Apropos of Nothing -3-

Palomar · 2004-09-07 06:18:19

*The other one collapsed, I guess. :-\

Hey, I got a phone call this weekend from my sister's 1st ex-husband. Said he'd been thinking about moving to my city if their son had continued living here with his grandmother (a few months ago my nephew moved back to the Midwest, to be near his mother).

"Interesting", considering ex-brother-in-law has been an absentee parent and reluctant to pay child support for years. He's also intrusive, including at least once dropping by for a "visit" -- unannounced -- to the home of my sister and her 2nd husband. No doubt he'd try to drop by unannounced to visit my husband and myself as well. I think he doesn't understand we're no longer in-laws and haven't been for nearly 15 years...and he was never a friend to me (he's not even a friend to himself).

Geez, I have in-laws already. Don't want to deal with
ex-in-laws! Him, moving *here*. Gawd. No thanks.

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-09-17 13:11:33

The police just busted some punk that was planning to blow up my old high school. How the times have changed.

And now the in-laws are coming to top it off. :bars2:

Working late, today, yep. Real busy. Might even need to go in on Saturday... yeah, that would be great...

Palomar · 2004-09-17 13:28:11

And now the in-laws are coming to top it off. :bars2:
Working late, today, yep. Real busy. Might even need to go in on Saturday... yeah, that would be great...

*Gotta work lots of overtime this weekend, huh? :;):

I understand.

Actually, my in-laws (:knock wood:) are rather good. They mind their own business, live far enough away (yet close enough for a round-trip drive in the same day), etc.

It's weird that it's my ex-1st-brother-in-law giving my family trouble all these years, though sporadically (must be fair), especially since he's not part of my nephew's life in any respect. ::shrugs::

--Cindy

Mad Grad Student · 2004-09-17 17:42:44

This is pretty minor, so I decided to post it here rather than in a dedicated thread. From the October issue of Popular Science:

"In July, University of Maryland molecular athropologist (And popsci Brilliant 10 award-winner) Sarah Tishkoff discovered surprisingly high variations within a gene associated with color blindness in men, suggesting that women may see a broader array of colors."

Dang. So in addition to living longer and affirmitive action benefits, it turns out that women see a more colorful universe than men. This is all highly speculative at this stage, of course, but it makes you wonder, what might that nebula in Cindy's avatar look like through a different set of eyes? It may be that women always see a more resplendant world than men do, but since neither group ever gets to see what the other's looks like, we'd never know. I'll let y'all chew on that for a while.

clark · 2004-09-17 18:00:45

Does cheese really make you want to smile? Think about it.

Cobra Commander · 2004-09-17 19:43:09

Dang. So in addition to living longer and affirmitive action benefits, it turns out that women see a more colorful universe than men.

Studies also indicate that men tend to have more accurate depth perception than women. I can't recall the specific study, read about it... damn, probably a decade ago. I saved the article for just such an occasion as this, have to look for it.

But it's getting late and I have to "work" tomorrow after all...

Palomar · 2004-09-17 20:20:18

"suggesting that women may see a broader array of colors."
Dang. So in addition to living longer and affirmitive action benefits, it turns out that women see a more colorful universe than men. This is all highly speculative at this stage, of course, but it makes you wonder, what might that nebula in Cindy's avatar look like through a different set of eyes? It may be that women always see a more resplendant world than men do, but since neither group ever gets to see what the other's looks like, we'd never know. I'll let y'all chew on that for a while.

*Interesting. I'd describe the colors of the nebula in my avatar as I see them...but what's green to me might look different to you. Back to square one.

As for benefits of being female, I can think of a few detriments as well. Especially when violent crime stats are made public. :-\ I've come close twice to being "one of the statistics." Won't go into detail, but I will say being generally smaller and weaker (as brute strength goes) is definitely a drawback. Hmmm...time to get another keychain container of pepper spray. :-\

--Cindy

Mad Grad Student · 2004-09-17 22:54:30

*Interesting. I'd describe the colors of the nebula in my avatar as I see them...but what's green to me might look different to you. Back to square one.

