Music Memory

I practiced the piano this morning for the first time in about 2 years. My mom brought some of my old piano books to me last week, and this morning I head a break between my classes and no homework to do, so I went to the little practice rooms in the basement of the HFAC and played for about 45 minutes. Have you ever been to one of those practice rooms? They have them all grouped together with very little sound barriers between the rooms. Well, if they did have sound barriers, the other people were playing REALLY loud. And since you know that everyone can hear you play, you feel really self-conscious while playing. I mean, the people in the practice rooms are all music majors or emphasizing in piano performance or something. So I played pretty quiet at first, but eventually got louder and louder. At the end I was rocking out on Beethoven's Pathetique as loud as I could, even though I was making tons of mistakes.

The interesting thing I noticed is that when I played the songs I learned 8 or 9 years ago, the same thoughts and feelings I had at that time also came back to me. For instance, when I played a certain part of one song, I instantly remembered the smell of noodles from my piano teacher's apartment. I also remembered watching the animated Starship Troopers TV show, which had this song as it's theme song. I remembered playing this song on the piano in my old church building in Berlin and how one of the notes in a crucial part of the song was badly out of tune and it always sounded like I made a mistake. I remember being worried about my classes in high school. In another section I remembered sitting at the piano in the room with the gold ceiling and my mom saying, "Practice that part five times before moving on!" And I still had trouble with that part.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting how the music acted like a little time capsule so that I'll always remember the feelings of being 15 years old.

Just look at this watch

It's so confusing that it's cool.

See how it tells time here.

A Successful Life

Katie bought the fun version of Life at D.I. the other day, and we've played it at least 5 times already. I lose most of the time. I'm not sure why. I just end up paying for box tickets to the World Series and producing a music video for a rock band. I think it's funny that success in the game of life is determined by how much money you have. Sure, you get tokens for doing things like "going fishing" and "playing a family game" but those tokens are just converted into money at the end of the game.

On the back of those tokens are things you have accomplished, showing you what a successful and full life you've had. Here are the things that make an abundant life...according to Life. You can consider this my to-do list:

1. Climb Mt. Everest
2. Invent New Ice Cream Flavor
3. Run World Record Mile
4. Solution to Pollution
5. Nobel Peace Prize
6. Humanitarian Award
7. Invent New Sport
8. Build Better Mousetrap
9. Pulitzer Prize
10. Swim English Channel
11. Design New Computer
12. Cure the Common Cold
13. Compose a Symphony
14. Paint a Masterpiece
15. Write a Great American Novel
16. Win Dance Contest
17. Lifetime Achievement Award
18. Open Health Food Chain
19. Save Endangered Species
20. Family Horse Wins Derby
21. Become President
22. Toy Invention Wins Big
23. Discover New Planet
24. Find New Energy Source

The back of the box says that there should be 25 tokens, so I guess we're missing one. That's OK; I'll just make my own:

    25. Write a blog post every day for a year

Duvets vs. Bidets

I wouldn't get these two things mixed up if I were you. It happens to me all the time. It leads to some awkward thoughts. For instance, Katie was telling me about a "cute duvet cover" she saw online the other day and an image of a cloth covered bum-rinser came instantly to mind.

"Oh gross!" is what I thought, then I looked at the computer screen and saw a bed cover. Whew. Close one.

I've never actually used a bidet before. There were a few on my mission, but I was too scared to try them out. Do you face towards or away from the wall? How do you dry yourself afterward? You probably wouldn't want to use toilet paper right afterward because then it would just disintegrate in your hand...

