The $%*! frustration thread

[Temporal Knight]

None taken. I hate it as well. I've actually considered stopping the use of that phrase, and replacing it with something better.

[ZeaLitY]

There; all those doujins have been added to the encyclopedia. Jeez...

[Lord J Esq]

I despise when a teacher prepares a test and the study material for said test, and then in the end, said test has different information upon it that said study material, thus one fails that very test.

And then becomes unprivileged due to family members who do not accept or tolerate grades such as, even if it is possible to bounce back and make an easy comeback from it.

Don't take this too personally: A general frustration of mine is when an education system coaches students to memorize the form of an upcoming exam, rather than teaching them enough about the principles and highlights of the subject at hand so that the students could plausibly complete an examination regardless of its form.

The term "such as".

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to avoid doing so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have English teachers, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

[Zephira]

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to avoid doing so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have English teachers, and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq everywhere like, such as and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., er, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.

I am frustrated that I know what this is referring to, and I wish I didn't. I can hear her talking in my head, get it out!
Seriously, if you're going to be a public speaker, don't try to sound smart. Actually plan what you're going to say, make sure you know what everything you're saying means, and drop the valley girl accent.

[ZombieBucky]

that leads me to my next frustration.
valleygirl accent.
see my sister megan brought her friend amanda over today to play some games. except amanda isnt amanda, she's 'starr'. 'starr' seems to have brown hair that she bleached blonde (i could see the roots lol) with red streaks in her bangs. she was wearing one of those weird hot topic skirt things that look like they should be undergarments and a corset top, each with bright red trim to match her hair.
now i have no problem with this look.
none whatsoever.
my only qualm was that she had that valleygirl accent.
we're in connecticut.
not california.
you should talk like a connecticutian.
not a californian.

i also have a headache.
im gonna go nap.
bye.

[KebreI]

that leads me to my next frustration.
valleygirl accent.
see my sister megan brought her friend amanda over today to play some games. except amanda isnt amanda, she's 'starr'. 'starr' seems to have brown hair that she bleached blonde (i could see the roots lol) with red streaks in her bangs. she was wearing one of those weird hot topic skirt things that look like they should be undergarments and a corset top, each with bright red trim to match her hair.
now i have no problem with this look.
none whatsoever.
my only qualm was that she had that valleygirl accent.
we're in connecticut.
not california.
you should talk like a connecticutian.
not a californian.

i also have a headache.
im gonna go nap.
bye.

I see nothing wrong with that discription save the bleached hair, I love natural hair colour it's a thing about me...


Between my moveing it to a new place, trip to PAX, Registration and loans, and misc. other charges I forgot about money for my texts books, son of whore!

Plus my laptop is dead so I am trying to get my MAME Cabinet internet worthy temporarily.

[Truthordeal]

I dunno, the whole quarreling over accents sounds suspiciously similar to the "Speak American! It's the only language I understand!" debate on immigration. Maybe that's just me being paranoid though. Huh.

*eats pie*

[Lord J Esq]

You'd better hope that pie is apple, son, 'cause if I open it up and find so much as a single escargot inside, you're going to Gitmo.

[ZombieBucky]

now see i dont have a problem with accents either or other languages. i can understand if the girl moved from california and talked like that. i dont care if immigrants come to america and learn english here but speak their native tongue. i start getting upset when they start speaking their language more than english, especially in public places like schools.
as for accents, the thing is that 'starr' has lived in connecticut her entire life, as have her parents. they dont talk like that.
faked accents and accents totally out of place drive me insane.

[Mr Bekkler]

fake accents are annoying as shit. i remember when i was in middle school and my little sister was still in elementary, and we'd moved to a more rural part of the city we all live in. we'd been there maybe a year, and she tried to convince me, lying through her teeth, that she'd "picked up" a "suthun ack-see-ent. that lasted all of an hour.

the solution? call her out on it. just a simple "why do you do that?" can be very effective. most people don't think about the "why".

[Truthordeal]

I've learned since moving up here that North Carolinians talk weird compared to those of us in Southern SC.