Yup, that's the quandry. I'd describe the nebula as two ribbons of pale green and red spread over a black background, and you would probably describe it exactly the same way. How we both percieve the nebula, however, is a different story. Short of trading eyes or something along those lines, there's no way to tell how someone else percieves color, contrast, depth, etc (though depth is more related to the way the brain processes information than how the eyes work). It's a fun idea to toy with, but ultimately doesn't lead anywhere useful, just kinda a brain exercise.

I would most likely have pretty poor depth perception compared to most of you out there, actually. My right eye is 20:20, but my left eye gets something more like 20:50. This puts me in an odd position because my left eye is pretty useless beyond 100 feet, but with it closed my right eye sees much more poorly. The two have learned to live with each other and seem to openly swap information to fill in any gaps either eye is missing, on a scale larger than most people's eyes do. It's a bit of a hassle, though, because my vision is just barely bad enough to warrant getting glasses, but whenever I wear them this odd refraction effect occurs, and my close-up vision is reduced to nil. I got along just fine until last year without ever having worn a pair of glasses before in my life, and I only use my glasses when trying to read the blurry projectors or the whiteboards in class (even then, I wouldn't need them except some of my teachers have taken fondly to writing on the whiteboards in light yellow and pink markers).

I hope that remark at the end of my original post didn't sound sexist at all. You have to look at it from my perspective I suppose, I was never around in a time when women had fewer rights than and were looked down upon by men, so that concept has always been distant from me. I see some fellow students getting twice the amounts of scholorships they would get if they weren't female, and half of the projects we try to do in my school's engineering club can't get off the ground because we can't get any girls to join (and whatever the project is requires male and female members). I can assure you that my generation has equal opportunity, and if things are allowed to continue as they are going we'll have reverse discrimination shortly.

At the begining of summer most of my father's side of my family convened in California for a family reunion. While we were there my grandfather asked me a question when this same type of subject came up "Would you rather fly on an airplane piloted by a man or a woman?" I answered him that I'd want to be on the plane with the better pilot, you don't give me enough information for me to say. That surprised almost everyone at the table, but that's the way I've always viewed the issue. Male, female, black, white, blah, or blah, that really doesn't matter. At all. I'm all for equality, let's just hope the pendulum of equality stops in the middle and doesn't swing over to reverse discrimination.

(Man, was that an enormous digression or what?)

Palomar · 2004-09-18 07:26:06

I hope that remark at the end of my original post didn't sound sexist at all.

*No, it didn't sound sexist. I just couldn't help thinking -- and commenting -- that I'd rather have a bit more strength than the ability to see colors better. That's all.

--Cindy

Josh Cryer · 2004-09-18 11:24:08

I dunno, the universe is beautiful, I would love to be able to see with more viberant colors. It's like at IMAX, how you're watching the screen and everything looks so... amazing, but in reality nothing looks quite as good (recall seeing IMAX: Solar Max, and watching the perpetual sun in the northern regions, it was quite remarkable, how the sun never dips far below the horizon!).

On top of that, I have really poor eyesight. Been thinking about getting LASIK. Anyone here have any experience with it?

I'm not really a suitible candidate for contacts (I have quite a complex astigmatism), and even if I was, I couldn't wear the 30 day lenses since they're not for people with astigmatism. Ahh well.

Palomar · 2004-09-18 20:28:18

On top of that, I have really poor eyesight. Been thinking about getting LASIK. Anyone here have any experience with it?
I'm not really a suitible candidate for contacts (I have quite a complex astigmatism), and even if I was, I couldn't wear the 30 day lenses since they're not for people with astigmatism. Ahh well.

*Nope, no personal experience with it nor relatives, close friends, etc. Have you considered lens implants? A bit more expensive, but they can be removed too (whereas LASIK's changes are permanent).

The vision in my left eye is worse than my right. Time to see an optometrist; it's been a few years.

Is there an optometrist in the house? :hm:

--Cindy

Josh Cryer · 2004-09-18 21:17:50

*Nope, no personal experience with it nor relatives, close friends, etc. Have you considered lens implants? A bit more expensive, but they can be removed too (whereas LASIK's changes are permanent).

Reading AllAboutVision.com, I don't think I could do the lense implant thing (and it's vague as to whether or not it can fix astigmatism). The procedure is a good 20 minutes! That's just crazy. Apparently the new all laser, with tracking are really really good. And it takes roughly a minute per eye.