Hard Interview Questions

I went to the Pre-Professional Office today to get some pointers on preparing for my upcoming optometry school interviews. The girl at the desk gave me four pages of questions written in size 4 font. The questions listed on the paper are some of the hardest interview questions I have ever read. Here is a sampling:

• Why should we offer you a place at our school?
• What stimulated your interest in a health care profession?
• If you want to "help people," why not choose a career in social work, law, or teaching?
• Is there anything you would like to brag about? (This question was listed in the section called "Maturity.")
• Describe a face-to-face meeting in which you had to influence a highly emotional individual.
• How would you redesign the health care system?
• What are three things you would like to change about yourself?
• If an AIDS patient was bleeding profusely from a laceration, what would you do? What if you do not have gloves? What if you have an open sore on your hand?
• What is the most difficult problem you have ever faced in your life?
• How would you rank the following individuals with regard to priority for a liver transplant? 1) A young woman whose family can't afford the operation, 2) A 45-year-old ex-sailor whose liver was damaged by alcoholism, and 3) a 75-year-old retired executive who has indicated that he will be a very generous donor to the hospital if he gets the transplant.
•   And my favorite question: What is the solution to terrorism?

I'm going to spend the next few weeks coming up with some great answers to these questions. And I'll be sure to forward my answer about terrorism to Robert Mueller. I'm sure he'll like to know the solution to terrorism.

7 pounds lighter

Warning: this is pretty gross.


I'm pretty sure I got food poisoning last night. It was the first time I threw up in well over two years. I don't recommend using this as a weight loss technique. The worst part was when I woke up at 2:00 and ran to the bathroom to throw up yet again, but didn't quite make it. I should have left the toilet seat up the last time I used it because the moment I entered the bathroom I knelt on the floor and threw up all over the toilet seat. The problem with that is that our seat acted like a ramp and shot the throw up all over the entire bathroom. It soaked everything--the bathroom rugs, the underside of the sink, the plunger, everything. It was so gross. It took about 40 minutes to clean up, but I felt much better afterward. And after a 5 hour long nap this afternoon, I feel perfectly fine now.

Yo

Katie here.  Bryan's feeling... uhh... not well.  So when I asked him if there was anything I could do to make him feel better and he requested that I write for him on his blog, I figured it was the least I could do.

And probably the least is all you should expect from this post.  I don't really have any interesting facts to tell you about.  Especially since I already spilled what I know on how a sewing machine works. 

...

(Still not sure what to say...)

Well, I guess I'll just tell you about my ego.

So we were out with Bryan's family again tonight.  They've been in town for a couple of weeks, but tonight was our last bit of family fun time before they head out.  So, naturally, we ate junk food.  Bryan's mom put in a request for a bite of local ice cream, so we took a little walk to do just that.

When we got there we all noticed her right away.  The girl who writes Nie Nie.  She was in line with her family for ice cream.  Just a regular person.  Just like us.  I'll admit we did whisper under our breaths, "Do you read Nie Nie?"  "Yes!  Shh!"  and "That's the girl who..." but we did try not to be pests.  And after our initial whispers we kept quiet and didn't bother them with paparazzi stares.  After all, we're all just people.

As a side note, I, by the way, have always felt this way.  That we're all just people.  I've never understood idolizing celebrities.  I mean, I'm sure I do it to some degree, but I've just never understood having posters of other people on my wall or running up to someone to get their autograph.  I don't know.  I've just always felt strange about treating celebrities like they're more interesting than I am.  But maybe that's just ego.

And that ego definitely came to visit me tonight.  Because after seeing Nie Nie the thought eventually crept in... "I wonder if someone is standing behind me in line here gawking, 'That's her.' and 'Do you read Notes From A Ver...' 'Yes!  Shhh!'"

I don't think this happened.  For one, I am not that popular and I am fully aware of that.  And also, I think of the few people who do read my little blog, probably not very many of them live local to me.  And of the people who do live near me and read my blog, I would honestly be surprised if there were any who I didn't already know personally from outside of the blog world.  Also, I don't think I'm anywhere near as cool or recognizable as Stephanie Nielson. 

All this aside, I did get a nice ego boost from my in-laws the other day.  We were sitting around chatting and the topic of all our little blogs came up.  They asked approximately how many views I get on my blog per day and when I answered "Oh, usually about one to three hundred," my mother-in-law (shocked) asked, "One hundred to three hundred?"  "Yeah," I replied (nonchalantly).  This was followed by a moment of awe and shock from my in laws.  ...During which I felt quite conceited.

Don't worry.  The I-am-wonderful attitude quickly dissipated.  Namely when I tried to think of a good ending just now.  And all I came up with was what you're reading now.  Meh.

