Saturday, April 7, 2018
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
My theories on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays, whatever your view on the holidays of the winter season, have a lovely time of it. Figured since you haven't heard from me in a while, thought I should post something. But not just any something.
I've said before, I'm a freak for science. I've earned any number of sideways "Katie shut up" glances for scientific analyses of things. Because it's fun for me, what can I say? So of course I'm a biology major in college now - were you expecting anything different? My finals were finished up Tuesday before last, on the 13th, so I've still got a lot of the content fresh in my brain. Not that it would stop me from doing scientific analyses if the information wasn't as fresh in there. Anyway.
The other day, my brother and I were watching Christmas cartoons in the basement and Rudolph was the first on the list. If you could hear the running commentary we have on everything we do, you'd understand completely why I am the way I am. And that commentary doesn't stop for anything, certainly not classic Christmas movies. And that particular day (and this particular day) my brain is tuned in to the possible genetics of a luminescent red nose on a member of the species Rangifer tarandus, or the reindeer.
Something like that would still be tied into genetics, right? My brain quickly computed that Mr. and Mrs. Donner were heterozygous for the gene for nose color - they had both the dominant and the recessive gene for nose. Let's say T is the dominant for black nose and t is the recessive for red nose. That means there was a 25% chance that you'd end up with a red nosed reindeer, and they hit that sweet spot. That's acceptable. But here's the big question - why aren't there more red-nosed reindeer around?
Sure, a recessive gene is less common than a dominant in a lot of cases, and given the prevalence of Abominable Snowmonsters of the North, a glowing red nose would be a genetic disadvantage. It's easier to find something that glows and emits a loud high-pitched noise. (I'm not even going to bother with the science behind a light making a high-pitched noise like that - one thing at a time.) But then it might also be a genetic advantage. Can you imagine how many snowstorms the frozen North Pole gets? (Yes I am just considering the North Pole population of reindeer. They are a geographically alienated population, so population genetics dictates that I only focus on the factors of this specific region. These are the rules environmental science follows.) A glowing nose of any color could aid in the finding of food on foggy Christmas Eves, not to mention the other times of year that storms occur. So as for the usefulness of a glowing red nose, the jury is out. But the point I started out making is that, sure a recessive allele is going to be less common than its dominant mate, but that doesn't mean it only occurs two times out of the entire population of North Pole reindeer.
And we have to assume that there are more reindeer in the North Pole than just Santa's reindeer. A man who delivers toys all over the globe for all the good children has to know a thing or two about maintaining a population of flying reindeer. He also has to know that you've got to have a way to maintain the population once the core deer die. There might be longer lifespans up North, but that doesn't mean the rules of mortality are suspended. Magic does not make one immune to the laws of science. You just... amend them. So Santa is going to have more than just the eight tiny reindeer that allow his sleigh to fly. Otherwise inbreeding occurs and after a few centuries, you've got mutated deer who can't fly, riddled with genetic disorders - it's just a mess all around. So there has to be an appreciable pool of recessive alleles for a red nose. Are these deer just not breeding? Why is Rudolph the first and only red-nosed reindeer?
And this afternoon, I think, what if the gene is linked to the X-chromosome? Then the gene could be dormant for most of the reindeer population. And that would explain how the gene shows up in a male reindeer first. Mrs. Donner is without a doubt XTXt in this case, so there's a 25% chance for a red-nosed reindeer son.
But dormant does not mean absent. How many other red-nosed reindeer have Santa and his elven ilk ostracized from their cheery Northern society? What is this seedy underbelly of the North Pole society?
Away from the doom and gloom, though, I'm telling all this to Mom, and she says, "Maybe it's not genetic, maybe it's a birth defect." Not all birth defects are genetic. Cerebral palsy, for example, is caused by the fetus not getting enough oxygen. Not genetic at all - circumstantial.
New hypothesis - a freak solar flare sometime during the seven-month reindeer gestation period cause a mutation in the fetus of Rudolph leading to the specialized genes that code for his nose to code a bioluminescence gene. This would cause his nose to light up. The atmosphere is thinner up there in the polar north - solar radiation could indeed have this effect. Granted, this solar flare is causing one hell of a mutation, but unlikely does not mean out of the question.
The next question that arose, then, was how Rudolph has control over this glowing. Bioluminescence occurs frequently in deep sea fish - we're talking DEEEEEP sea where it's dark beyond belief. This luminescence helps attract prey. The animals, presumably, don't have conscious control over this glowing. So how does Rudolph? My first thought was to write that off as Santa's magic.
"Now, hang on, stop the presses!" you cry, "You reeled me in with this purely scientific discussion of one of Christmas' most popular icons. This is something I've been waiting for my entire life, and thank God you delivered it. But now you're throwing out this bullcrap about Santa's magic? Why didn't you just write it off as magic from the beginning?" Oh, come on, you can't use magic as the be-all, end-all deus ex machina till the end of time. No fantasy story does that. Otherwise the story would be over too quickly. "Bilbo's got a magic ring that needs to be destroyed?" Gandalf comments, "I'll just poof it to Mount Doom! Problem solved!" "What's this?" the White Witch of Narnia remarks, "The Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve are coming through a portal near the home of the faun Tumnus? No matter, I'll just use my freezing magic to freeze the portal before they can come back! No problem!" (I tried to come up with a Harry Potter example, but J.K. Rowling does a good job by applying the minimum amount of rules and taking magic to its best and furthest limit before the rules apply. Well done, dear lady.) See how quickly everything falls apart when you use magic to solve absolutely everything? There are rules in each story, and magic follows rules, too.
"But science!" Well, if you would have let me finish when I said "Santa's magic", you would be appeased. Mom, not letting me explain things away with magic (which I was reluctant to do) mentioned something that, in hindsight, I probably got wrong on the bio final: Some genes are only encoded for under certain conditions. Like high activity levels - anaerobic respiration occurs in your muscles. Or stress. The body under stress is a brilliant thing. You may feel totally immobilized when under stress, but your body is doing spectacular things. Raising your adrenaline levels, increasing your rate of respiration, increasing your heart rate and revving you up for a fight. Or to run, whatever happens, you know. Your body prepares you to do all sorts of things when you're under stress. The same is true throughout the animal kingdom.