Mad Grad Student · 2004-09-18 21:36:45

I think I know someone who has lens implants, that is, if we're talking about the same thing. She was born with highly developed cataracts (or something like that, hard to tell when you "know" someone from random glances in the classroom and a two-hour phone conversation) and had little pieces of glass inserted into her eyes to keep them from growing completely over her corneas (or is that corneae?). Anyways, I'm afraid I don't really have any advice on the subject.

Color vision disparity or no, IMHO the universe is plenty beautiful enough, if you look in the right parts. Either its vibrant or dazzling (like the nebula) or its black, there's actually very little ugly to look at off of Earth. It's strange to think that there are so many people, the vast majority of people, who couldn't care less about the universe off of Earth and as far as they're concerned, the edge of the universe is somewhere between Kandahar and Baghdad. And when you try to talk to them about space, they simply say "Who cares?" Boy, what they're missing. :;):

If this thoery about a color vision disparity between men and women turns out to be true, at least it may vindicate one of my cooky ramblings from a long time ago. About five years ago when I was visiting relatives in Chicago (-insert shout-out to Jenny and Amanda Atkinson. w00t!- [hey, this is the apropos of nothing. :;): ]), one of my cousins seemed exasperated about how all the clothes that time of year were pink. So, I came up with one of those crackpot theories 10-year-olds are liable to come up with and mentioned that since women don't get color blindness as much as men, perhaps they can see more in pink than men do. Of course I quickly added that it's probably jsut a cultural thing, baby boys get blue everything, baby girls get pink everything, but maybe there's something to that theory after all. :hm:

Going off on another tangent, do you still have any of those brownies lying around you made in the first Apropos, Cindy? If not, how about mixing up a batch for your favorite message board homies?

Palomar · 2004-09-19 07:31:40

Going off on another tangent, do you still have any of those brownies lying around you made in the first Apropos, Cindy? If not, how about mixing up a batch for your favorite message board homies?

*I'll have to whip up a fresh batch. Do you like chewy or fudgy? With walnuts or without? Frosted or unfrosted?

--Cindy

dicktice · 2004-09-19 11:22:41

Re cateract lens implants, I have had both eyes done, four years ago, and talk about being "born again"! Extremely near-sighted ever since I started reading science fiction night after night beneath the covers, by flashlight (not to be recommended, by the way), beset with asigmatism and old man's farsighted vision due to ossified accomodation, my vision was on the way to "functional blindness." Now, except for the old man's farsightedness (for which pairs of dollar glasses off the rack suffice) my sight is well-nigh perfect: No more myopia or astigmatism, since the prescriptions of the inserts corrected both the former and the latter. I passed my driver's licence eye tests with flying colours, and fly gliders with no glasses required to be carried on my person for the first time in a lifetime of sport flying. Negotiating thermals while circling alongside other sailplanes is much better now that my peripheral vision is unopstructed by frames, and my depth perception which is of great importance when landing-out (being so close to the ground) is fantastically improved. Don't for God's sake, have laser surgery done to correct myopia: It wrecks your night-driving vision because of cauderization of the corneal surface, by causing internal reflections. Here in Canada, the lens insert operations are on the Health Plan--with folding lenses $250 apiece extra (preferred because the incision need not be enlarged to insert) which I elected for at the recommendation of my surgeon. Whatever the cost, go for it lens inserts over laser correction. Dr Joy in the UK, who used to do laser myopia operations, now does lens inserts exclusively. In a radio interview, he discontinued laser operations when he became aware of the night vision imparement. Asked if he would recommend lens inserts for younger myopic patients he said, if serious enough to prevent normal activities on account of vision only: by all means he would. The only problem will be that youthful accomodation naturally will be lost, whereas in oldsters like me, it is already gone so no problem. Don't take my word for it: There must be websites where forums of good and bad experiences are being discussed all the time. Just don't believe the commercials about that laser business, without question. We were born at the right time, for the first time in history, where getting cataracts won't necessarily make you functionally blind for the rest of your life.

Mad Grad Student · 2004-09-19 18:24:31

*I'll have to whip up a fresh batch. Do you like chewy or fudgy? With walnuts or without? Frosted or unfrosted?