[ZeaLitY]

A friend begged me to watch this:



I'm several minutes in, and it seems mostly bullshit, spun by unromantic people who can't believe that this world; that humanity and the universe are beautiful unless it's part of some goddamn creation myth or idiotic spiritualist purpose. I think it's rather poor form for a person who is a default rational thinker to embrace spirituality out of some sense of "emptiness" or need for purpose. We create our own purpose. Making up bullshit to feel better about the world is called delusion. And religion is delusion, hidden in the illusion of authority from being centuries old. Yeah, well, "the earth is flat", the medieval humors system of medicine, and other misconceptions were all centuries old, too, and they were complete bullshit. Religion, you're next.

I hope this movie gets better, or it'll feel like a waste of two hours.

Science has told us that we're some sort of genetic mistake.

A FUCKING BADASS GENETIC MISTAKE, THANK YOU VERY MUCH

This reminds me of creationists talking about intelligent design while ignoring the fact that the majority of animals born have genetic defects, many of them life-threatening or debilitating. What, was God asleep at the wheel when it came down to make DNA robust? Did he add mentally-disabling gene mutations and physical frailties to humanity in order to spice things up?

Fuck this woman. I'm a badass "mistake"; I'm a sentient. And I don't need to explain my existence with fantasy to live a meaningful life.

[Uboa]

Admittedly, I've also watched that conversation piece.  My advice:  Don't hold your breath.  I can't even recall the point it tries to get across, but I remember it being vaguely similar to "The Secret".

Also, the notion that natural selection makes mistakes is amusing, in a dismal way.

[ZeaLitY]

My friend is expecting a response on it, so I'd better go ahead and keep track of my responses.

@00:08:00

Science has told us that we're some sort of genetic mistake.

A mistake implies fault, or something that failed to meet a certain standard; this is loaded framing. Humans evolved naturally, yes, but essentially this is neither a good thing or a mistake.

This separateness is the cause of everything wrong with the world.

This is flawed reasoning. The world suffered murder, rape, usury, war, and other horrible conditions for most of human history, and these all predated the Enlightenment and modern science, accused as the progenitor of this spiritual "separatism". Atrocities, some unique to religion, occurred during periods of theocracy in many countries and periods of human history, such as Europe under the Papacy. This is scapegoating science for humanity's frailties.

@00:08:31

(Paraphrased) We need a new spirituality, because the old mythologies, as well as the old scientific way of doing things, are dead.

Humanism has you beat by decades, buddy, and it's not a spirituality. Also, why are you talking about quantum physics while sitting inside what appears to be a religious library?

@00:08:42

We have to go beyond our senses to create a new paradigm.

We shouldn't be "creating" anything. We are rational thinkers and scientists. We study the world.

We know nothing about reality. All of what we know about reality out there is filtered through our sense organs.

Yes, and sense organs are designed to help an organism perceive reality in order to survive.



@00:11:00

(A doctor appears to talk about eyes. The computer in his office has Siddharta Buddha as a screensaver.)

In other words, your credibility as an educator of science just went down a few notches.

@00:14:45

(Paraphrased) Sight works by processing tons of information, which the brain accepts as real and allows the organism to act upon. But what constitutes reality?

So far, this has just been a vague endorsement of solipsism, with a hint of "do you know what you're seeing? Science can't explain that, so, SPIRITUALITY!!!  "

Also,



@00:17:15

(Paraphrased) Classical physics suggest determinism and no free will. Quantum physics open up the possibility of some degree of free will.

I can agree with this, although I'm not surprised that the speaker here is the most credible looking person interviewed yet.

@00:17:55

(Paraphrased) Subatomic physics are an utter fantasy of mad scientists trying to explain micro-phenomena. We need a new discipline of quantum physics to really understand.

This person is terrible at the scientific method and recognizing that the scientific corpus changes in response to new evidence. He's not doing a good service to science by painting it this way. It's almost able to hear him say without saying, "we need quantum theory because it allows for my spiritualist ideas!!"

@00:21:10

(Paraphrased) Because of quantum mechanics, all things are connected.

I'm afraid all things were "connected" before quantum mechanics, since earth is not a closed system. The interviewee didn't offer any real applications for this interconnectivity he's selling, but I'm almost willing to bet it's used to some spiritualist end down the road. He didn't link the innterconnectivity to any hard quantum mechanics concepts or phenomena, but someone before talked about entanglement, so perhaps we'll get a little dishonest science going that way.

@:00:25:11

(Paraphrased) The vacuum in a hydrogen atom has so much energy that creating the Big Bang is no problem.

No idea where he's going with this, and I'm not prepared to fact-check his science right now. It sounded like they were about to go into dark matter, but then this guy popped in with his hydrogen bomb.

