Daydream Believer

TechCrunch reports that a new software will be put to the test Thursday night during the Biden/Palin debate.  RealScoop purports to be able to detect whether a candidate is lying or not, simply by taking note of the speaker’s vocal inflections and patterns and performing 1,000 calculations a second to determine whether what is being spoken is “true” or not.  The report didn’t mention whether the software can detect subtle vocal variations that occur when a person employs sarcasm or forgets their train of thought, etc.  Overall, I’m not going to be monitoring this technology during the debate, but I might check in afterwards to see what it reports.  I wonder if things like this will prove more popular in future elections, although I doubt it.  Results of polygraph testing are still, to my knowledge, not admissible in court.  I doubt this technology will find relevance in other state business.

I just finished reading Philippa Gregory’s The Constant Princess, an historic novel about Katherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and first wife of Henry VIII.  This is the third book of Gregory’s that I’ve read; I really enjoy them because I get to enjoy a well written story but I also get to learn more about historical figures that have interested me ever since I was 11 years old.  She roots her novels very deeply in archival and secondary research - I know she sticks to the facts when possible and I trust her interpretations when she has no evidence to fill in the holes of the stories she tells.

The thing is, and maybe this is where I’m a nerd, the part I often look forward to most is the Author’s Note at the end, because she usually tells you a bit about her research to give her interpretation of history more explanation.  I just wish they were longer, god dammit!  Seriously, I want more detail, references to specific documents - I want to know just how she got the information she did, and why.  In my ideal world, she’d put out an edition of her books that had point-for-point references running thoughout the novel’s text, like footnotes, or a detailed Author’s Note after each chapter.  Because even though I trust her interpretation, I am still hungry for information on where the facts stop and the interpretation begins.  This kind of book would take twice as long to read, but I’d relish it.

I definitely recommend this book, as well as The Other Boleyn Girl.  The Queen’s Fool is also good.  My next one will be The Boleyn Inheritance.

Not dead!  Just haven’t had time to write anything down, I have been so busy.  Seriously, where do days go?

I’ve had a million ideas of things I wanted to blog about, but that ain’t happening.  In the meantime, all you politicky people might enjoy this source for comparing the presidential candidates’ opinions on science issues.

I bought my laptop, a Dell Latitude, back in February of 2005. It was a refurbished Dell, meaning it was and old computer made new again, so it’s really more than just 3 1/2 years old.  Anyway, it’s lasted pretty well, all things considered.  I had to replace the motherboard a couple years ago because it overheated, but that was pretty common with the model I had, and the warranty covered it.  Other than that, though, it really fared quite well.

But over the last few months, I noticed that starting to change.   The jack where the power cord plugs in was loose or completely broken, and I had to contort the cord and duct tape it to the computer to keep it in place and keep my laptop supplied with power.  Something had gone funky with the screen, and a rectangular distortion was following my mouse around half the time.  My volume control buttons just up and quit a few months ago.

I had planned to replace the laptop, who I had named Anastasia, later this winter, but Grant and I went to Best Buy over the weekend…and there was a sale…and there was a really pretty and shiny new HP (shiny like gleaming, not like Firefly shiny…although I guess that too).  Anyway, I buckled under the excitement of spontaneity and shininess.  So, now I’m typing this on Penny, who got her name from a lovely little TV show that is coming back in a few weeks.  I don’t name very many things (at least not compared to some  people) but computers need names I think.

For you techies out there, she’s an HP Pavillion Entertainment PC.  She’s got a great graphics card and processor, plenty of RAM and storage.  She can also play Blue Ray discs, which I totally don’t need, but I think could be fun down the line.  This will be great because I can work on some super secret gaming-related stuff for work a LOT more easily, and now I can look into other fun things people do with computers.

On Saturday, Grant and I went to the local pet shelter and adopted a couple new family members. Meet Olive and Morgana:

They’re still a little skittish, so grabbing a good picture of them was hard. And, as a footnote, Olive doesn’t have red eyes - it’s just a reflection/distortion.

We originally went “just to look” but I think we both knew that actually bringing some home was a distinct possibility. After holding them both, and another piggie that was adoptable, we settled on these two. They’re not sisters, but they do look a lot alike, obviously. But Morgana is chubbier and has a white foot, and Olive is slimmer (younger) and has a browner tint to her dark hair.