And think about this: Rudolph and Hermy are being chased by a vicious Bumble. That's a pretty stressful situation! And his nose doesn't stop glowing, not for a minute. Rudolph was just told by Clarice that he's cute, is praised by his teacher for a brilliant display of flying, and he starts a little play fight with his friend. Those fights are normal among reindeer males, his adrenaline is already up from the shock and heart going pitter-pat, of course his nose is glowing. Santa, the ruler of all good in the North Pole (who rejected me as a youth because of my physical deformity) has just asked me to lead his sleigh and save Christmas? That's a hell of a lot of pressure! Of course his nose is going to glow!
"But his nose started glowing when he was born! What stress was he under at birth?" You think I didn't do some research on reindeer? Shame on you, gentle reader! When a reindeer calf is first born, you should leave it be for about 4-6 hours, so say the reindeer farmers. Let the mother tend to it. And what do Mr. Donner and Santa do? They disturb the kid. I don't know what that would do, but I can imagine it would cause excitement, raise the heart rate, some degree of stress on the body, bam! Glowing nose.
See, now, perfectly scientific explanation to Rudolph's glowing nose.
If you want an explanation of talking snowmen, such as Sam and Frosty, then I implore you to look no further than the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Snowmen". In short, they're leftovers from an alien invasion by snow that occurred in the 19th century.
Fa la la la la la la la la!!!!
I've said before, I'm a freak for science. I've earned any number of sideways "Katie shut up" glances for scientific analyses of things. Because it's fun for me, what can I say? So of course I'm a biology major in college now - were you expecting anything different? My finals were finished up Tuesday before last, on the 13th, so I've still got a lot of the content fresh in my brain. Not that it would stop me from doing scientific analyses if the information wasn't as fresh in there. Anyway.
The other day, my brother and I were watching Christmas cartoons in the basement and Rudolph was the first on the list. If you could hear the running commentary we have on everything we do, you'd understand completely why I am the way I am. And that commentary doesn't stop for anything, certainly not classic Christmas movies. And that particular day (and this particular day) my brain is tuned in to the possible genetics of a luminescent red nose on a member of the species Rangifer tarandus, or the reindeer.
Something like that would still be tied into genetics, right? My brain quickly computed that Mr. and Mrs. Donner were heterozygous for the gene for nose color - they had both the dominant and the recessive gene for nose. Let's say T is the dominant for black nose and t is the recessive for red nose. That means there was a 25% chance that you'd end up with a red nosed reindeer, and they hit that sweet spot. That's acceptable. But here's the big question - why aren't there more red-nosed reindeer around?
Sure, a recessive gene is less common than a dominant in a lot of cases, and given the prevalence of Abominable Snowmonsters of the North, a glowing red nose would be a genetic disadvantage. It's easier to find something that glows and emits a loud high-pitched noise. (I'm not even going to bother with the science behind a light making a high-pitched noise like that - one thing at a time.) But then it might also be a genetic advantage. Can you imagine how many snowstorms the frozen North Pole gets? (Yes I am just considering the North Pole population of reindeer. They are a geographically alienated population, so population genetics dictates that I only focus on the factors of this specific region. These are the rules environmental science follows.) A glowing nose of any color could aid in the finding of food on foggy Christmas Eves, not to mention the other times of year that storms occur. So as for the usefulness of a glowing red nose, the jury is out. But the point I started out making is that, sure a recessive allele is going to be less common than its dominant mate, but that doesn't mean it only occurs two times out of the entire population of North Pole reindeer.
And we have to assume that there are more reindeer in the North Pole than just Santa's reindeer. A man who delivers toys all over the globe for all the good children has to know a thing or two about maintaining a population of flying reindeer. He also has to know that you've got to have a way to maintain the population once the core deer die. There might be longer lifespans up North, but that doesn't mean the rules of mortality are suspended. Magic does not make one immune to the laws of science. You just... amend them. So Santa is going to have more than just the eight tiny reindeer that allow his sleigh to fly. Otherwise inbreeding occurs and after a few centuries, you've got mutated deer who can't fly, riddled with genetic disorders - it's just a mess all around. So there has to be an appreciable pool of recessive alleles for a red nose. Are these deer just not breeding? Why is Rudolph the first and only red-nosed reindeer?
And this afternoon, I think, what if the gene is linked to the X-chromosome? Then the gene could be dormant for most of the reindeer population. And that would explain how the gene shows up in a male reindeer first. Mrs. Donner is without a doubt XTXt in this case, so there's a 25% chance for a red-nosed reindeer son.
But dormant does not mean absent. How many other red-nosed reindeer have Santa and his elven ilk ostracized from their cheery Northern society? What is this seedy underbelly of the North Pole society?
Away from the doom and gloom, though, I'm telling all this to Mom, and she says, "Maybe it's not genetic, maybe it's a birth defect." Not all birth defects are genetic. Cerebral palsy, for example, is caused by the fetus not getting enough oxygen. Not genetic at all - circumstantial.
New hypothesis - a freak solar flare sometime during the seven-month reindeer gestation period cause a mutation in the fetus of Rudolph leading to the specialized genes that code for his nose to code a bioluminescence gene. This would cause his nose to light up. The atmosphere is thinner up there in the polar north - solar radiation could indeed have this effect. Granted, this solar flare is causing one hell of a mutation, but unlikely does not mean out of the question.
The next question that arose, then, was how Rudolph has control over this glowing. Bioluminescence occurs frequently in deep sea fish - we're talking DEEEEEP sea where it's dark beyond belief. This luminescence helps attract prey. The animals, presumably, don't have conscious control over this glowing. So how does Rudolph? My first thought was to write that off as Santa's magic.
"Now, hang on, stop the presses!" you cry, "You reeled me in with this purely scientific discussion of one of Christmas' most popular icons. This is something I've been waiting for my entire life, and thank God you delivered it. But now you're throwing out this bullcrap about Santa's magic? Why didn't you just write it off as magic from the beginning?" Oh, come on, you can't use magic as the be-all, end-all deus ex machina till the end of time. No fantasy story does that. Otherwise the story would be over too quickly. "Bilbo's got a magic ring that needs to be destroyed?" Gandalf comments, "I'll just poof it to Mount Doom! Problem solved!" "What's this?" the White Witch of Narnia remarks, "The Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve are coming through a portal near the home of the faun Tumnus? No matter, I'll just use my freezing magic to freeze the portal before they can come back! No problem!" (I tried to come up with a Harry Potter example, but J.K. Rowling does a good job by applying the minimum amount of rules and taking magic to its best and furthest limit before the rules apply. Well done, dear lady.) See how quickly everything falls apart when you use magic to solve absolutely everything? There are rules in each story, and magic follows rules, too.
