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- At the Black Dog, tonight, we ran into a fellow, waiting in line to get coffee, who revealed himself to be a CS postdoc, working on bioinformatics. He was from the Netherlands, and together (gently probing at each other's hackerness), we figured out that with a given scrabble hand, you're never going to have to check more than O(2^7 * 7!) sequences of letters to see which ones are words (it's like less than a few thousand and less than that because it's not really 7!) -- if you were writing the AI player for a computerized version of scrabble. This fellow gets many cool points; he softly explained what he was working on, and he had a cool accent...
- Garrett
lomonthang is totally reading Jung and thinking all sorts of lofty thoughts, and maybe he's going to do sculpture-like things at FSU. And we saw Brett, who was playing funky beatZ up in the place at WVFS.
- After we visited Brett, we had tasty pitas and watched the partygoers crowd the streets and the bars. It was surreal.
- What do real people think about? What's a typical conversation sound like at the bars on Tennessee Street sound like? What does anybody discuss in this life? What is average -- and do the people we saw tonight count as average?
- Garrett
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- After we visited Brett, we had tasty pitas and watched the partygoers crowd the streets and the bars. It was surreal.
- What do real people think about? What's a typical conversation sound like at the bars on Tennessee Street sound like? What does anybody discuss in this life? What is average -- and do the people we saw tonight count as average?
no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 12:46 pm (UTC)"Whitney, have you noticed something about yourself. You always end up talking about something that normal people just can't even touch. I mean like you and Anthony were talking about that biology crap yesterday, and when he comes in and teaches you phyiscs, and you're not even in the AP class but you skip our class to go sit over there. That's not normal."
"What is normal?"
"I don't know *begins to thumb through the pages of Cosmo*. Maybe you could think about a shred of make-up."
Normal is an interesting and vague thing. Does that fact make me any less? What about you, Tallahassee kids who sit in the black dog and discuss AI? Are you any less normal for doing it? It's all a cultural thing honestly. In the South, or at least in the south I am from, women are sort of pointed to and expected to be what I deem as "magazine" women. Again there is another common social barrier we see with how men view women. The infamous Harvard comment just keeps that glass ceiling another few inches down. Is the fact that I am a biologist at a very male school not normal? Because of the barriers that people like to place on themselves (I am black, green, I speak in tongues, and the leader of my own religion) it becomes how much can we separate and make ourselves different but drawn to a specific group. How can you be Jane Christian and be normal within the views of that community that is a pin pointing factor. Then again what do I really know, I’m just a female biologist.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-25 07:42 pm (UTC)(an faint scribbling of many many cool points in Garrett's Book next to your name is heard)
groovy.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-26 08:02 am (UTC)It's not just the South. That occurs here in Colorado as well, and I strongly suspect that it applies to pretty much anywhere that's been overrun by what has been dubbed "pop" culture. As far as I can tell, this isn't a "culture" in the classical sense, but a commercial image specifically tailored to encourage people to buy more products that they really don't need, like the makeup that you mentioned. In this culture, "barriers" are good because they define "markets" that specific products can be tailored to, though they may have no practical value.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, no one should get too worried about being "normal", especially when "normal" is defined by institutions that are primarily concerned with making money for themselves.
Marketing is one of the purest forms of evil in the modern world.
"Live from the People's Republic"
no subject
Date: 2005-03-26 03:37 pm (UTC)ALEX!
Date: 2005-03-25 04:23 pm (UTC)i had totally forgotten about this
*spaz*
Re: ALEX!
Date: 2005-03-25 05:53 pm (UTC)Bowie is dead on
Date: 2005-03-25 07:48 pm (UTC)It was like scuba diving with tropical fish, but without the pretty water and corals.
and I still cant figure out what I would talk to them about. Their shoes? The not-so-subtle hue of their lipstick, which they unconsciously apply in order to make their lips the color they become when they are sexually aroused, due to increased surface blood flow? Would we discuss that? Or perhaps the football game?
Re: Bowie is dead on
Date: 2005-03-26 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-26 03:02 am (UTC)...except that, you know, among my friends I'm both normal and average.
It's a question of categorizations, really, and comparisons -- and I forget who says it, but somebody famous says that "comparisons are odious".
Just so long as people have people to find and be with and be happy, everybody's okay. I really do think that humans are herd animals at heart.
(Although, like
no subject
Date: 2005-03-26 07:49 am (UTC)What I have seen on the "news" has made me quite uninterested in what defines the "average" person. No one is completely average, not even those who try to be. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. Too much will completely overwhelm the natural flavor of life and may burn out your taste buds. OK, perhaps that's not quite what they meant, but still-- everyone has a distinct personality in some way and this is a good thing. As a matter of fact, I strongly believe it to be fundamental to the nature of sentience. I do find it interesting to note, though, that most intellectual types are not considered "normal". What does this say about "normal" people?
"Live from the People's Republic"