Presidential Candidate Selector

I shouldn't even bother taking these quizzes, because the results always nauseate me. My top eight results (I had a lot because I told it to include withdrawn or unannounced "candidates") are all nuts, ranging from Michael Badnarik of the LP (#2) to Walt Brown of the Socialist Party (#9) before getting into mainstream territory like Wes Clark (#10) and George Bush (#14).

This always happens. I really don't think that my political positions are nutty. Granted, I have some unrealistic ones (like decreasing spending or getting the government out of the marriage business) but I'm fine with half-measures (like holding increases to reasonable levels and allowing civil unions). I think the people who write these quizzes need to add a question like "I am unwilling to vote for a crackpot."

But what I really don't get is how both Libertarians and Socialists can be ranked at the top of the list above "normal" candidates. How does that work?

(Actually, I went back and changed from saying that drug laws should be relaxed to no opinion, and my list looks more respectable now. I guess I can see how that would correlate to nuttiness.)

# : 3:28 PM : :

This video about what voting might look like in Florida is hilarious. You need to watch it with the sound on.

# : 11:12 AM : :

My kittens rock. Tess plays fetch! She loves her little bouncy balls, and she will bring them to you and stand there looking cute with the ball hanging out the side of her mouth. When you take it and throw it, she will chase it down and bring it back. If you move to another part of the room, she'll go where you were, look around, and then bring the ball to your new location. She doesn't seem to get bored of playing fetch. It's crazy cute.

Last night I watched The Exorcist and when the scary voice first came on I got really freaked out. Tess had been sitting on my lap, and right away she stood up and put her paws on my shoulders and gave me kisses until I wasn't scared anymore. I'm sure she could tell I was afraid and wanted to comfort me.

Max is developing his own brand of cuteness. He's a very aggressive cuddler - he will force his way into your lap and flop around until he gets enough petting. He's gotten much more sociable, so he follows people around and cries when I lock him out of my room. If two people are sitting on the couch, he must be there too.

This week they've been adorably naughty. I made cornbread muffins and stupidly left them on the counter while we went outside to watch the eclipse. When we got back in, there was cornbread everywhere. I think in addition to spreading crumbs, they actually ate quite a bit as well. And they even chewed up the paper muffin liners. My crazy bread-eating kittens.

# : 10:19 AM : :

I'm not sure that "coincidence" is the right word - I'm talking about the phenomenon of learning or noticing something new and then suddenly seeing it everywhere. Whatever that's called, it's been happening to me a lot lately. (I think it's because I haven't been sleeping much - awhile ago I discussed the strange consequences of stress and minimal sleep. Unfortunately, t(f)er's interesting comment on the similarities of those effects to those of speed has been helpfully deleted by Haloscan.)

First, Tim mentioned John Rawls's veil of ignorance while giving me a 5-minute briefing on the philosophy I missed when I was reading Schiller in college. A few days later I was reading Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate (which is excellent, by the way - I'll write more about it once I've finished it) and he referenced the same concept. I felt smart since I understood it, then wondered how many such references I've failed to note while reading my typical geeky books.

The next one was when The Blank Slate and Virginia Postrel's The Future and Its Enemies, which I was reading simultaneously, quoted the same passage by Tom Wolfe [*] on the concept of a self. I was very confused when I read the quote in Pinker, thinking I'd lost my place and read the same page twice, but then I checked the helpful index in the Postrel book and felt on top of things. Interestingly, I was reading Postrel's book on loan from Tim, which makes a neat little triangle of coincidences. Or maybe shows how incestuous my recent reading has been. (The Blank Slate also quotes The Blind Watchmaker, which I finished last month.)

Finally, I read a Language Log post on the dubious grammaticality of the construction *boring of X. Personally, I find it perfectly acceptable, but Liberman doesn't agree. I bowed to his linguistic expertise and moved on to the next post, only to hear one coworker offer another a new project "once you've bored of that one." Since I would have gotten strange looks for commenting on that, I had to blog about it instead.

The real point of the post, though, was not so much to share these oddities, as to stuff a post full of all the fascinating stuff I've been reading lately. I recommend all of the above-linked items.

*Amazon's "Search inside the book" feature is great. I couldn't remember the specifics of the quote, and didn't want to misattribute it, but luckily Amazon let me search inside. (I think the quote stuck with me by virtue of its idiosyncratic use of italics: "what's a bootstrap, for God's sake?" - and now I'm trying to think which other authors characteristically (and annoyingly) do that. Salinger, maybe.)

# : 4:17 PM : :

I'm back. I didn't realize how tiring that little tour was going to be.

