Buying a used car

Things to consider:

1. Price
2. Ability to fix parts that are continuously breaking apart
3. 6-CD changer (not me, someone else)
4. leather seats (same someone else, by the initials of ND)
5. Not Ford Taurus
6. Mileage
7. Leaking engine (yes, I said buying a used car, didn't I?)
8. My good friend Kelly's Blue Book
9 My other friends comments.
10. Budget constraint. For now - given by parents

An illusion indeed.

Deja Vu is about the most boring place I've been to in Ypsi - Ann Arbor.

Please do not go there, even if you are bored out of your mind and think that Deja Vu will provide you with a shot of adrenaline. You may be better off shopping at the S^3 store on South U. Or visiting my bathroom, which has been increasingly filled with FHM subscriptions by the boys in the house.

conservatism

If only elections around the world ran like the papal elections.

It doesn't bother anyone who is not interested.

The only question the public gets to talk about is conservative/not, black/not.

No campaign defamation-related sex scandals on TV (although... never mind.)

Fact that an African cardinal stood a chance in the election makes America's liberalism look like a farce.

Maximizer and Satisficer

Two classmates modeled the paradox of choice, as first outlined by psychologist Barry Schwartz. Gist of it is that people are dum and irrational, therefore, when given more choices, they get terribly confused about their utility function. When given too many choices and forced to choose one, the indecisive, backward-looking person does two things 1. accumulate opportunity cost, which defies its own definition, because opp cost supposed to be compared with next best choice only 2. loses sight of marginal utility of spending more time on making a decision.

Now in addition to comparing a short-white skirt with long-black one, I have to consider my marginal utility gained from spending more time making a choice? WTF?

Anyway, maximizer = person spends inordinate amount of time trying to make the best decision, confuses him/herself when too many choices are available. Satisficer = person that is content when finds U(W)>U(W*), W* being some kind of mean/expectation of mean.

Barry Schwarts said latter will be happier. Model agrees.

I think I am half-confinced.


Life has too many variables to control for anyway.

UROP - the end

Finally finished summarizing three volumes of Paris Peace Conference Treay minutes over the span of two semesters.

A time worth celebrating.

My mind now is filled with obscure names like Dantzig, Vorarlberg and Danube (these are only names I remember because I made up my own pronunciation for them). I wonder what have these places turned into now, after all the bloodshed and nonsensical arguments that politicians had fought over a century ago. Example of arguments made:

If you don't give me what I want I will declare myself Bolshevik

This city's pastors are not celibate, and therefore should not belong to the other state whose pastors are.

I had conqured this land 1000 years ago by force, and there is no reason why I should leave now.

The people in that city are ignorant fools and have no clue what they want, so give them to us.

President Wilson said that economic sustenance is key. Therefore I follow the American's principle as long as it pleases me.

The League of Nations sucks at resolving this dispute, why should we listen to them? It sucks, it sucks, it sucks.

Give me what I want now or I will throw rocks at you.

Throw Rocks at'em

The act of throwing rocks at foreign embassies is analagous to games that 5-year-olds play. The fact thatt such an act is done en masse only demonstrates the stupidity of the mob. My faith in the authoritarian government had previously been in its ability to quash such imbecile mobbish instincts at the most efficient rate around the world. But when a government has to resort to the throwing-rocks act in foreign diplomacy, it has clearly exhausted its wits. Sad, very sad.

And of course, the insulted party is now demanding an apology. So much for hitting someone to get an apology back. Didn't you learn when you are 5 years old that this strategy simply DOES NOT WORK? Not if you slap them slightly across the face to irritate them. If you truely were to get an apology out of someone, you'd have to f****** SMACK the hell out of them, and see blood. BLOOOOOD. White, yellow and red, Sin City style.

Bug This

What do conservative scientists do when they are bored? Discovering new species of beetles that feed on mould, and naming them Agathidium bushi, Agathidium cheneyi and Agathidium rumsfeldi.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4443263.stm

The other newly discovered bugs were named Darth Vader and the Greek words for "ugly". "Big ears" anyone?

If I were a bored liberal scientist in disguise, I would name a family of bugs "youi" "Forgotti" "Polandi".