"But science!" Well, if you would have let me finish when I said "Santa's magic", you would be appeased. Mom, not letting me explain things away with magic (which I was reluctant to do) mentioned something that, in hindsight, I probably got wrong on the bio final: Some genes are only encoded for under certain conditions. Like high activity levels - anaerobic respiration occurs in your muscles. Or stress. The body under stress is a brilliant thing. You may feel totally immobilized when under stress, but your body is doing spectacular things. Raising your adrenaline levels, increasing your rate of respiration, increasing your heart rate and revving you up for a fight. Or to run, whatever happens, you know. Your body prepares you to do all sorts of things when you're under stress. The same is true throughout the animal kingdom.
And think about this: Rudolph and Hermy are being chased by a vicious Bumble. That's a pretty stressful situation! And his nose doesn't stop glowing, not for a minute. Rudolph was just told by Clarice that he's cute, is praised by his teacher for a brilliant display of flying, and he starts a little play fight with his friend. Those fights are normal among reindeer males, his adrenaline is already up from the shock and heart going pitter-pat, of course his nose is glowing. Santa, the ruler of all good in the North Pole (who rejected me as a youth because of my physical deformity) has just asked me to lead his sleigh and save Christmas? That's a hell of a lot of pressure! Of course his nose is going to glow!
"But his nose started glowing when he was born! What stress was he under at birth?" You think I didn't do some research on reindeer? Shame on you, gentle reader! When a reindeer calf is first born, you should leave it be for about 4-6 hours, so say the reindeer farmers. Let the mother tend to it. And what do Mr. Donner and Santa do? They disturb the kid. I don't know what that would do, but I can imagine it would cause excitement, raise the heart rate, some degree of stress on the body, bam! Glowing nose.
See, now, perfectly scientific explanation to Rudolph's glowing nose.
If you want an explanation of talking snowmen, such as Sam and Frosty, then I implore you to look no further than the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Snowmen". In short, they're leftovers from an alien invasion by snow that occurred in the 19th century.
Fa la la la la la la la la!!!!
Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Just to clarify for everybody out there...
I was typing today, since I finished my homework and felt like writing, when I noticed I still had Google open in the background from yesterday. It still had yesterday's Google Doodle of the letters playing tennis. "Well, that's distracting," I said to myself, so I hit refresh. And I saw that Google had a new logo. It's rather streamlined. Personally, I liked the old one. I liked how un-smooth it was, but I digress. It had a little link at the bottom, which I followed, and it lead to Google's blog, a place I've been before, but don't frequent. It's pretty nifty.
So I scrolled down on the comments, because even when I'm goofing off, I goof off. I have no legitimate reason. And I saw someone's comment saying she liked it- She said it was clean, simple, and skinny. Which it is. These are facts. Someone made a joke, which I liked-"real fonts have curves". It's a good joke.
But then someone attacked the OP (original poster). I'm posting the whole comment, and even though I'm not giving you the link to Google's blog, it's not hard to find, but please, whatever you do with this, don't troll this guy. He seems sad enough to me.
So you hate fat people? Just what I would expect from a racist. Look what America has become. Accept the lord as your master and savior! This is the only way those blacks will go to heaven anyway... Screw your PC bullshit
So it seems a little hypocritical to me-calling someone a racist, then saying a racist comment saying Black people won't go to heaven unless they accept the Lord as their Savior. It's also really uncalled for, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.
Even if the OP said that she did hate fat people, that's not racist. Racist means, simply, a prejudice for or against a particular race. From Merriam-Webster-"racism-a belief that some races are by nature superior to others; also: discrimination based on such belief". Weight is not a race. There is no shared fat-people culture, or skinny-people culture, they are not all from one country (and I've heard several variations of the "fat Americans" joke), and they are not all of one skin tone.
That's not to say that there isn't a word for prejudice against the overweight. When I was on iFunny the other day, I found a picture of an excerpt from a book called "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" (you can just google "politically correct fairy tales" and get a PDF to read). I found myself a PDF and it was FUNNY! I won't tell you any of the stories, because they're just a pleasure to read, but it opens up with an introduction that tells you how silly the book is going to be (not in those exact words, of course). Here's the important part:
"If [...] I have inadvertantly displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconimicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriachalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize and encourage your suggestions
for rectification."
Not all of those prejudices are words, I'm pretty sure. But my point is, there are so many types of prejudices out there, and they're not all racism, or race-oriented. Some people are just misguided, in fact, and dislike people. I always wonder how neo-Nazis can find anything admirable in the Nazi party to the point where they want to emulate it. (If anyone has any ideas, please tell me. I don't understand, seriously, and would like to.) But just calling someone a racist when they display (or you think they display) some kind of prejudice as the guy above did is wrong, and you lose a lot of credibility as a debater. (Not to mention the amount of Katie-points you lose by not carefully choosing your words!)
Anyway, that's all. Just thought I should clarify for everyone.
So I scrolled down on the comments, because even when I'm goofing off, I goof off. I have no legitimate reason. And I saw someone's comment saying she liked it- She said it was clean, simple, and skinny. Which it is. These are facts. Someone made a joke, which I liked-"real fonts have curves". It's a good joke.
But then someone attacked the OP (original poster). I'm posting the whole comment, and even though I'm not giving you the link to Google's blog, it's not hard to find, but please, whatever you do with this, don't troll this guy. He seems sad enough to me.
So you hate fat people? Just what I would expect from a racist. Look what America has become. Accept the lord as your master and savior! This is the only way those blacks will go to heaven anyway... Screw your PC bullshit
So it seems a little hypocritical to me-calling someone a racist, then saying a racist comment saying Black people won't go to heaven unless they accept the Lord as their Savior. It's also really uncalled for, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.
Even if the OP said that she did hate fat people, that's not racist. Racist means, simply, a prejudice for or against a particular race. From Merriam-Webster-"racism-a belief that some races are by nature superior to others; also: discrimination based on such belief". Weight is not a race. There is no shared fat-people culture, or skinny-people culture, they are not all from one country (and I've heard several variations of the "fat Americans" joke), and they are not all of one skin tone.