Maybe you should all pray that Bryan gets feeling better so you don't get stuck with me again tomorrow.

Grabbed by HP

I started listening to Harry Potter on CD. It has been all I have listened to at work for the past two complete days. I started with the last book, which is good because if I started with an earlier book I would have had to listen to all the rest in the series until I got to the last book anyways. I hate how much the story grabs you and you just have to keep reading and reading until you finish (or, in my case, listening and listening).

Has anyone else taken an online class and the lectures are recorded on a CD or online? I really like learning that way because you can watch the lessons on fast-forward and get through it faster and even understand it better. I wish I could do that with these CDs. Actually, I wish I could do that with every class I take.

Squeezing my spleen

I wish I could do this.

The reason is because this at lest part of the secret as to how sea lions can hold their breath for an hour underwater, and why I can currently hold my breath for a max of 2 minutes 16 seconds. Sea lions have the same size of lungs as humans and (almost) the same type of blood. I say "almost" because they have quite a bit more hemoglobin, which is the stuff in the blood that carries oxygen. The trick with the spleen is really neat. In humans, the spleen filters and stores extra blood for you. In sea lions, the spleen stores A LOT of extra blood. Right before it dives, a sea lion uses some kind of muscle to constrict the spleen and shoot a lot more blood in the blood stream. Then the sea lion breathes in real deep to make sure that every last hemoglobin is saturated with oxygen. After it submerges, most of the blood is diverted to the most vital areas (brain, muscles to swim, etc.) leaving things like the digestive and reproductive system to resume their functionality on land.

Because of these cool biological tricks, sea lions can comfortably swim around underwater for an hour before needing to take another breath.

I'm jealous.

Hacked account

This is just a warning to you all: change your password frequently. I have been using the same password for my email account for the past few years, and apparently that's a bad thing. This morning my some spam site got a hold of my account and emailed a bunch of random people on my contacts list with a link to some Canadian pharmaceutical company. If my Canadian counterpart emailed you, I apologize, eh? That's why this blog was blocked this morning--I think Google thought I had become a robot.

I then looked at my account activity and realized that this was not the only time my account has been hacked. There was a stalker in the United Kingdom who hacked into my account using a mobile phone just two days ago. Kind of creepy...

Anyway, just a friendly reminder to change your password often.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

I found this here. HA!

Defeat

I arm wrestled David today. Sadly, I lost. That is the first time I have ever lost an arm wrestling match to a younger brother. In fact, I think that may have been the first time that an older brother has lost an arm wrestling match to a younger brother in my family. For shame.

I will train and hone my skills to be ready for a rematch during Christmas break. Better watch out, David. Better not cry.

Or maybe I don't even care.

Sit in the front of the class

It has been shown that you are more likely to get a good grade if you sit up in the front. A university did an experiment by randomly assigning students seats in a Freshman level physics class. The students who sat in the front four rows did significantly better than the students in the back of the class. About halfway through the semester, the students were reassigned seats by having the front row kids sit in the back and the back row kids sit in the front. The amazing thing is that their grades didn't change after switching seats. Their study habits and attitude toward the class had already been set.

My advice: sit in the front row for the first part few weeks of class, and then you can sit anywhere you want. That way you can rest assured that you will have the best grade!

Close call

We had a really fun day at Lagoon with my family, who are all out here to drop off my little sister at BYU. We spent the whole day walking around, riding roller coasters, and enjoying each others' company. We headed off home around 8 PM, when the sun was starting to set. About an hour into the drive back home, I noticed something funny with the cars up ahead. They were all swerving quite a bit. A second later I realized why: a white car was driving the wrong way on the freeway! And it was headed right towards us! I swerved the car to the shoulder but we started fishtailing. Luckily, I was able to correct it and get the car back under control. It was only after the fact that Katie and I realized how lucky we were. Katie immediately called 911, and spoke quickly with the operator. It turns out that they had already received notice about that car. A few moments later we saw a police car zoom past. Then a few more police cars. We have been checking the news this evening to see if the driver of the car caused any accidents, but we haven't seen anything so far. I hope the driver of that car just pulled over to the side of the road as it passed us.

