Haglblaugl

It was debate time today.

OMFG

So the debate was on free will. Monday, we broke off into groups of if we believed if there was free will, or no free will. We wrote up lovely little questions, and got prepared to come to a great consensus on free will. And that is exactly what happened.

I'm just kidding, it was total madhouse and I would rather have gouged my eyes out with a rusty spoon.

My reasoning for this is because instead of being a debate, it was a "I'm right and you're wrong, so bow down to me" fest. Bleck. I was hoping for a "lets reach a nice happy consensus" type thing but that never happens does it.

It was interesting though.

I think we have a bit of free will and a bit of...no free will? Determinism? I bet there is an actual term for that which is evading me...ANYWAY. For instance, I had the free will to turn on dubstep while I'm typing this out. (Night Rider by Dub Scout is playing at the moment) Listening to music is not necessary. Yet I turned it on anyway. I have the free will to take my medication. But I don't have the free will to not have epilepsy, depression, and severe anxiety. (general and a tad bit of social)

Mentor session was annoying.

It started off as promising, but it got into the typical god/no god discussion. Let me clarify: "I believe this so I don't have to prove it. YOU have to prove it." "Okay, but can you disprove what I'm saying?" "Why should I? I haven't stated ANYTHING." "You said you're against what I believe." "N-n-no I didn't."

ARGH. It's like, YOU HAVE NO OPINIONS. But then you say, "yes I do, but I refuse to tell you them because you haven't proved jack shit." Then you tell them your proof, and they say "Yeah that didn't prove anything." "Okay why." "NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX"

Ahem.

It was pretty enlightening, actually. Discovering how humans decide that they are absolutely right, there can be NO GREY AREA and that you are wrong no matter what you say. I've noticed that in this free will debate, abortion, religion, general politics, gun control...humans have this need to be right, and for someone else to be completely and utterly WRONG.

Catch you later!

More Slime Mold

SO!

I bet you are wondering what happened to the slime mold.
It died.
It didn't just die, it refused to go through the maze and get to the food. It went down my "trick path" and sniffed the food. One whiff of the Starbucks muffin, and decided it would rather die than eat that wonderful wonderful muffin. I feel bad for it, but I'm also wondering if there are optimal foods for the mold. Does it want more fat, more carbs, more sugar? Maybe more salt? I would like to do this multiple times with foods that are high in each thing, and see which one it lurches forward towards.

RIP Slime mold.

(Pictures of mold to come? We'll see.)

Gary: Gary Harder

Hey you guys!

23 page views. Yowza yowza yowza. Although, it could just be one faithful follower. In which case...THANK YOU! Thank you for taking time out of your day to check and see if I have updated my blog. I didn't last week even though I promised you. Oops. I WILL do a post Wednesday. Pinkie promise!

Okay, lets get down to business.
(To DEFEAT the HUNS!)

So last Wednesday I didn't come to class for the stupidest reason ever, which I don't really feel like getting into. Today, we worked more on the slime molds. I was supposed to tell you all about the slime mold last time, so I'll go ahead and do that now before going into today's slime mold.

It had grown exponentially! Wow that slime mold loved the oatmeal. It had spread out and was eating that oatmeal like there was no tomorrow. So, then we had to make a new slime mold, and add something delicious to it, that it might want to eat. V8 (the fruit kind) was added to a NEW slime mold, along with two oatmeal pieces. Yummers.

Well today, that silly slime mold HATED the V8. It was super excited about the oatmeal, and looked healthy and happy. But when it got to the V8, it was pale, and barely there. You had to look SUPER closely to even see that the mold was there. It looked super sick, and skinny. Like it might be dying.

The purely oatmeal one had grown even more. It was even trying to grow OUT OF THE PETRI DISH.

HOLY SHIT.

Well I was pretty excited because that was Gary, my baby. I made it because my partner wasn't there. The other one was my partner Lanie's baby and it died. Clearly I am the better parent.

So today, we had to make a maze and put some food for the mold to find. We made ours out of tape which sort of melted when the agar was put in. Oops. It was the world's easiest maze, but that's okay. ...Right? I'm super excited to see how smart Gary: Gary Harder is! Or stupid. Don't be stupid, love. Don't be stupid.

Alright have a nice day!

Heh heh..uh hi again.

Wow. Have not written in a while. I'll encompass both classes this week to make up for being such a slacker pants.

Actually first I'm going to add a bit of personal intrest.

On the 16th, we were supposed to record a joke, and it would be cool and funny. I got super dizzy in class, walked out, and collapsed on the floor.

I had to record my joke late, and will be turning it in soon...gah.....Probably going to get marked down for not turning it in sooner, which really sucks, but I'll try and make everything else nice and shiny.

SO ANYWAY.

On the 28th we got into a really cool discussion in class about AIs. I've always been interested in AIs because I read this comic called questionable content. (questionablecontent.net if you are interested)  NO it is NOT scandalous. It's basically a slice of life comic with some futuristic elements. One of the elements are these AIs called AnthroPCs that you can buy. They have their own personalities, interests, and so on., but they are mainly used as companions.

Here is a pretty good comic that illustrates this:

(If you can't read it, here is the URL: http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1411)

In the mentor session that day, we got to talk with Eliza and Cleverbot. They are AI's online that will talk to you. They aren't perfect of course, and often get confused. And Eliza--she is so sassy! I told her my name and she said "I'm not concerned with names." or something like that. Cleverbot is smarter, and funnier. I like him (?) a lot.

I think the idea of intelligent machines is really interesting, and I wouldn't mind seeing it come to flower. However, I'm pretty sure I won't. I honestly don't think it's attainable within my lifetime, which makes me sad, but I understand that everything must come to an end. If I DO get to see it, that would be fantastic. Seeing how our technology is advancing is absolutely fantastic.

So moving on to the 30th.

We had a guest lecturer come in and teach the class. It was alright I guess. I liked the movie we watched more than the movie itself. Maybe that was just because I'm so used to my professor that anything else seems weird and annoying. I don't mean to be rude, but sometimes her thick accent got in the way of things. I have horrible hearing already (I'm practically deaf in my left ear) and adding a thick accent on top of it doesn't help things. She did have really interesting things to say, and it's always nice seeing things from a different perspective.

The thing about the movie I liked was that I am pretty sure it is the same documentary mentioned in the book we are reading. To think that I am watching the same thing that the author of our book watched in a back room felt really cool to me. It felt like a small connection, a deeper insight.

Although maybe it wasn't and I'm just being dumb.

The mentor session had to do with Scratch. Don't even get me started on Scratch.

I'm totally kidding, get me started on Scratch. It doesn't matter if you do or not, I'm about to go off.

It's this animation program designed for kids by people at...MIT I think? And I apparently, am not skilled enough to make the damn thing work. I spent like, 20 minutes trying to figure out how to make a dot move slowly towards a sun, and now I have to replicate it on a different computer.

Guess who doesn't remember how to do it? THIS GUY!

I HATE Scratch. I don't see the point in it, I don't understand why I'm using it, but I will do it anyway because it is an assignment and I'd like to get a good grade. Whatever. The last time I used it was also a disaster, and I ended up giving up. Which was probably a bad idea. I should've just talked to the professor instead of turning in the half assed project that I did, but what's done is done. 

Anyway, that concludes monday and wednesday. I might have *two* blog posts for you next week! Oh boy! But they'll be shorter. If I don't, I don't, but they'll be there! I've been neglecting you, faithful readers! Or reader. Who knows.

Have a nice day!