Miami was fun. I got to hang out in South Beach and see crazy trendy bars like one with a reflecting pool surrounded by beds. It looked cozy, but I think I'd probably fall asleep. We ate tapas and gelato and drank sangria and mojitos. Very tasty.

I had a great time at Lake Hope. I took quite a few pictures, which I'll upload when I get a chance. We went boating, hiking, and target shooting. I'm a much better shot than I used to be, though I can't figure out why - certainly my vision hasn't improved.

I managed to forget my dress shoes, so had to stop at Payless on the way to Pittsburgh. I also misread the Mapquest directions and got a nice tour of Da Burgh on the way to my hotel. And got lost again on the way to my interview, so I was late and stressed, and somewhat sick (as I have been for a week or so). The tour was interesting - I got to see a body for the first time, and didn't faint, so that's good. The interviews were stressful, and I really can't figure out how well or poorly I did. I don't find out until March, so I'll try not to worry.

During this weekend's thousand miles of driving, I saw a million "support our troops" ribbon bumper stickers. Where did these come from? I hadn't seen any until Friday, and then they were everywhere. They seem to come in either yellow or red/white/blue, and some people have several. I feel like I missed something.

# : 11:16 AM : :

Wednesday-Friday: Miami for work

Friday-Sunday: Lake Hope State Park in Ohio for vacation with my family

Sunday-Monday: Pittsburgh for an interview

I'll be back Monday night... we'll see when I'm recovered enough to blog again!

# : 2:35 PM : :

I bought the kittens catnip-impregnated scratching carpets, and they love them. I think this will cut down on the scratching of my actual carpet. Also, they got too big to eat from the same dish, so they would shoulder each other away and one would end up going hungry. Now they have two dishes and they can both scarf their food down at warp speed. Good kittens!

# : 2:33 PM : :

ME:
I got into Ohio State!

FRIEND:
GO WOLVERINES!!!

MY INNER MONOLOGUE:
Huh? Was that in response to what I just said?
[small crack of light]
I don't understand that remark, which means it's probably either a sports reference or a Simpsons quote. A wolverine is a mean animal, so a sports mascot is more likely.
[quick Google]
Aha, University of Michigan! I've heard about that rivalry.

ME:
Very funny. I don't think I'm going to fit in there.

# : 2:05 PM : :

Update on the applications:

I finally finished all my secondaries. Turns out, I wasn't eligible for the program for which I was procrastinating writing an essay (no research experience) so I just had to pay my money. I could have done that weeks ago! oops.

I got wait-listed at UVa. That bothered me a lot more than I would have expected - I wasn't particularly upset when Mayo rejected me, or at least I got over it really quickly. For this one, I keep thinking about what might have gone wrong in the interview and agonizing about whether I'll do better next time, or worse, wondering if I'm not qualified for a very selective school and imagining further piles of rejection letters. On the other hand, I am definitely counting my blessings - I'm super lucky to have one acceptance, so it's pretty ungrateful to moan about this, and I'm trying not to.

It has cranked up the angst over where (geographically) I'll end up though. More and more, I feel like I really want to stay near DC, and it's getting pretty late for adding any more nearby schools. I don't want to just pour money down the drain, so I probably won't, but I worry that I'll regret it later.

# : 11:04 AM : :

Slate Election Scorecard

I don't know how accurate this is, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Looks like Virginia isn't a Bush lock as I had assumed - I will have to take that into account when deciding on my vote.

But what I found the most interesting was that Iowa and New Hampshire, the earliest primary states, are considered the only two dead even races.

# : 5:40 PM : :

I guess I'm really going to med school! I got my first acceptance today.

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported me throughout this process. I owe you one.

# : 2:36 PM : :

My kittens are driving me nuts. We've hit a plateau in training; they don't scratch the sofa quite so much but they scratch my bed instead. And they jump on the stove! Stupid kittens.

The other night, I was going out right after work so I packed myself a sandwich. I didn't finish it and stuffed the end (wrapped in plastic wrap) back into my purse and forgot about it. When I got home, I was relaxing when I heard rustling and growling. Maxwell had unwrapped the sandwich and was going to town on the turkey. (He also ate the bread. I think whole-grain is their favorite. I have hippie kittens.) Naturally, I took it away from him, but the whole rest of the evening he was trying like hell to get into my purse. I guess he thought it was a magic sandwich stash.

Today, I pulled out my tube of hand lotion and squeezed some out to apply. When I was putting the cap back on, I noticed some lotion on the outside of the tube. Turns out Max got to it and put half a dozen little punctures in the plastic. Now I don't need to open the tube to put on lotion; I can just squish it around in my hands. Which is convenient because Max also seriously clawed my finger yesterday so I have a bandaid on there restricting my range of motion.