Anyway, we said a very sincere prayer of gratitude once we got home. An accident of two cars hitting head-on with both going at least 65 mph could have easily lead to a fatality. It makes me really worried to think about. But we're all safe and happy and grateful for how well the situation turned out.

How Polynesians Traverse the Ocean

I wrote about the new book I'm reading last Saturday. It's still really interesting. I just finished the part about surviving on the high seas and am currently reading about deserts. Dr. Kamler talks about how Polynesians were able to traverse the open waters, going from island to island without seeing anything but water:

Not having the navigational capabilities of migratory birds or oceangoing fish, the Polynesians were nevertheless able to create an ecological niche for themselves by making astute use of the senses they did have. Crossing empty horizons, they learned to locate land by indirect clues. A greenish tint on the undersurface of a cloud was light reflecting island vegetation. Birds that roost on land could be followed home in the evening. Islands generate sounds when breakers crash against the shore and emit smells when wind carries the scents of flowers, fruit, and earth. Waves that strike an island bounce back and radiate outward, creating a ripple pattern that can be seen on the surface and felt against the boat.

 Isn't that so crazy? You can only see for about two miles until the earth bends away. Can you imagine smelling flowers and earth from two miles away? Your senses would have to be so honed to be able to pick that up. Also, on another note, did you know that a shark's nostrils are independent? It's kind of like our ears and how we can tell where a sound is coming from. A shark can smell a drop of blood that has been diluted over 10 million times and locate the direction it came from with frightening precision. I find myself thinking about a shark's sense of smell when I don't have to think about anything, like when I brush my teeth in the morning or eat breakfast. I wish I had that skill.

Pandora thinks I love "Hey Jude"

Don't get me wrong--I do like that song. The problem is that it came up once on one of my Pandora radio stations last week Friday, and then it has been playing different versions of that song over and over again. I think I have listened to at least six different covers and versions since Friday. That's no exaggeration. I have had that part at then end stuck in my head...you know, the one that goes, "Naaaaah nah nah nanana naaaaaaa, nanana naaaaaaa heeey Jude HEY JUDAY JUDAY JUDAY JUDAY!!" The problem with having a song like that stuck in your head is that there is no definite ending. They just play that end part for about four minutes and then is slowly fades out, leaving it repeating over and over again in your head.

Poor guy

This is what happens when you try to order an ice cream cone in Istanbul.

Ant Head Sutures

I'm reading a book right now called Surviving the Extremes by Dr. Kenneth Kamler. It's about how the human body and mind react to extreme environments, such as high altitudes, jungles, or the open seas. It's really interesting. Dr. Kamler described in detail how he once had to perform a hand surgery in the Amazon jungle when a little boy sliced through a couple of tendons and a nerve while swinging a machete. He was kneeling in about a foot of mud and his assistant sat on a log and held the little boy down while he stitched his nerve and tendons back into place. It was utterly fascinating.

One thing that Dr. Kamler talked about his how he often used the local treatments for illnesses because they were much more practical and available than the supplies he brought with him. One of the treatments was using ant heads to close up lacerations. If someone got a deep cut that would require stitches, you would just take a few army ants (these ants are HUGE, probably about 2 inches long) and hold them close to the cut. The ant would then bite you with their huge "jaws" and close the wound. After they bit you, you would twist the body and pull, leaving you an ant head serving as a nice, little organic suture. You would do this a couple of times to close the whole wound. The nice part about this method, besides the abundance of army ants in the Amazon, is that the heads will fall off on their own -- no need to remove them like normal stitches.

Can you imagine what it would be like to go to the doctor's office now with a cut on your hand, and then the doctor pulled out a huge jar of army ants? That would be so cool!

The last man...uh, men...who knew everything

I was reordering books for the library a few days ago, and one of the books that was lost was called The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, The Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured The Sick, and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone, Among Other Feats of Genius. Despite the exhaustively long title, I thought the book was quite interesting. The last man to know everything? Really?

I did a search in the library catalog to make sure that it was truly lost and rather than typing in the ENTIRE title, I just typed "the last man who knew everything" and pressed Enter.