So far, they’re getting more used to each other and us. There are battles for who gets to hang out in the Pigloo, but they cooperate very nicely when they feel like knocking the hay feeder off the cage wall. Olive doesn’t mind being picked up very much, but it really freaks Morgana out. On the other hand, Morgana is perfectly willing to eat out of our hands, but Olive would rather do her own thing.

Their cage has a shelf on one side with a ramp up. We can’t tell if they actually know how to get up there. Morgana probably can/does climb the ramp, because she was on the shelf when we woke up this morning. However, she does not use the ramp to get down; she just jumps. Olive, on the other hand, uses the ramp to go down, but I’ve never seen her go up. Hmm.

So far, they’re a pretty manageable pair. They only mess in one side of the cage, which is pretty convenient, so we’ll see if that keeps up. Morgana tends to poop all the time, even when she’s in your lap (which is standard guinea behavior) so we need some towels to use for lap time; I think we’ll use a few of my old t-shirts.

Anyway, the four of us are doing quite well; I think we’ll all get along just fine.

Enough has been said and written about McCain’s pick of Gov. Palin, and I have ranted about it long enough in conversations over the last 24 hours. So, I won’t discuss all my complaints. But my two main objectives lie in two issues closest to my heart.

The first is the environment. McCain isn’t the Earth’s best friend, by a long shot, but Palin can almost unequivocally be considered its enemy. She doesn’t believe humans have caused climate change, and is even suing the federal government for putting the polar bear on the endangered species list because it would interfere with drilling. (She also wants creationism to be taught in schools, but that’s another rant for another time.)

But my second complaint is one which we hashed out greatly last night over dinner - the fact that the main reason McCain picked Palin was to steal Hilary supporters from the Democratic party. It seems like the McCain camp thinks female voters care more about ovaries than their political views. Considering Palin’s appalling record and public stances when it comes to “women’s causes” (see Rich’s blog for more) I disagree. But I am also insulted, as a woman, that his group thinks that this tactic would really work, or at least when it comes to educated women. Someone yesterday likened it to dangling a carrot in front of the female population, and it disgusts me. I was even more angered this afternoon to find out that McCain had only met Palin once back in February before choosing her to run with him. To me, this is just further evidence that McCain chose Palin chiefly because of a niche she fit (gender) and not at all due to political or personal compatibility. From this methodology, it’s clear that McCain never had an interest in actually choosing the best VP he could have; rather he planned to just pick a VP that filled a niche to reign in stray voters. And that’s not what this should be about.

I really love Mint.com for putting my entire financial picture in one place for easy, comprehensive access.

I really hate Mint.com for telling me my net worth is -$XX,XXX.  It’s depressing to actually know the figure. 

Google Reader has released a set of new feeds you can subscribe to and follow the news that newspeople are following.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/08/read-what-they-read.html

At the web site above, you can subscribe to the feeds of Barack Obama and John McCain, but also political journalists like Arianna Huffington and others.  The idea is that by reading what they’re reading, the general public can get a better idea of what is newsworthy in the current political climate.  But what I found most interesting, however, are the sites that the candidates have on their feeds.  Obama keeps up on the Daily Show, and McCain checks out JibJab.  Hilarious.  My jadedness of the political machine, however, makes me pretty darn certain that some low-level staffer compiled the feeds for the candidates, and that Obama and McCain probably have little to no idea that it’s out there.  I also doubt that McCain even knows what RSS is, but that’s another story for another post.

I had my first doctor’s appointment for the egg donation process on Friday. It was really quick, actually. They drew blood, just as if it were any other medical exam, and then I had an ultrasound. I gotta say, I have no idea how those nurses and technicians know what they are looking at - I tried sneaking peeks, but all I saw was black, grey and white static. The nurse apparently saw something though, because at one point, she says to me, “OK, uterus looks good - and you have really pretty ovaries.”

Thanks?

I told her that that was a strange compliment to receive, and she laughed and pointed out that when you work in reproductive health, you often have to deliver bad news, or point out areas of difficulty to patients. She says that because of that, she likes to deliver positive feedback whenever she can. I thought that was a great attitude to have, and I can see it being important to her, personally, to be able to celebrate the good stuff while helping people work around the bad. So, it was an unorthodox compliment, but its context was quite touching.

I finished the appointment and went on my way.  The results of the bloodwork came back with an all-clear, so on Monday I start birth control pills, as does the recipient mother.  By the end of the month, we’ll be on the same cycle, at which point, then I start the hormone treatment.

Links on the side are updated.  Woo!!