That's not to say that there isn't a word for prejudice against the overweight. When I was on iFunny the other day, I found a picture of an excerpt from a book called "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" (you can just google "politically correct fairy tales" and get a PDF to read). I found myself a PDF and it was FUNNY! I won't tell you any of the stories, because they're just a pleasure to read, but it opens up with an introduction that tells you how silly the book is going to be (not in those exact words, of course). Here's the important part:
"If [...] I have inadvertantly displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconimicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriachalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize and encourage your suggestions
for rectification."
Not all of those prejudices are words, I'm pretty sure. But my point is, there are so many types of prejudices out there, and they're not all racism, or race-oriented. Some people are just misguided, in fact, and dislike people. I always wonder how neo-Nazis can find anything admirable in the Nazi party to the point where they want to emulate it. (If anyone has any ideas, please tell me. I don't understand, seriously, and would like to.) But just calling someone a racist when they display (or you think they display) some kind of prejudice as the guy above did is wrong, and you lose a lot of credibility as a debater. (Not to mention the amount of Katie-points you lose by not carefully choosing your words!)
Anyway, that's all. Just thought I should clarify for everyone.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
What voice part IS Adam Young?
So, I am a HUGE Owl City fan. The first thing I looked up when I started learning guitar was an Owl City song, and I was very disappointed that I couldn't play it because at the time I didn't know how to read guitar tabs. Now that I can, most of the songs in my tabs folder are Owl City songs, or Sky Sailing (which is basically Owl City except in acoustic rather than electronic medium). To state it exactly, I have 48 songs in my folder, and 24 of them are by Adam Young, the genius that is Owl City/Sky Sailing. Knowing that, I can get into my point.
This last week, Tuesday 'til Friday, I was at a singing summer camp which had no wi-fi. I typed this on my iTouch around 9 PM Thursday, and am posting it now.
Thursday, July 9, 2015, 9:10 PM
So, yes, I'm a nerd. Now that we've established that... Last February, I learned that there was an a capella summer camp in my area and it apparently had been there for 3 years and I had no idea. Awkward...
This last week, Tuesday 'til Friday, I was at a singing summer camp which had no wi-fi. I typed this on my iTouch around 9 PM Thursday, and am posting it now.
Thursday, July 9, 2015, 9:10 PM
So, yes, I'm a nerd. Now that we've established that... Last February, I learned that there was an a capella summer camp in my area and it apparently had been there for 3 years and I had no idea. Awkward...
This is the 3rd and final night of it and I am lying in my room writing and listening to the sweet, sweet sounds of Owl City and associated Adam Young productions. I love the guy.
On a related note, the a capella camp is actually more like a barbershop quartet camp. In barbershop, the parts aren't the standard SATB. From highest to lowest, you have tenor-flute like Soprano 1s; lead-they sing the melody line; baritone-the higher Altos with the trickiest and seemingly most random part, but it really makes the whole thing come together; and the bass-they sing bass, which for women ends at F-3, the F below middle C. That's what I'm singing (and it's turning out really fun but a literal pain-my chest hasn't hurt so much since I had to sing Alto with congestion). If I do this again, I'm going to try baritone.
But anyway, so here I am lying in my room with my Owl City, and I'm wondering "What voice part is Adam Young, anyway?"
Usually, I'm pretty good at this. It's not exactly a difficult thing to determine. But I've become aware that your voice doesn't stop developing until you hit 35, and I'm pretty sure he's not that old.
In his early Sky Sailing work, in everything but "I Live Alone", he's in the tenor range. As you move on through "Maybe Im Dreaming", "Ocean Eyes" and "All Things Bright and Beautiful", he's singing in the baritone range-lower than tenor but higher than bass. But in some of his more recent stuff, like his "Ultraviolet" EP, he has one song that's in E-flat, which is really low. For reference, "Fireflies" is in A-flat, and E-flat is a major fourth BELOW that. It's out of my range, but only just. Imagine "When Can I See You Again?", the song at the end of "Wreck-it Ralph", an octave lower. That is merely a half-step below the song in E-flat I'm referring to. (The song is called "This Isn't the End"--it is one of the best songs I've ever heard. Take a listen if you like.) The point is, it's in the bass range.
So...Im at a loss here. On one song on the EP, he goes into some soprano notes, which throws me off even more. The guy is playing with my ears. It doesn't make me like him any less-it might, in fact, increase my liking for him. I like being thrown off my game in this mild way. Here's hoping he keeps me on my toes in the future.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Ahh, Science
Recently, Andrew, that historian brother of mine, has been taking a science class. I love science, and that's one of the reasons I know he's taking the class. The second reason is that when the book for this class arrived in the mail, I was home and present when it was unwrapped. The title-"Rare Earth"-was rather intriguing. The third reason I know he's taking the class is because he's having a lot of difficulty with it.
Thankfully, these difficulties are right up my alley. As I understand it, the assignment he's been working on as of late involves using the dates and times provided by the book to create a timeline of the history of the Earth. However, the book is riddled with inconsistencies. I haven't read it, and despite my interest before, I don't think I'm going to, but I've been reading the reviews on Amazon, both the positive and the negative ones to get a full perspective. At one point, the book says that it was take 300 Earths to match the mass of Jupiter, or fill it up (something like that), yet 3 pages later, it says that it would take 318, which, given the mass/size of the Earth, is a big difference. I wouldn't know which to believe, either. But there are also inconsistencies with the dates provided. At one point, it says that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, when in fact, it's 4.6 billion. It also provides false and conflicting information about when eukaryotic cells first showed up, how soon after the Great Oxygenation Event and Snowball Earth was oxygen first available, when the ice ages occurred, and so on. It contradicts itself constantly.
Apparently, the whole thesis of the book is that animal life like ours is rare because you have to have the perfect conditions to create intelligent life like us. In one sense, this is true. It's highly unlikely that there are any other species of humans wandering about the galaxy sending up satellites and whatnot. With the countless different ways that DNA could arrange itself, it is very unlikely that there is another species of human out there. And that's just if all DNA is carbon-based, and if all the conditions are exactly the same everywhere else. Here's an easier way to digest it. My dachshund is short-haired and brown (red in the right light). I have seen black shorthaired dachshunds, and just recently, I saw a tri-colored one. Not to mention that there are long-haired and wire-haired dachshunds. Now how could this be? They're all the same breed of dog. Because of DNA variations over time caused by mating, both selective and natural. Personally, I think that tri-colored dachshund is gorgeous, and stunning to look at, but I wouldn't trade my snoring, floppy-eared, red canine for anything. But even if you go as far back as to when the breed first appeared, when the conditions were relatively the same all over Germany, you had different colors, different sizes. I'm not yet a self-declared expert on the evolution of the breeds, but I'm pretty sure the different colors and sizes comes from the wolf genes still present and visible in the species of dog.
