These are the most boring things on the face of the entire planet. Which is a little bit strange because the stuff that alot of them imply is all so very frickin' cool. Yet, somehow they are tres tres boring. If you're ever having trouble sleeping, the hell with traditional methods. Throw out your sleeping pills, put that book down, and if you even think about having some warm milk I will fucking kill you. Instead, try to slog your way through a couple pages of riveting literature such as the following example,
"Let us postulate by ascertaining the community composition, we can unambiguously state the instantaneous rate of change of both the predator's and the prey's density" (Rosenzweig 1963).
I guarantee you'll be asleep in minutes (patent peding). Anyways, after reading about 15 of these in a row, constantly battling an ever-increasing desire to pass out until December, one's brain tends to... oh what's the word... commit suicide. Which is why, every once in a while it is so refreshingly nice and beautiful and hilarious to find something so bizarre or unnatural that you just have to laugh... or giggle silently to yourself.
The first of these I found was an article called "Populations of small mammals cycle - UNLESS THEY DON'T!!!11!!" (Hanski 1987). Now, Hanski didn't actually capitalize the "unless they don't" part because that would have been unprofessional (he also left out the exclamations and the ones). However, that was how I read it in my mind and, also, how I imagined Mr. Hanski imagined it in his mind when he wrote it. It reminds me of a frustrated person who doesn't really have any good supporting reasons behind what they think so instead they just yell "BECAUSE THAT'S THE WAY IT IS OKAY NOW SHUTTUP AND LEAVE ME ALONE". I don't blame Mr. Hanski for this - in fact, good on him! The dude's probably published 6 or 7 other articles and he's even got a model named after him and still no one knows why sometimes, some small mammal populations don't cycle when, in a different place, the exact same species does experience population cycles. It's kindave annoying and I can see him getting very frustrated at the issue.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have cookies to eat
References
[1] M.L. Rosenzweig and R.H. MacArthur. Graphical representation and stability conditions of predator-prey interactions, The American Naturalist, 97(895): 209-223, 1963
[2] I. Hanski. Populations of small mammals cycle - unless they don't. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 2(3): 55-56, 1987
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Rollerblading
It's pretty awesome. I decided to rollerblade to the school today cause I had some stuff to do there. It was pretty good, only took me 40 minutes to get there which is pretty great 'cause I thought it would take an hour at least and I even managed to avoid the highway for the most part except for one little part on the bridge that freaked me out completely. I got to the school okay though and then managed to get neither of the things I needed to done. The first thing was get my student card back that someone had turned in but the service center was closed and so I couldn't get it. The second thing was get some books from the library - which evidently, I need my student card to do. Just giving them your student number isn't good enough. So that was a giant fail.
So I hung around a bit, read a couple of journal articles which was pretty amazing because I can usually only get through half of one before I start falling asleep. And I decided to go back home. I found a wicked nice bike path that goes down beside the on-ramp so I didn't even have to go on the highway on the way back. Of course, that wouldave been too easy so the bike path randomly turns into dirt and gravel at the bottom of a hill. I would have bailed pretty hard were it not for my unbelievable athletic abilities.
As I started going in the direction of home I decided "fuck it" and randomly went down a whole bunch of other roads. Lots of them end in gated communities. I hate gated communities. If I ever wind up living in one, please shoot me please. But, it turns out there's alot of really cool random things hiding away in Kelowna. I shall make a list.
1. There was a house where the guy decided that it would be pretty cool if he put a driving range in his backyard. That is so cool! I don't even like golf but man, awesome! There was just a bunch of people in his yard hitting golfballs. Rad!
2. There was another house that randomly had a caboose on their front lawn. I have no idea how that caboose couldave gotten there or why anyone would want it there and that's what made it awesome. The nearest railway was a kilometer away at least. That's what makes it so awesome. It was totally awesome. The sign on the places driveway said that they made gourmet spreads. What the hell does that have to do with a caboose?
