Electricity

The gentle hum of electricity hides the vivid movement of electrons. Miniscule particle-waves, barely understood, run our world with such delicate power it has become everyday. What if the electrons decided to revolt? Would we even notice? What if they already have?

Clever Cryptology

EDIT: Irrational84 is, of course, right. To encode Z it would have to be base 36. *headdesk* For the code at the bottom, stick with 35. It's ok, there are no Zs!

I have come up with an idea of cryptology that I think is fabulously clever: convert back and forth from base 35!

I can tell this will need some explaining.

First let us discuss what different bases mean. (Does this need to be explained? I worry about this. I want to keep everything clear and clean, explaining as few things as possible, I also want my writing to be accessible to the layperson. (What a weird construct. Oh, the lengths I go through for gender neutrality.) In my experience what it means to be in a different base is somewhat erudite, (So is the word erudite. God damn it, you can look up your own words!) so I will explain it.)

 

Normally we count in base ten, this is what we have been conditioned to think in and seems like the natural, nay, the only way to count. What this means is that we can phrase our counting like so:

 

10^0	10^1	10^2	10^3	10^4
1	10	100	1000	10000
ones	tens	hundreds	thousands	ten-thousands

 

As you can see saying that we count in base ten means that our most basic way of dividing numbers is based on the powers of ten. So counting in binary would look something like this:

 

2^0	2^1	2^2	2^3	2^4
1	10	100	1000	10000
ones	twos	fours	eights	sixteens

 

This chart makes a bit less sense. But say you wanted to write three in binary. Three is 2^1 (2) +2^0 (1) or 10 + 1, thus three is 11. So what’s twenty in binary? It’s 2^4 (16) + 2^2 (4) or 10000 + 100, thus twenty is 10100. See, isn’t that simple? And using the above mentioned chart one can easily transfer into any base, including those larger then ten. Let’s take a look at hexadecimal, as an example.

 

16^0	16^1	16^2	16^3	16^4
1	10	100	1000	10000
ones	sixteens	256’s	4096’s	6153’s

 

So let’s say we wanted twelve, that’s just C. WHAT? A letter? That’s because once the bases get above ten we can’t keep using normal numbers because the numbers have two symbols in them. So new symbols need to be chosen, and the convention is to just use letters. Therefore ten in hexadecimal is A, eleven B, twelve C, thirteen D and so on until fifteen which is F. Sixteen, as can be seen above, is 10. So, what’s 300? Well, 300 = 16^2 (256) + (16^1)*2 (32) + (16^0)*C (13) or 12C. Understand? Let’s try a harder one. What’s 5,000,000,000 in hexadecimal? (What? Just use a calculator!) OK! Let’s go!

 

5,000,000,000 = 16^8 (4,294,967,296) + (16^7)*2 (536,870,912) + (16^6)*A (167772160) + (16^4)*5 (327,680) + (16^3)*F (61440) + (16^2)*2 (512)

 

Therefore 5,000,000,000 in hexadecimal is 12A05F20. (I may have made a mistake in my work, but the process is correct!) Isn’t that cool? It was fun too! I like changing bases! (Have I mentioned lately that I am a nerd?)

 

OK! Back to my wondrous code of wonderment! Now, don’t you see that any phrase can be transferred into base 35? It would create horrendously long numbers, but by using a reasonably simple, consistent, easy to memorize rule these numbers can be transformed back into words! As long as the phrases are written in the Latin alphabet a message of any length and complexity can be coded, and the code is non-intuitive, thus much harder to crack! The big problem is that longer words create numbers that are so long they become difficult to manipulate, even with calculators. (Someone should (someone probably already has) write a program to do this. (I suppose I could. (Hmm…)))

 

I think it’s clever.

 

To test you all I’ll put a normal blog post (You know, instead of writing about ideas I’ll write about my life!) in code! To read about the mundanities of my life you’ll have to crack the code!