But to return to the point, because I could talk about dogs all day and not bore myself, it is also highly unlikely that we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe. We are the most intelligent that we are aware of, but that doesn't mean that, compared to everything else that might be there, we aren't bone-dead stupid. Right now I'm thinking of the Tralfamadorians from "Slaughterhouse-5". They could see through time and had humans in a zoo. They looked nothing like us, yet were clearly more intelligent than we. I also remember reading in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" about the Hooloovoo (I think it was), an "intelligent shade of blue". That's not even to mention the Buggers from "Ender's Game". They were clearly intelligent, at least enough to develop space travel, but we didn't understand how they communicated. If I remember right from the book, we didn't regard them as intelligent life. I always pictured the Buggers as space wasps, in my head. That's certainly not humanoid, unless I truly did miss something by covering up all those pictures of arthropods in middle school. It's highly unlikely that there are a lot of other humanoid species out there. Look how few humanoid species there are on Earth!
Humans aren't even the only form of intelligent life on Earth, and this I find fascinating. Octopi are the most intelligent, non-deuterostome on the planet. They play, just like we humans do. When lions play, it's really hunting practice, honing their predatory skills for later in life. Octopi play just to play, for fun, you might say. An octopus has accurately predicted the outcome of...some important sporting event, I can't remember which...for several years. And even among the deuterostomes like us, pigs are the 4th most intelligent animal. Dolphins are pretty high up there, too. The border collie is the smartest breed of dog. Elephants mourn their dead. Whale communication is a beautiful thing to hear. It's so complex, we can't crack it. The nonverbal language of dogs and chimpanzees is easier to grasp. And we're certainly not all that advanced in terms of sensory perception. Dogs, for example, can smell time. If you were to pull a petal off of a rose, a dog could smell the rate of decomposition, how long ago you pulled it off. They might also be able to tell who pulled it off. Dogs can smell fear, bombs, cancer...It's amazing, but here I am talking about dogs again.
The reason for the discrepancies in this book-I was talking about a book at the beginning, remember?-is that it was published 15 years ago. That may not sound like it's out of date, but science has drastically improved since then. As of the book's publication year of 2000, not very many exoplanets had been discovered. As of 2003, alone, over 100 had been discovered. As of March 3, 2015, 1821 confirmed exoplanets in 1192 planetary systems have been discovered, with 478 of those systems having more than 1 planet. And that's just in our galaxy, which is only 100,000 light years across. According to the best estimate of astronomers, there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I know for sure that by 2000, we knew of at least 3000 galaxies.
All of this astronomy is difficult to grasp for the average person, and if that's false, then at the very least, it's very difficult for Andrew. He's not a science-y person like I am. All of that data in the above paragraph took a bit of research on my part. All the discrepancies in the book are throwing Andrew for a loop. They are a great source of frustration for him. But, like I said, all of those problems are right up my alley. Last year, Mr. Allchurch gave me, among other data files for AP Biology, a powerpoint about the history of the Earth. I trust Mr. Allchurch implicitly. So I gave Andrew the powerpoint and told him that it would be, without a doubt, absolutely correct. I also, as just a bit of fun for myself, looked up the history of animal evolution and sorted all of my animal figures in the order that they evolved in. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd. I bookmarked the website I got my dates from and sent him that, too. Hopefully they'll be of some use to him.
Blimey, I love science!
Thankfully, these difficulties are right up my alley. As I understand it, the assignment he's been working on as of late involves using the dates and times provided by the book to create a timeline of the history of the Earth. However, the book is riddled with inconsistencies. I haven't read it, and despite my interest before, I don't think I'm going to, but I've been reading the reviews on Amazon, both the positive and the negative ones to get a full perspective. At one point, the book says that it was take 300 Earths to match the mass of Jupiter, or fill it up (something like that), yet 3 pages later, it says that it would take 318, which, given the mass/size of the Earth, is a big difference. I wouldn't know which to believe, either. But there are also inconsistencies with the dates provided. At one point, it says that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, when in fact, it's 4.6 billion. It also provides false and conflicting information about when eukaryotic cells first showed up, how soon after the Great Oxygenation Event and Snowball Earth was oxygen first available, when the ice ages occurred, and so on. It contradicts itself constantly.
Apparently, the whole thesis of the book is that animal life like ours is rare because you have to have the perfect conditions to create intelligent life like us. In one sense, this is true. It's highly unlikely that there are any other species of humans wandering about the galaxy sending up satellites and whatnot. With the countless different ways that DNA could arrange itself, it is very unlikely that there is another species of human out there. And that's just if all DNA is carbon-based, and if all the conditions are exactly the same everywhere else. Here's an easier way to digest it. My dachshund is short-haired and brown (red in the right light). I have seen black shorthaired dachshunds, and just recently, I saw a tri-colored one. Not to mention that there are long-haired and wire-haired dachshunds. Now how could this be? They're all the same breed of dog. Because of DNA variations over time caused by mating, both selective and natural. Personally, I think that tri-colored dachshund is gorgeous, and stunning to look at, but I wouldn't trade my snoring, floppy-eared, red canine for anything. But even if you go as far back as to when the breed first appeared, when the conditions were relatively the same all over Germany, you had different colors, different sizes. I'm not yet a self-declared expert on the evolution of the breeds, but I'm pretty sure the different colors and sizes comes from the wolf genes still present and visible in the species of dog.
But to return to the point, because I could talk about dogs all day and not bore myself, it is also highly unlikely that we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe. We are the most intelligent that we are aware of, but that doesn't mean that, compared to everything else that might be there, we aren't bone-dead stupid. Right now I'm thinking of the Tralfamadorians from "Slaughterhouse-5". They could see through time and had humans in a zoo. They looked nothing like us, yet were clearly more intelligent than we. I also remember reading in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" about the Hooloovoo (I think it was), an "intelligent shade of blue". That's not even to mention the Buggers from "Ender's Game". They were clearly intelligent, at least enough to develop space travel, but we didn't understand how they communicated. If I remember right from the book, we didn't regard them as intelligent life. I always pictured the Buggers as space wasps, in my head. That's certainly not humanoid, unless I truly did miss something by covering up all those pictures of arthropods in middle school. It's highly unlikely that there are a lot of other humanoid species out there. Look how few humanoid species there are on Earth!
