

Here's a pig.

...I believe it won a prize of some kind.

Here's a cow... (or dairy beef, to be politically correct)

 

Here is the judging of the heifers!

Here are some dog's for adoption. None of them seem as cool as Grant.

At the pony-barrel-races they had to occasionally smooth over the surface with this country equivalent to a Zamboni.

Well, that was technically just a tractor with an attachment, but they also had some cool vintage tractors. This is my friend Q sitting on one of the vintage tractors before we saw the "do not sit on the tractor" signs (yes... signs, multiple).

I even managed to find some rare books for sale!

So, there you have it. I'm not really sure what the takeaway from the experience was supposed to be, but I got two books that were about 200 years old.

Grant and the groomers

I have a dog now. He's going to help me out with my reading year.

Anyway, I had him groomed with a livingsocial deal today. First, you need to meet the dog to appreciate the change. He's a pretty scruffy little guy.

He likes to lie around while I read.

He even plays hockey a little with Gary.

But he looks so different after a shave!

We suspect that he'll appreciate the short hair during this crazy heat. This is him hanging out with me on the front porch:

Academic Marketing

In the halls of the University of Notre Dame, I see posters every day, plastered to the wall with the intention of convincing undergraduate students that a particular department has the right academic major or minor for them. The assumption is often that you have chosen your major. Either that or a minor in something you enjoy is likely to spark an interest in taking that subject on as a major. The point is, students are supposed to think about changing a big portion of their life, or at least their college career, based on the inspiring logic of a  catchy line on a poster.

The foreign language study posters are my favorite, but there are plenty of others. Some even advertise specific classes. So: "Confused about life?" is the header for a class called "Tolstoy (in English)" and a painting of Tolstoy is supposed to help with that. Is that what Tolstoy offers? Resolution to life's confusions? Not in my experience.

The French department offers: "Yes, French. C'est Chic!" Written on simple white paper, I suspect this is trying to appeal to some Apple-Mac-like simplicity of color motif.

But the best are from the Italian department. Last year one read, "Milton spoke Italian. Shouldn't you?" The logic escapes me. Another read, "Aristotle spoke Italian. Shouldn't you?" which is just plain false. But recently they've been updated. So, "Colin Firth speaks Italian. Shouldn't you?" At which point I could only think to myself, "If I ever run into Colin Firth, I doubt I'll be relying on Italian to communicate."

Good luck, Italian language department. I hope the black-and-white posters work for you.

Cartoon thing

I use this presentation software for class stuff. I'm trying to get better at using it more creatively. So, I used an app on my phone called "Cartoon Camera" and put this together. Hopefully this works...

Cartoon experiment on Prezi

The Cost of Racing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lanternerouge/5901695630/

This picture and one other surfaced recently on a flickr account related to a race I did in Kansas City last summer. The rights to the picture are reserved, but it offered me html code for inserting the picture into something else, so I feel like I'm doing it justice somehow right now. I'm still very confused about how photo and video copyrights work. Anyway, I paid $40 to be in that race (the cost of racing), so I feel like the least I get is an awkward picture of me from the final stretch on my blog.

Even thought it was a three lap race, I know this is from the final stretch because, for the first two laps, I went down to the finish with a big smile and my arms spread out because I knew I was going to win. Finishing the race was achievement enough. When I was going up the last hill, which was a beast, for the last time, I saw that I was gaining on a guy who had passed me a couple miles back. So, I pushed with all my remaining strength and passed him and came 42nd instead of 43rd out of 48.

If anyone asks you if you want to be in a bike race... you know, just for fun, I suggest you check a few things:
1) Is it a hilly race?
2) Will it be over 95 degrees outside?
3) Do I have a thirty-year-old, steel-framed bike? / Does everyone else have bikes that cost more than my rent for this year's rent?

Graduate Words

A long time ago, I started writing a post about what words are overused in graduate school. I ran into two problems: 1) most of the words were overly specific to literary studies 2) I learned that these words are actually useful, which was kind of disappointing.

Here's the dilemma. If someone uses a word (let's say, "peanut") and then says, "I mean that in the Hegelian sense," I kind of want that person to punch him/herself in the face.* The problem is that if you know what it means for something to be meant in the "Hegelian sense" then you realize that they were saying something rather specific (In the case of "peanut" it wouldn't make sense, and I would get to laugh at them, thus removing the need for self-inflicted face punching). In graduate school, it's also difficult to know that people are using basic words in the same way you would use them (As in, "I sure hope you're not saying 'peanut' in some obscure sense of the word**). So, if you use words with more specific meanings, you're actually being helpful to people around you... most of the time. It's hard to be mad at people who are trying to be helpful.

All of that aside, here is my list of the top three words that are overused and yet annoyingly useful:
- ontology/ontological: inquiry into the natures of being itself/something that speculates about the nature of being (often used to describe a bold claim about something definitely existing, like "goodness")
- telos/teleological: the goal of a goal-oriented process/something that is headed for a specific goal (math problems and political campaigns are usually teleological, but literary criticism and scientific inquiry often don't have a telos unless you count the rather broad goals of knowledge and insight)
- epistemology/epistemological: the study of how we know things or comes to know them/relating to the study of knowledge or the process of obtaining knowledge (philosophers, psychologists, and educators are deeply interested in epistemology whether or not they use the word)

Although this has all been my way of communicating a little bit about what my grad school existence is like, we don't actually spend any time defining these words, we're just expected to pick them up along the way. I hope you didn't mind reading that.

* Being a largely non-violent person, I don't like to imagine myself punching people in face, but I'm totally okay with them hitting themselves.

** I think this is hilaaarious.