But he is so incredibly cute when he flops onto my lap and purrs as loud as he can. How can I be mad?

# : 10:22 AM : :

Since I moved my blog, whenever I first access it the first post or two are fine, then below that it's gibberish*, and it doesn't load the side bar or the comments. Hitting refresh fixes it. I'm running Firefox 0.9 in Windows 2000. One friend who runs Firefox 1.0 has the same issue; another one doesn't.

Anybody else? Any solutions?

*like this:

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# : 9:34 PM : :

You Forgot Poland

OK, this is mean and exaggerated, and one could just as easily make a site mocking Kerry, but oh man that's funny. It was the photoshops that got me.

# : 4:51 PM : :

Last night was my best effort at watching the entire debate. I went to a debateoke party, where we watched it on TiVo and paused after the questions to have people give their own answers. It was mixed between trying to say what the candidate would actually say, and playing it for laughs, which was consistently hilarious.

Since I paid more attention than usual, I actually have some stuff to say, in no particular order:

• The questions on this debate weren't very good. The town hall questions were much better. Here, it was mixed between softballs (the family questions? please) and questions that didn't really show an understanding of the issues (flu shots) and some just plain stupid questions (do you believe homosexuality is a choice?)
• I was surprised that when the moderator specifically asked the candidates what they'd say to a worker who'd lost his job to outsourcing, neither took the opportunity to show their compassion and neighborliness and whatever else they keep trying to get across with all their anecdotes about connections made on the campaign trail.
• Then Bush talked about education instead of outsourcing. I'm sure the No Child Left Behind act is a big comfort to the 40-year-old programmer with a master's degree whose job is now being done by an Indian. And, yay, said programmer can go to community college! I think maybe Bush fell for those ads that say you can get computer certified and make big bucks.
• On the minimum wage question, education again! This one at least is a little more relevant; people who are making minimum wage actually would benefit from further education. (Many of them, being teens, might even benefit from NCLB if it worked.) But what I want to know is, who told Bush to push his education policies? Doesn't everyone agree that NCLB sucks? Who does he think is going to be swayed here?
• funny points: Kerry's Tony Soprano remark; Bush's crack about not being able to trust the major news outlets (we rewound and were pretty sure that he actually pointed at the CBS moderator here - snap!)
• the tussle over McCain. Kerry: he's my friend! Bush: he supports me! You would think candidates for President would be past name-dropping.
• Bush did a great job on the faith question, surprisingly enough. That was my debateoke question, and I nailed the first part of his answer but then he did better than I did! Kerry's answer was goofy. It doesn't make sense to say "faith without works is dead" then go on to talk about how your faith won't affect your policies. I mean, it isn't necessarily a contradiction, but that verse would more logically be followed by a statement that faith affects all areas of life. Or, the faith/policies split should be preceded by a different verse. I suspect that he just threw in the first verse he thought of.
• The discussion about being surrounded by strong women grated on me. The phrase strikes me as condescending; it has all sorts of connotations about women supporting their men and traditional gender roles and all that.
• The most shocking response was when Kerry brought in Mary Cheney. That was just inappropriate, and it wasn't even particularly relevant.
• I was surprised to see the polls giving the win to Kerry; the group I was watching with was pretty liberal overall and we all thought Bush was cleaning up.

# : 1:58 AM : :

During my interview yesterday, the interviewer asked me what I'd done to learn more about medicine. After discussing volunteering, talking to doctors, reading books, and that sort of thing, I mentioned that I'd also done some internet research and found a bunch of medical web logs. He hadn't heard of blogs before, so I explained the basic concept and told him about some of the blogs I read regularly. He seemed really interested, and I think now he's going to start asking people about them. I was proud.

Later on, I was telling a fellow applicant about my interview, and it turned out that we both read The Underwear Drawer religiously, and applied to a certain New York school primarily because Michelle went there. How weird/cool is that?

# : 1:36 PM : :

Coming back to work is easier after a great weekend, because even though I'm awfully tired I'm in a good mood.

I taught my first MCAT class on Sunday. Three hours of me standing up and talking - I was starting to flag by the end, but I was surprised that I could teach for that long at a stretch. And no matter how boring I was (I tried to keep it interesting, but there were definitely a few dull stretches) my students were listening intently and taking notes. These people are really dedicated!

Yesterday I had an interview in St. Louis, and it went very well - I liked the school a lot. My day was over after lunch, so I went sightseeing with several other applicants. We wandered around the neighborhood and went downtown to see the arch. I was skeptical, but everyone said I had to see it. It is big, and shiny, but I still don't think it was worth the trip. Or the walk through the rain.