Turns out there was more than one last man who knew everything.

My search told me that there were THREE books with the title "the last man who knew everything." These books are:

1) The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young (the book I was trying to replace)
2) Athanasius Kircher: The Last Man Who Knew Everything
3) Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Now, if you ask me, there should only be one person with the title of "the last man to know everything." I think the authors should have to go back and rename the books like "the second to last man who knew everything" and so on. And I'm pretty sure that they were being very gracious in saying EVERYTHING, too. I mean, when I looked up Joseph Leidy in Wikipedia, it only mentioned that he was into paleontology, anatomy, and parasitology. Those are interesting fields, but what about stuff like nunchuck skills, bow staff skills, and computer hacking skills? Don't those count as some part of everything?

Ghoughpteighbteau tchoghs

Can you figure out what this is saying? Try to avoid Googling it.

Hint: this is in English, although spelled very strangely (think ghoti).
 

Sources and Words

1. Referring to the post I wrote a couple of days ago about bread crust, I didn't just make up sources. Here are the things I found:

-Bread crust and stuffing rich in healthy antioxidants
-Is Bread Crust Healthy For You?
-Bread crusts rich in antioxidants
-Bread Crust and Anticarcinogens

Bam!

2. I just listened to the new RadioLab episode. It was really interesting. Here is a video that was produced along with the episode.

Pen[cil]

This looks awesome. I wonder if it would work on a Scantron test sheet...

The crust is healthier

I have wondered about this for a while. It didn't really make sense to me why the crust of the bread is considered healthier than the inside. After all, it's just bread that has been cooked a little more.

Turns out that crust is healthier for you. Researchers have found that an anti-oxidant (pronyl-lysine) is eight times more prevalent in the crust than in the soft, middle part of a loaf of bread. Also, the crust contains more dietary fiber, which helps prevent colon cancer.

And there you go.

Already invented inventions

Have you ever thought of a GREAT invention, only to realize that it already exists? That has happened to me twice this week.

Invention number one: diameter measuring tape. This measuring tape can tell you the diameter of a large round object by just wrapping it around it. This could be used to measure the diameter of large trees, huge balls, rocks, whatever. You just have to calculate the spacing using the formula for the circumference.

Turns out it already exists. Dang. There goes my million dollar idea.

Invention number two: a zoom-able paper map. I got this idea when Katie and I were at Barnes & Noble and I saw a pop-up book. I thought to myself, "How cool it would be if you could do that with a map? Very cool." You would just fold out a paper and then you can see the portion you want to look at up close.

This already exists, too. See?

Watch the video here to see how the map works. It's pretty much the coolest map I have ever seen.

Someday my creativity will pay off...

ADHD and Dancing

First, I would like to answer yesterday's question. David wins for being the closest. The correct answer is 3 because all of the numbers represent how many syllables are in each letter of the alphabet, and the letter "w" is the only letter that has more than one syllable. Unless you count "elemenopee" as one letter, in which case it has 5 syllables. Tricky, tricky. 

Yesterday, while I was at work, I listened to this talk by Ken Robinson about creativity in schools. It was really interesting because he talks about how the public school system focuses on bettering one part of the body, the brain. And usually just the left side of the brain. Math and English are given the highest position in the public school system, then comes Social Studies, and then the arts come in last. There is a hierarchy of subjects within the arts, too. Music is usually given preference over drawing, and then, dead last, comes dance. This is the same in public school systems across the world.

Ken Robinson talks about a friend of his, Gillian Lynne, who would have been diagnosed with ADHD if that was an illness in her time. When she was a little girl, she had a hard time sitting still. She would always wiggle in class. Her mother thought something was wrong, so she took her to the doctor. After the mother told the doctor her concerns about her lack of concentration, the doctor said that he would like to speak with the mother privately in the hallway. Before the doctor and mother left the room, the doctor turned on the radio. Once the adults left, the little girl jumped off her chair and started dancing to the music. The doctor and mother were watching this through a window or two-way-mirror or something, and the doctor said to the mother, "You see? There is nothing wrong with your daughter. She is just a dancer. You should enroll her in a dance school." That is what the mother did. The daughter excelled in that environment. She loved using her body to express her emotions.She continued to succeed in life, was the choreographer for the musical Cats and Phantom of the Opera, and is a multi-millionaire.