Humans aren't even the only form of intelligent life on Earth, and this I find fascinating. Octopi are the most intelligent, non-deuterostome on the planet. They play, just like we humans do. When lions play, it's really hunting practice, honing their predatory skills for later in life. Octopi play just to play, for fun, you might say. An octopus has accurately predicted the outcome of...some important sporting event, I can't remember which...for several years. And even among the deuterostomes like us, pigs are the 4th most intelligent animal. Dolphins are pretty high up there, too. The border collie is the smartest breed of dog. Elephants mourn their dead. Whale communication is a beautiful thing to hear. It's so complex, we can't crack it. The nonverbal language of dogs and chimpanzees is easier to grasp. And we're certainly not all that advanced in terms of sensory perception. Dogs, for example, can smell time. If you were to pull a petal off of a rose, a dog could smell the rate of decomposition, how long ago you pulled it off. They might also be able to tell who pulled it off. Dogs can smell fear, bombs, cancer...It's amazing, but here I am talking about dogs again.
The reason for the discrepancies in this book-I was talking about a book at the beginning, remember?-is that it was published 15 years ago. That may not sound like it's out of date, but science has drastically improved since then. As of the book's publication year of 2000, not very many exoplanets had been discovered. As of 2003, alone, over 100 had been discovered. As of March 3, 2015, 1821 confirmed exoplanets in 1192 planetary systems have been discovered, with 478 of those systems having more than 1 planet. And that's just in our galaxy, which is only 100,000 light years across. According to the best estimate of astronomers, there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I know for sure that by 2000, we knew of at least 3000 galaxies.
All of this astronomy is difficult to grasp for the average person, and if that's false, then at the very least, it's very difficult for Andrew. He's not a science-y person like I am. All of that data in the above paragraph took a bit of research on my part. All the discrepancies in the book are throwing Andrew for a loop. They are a great source of frustration for him. But, like I said, all of those problems are right up my alley. Last year, Mr. Allchurch gave me, among other data files for AP Biology, a powerpoint about the history of the Earth. I trust Mr. Allchurch implicitly. So I gave Andrew the powerpoint and told him that it would be, without a doubt, absolutely correct. I also, as just a bit of fun for myself, looked up the history of animal evolution and sorted all of my animal figures in the order that they evolved in. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd. I bookmarked the website I got my dates from and sent him that, too. Hopefully they'll be of some use to him.
Blimey, I love science!
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Silence and Laughter
This morning, I had the pleasure of viewing a conversation held entirely in silence. I know, it kind of seems like a contradiction in terms, but I'm telling you, the only words spoken from the time it began to the time it ended, the only words that were spoken were "Bless you" when somebody sneezed, and the sneezer was not one of the two conversationalists. For the purposes of this blog, they will be called E.G. and R.J. They know who they are, but all you guys will be left guessing. Ha-ha.
Today, in 5th period, which is Environmental Science, we had a test. (And believe me, that's a blessing all it's own. Have you ever had those moments where you just want to "kill" people? Like not literally kill but you just want to make them go away? That's basically 5th period for me. I love the class, but I can't stand my classmates. So there's a knife murderer that comes out. She basically looks like the guy from "Assassin's Creed". But, anyway, a test day is the day where no one talks. Which means, no one I have to silence with my soul-stealing blade, made of dragon tooth and igneous rock. Man, it's gorgeous.) On test days, one of the-I get the feeling they're not exactly special-ed, but that's really the best name right now-teachers takes several students (some of the ones that are most often subject to my Blade) to another room to take their test. This makes the room even quieter. I often get my test done, if not first, then second or third. So then I get about an hour to do whatever I want to, so long as it's quiet. Usually I choose to write. After all, it's a perfect time. Today, however, the teacher had a project she wanted us to get started on. So I grabbed everything I needed and got to work. Unfortunately, the person sitting across from me was making the only sounds in the room. He has a voice that you can easily pick out of a jumble of voices, so naturally when it's the only voice it's pretty distracting. So I had to stop working.
I don't know why, but after I stopped I spent some time just looking at the ceiling not doing anything. I guess I was just relaxing. But when I started paying attention to the room around me, the first thing I noticed was in my peripheral vision. I don't know what it was, but it was enough to catch my attention. R.J. What on earth was he doing? So I followed his motion as he threw something across the room. E.G. caught it. I had just stumbled across a cross-room duel, which included spear throwing, upside-down gun shooting, and grenade throwing.
Now, usually, interactions like this are accompanied by sound, and are just plain annoying. But when it's just the motions, all exaggerated and silent, it's ruddy hilarious. And I had to stifle all of my laughter because people were still taking their tests.
Then, and this was the highlight, E.G. got ahold of a meter stick. R.J. had been moved across the room so as to discourage cheating (there were only 2 people per table), but had left his bag beside E.G. So he got ahold of it with the meter stick and tried to pick it up. Apparently it was really heavy, and it fell right to the floor. That was funny on it's own, but the teacher didn't even notice, which made it even funnier. Then he managed to bring the bag close and started digging through it. He would pull things out, glare hilariously across the room at R.J. and then place the object on the table. Except-He took R.J.'s asthma inhaler-at least I think that's what it was, I wasn't exactly nearby-and put it into the pocket of his hoodie. Then he pulled out a PopTart. Supreme glare. He shoved it into his hoodie, like you do when you're trying to hide something, you know? You hide it under your jacket? So he stuffed this PopTart into his hoodie. Then he pulled out a large black notebook, and he glared even bigger. Then, I don't know how, but he managed to stuff this notebook into his hoodie. Now perhaps I should say here, that he wasn't shoving this stuff into the bottom of the hoodie. He was shoving stuff into the head hole. And when your head's in the way, there's not exactly enough space for a notebook that big. Then he proceeded to make sure the bag was completely empty and then put it on his head. Later, when he held R.J.'s "heart" up to the sky, he looked like a priest worshipping some sun god. Blimey, it was hilarious! And I couldn't make a sound.
Also-and personally, I think this is the best part-they knew I was watching the whole time. So every time I laughed, they laughed. And every time one of them would look at me, especially E.G., I couldn't help but laugh.
Okay, maybe this was a "you had to be there" situation, but I just thought it was a gift to be able to watch a totally silent conversation take place, not to mention an absolutely amazing comedic opportunity.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
What's the point of the ACT?
So now that I'm a junior, I get to take the ACT. Whoopee.