We got sushi for dinner (just as good and expensive as DC) before heading to the airport. It turned out that three of us were on the same flight, so we sat together and talked the whole way. That is by far the best way to spend a plane ride.

At all my interviews so far, I've been really impressed at how cool and interesting the other applicants are. We discussed this a little bit at the airport, and came to the conclusion that the med school selection process, contrary to popular belief, actually does a decent job of picking out smart and well-rounded applicants. (Or, coolness is positively correlated with MCAT score, ha!) Practically everyone I've met on the interview trail, I've wanted to hang out with more. It would be cool if I ran into some of them at later interviews.

The other weird thing is that the med students and applicants are, overall, much more attractive than the average person. We really couldn't figure this one out, but we all agreed that it's enjoyable.

# : 10:38 AM : :

Flea writes a hilarious post about cats and medicine. How could I not love it?

Then, students complain about racy candy wrappers.

Spokesman Marco Alfter said: "The new wrapping is certainly fruitier than the old. But we have not had any other complaints. In fact until now the feedback has all been positive."

Fruitier, indeed.

# : 1:18 PM : :

Today has been full of annoyances.

Things aren't going too well dealing-wise, which probably contributes to me being easily annoyed. My coworkers are really interested in my med school applications, and every day several of them ask me if I've gone on any interviews yet. My first response lately is WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP ASKING ME QUESTIONS? I have to stop and think to remember that I'm really lucky to have so many people who care about me, and besides they don't know that everyone else asks the same questions.

I'm hating my job in general at the moment, not for any particular reason, but I think the tedium caught up with me. Plus, today some alarm kept beeping, which was driving me around the bend. No one else seemed particularly bothered.

My kittens are continuing to be destructive adolescents; they've knocked two glasses of water into the carpet today. They also ripped off their collars. And the peppery stuff you spray on fabric to stop them scratching does not work. Not even a little bit.

On the other hand, the kittens are really precious. Tess seems fascinated by laughter, and she'll stand in front of me and snuffle in my face, making me giggle more, for as long as I can stand the tickling. Max purrs all the time and flops down in my lap pretty much whenever he's nearby. He's especially cuddly now that he's chubby!

I went to handbells tonight, having missed the season's first two practices due to Thailand and jet lag. I got assigned bass bells since I wasn't there to express a preference. They're big! And we had several no-shows, so I picked up my neighbor's bells too, and those are freaking huge. Bigger than my head. I need two hands to ring them! Between the jumping around for five bells, and the weight, I broke a sweat. It was great.

# : 9:41 PM : :

Welcome to the new and improved home of my blog!

OK, so it's not really improved yet. Especially since I uglified the design by putting in the new name myself. (Emily, I'm sorry for making your design look bad!)

But it was time to move. The original plan for my blog was as an extension of my AIM profile, which was how I kept friends updated during college. For quite some time now, it's exceeded that mission, so the old name was about played out.

The new name, of course, comes from the phrase "the value of this function increases without bound." I always thought that sounded neat. Also, it describes the content of the blog, which can cover just about any topic but always tends toward the geeky. I did have a philosophical application of the phrase as well, but it was really dorky, so I'll just keep that to myself.

To those of you who link to me - first off, thanks! It's nice to be loved. I would appreciate it if you could update your links to reflect the new location and title of my blog. Bonus: "Without Bound" is a lot shorter than "All the Stuff I Couldn't Fit in My AIM Profile" so it'll look a lot nicer in your blogroll.

If anything broke during the migration, please let me know.

# : 10:32 AM : :

Eric and I broke up.

It feels very strange to announce this on the internet, so I won't say more, but I figured that since the point of having a blog was to keep in touch with family and friends, I couldn't leave out something major like this. So, there it is.

# : 3:26 PM : :

Yesterday was Kitten-Walking Part Two. This time we actually got the kittens outside. Max was absolutely thrilled. He skulked around and pounced on every little leaf. We didn't let him go in the woods, which he was Not Pleased about. It was so funny to watch little 6-pound Max straining against the leash with all his might.

Tess hated it though. At first she was purring because I was petting her, but once she realized that we weren't going anywhere else, she started to shake. She stayed on my lap and tried to hide in my sweatshirt. She did look around, and she briefly walked around me (keeping pressed against me the whole time) but when she tried to climb up onto my shoulder I figured it was time to go back inside. I had to carry her the whole way around the building, and she clung on the entire time.

So I won't make scaredy-cat Tess go on any more walks, but I think Max might be addicted.

# : 3:24 PM : :