Wasted An Hour at Work Playing This...

I can't figure out a winning strategy for this game. I get a similar score if I button mash (down, down, down) as if I place strategically. Maybe I just suck at this...

Books That Make You Dumb

So some guy collected ten random books from a Facebook profile and compared that to the median SAT score at the college to produce a map of books that make you dumb. Click to enlarge, or here for the original site.

I did some investigation, my points are below. Interesting though that people who read Harry Potter are smarter than people who read the Bible. Also who knew I would get more points for Ender's Game than for Shakespeare.

I think the real reason is the popularity of books--as more people read books, the average intelligence of the readers approaches that of the general college population. The average SAT score in 2007 was 1017 (from the College Board).

















Books I have read:

Fahrenheit 451	893
Bible	909
A Time to Kill	960
Where the Red Fern Grows	999
Of Mice and Men	1007
Wuthering Heights	1012
Gone With the Wind	1022
Hamlet	1022
John Grisham	1027
Chronicles of Narnia	1032
Animal Farm	1048
Lord of the Flies	1049
The Giver	1064
A Farewell to Arms	1079
The Book of Mormon	1083
Harry Poter	1089
To Kill A Mockingbird	1096
Shakespeare	1101
Lord of the Rings	1102
Anna Kernina	1113
1984	1120
The Kite Runner	1123
The Great Gatsby	1124
East of Eden	1136
Enders Game	1167
Catch 22	1233
Total	1061.923

Nothing like my favorite trail on MLK day...

...favorite trail being the Ray Miller portion of the backbone. I managed to get a run in this morning before the rain hit. Also, I think to honor MLK, I may shave the red beard. I have definitely enjoyed not shaving for the past 4-5 weeks, but I think the time for such hairiness has passed.

Almost Every Day I Check...

...and some days McSweeney's give's me my lists I love so much.

Don't Look

So originally I was going to write a very witty post about all of these people calling roll on their blogs. But then I noticed that there were really only two that I know of. You may know that too, if you tried to follow any of those supposed links.

But two points is enough to establish a trend! Or at least that is what I thought until I had to suffer through one of those "Bible is one point and BoM is another point" lessons last Sunday. The teacher phrased his clincher poorly and instead of asking "how many lines you can draw through two points" he asked "how many directions can you go with two points." A math guy absentmindedly answered "two." This, of course, is the correct answer but doesn't illustrate the lesson as well.

After a brief church chuckle, I mentally extended that reasoning further. What about D&C and PofGP? Aren't those points? How many lines can you draw through those points? What about modern prophets who can, essentially, establish any new point or direction God feels like. What do you do then? Collinear? Hardly. What do you do with the "as far as it is translated correctly" clause? Now we don't have a point, but a cloud of probability where a point could possibly exist.

I know, I am blowing your mind, and we are still in two dimensional space! Who said anything about these points and this cloud being coplanar? 4th dimension? Curved space? Special relativity? Black holes? Worm holes? Physics? Stopping a train with a cat?

Cats, my favorite gospel topic. Schlotsky's cat, specifically. Whoops, Wikipedia says it is called Shrodinger's cat. But it was actually two Sunday's ago--fast Sunday and all--so you can understand the mixup. As all pedantic a-holes know, Schnauss's cat is a thought experiment that says "if a scenario existed where a cat's state of life or death could be made dependent on the state of a subatomic particle, and also isolated from any possible observation, the state of the cat itself would be" in two states simultaneously. By observing the cat, you kill it or let it live. Observing the universe changes it.

You see, you could be a really excellent blogger. Or, like me, you could spend half the time posting recycled humor and the other half writing reflexive, self-absorbed nonsense to take a break from excel models. But as soon as you call roll, you find out one way or another--and suddenly your blog isn't such a gnar bucket. Gnar buckets, as I learned in priesthood, are the receptacles for the gnar after you shred it. "Nah bra, I filled up like six gnar buckets working my board on that rip."

Moral? Roll call = dead radioactive cats = empty gnar buckets.

No More Monkeying Around....Wilson!

Lamers...break is over and time for Wilson and me to return to work on the mainland. I am shooting for the castaway look with the new beard.

Drop Dead Stanford...

...because after another weekend of all-nighters, I just killed you. Unlike my applications so far (I believe the deserved critique was "I have read better on your blog"), I think I did well. A solid triple. I hate baseball, why do I use baseball metaphors?

Of course posting this will make it that much more embarrassing that I didn't get in anywhere, but hey, you lose some, and then you lose more, right?

Screw it, I am going to Hawaii.