Though the last word was meant as sarcasm, I honestly love taking tests. Freshman year, the morning of my Honors Biology Final, Mr. Allchurch said to me, "I bet you just love taking tests." And though I hadn't realized it until that point (and no, I didn't realize it just because of the fact that when a British man says something, you want to listen), I do. I really do. I told him, yeah, and "It's the only time when everyone shuts up!" Excessive talking at the wrong times irritates me, if you haven't figured that out yet. In addition to that, it seems to me like a break from normal work. On a normal day in Honors Bio, for example, I would take a good 2-3 pages of notes per day, perhaps more. I didn't date my Bio notes then, and now I wish I had. You do far less writing on a test than you do learning the information. And as another addition, I usually finish fairly quickly (although math tests take a little longer from time to time), and then I have a good hour or so to do "Katie things". This includes writing, drawing little one-line doodles that look like something off a Rorschach inkblot test, playing music in my head, or telling myself stories. With the exception of writing, as it is forbidden, I do these things when I finish with a particular section of the ACT test.
Today we took a practice test. Personally, I would have rather been in my classes. We were given the choice not to take it, but we were promised a movie in the theater afterwards and exemption from the remaining classes of the day if we took the test. I planned to use this time to finish up my AP Language homework and work on my novel some more. This never happened. (My school just seems to have problems following through on their claims, and they are so bad at scheduling I once suggested that they should schedule something 30 minutes before they wanted it to happen so that it would actually happen when they wanted it to.) So, yeah, I missed AP Music Theory and had to jump right to Spanish. Why hast thou forsaken me, O ye Pharisee of Probability? (Would you believe I just thought of that now?)
Testing is important. I get that. Each job has certain skills that are essential if that job is to be carried out. As an engineer, you need to know how to do math. As a statistician or a scientist or an accountant, you need to know how to read graphs. If you're going to write anything in your life, you need to know how to write it with the proper spelling and grammar. The person reading that report is going to need to know how to pick out the important bits and remember those. And the ACT does test those skills to an extent. But I don't think the test really works.
Last year, in the second semester of AP Biology, Mr. Allchurch put some articles on to my data stick (everyone else's, too, but they're not the ones writing this blog post, are they?), one of which was one about being a good science teacher, or something like that. I enjoyed reading it. It said that school is the only time in your life that you can't look something up if you don't know it. If you're a professional chemist, you don't need to memorize the atomic masses of every single element, or really even the order they come in on the periodic table. You're probably going to have one right there next to you. A biologist probably doesn't need the knowledge about what photosystem does what in his everyday work, and if he needs it, he can look it up. Just the other day, my science teacher didn't know the name of the Marianas Trench, the deepest trench in the ocean, off the top of her head. She looked it up. Everything is somewhere, and school is the only place where you can't go find it. Sure, it's great if you memorize the information, but people aren't textbooks. That's why we have textbooks. There are many more important things to keep in our heads, like what not to combine if you don't want something to explode.
And that's not even the big part of my objection. I understand that some students would just look up all the information even if there are some things they should know, like in Biology you need to know the structure of the cell, or the formula for photosynthesis/respiration. So I get why they wouldn't make all tests open-book. I don't think the test should be timed.
I hate the math portion of the ACT. I also hate the science portion, but I hate the math portion even more. It's 60 questions in 60 minutes. Anyone who does math for a living has way more than one minute to solve a problem, be it one as simple as a math teacher would have, as long as an accountant would have, or as complex as an engineer would have. You have as much time as you need in the real world of math. Timed tests should not exist. Some people can't work or think under that kind of pressure. That's the same reason why I seldom play timed games. When that ticking clock isn't there, I can come up with a solution to the game in a matter of seconds. But with that clock, the same solution will take me so much more time to come up with. It's the same thing with the math portion. I'm in trigonometry now and I find myself enjoying solving triangles. Today I saw a problem on the math portion that looked like it wanted me to solve the triangle. So I quickly got to work. I saw my angles-I was given two of them- and I subtracted their sum for 180, like I always do. Only then did I read the question and find that I did all that work for nothing. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter now. This isn't just me. I'm not the only one with the potential to do that.
And the thing is, the test is barely even testing mathematical knowledge. It wants to know that you know the proper formula, sure, but I think what it's really testing is reaction to stress under pressure. I was under the impression that humans were against human experimentation. I'm cool with it, personally, just tell me that's what you're doing and I'll submit like a little bunny rabbit. So long as it's not "oh, we're testing this to see if it's lethal", but rather psychological testing. Fire away with that, because I love it. Also, some people already have bad reactions to math. I read an essay about it once, I think, a professional essay, that said that fear of numbers was a legitimate thing. (I don't think you can have mathematical dyslexia, as I once had someone at school tell me they had, but certainly all the numbers can get you discombobulated.) Some people just aren't math people. And that's cool. I'm not a dancer. My friend "A" is not a singer. My friend "K" struggles with academia. Everyone's good at something and bad at something else. And you can teach people who are bad at math the formulas and all the everything they'll need (and you did read that right), but you can't teach them to be good at math. It's not going to happen. So certainly if we're going to have a test that tests everything, it should have math on it, but it shouldn't be timed. That just makes things worse. And I understand that we can't have people taking the test for the whole day. But that doesn't mean we can't have them stop for meal breaks or come back in the morning, and they can be restricted from answering any questions they answered before the break to prevent cheating.
And here's why I hate the science portion. It bears little relevance to science itself, and that upsets me. I get that it's all about reading graphs. But I keep getting this question about the threshold of hearing versus the threshold of pain. I keep looking at this graph, and I keep reading the explanation of the study they mention at the beginning, but I can't answer the questions. Maybe I want to understand this graph more. I know I do, and I'm incapable of it when I've only got 5 minutes and I'm left to my own devices. My desire for understanding could be preventing me from focusing on actually answering the question. But the first question is usually about finches. This question is the last one. The finch question is an easy one. I've answered it a dozen times in Biology class alone. I look at this graph about hearing and pain and the first thing I think is airplanes. And then I'm kind of stuck on that. I barely even tried answering those questions this time.
Clearly the ACT is in need of some serious reform. As far as tests go, I don't think it's been structured very well. I want to understand why they made it this way. Because I don't see the point of it. I don't see any purpose beyond college and the fact that schools make you take it for taking this test, for spending over 3 hours of my day doing something that I will barely remember later on. I'll remember the rest of high school. I'll hardly remember any of this.