Walnuts? Blech! Who puts walnuts in brownies!? The only thing I'd ever intentionally insert into brownie batter would be peanut butter chips (mmm, peanut butter). You should try it sometime, it's like Reeses Peanut Butter Cups meets fudge, or something like that. As for the other two, fudgy and frosted, please.

Don't for God's sake, have laser surgery done to correct myopia: It wrecks your night-driving vision because of cauderization of the corneal surface, by causing internal reflections.

Myopia is the only thing wrong with my eyes (except for that they're apparently crummy cone-defficent male eyes), and I was thinking about perhaps getting laser surgery at some point in the future. At some point I'm going to have to do something, because it takes my eyes way too long to focus on the instrument pannel when I glance down at it, and those precious seconds count when you're circling in thermals with a few other gliders (as I'm apparently sure Dicktice can relate to). I'll most likely get contacts the next time I go to the optometrist, but I don't really see that as a permanent solution, having to place little bits of glass in my eyes every day hoping they don't come loose at the worst possible time, and we're not allowed to use them in the chem lab. I've recently read about a new kind of contact that you put in your eyes at night during which it molds them into the correct shape and by morning the shape change should stick for about 14 hours. That's more convenient, but it makes one wonder what happens if they come loose during REM sleep.

LASIK surgery seemed to be the best solution up until now, it's cheap, permanent, and has no inconvienent equipment factor. But if night vision becomes a problem, well, I'll have to take that into consideration too. At least I suppose I have some time to decide.

It's funny what you can find out about yourself on the internet. I recently googled my name, and that didn't come up with anything related to me at all (about what I expected), but I did find this shot of me at the Regional Science Bowl competition last April when I changed the keywords around (a lot).

Yep, that's Team B from North Canyon High School, Phoenix AZ (Cybermolesters, are you listening?). I'm the one second from the left with the light brown shoes and Elton John-type-looking sunglasses. We placed sixth out of about 35 teams, not bad when you consider that two of us were freshmen (me and the girl all on the far right) and that Team A included one guy who took Calculus as a freshman and the other "star" players, yet placed much more distantly than we did.

We're once again training for Science Bowl this year, and things are going well. It's DC or bust (not really)!

clark · 2004-09-27 13:47:09

Beware the granfalloon!

Mad Grad Student · 2004-09-27 21:01:43

Wha? ???

clark · 2004-09-28 05:55:50

Bring me two of every animal!

Palomar · 2004-09-28 09:08:15

*Oh geez. The curtains in my kitchen (hens and roosters, barns) is REALLY going to clash with my Halloween tablecloth and placemats. :-\ -laugh-

I think I'll buy a new pair of curtains for the holiday season...basic white, to go with my holiday tablecloths and placemats. Otherwise it'll look horrendous.

--Cindy

::edit:: Hey, maybe I can switch the curtains covering the back door's window with the kitchen window curtains. Might be about the same dimensions, and those curtains are cream colored. :hm:

Palomar · 2004-09-28 09:57:05

*Ugh! Damn. I just ate a bite-sized Mauna Loa chocolate chip/macadamia nut cookie. Something in it tasted like what my cat's litter box smells like sometimes. Cripes. That's one of the few times I've associated a taste with a smell (the *source* of the smell of which I never tasted, of course!).

My god... Might have to toss that box of cookies.

Walnuts? Blech! Who puts walnuts in brownies!?

*Whoa. Doesn't like walnuts in brownies. Noted.

--Cindy

Cobra Commander · 2004-09-28 10:08:34

My god... Might have to toss that box of cookies.

Tossing cookies seems the appropriate response to eating something with a distinct flavor of cat excrement.

clark · 2004-09-28 10:15:36

to far by my own standard...

Palomar · 2004-09-28 13:37:31

My god... Might have to toss that box of cookies.
Tossing cookies seems the appropriate response to eating something with a distinct flavor of cat excrement.

*Yeah...but half the box is fine so far (we've been nibbling on them for a few days). Perhaps one of the macadamia pieces was bad. ::shrugs::

Aw, how sweet...my husband is telling his mother on the phone that he loves her.

--Cindy

clark · 2004-09-28 14:13:24

You know, Albuquerque has a wonderfully lovely bio-park. For the sum of 10 dollars, you can see an aquarium, a zoo, and a botanical garden. I especially enjoyed the butterfly garden.

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