 

18 44,269,875 18 27,334 400 653 930,874. 1,393,204 479 18 479?

 

(If you try and translate that and it makes no sense, please tell me! I’m worried I’ve made a mistake.)

My Sesquipedalian and I

I like words. I think they’re nifty. In fact, I consider myself to be quite a logophile. In my spare time I have been known to read the dictionary. I have a thesaurus right next to my computer. I love looking up words, and reading the list of synonyms; I relish the feeling of precision of knowing exactly what this word means, and knowing the precise word to fit this meaning. I find great pleasure in the shades of meaning between argument, quarrel, squabble, dispute, contretemps and skirmish. And I absorb vocabulary; it becomes a part of me to the extent that loquacious, sesquipedalian, and effervescent are a part of my vernacular.

I consider my language to be my primary source of self-expression; the way I use and put words together defines me. Where some people communicate themselves by the clothes they wear, or the sports they play I try and speak with eloquence. My goal is not to confuse or impress, however, it is to confess. Thus I am quite distressed when people do not know the meaning of the word I use. It simply does not occur to me, unless I think about it, that most people just don’t know what a palimpsest is.

These misunderstandings quite distress me, for one thing, my goal really is to be clear and concise. I swear. But, also, I think that people think I’m arrogant, that I’m using big words just to impress. And I do hate this. I hate it when I hear (or see) someone force a beautiful word into a sentence where it doesn’t quite belong or, worse yet, just completely skewer the word. I use words as tools, as art, but not to inflate myself. And I don’t want to be misinterpreted!

Now, like many things, I have a specific example. The other day in my American literature class we were discussing what it means to be an American. And, predictably, people were coming up with some silly, saccharine sayings such as “to be American is to be free!” Now I by no means hate the United States of America. Overall it seems to be a pretty groovy place when compared with, say, Malaysia, but I get so fed up with the hero worship. The U.S. is not a perfect place! This country has many significant flaws with its culture! So I raised my hand in class and exercised my right to free speech and said some things along the lines of “I have always seen American culture as xenophobic and sensationalistic!”

This, of course, got some people’s goats (I need to stop stealing people’s goats, I’m running out of room in my dorm.), and one guy responded by complaining about my diction! He said something like “just because you use fancy words doesn’t make it true!” This is a college classroom! Aren’t exotic words to be expected?

Oh well. I guess I’m just going to move past my rage and rhapsodize about words for a while.

I really like the word maverick. It’s a pretty common word, but most people just know it’s primary definition of rebel. It has a secondary, slightly archaic meaning of an unbranded calf. See, Maverick was originally the name of a man who refused to brand his cows! Isn’t etymology cool? But whenever I use, or hear someone else use, maverick I have an urge to make a pun involving this secondary definition. Sadly, most people don’t get it.

I also really like defenestration. It’s a great, overly specific, perfectly useless word. It means the act of throwing something out of a window. It has a specific reference to English history, where someone in parliament got thrown out of a window, but it can be used more generally. I’m just not sure how. It’s a noun. Maybe if someone kept throwing eggs at you from the safety of their house you could yell at them in ire, “Stop with the defenestration already!”

Defenestration makes me think of another fairly useless word, floccinaucinihilipilification, which is the longest non-technical word in the English language. (Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest non-coined word.) Floccinaucinihilipilification means the act of coming to the conclusion that something is not worthwhile. Like defenestration it is a noun and thus has limited usage, however if one were to mutate it into other parts of speech I could see it having quite the plethora of uses. “That floccinaucinihilipilificator!” “I’m tried of all this floccinaucinihilipilification!”
It’s up to you how to pronounce the thing.

And for the record, antidisestablishmentarianism refers to the movement against the movement to get rid of the Church of England’s status as the state church in the 1800’s. I don’t like these sorts of words, as they have very specific context.

Before I quit this behemoth of a post I would like to point out that while I adore playing with entire words and sentences I do not take the same joy with parts of words. My spelling is horrendous and I hate games like scrabble and boggle.