Okay, the woman afterwards confirms that what they're talking about is dark matter, except they aren't calling it by that name. This movie came out in 2004, and I thought dark matter and dark energy had been established by then...?

@00:26:23

(Paraphrased) The more scientists study physics, the most abstract it gets. The universe is connected by a unified field of pure, abstract consciousness.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived to pseudoscience and spirituality. "Pure abstract consciousness"? What does that even mean?



He just stole a little piece of string theory, too. Cute!

@00:27:15

Objects never actually touch each other.

Someone fact-check this.

@00:31:12

(Paraphrased) A brain experiment demonstrated that physical stimulus instantly was recognized by the brain, but direct stimulation of the brain produced stimulus with a small delay. That, coupled with T-symmetry, means quantum mechanics can influence the past or travel back in time.

There are studies showing that when people begin to move their hand, their brains are already aware of it even if they are'nt consciously aware of what they're tryiing to do.

The former point is obviously psueodoscience, but he asserts that the scientist who conducted that brain experiment believed it was time travel, so a fact-check would be nice to get the real story. The latter point is ridiculously weak support for this pseudoscientific idea, discounting the role of the subconscious and involuntary movements. I have done things before I was aware of them in fast, heated games of racquetball. This happens all the time, even when you try to avoid stumbling over a roadblock that you were only peripherally aware of.

@00:32:33

Quantum physics says we're all just waves of information. Is that how it is? I hope so!

I'm starting to see their angle. If everything exists on the quantum level, then it's all "abstract" and controllable from consciousness. Wishful thinking, just like religion and spirituality.

@00:33:00

(Double slit experiment)

Here comes the fish hook.

@00:39:11

(Paraphrased) Scientists disagree on quantum phenomena because they're observing it from different angles of perception, leading to different results.

I know where this is going. It's similar to "scientists disagree on global warming" and other canards built around the idea that scientists are normally supposed to agree on everything and have all the answers. But they don't in this case, which means this Zsa Zsa Gabor-like spiritualist lady does have all the answers! (Not to mention what she said is kind of a lie...)

@00:40:10

(Paraphrased) There's no way we'll ever describe in mathematical terms the act of observing and "collapsing the waveform".

I can't speak with authority on quantum mechanics, but this sounds like defeatist gap-thinking.

@00:45:07

(Paraphrased) (Discussion of entanglement) Since everything was entangled at the Big Bang, everything is still entangled and connected.

Oh-hoh. That's going a little far, pun allowed.

@00:55:00

(Paraphrasing the last few minutes) Because intention produced noise in random number generators, voila, thought can control the cirucmstances of your life.

Wishful thinking. They're about to start talking about that Japanese guy who claimed intentions produced variations in ice crystals. Total bullshit. This hurts to watch.

@00:58:40

(Armin Shimmerman appears as part of the scene to reinforce the water thought thing)

A new nadir for DS9: one of its former actors supporting pseudoscience. Quark, you son of a bitch.

~

I can't go on. This is so depressing, because it's tailored to people desperate for spirituality or religion. It's a new kind of religion wrapped in pseudoscience in order to make it seem less bullshit than the old religions, which are too riddled with antiquities and contradictions.

Fuck this. The truth is my master. Truth is beauty, and beauty truth. That is all ye know on this earth, and all ye need to know.

[Uboa]

Objects never actually touch each other.

If they're referring to mundane objects like pencils, tables, and the like, this is correct.  I'm not so sure about, say, quarks, or particles in an atomic nucleus.

I'd like to fact check that brain experiment, but I need more specifics on it to use the google.  (Names of scientists involved, or something.)

Edit WRT particles touching:  Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia's article on neutron stars:

A neutron star is a type of remnant that can result from the gravitational collapse of a massive star during a Type II, Type Ib or Type Ic supernova event. Such stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without electrical charge and roughly the same mass as protons. Neutron stars are very hot and are supported against further collapse because of the Pauli exclusion principle. This principle states that no two neutrons (or any other fermionic particle) can occupy the same place and quantum state simultaneously.

According to this, particles can "occupy the same space" so long as they do have the same quantum state.  But, everything I've perused so far has neglected to mention particles "touching", or even define what it would mean for particles to "touch".  I'm guessing occupying the same space is essentially touching, but I'm not sure.