Can you imagine what her life would have been like if they repressed that talent and gave her drugs to "calm her down"? I'm not saying that is is never appropriate to treat people diagnosed with ADHD with medication. In some cases I believe it helps the child a lot. I'm just saying that I think it would be good to not always label people as having an illness or a disability, when in fact they are just highly gifted in other areas.

Riddle

What goes where the question mark is?

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ? 1 1 1

Hint: it's not a 1
Another hint: count how many numbers there are (including the ?)

Taking away my pride

A couple of days ago I took my third statistics midterm. I had done pretty well on the previous midterms, so I didn't think I needed to study that hard. I took the test and saw that I got a 100%! Sweet!

The next day in class I was talking to a guy sitting next to me and he said he was surprised that he did so well. He said, "Dude, I didn't even, like, study or anything, and I got a perfect score!" Someone turned around and also said that she was surpised that she got a hundred because she "guessed on pretty much every question." I guess I was sitting in the slacker section. It turns out that everyone in the class got a 100%. I guess there was some error in the testing center grading sheet or something. They regraded all the tests, and, sadly, I did not get a perfect score. Bummer! But I did well enough. I think I would have been satisfied with my score if I didn't think I got a perfect score first...

Handicapped Stalls

Do you ever feel guilty using a handicapped bathroom stall? Sometimes I do. I guess I'm worried that while I'm in there a guy will come into the bathroom in a wheelchair and have to wait for me to come out, and then he'll be really frustrated that he had to wait for a perfectly healthy person to get out of his stall. Would it be wrong to pretend to have a limp or something if I hear someone with a wheelchair come in? Probably. According to this site, it's OK to use the handicapped stall. Here's what he says:

If there are disabled people around, it’s impolite to use the handicapped restroom or stall ahead of them, but if not, you can use whichever one you want. “If you like more room or need a place to hang your newspaper, it’s fine,” Schmokel says.

I don't ever remember seeing hooks for my newspaper in the handicapped stall.

Application is done

I was up to the wee hours of the morning yesterday finishing the last little bit of my application for optometry school. It is done! Yay! I have applied to four schools:

1. University of Indiana
2. Ohio State University
3. University of Houston
4. Southern College of Optometry (in Memphis)

I applied to these schools after much deliberation. These schools fit the criteria I was looking for: 1) high percentage of student passing the board exams the first time, 2) a lot of clinical experience, and 3) cheap tuition and low cost of living. I hope to hear back from them in a few weeks.

So cross your fingers, druck die Daumen (press your thumbs), or twist your phalanges in the culturally appropriate manner you are accustomed to in order to bring me good luck.

Rambling Through the Avenues of Time

Flight of the Conchords is the best. I love this song.

Spiritual Teleportation

When I was serving my mission a few years ago, I read the scripture in Acts that said how Philip was teleported by the Spirit after the eunuch was baptized. I thought this was really neat, so I spent the next little while searching all throughout the scriptures for any reference to spiritual teleportation. I thought that I had a higher chance of it happening to me if I knew more about it. Anyway, I found at least six references to teleportation in the standard works, however, I am not any closer to actually teleporting. Maybe someday it'll happen. Here are the references I have found:

1. Acts 8: 39 "...the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more:"
2. Matthew 4:5 (JST) "Then Jesus was taken up into the holy city, and the Spirit setteth him on the pinnacle of the temple."
3. Helaman 10:16 "...for he was taken by the Spirit and conveyed away out of the midst of them."
4. 1 Nephi 11:1 "...as I sat pondering in mine heart I was caught away in the Spirit of the Lord, yea, into an exceedingly high mountain."
5. 1 Nephi 11:19 "...I beheld that she was carried away in the Spirit;"
6. Moses 6:64-68 "...Adam cried unto the Lord, and he was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord, and was carried down into the water, and was laid under the water, and was brought forth out of the water."

Let me know if you are aware of any other references. Also, let me know if you have teleported before, because that would be really cool.