Why Men Suck: A True Story

Hi! My name is Sarah and I am a feminist. Because I do not mention this enough. I am sure there is no indication elsewhere on this page that I am a feminist. BUT! The point of mentioning this here is I want to discuss what it means to me to be a feminist! There are many negative stereotypes associated with feminism, a big one is that we hate men. All lies. Despite the fact that I make several mentions of how much men suck, I am actually very fond of men. Some of my best men are friends. Or something like that. I merely mention this suckyness over and over again for laughs. I am trying to be funny. Because I like to pretend that this is humorous blog.

Now, while I don't hate men, I do foam a bit at the mouth. This may or may not be because of the rabies. I am a very angry person, though, (just look at that picture!) so my guess is that the foam is from my general rage. And boy do I have rage! I can rage about so many different topics! From the mundane to the... not mundane. Anyway! I am a feminist because: Sexism exists. It is real. And I hates it.

Now I have a very specific something I want to rant about: Body Image. Still, in today's culture, a woman's power comes from her appearance. As women we are bombarded with the propaganda that we must be SEXY and smart. This is, I suppose, better then feeling pressure to be merely sexy. Now, to be honest, shallow values is a trans-genderal epidemic, but women feel much more pressure to be perfect. (ok, ok, I've never been  a man, I don't really know.) This can be seen easily in commercials; there are a myriad of cosmetic commercials selling women glamour, clothing commercials selling her style, cleaning commercials selling her a family, a whole army of unattainable women with unattainable looks, doing unattainable things.

And I hate the whole concept of make up. I resent the implication that women have to paint their faces to be beautiful! (or that women have to be beautiful in the first place!)

The impetus behind this rant was that Saturday night I went out dancing (at the local gay club, which I call the gay bar, so that I can say "I have something to put in you, at the GAY BAR GAY BAR GAY BAR." My diction is ruled by song lyrics.) with a couple of male friends. And I wore my new corset. Because it pleases me. And it makes me hawt. And gives me unbelievable amounts of cleavage. But the point is not that I am one sexy beast, the point is that I normally dress pretty frumpily, and while I was going all femme fatal I met some of my straight male friends. And they acted different around me. They smiled more at me, talked to me more, were generally nicer. And these guys are people I respect. (I'm not even going to mention how the drunken idiots acted around me. God.) They respect me, they talk to me about "intellectual" things. They were still significantly nicer to me when I was beautiful. And this bothers me.

RAWR. I will rage against underlying problems in our culture that I have no chance of fixing!

Wo0t!!1!!!! F1rst P0st!!!1!!!

I created this blog a while ago. And by a while I mean a few weeks. I remember this because I spent a while angsting over the name to a few friends on AIM. My friends never liked the name I picked. I'm rather fond of it. For one thing, it alliterates, for another it connotes zombies. Because there is a basement somewhere, and there are brains. And you can get them for cheap. Zombies.

It also has the purchasing slightly used black market body parts vibe to it, which I love. Plus, I'm totally trying to cultivate the dispossessed hipster feel, and nothing screams "I'm rebelling" quite like cheap zombie food.

The point is, there was a significant space of time between my first post and the birth of this blog. That's because I don't commit well. And I'm scatterbrained. So I may or may not update this blog frequently. Don't the possibilities excite?

Why am I writing a blog? Because I'm just that cool. I like to write about myself. And I like to write about the great injustices. In fact I like to write about most anything. But when I just write and then shove it away into the abyss of my desktop nobody ever says compliments me on my writing. And I do love my compliments. The moral of this story is: I'm narcissistic.

Anyway, the real reason I thought of posting today is that I can feel a feminist rant coming on. But I wanted to post a "first post" first post before I start into why men suck. But don't despair! If you stay tuned in a couple of hours you can get all of the unbridled passion and fury of an amateur social scientist.