Though the last word was meant as sarcasm, I honestly love taking tests. Freshman year, the morning of my Honors Biology Final, Mr. Allchurch said to me, "I bet you just love taking tests." And though I hadn't realized it until that point (and no, I didn't realize it just because of the fact that when a British man says something, you want to listen), I do. I really do. I told him, yeah, and "It's the only time when everyone shuts up!" Excessive talking at the wrong times irritates me, if you haven't figured that out yet. In addition to that, it seems to me like a break from normal work. On a normal day in Honors Bio, for example, I would take a good 2-3 pages of notes per day, perhaps more. I didn't date my Bio notes then, and now I wish I had. You do far less writing on a test than you do learning the information. And as another addition, I usually finish fairly quickly (although math tests take a little longer from time to time), and then I have a good hour or so to do "Katie things". This includes writing, drawing little one-line doodles that look like something off a Rorschach inkblot test, playing music in my head, or telling myself stories. With the exception of writing, as it is forbidden, I do these things when I finish with a particular section of the ACT test.
Today we took a practice test. Personally, I would have rather been in my classes. We were given the choice not to take it, but we were promised a movie in the theater afterwards and exemption from the remaining classes of the day if we took the test. I planned to use this time to finish up my AP Language homework and work on my novel some more. This never happened. (My school just seems to have problems following through on their claims, and they are so bad at scheduling I once suggested that they should schedule something 30 minutes before they wanted it to happen so that it would actually happen when they wanted it to.) So, yeah, I missed AP Music Theory and had to jump right to Spanish. Why hast thou forsaken me, O ye Pharisee of Probability? (Would you believe I just thought of that now?)
Testing is important. I get that. Each job has certain skills that are essential if that job is to be carried out. As an engineer, you need to know how to do math. As a statistician or a scientist or an accountant, you need to know how to read graphs. If you're going to write anything in your life, you need to know how to write it with the proper spelling and grammar. The person reading that report is going to need to know how to pick out the important bits and remember those. And the ACT does test those skills to an extent. But I don't think the test really works.
Last year, in the second semester of AP Biology, Mr. Allchurch put some articles on to my data stick (everyone else's, too, but they're not the ones writing this blog post, are they?), one of which was one about being a good science teacher, or something like that. I enjoyed reading it. It said that school is the only time in your life that you can't look something up if you don't know it. If you're a professional chemist, you don't need to memorize the atomic masses of every single element, or really even the order they come in on the periodic table. You're probably going to have one right there next to you. A biologist probably doesn't need the knowledge about what photosystem does what in his everyday work, and if he needs it, he can look it up. Just the other day, my science teacher didn't know the name of the Marianas Trench, the deepest trench in the ocean, off the top of her head. She looked it up. Everything is somewhere, and school is the only place where you can't go find it. Sure, it's great if you memorize the information, but people aren't textbooks. That's why we have textbooks. There are many more important things to keep in our heads, like what not to combine if you don't want something to explode.
And that's not even the big part of my objection. I understand that some students would just look up all the information even if there are some things they should know, like in Biology you need to know the structure of the cell, or the formula for photosynthesis/respiration. So I get why they wouldn't make all tests open-book. I don't think the test should be timed.
I hate the math portion of the ACT. I also hate the science portion, but I hate the math portion even more. It's 60 questions in 60 minutes. Anyone who does math for a living has way more than one minute to solve a problem, be it one as simple as a math teacher would have, as long as an accountant would have, or as complex as an engineer would have. You have as much time as you need in the real world of math. Timed tests should not exist. Some people can't work or think under that kind of pressure. That's the same reason why I seldom play timed games. When that ticking clock isn't there, I can come up with a solution to the game in a matter of seconds. But with that clock, the same solution will take me so much more time to come up with. It's the same thing with the math portion. I'm in trigonometry now and I find myself enjoying solving triangles. Today I saw a problem on the math portion that looked like it wanted me to solve the triangle. So I quickly got to work. I saw my angles-I was given two of them- and I subtracted their sum for 180, like I always do. Only then did I read the question and find that I did all that work for nothing. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter now. This isn't just me. I'm not the only one with the potential to do that.
And the thing is, the test is barely even testing mathematical knowledge. It wants to know that you know the proper formula, sure, but I think what it's really testing is reaction to stress under pressure. I was under the impression that humans were against human experimentation. I'm cool with it, personally, just tell me that's what you're doing and I'll submit like a little bunny rabbit. So long as it's not "oh, we're testing this to see if it's lethal", but rather psychological testing. Fire away with that, because I love it. Also, some people already have bad reactions to math. I read an essay about it once, I think, a professional essay, that said that fear of numbers was a legitimate thing. (I don't think you can have mathematical dyslexia, as I once had someone at school tell me they had, but certainly all the numbers can get you discombobulated.) Some people just aren't math people. And that's cool. I'm not a dancer. My friend "A" is not a singer. My friend "K" struggles with academia. Everyone's good at something and bad at something else. And you can teach people who are bad at math the formulas and all the everything they'll need (and you did read that right), but you can't teach them to be good at math. It's not going to happen. So certainly if we're going to have a test that tests everything, it should have math on it, but it shouldn't be timed. That just makes things worse. And I understand that we can't have people taking the test for the whole day. But that doesn't mean we can't have them stop for meal breaks or come back in the morning, and they can be restricted from answering any questions they answered before the break to prevent cheating.
And here's why I hate the science portion. It bears little relevance to science itself, and that upsets me. I get that it's all about reading graphs. But I keep getting this question about the threshold of hearing versus the threshold of pain. I keep looking at this graph, and I keep reading the explanation of the study they mention at the beginning, but I can't answer the questions. Maybe I want to understand this graph more. I know I do, and I'm incapable of it when I've only got 5 minutes and I'm left to my own devices. My desire for understanding could be preventing me from focusing on actually answering the question. But the first question is usually about finches. This question is the last one. The finch question is an easy one. I've answered it a dozen times in Biology class alone. I look at this graph about hearing and pain and the first thing I think is airplanes. And then I'm kind of stuck on that. I barely even tried answering those questions this time.
Clearly the ACT is in need of some serious reform. As far as tests go, I don't think it's been structured very well. I want to understand why they made it this way. Because I don't see the point of it. I don't see any purpose beyond college and the fact that schools make you take it for taking this test, for spending over 3 hours of my day doing something that I will barely remember later on. I'll remember the rest of high school. I'll hardly remember any of this.
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