3. Orchards. These look like they would be so much fun to run through as fast as you can. Or maybe walk softly holding hands and whispering secrets? They're like a really long straight cave made out of trees and I love it. If it weren't for me being too lazy to put my shoes on and if the electric fence didn't have so much electricity in it, I totally would have ran up and down the rows.
4. A bird (not a chicken) played chicken with me. It just flew straight at my face and then dodged away at the last second. I guess that means I won. At any rate, I think the bird was probably a fan of Pearl Harbour
5. The coolest playground ever. It was half playground and half water park. You know how every playground ever has a slide on one side of it? Well this one did too. Except it was a water slide. There was also a giant dragon (aren't they all giant?) supported by posts in mid-flight. I wanted to go conquer that playground but I think the grown-ups would have yelled at me. Probably because I would kick their shitty kids asses so hard at playground.
6. There was a short little road called "Euclid Drive". I checked it out and it's okay guys, it totally had Euclidean Geometry so there is no need to panic. Actually, it would be pretty cool to see a road with non-Euclidean Geometry, a hyperbolic road or something maybe? I don't even know what that would look like
7. Airplanes flying 200 metres-ish above my head. So cool!
Overall, good day. Even if I managed to get absolutely nothing done. I think I'll do it tomorrow too. Sure beats staying in my room. Also: need to consider looking into a bike - would make things easier and safer.
So I hung around a bit, read a couple of journal articles which was pretty amazing because I can usually only get through half of one before I start falling asleep. And I decided to go back home. I found a wicked nice bike path that goes down beside the on-ramp so I didn't even have to go on the highway on the way back. Of course, that wouldave been too easy so the bike path randomly turns into dirt and gravel at the bottom of a hill. I would have bailed pretty hard were it not for my unbelievable athletic abilities.
As I started going in the direction of home I decided "fuck it" and randomly went down a whole bunch of other roads. Lots of them end in gated communities. I hate gated communities. If I ever wind up living in one, please shoot me please. But, it turns out there's alot of really cool random things hiding away in Kelowna. I shall make a list.
1. There was a house where the guy decided that it would be pretty cool if he put a driving range in his backyard. That is so cool! I don't even like golf but man, awesome! There was just a bunch of people in his yard hitting golfballs. Rad!
2. There was another house that randomly had a caboose on their front lawn. I have no idea how that caboose couldave gotten there or why anyone would want it there and that's what made it awesome. The nearest railway was a kilometer away at least. That's what makes it so awesome. It was totally awesome. The sign on the places driveway said that they made gourmet spreads. What the hell does that have to do with a caboose?
3. Orchards. These look like they would be so much fun to run through as fast as you can. Or maybe walk softly holding hands and whispering secrets? They're like a really long straight cave made out of trees and I love it. If it weren't for me being too lazy to put my shoes on and if the electric fence didn't have so much electricity in it, I totally would have ran up and down the rows.
4. A bird (not a chicken) played chicken with me. It just flew straight at my face and then dodged away at the last second. I guess that means I won. At any rate, I think the bird was probably a fan of Pearl Harbour
5. The coolest playground ever. It was half playground and half water park. You know how every playground ever has a slide on one side of it? Well this one did too. Except it was a water slide. There was also a giant dragon (aren't they all giant?) supported by posts in mid-flight. I wanted to go conquer that playground but I think the grown-ups would have yelled at me. Probably because I would kick their shitty kids asses so hard at playground.
6. There was a short little road called "Euclid Drive". I checked it out and it's okay guys, it totally had Euclidean Geometry so there is no need to panic. Actually, it would be pretty cool to see a road with non-Euclidean Geometry, a hyperbolic road or something maybe? I don't even know what that would look like
7. Airplanes flying 200 metres-ish above my head. So cool!
Overall, good day. Even if I managed to get absolutely nothing done. I think I'll do it tomorrow too. Sure beats staying in my room. Also: need to consider looking into a bike - would make things easier and safer.
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