Dear Mr Matheson,
I’m sure you don’t remember me, I was in your algebra class back in the late 80’s. I would describe myself as that weird, shy, socially awkward kid but that would describe most of us. Algebra always confused me, i was terrible at it. I went to you one day after class because I was not understanding something you had taught that day. It was early on in the school year and the concepts were fairly new. You told me that if I had been paying attention I would have understood what you were talking about.
Thing is, I was paying attention. You made it my fault, it couldn’t possibly be that you were too old and set in your ways to actually know that some people would be confused by your cryptic descriptions. You were too grumpy to see that sometimes these things aren’t obvious to kids. You were way too much of a fuck to help someone who came to you and asked for help even though it was your job. You get paid to teach, you do not get paid to funnel the contents of your brain onto a chalkboard and the fact that you don’t know the difference between the two means you are not teaching.
You made me cry in frustration that day and I gave up. I believed you. I believed it was my fault for not understanding. You looked at me like I was a fuck up who didn’t care and instead of me realizing how wrong your logic was, fuck ups don’t stay after class and ask for help, I believed you.
And I failed algebra. I ended up taking “everyday math” since I would never be smart enough to learn algebra.
Then this weekend I was crocheting a sweater but I had to make it bigger than the pattern called for. I sat down with the calculator and I determined certain values and made the appropriate multiplications and divisions where necessary. I was able to plug those values into other equations and get stitch counts and row numbers. The thing is, it worked perfectly. Last night, when I pieced the sweater together, every fucking part of it lined up perfectly. All of the seams just laid there begging to be sewn together. When I tried it on, it totally fit. I increased the width of the sweater, shortened the body, did my decreases and raglan caps and armholes based on the figures I had calculated. And it worked.
And technically, it was the algebra. I figured it out. It wasn’t that I was a fuck up or that I wasn’t paying attention, it was that you were too damned lazy to take the time to teach me and now, 19 years later, i taught myself. I think you owe me part of your salary.
But you probably already spent it on cheap Farah slacks and cotton poly blend short sleeve shirts.
asshole.

I am such a damned nerd. Seriously. Also, showing signs of OCD maybe…
Thursday night I pop into the Library to pick up the book they have on hold for me (China Mieville’s “Un Lun Dun”. Read this. It’s awesome. Read this especially if your name is Julie and you live in Montreal, but even if your name is not Julie and you do not live in Montreal! If your name is Gary and you live in Muncie, read this book. Or not, you may not like it. What the hell do I know) and I figured I’d also snag some DVD’s for the weekend.
Anyone who checks out DVD’s from the library is automatically a nerd. It’s just the way it goes. So, being the ultra-nerd, I skip the movies and go directly to documentaries (I don’t really miss TV all that much but I do miss my science documentaries. Nerd.). I got two documentaries about space and I also got Murderball because, you know, sometimes I feel this desperate urge to grasp the last remaining shreds of hipsterdom from my gaining nerdiness.
One of the space documentaries was a lovely affair done up by BBC. It was a pseudo-documentary following the mission of a 6 year trip through the solar system with the astronauts visiting various planets and moons. The science was a tad wonky now and again, I mean if there’s an 89 minute delay in communications because of distance you can’t really get minute by minute health readouts on the astronauts down at mission control, can you? Also, they sometimes had instantaneous conversations with the astronauts even though they were so far away. Anyway, this documentary was way cool. It was treated as though the mission were really happening and not just “this is what could happen if we went to venus”. There was even some implied humpty moments among the crew. hot! Zero G BJ! I watched it 3 times. 3 times. Does this count as some sort of OCD or something.
The other one was supposed to be about the creation event and what not. Mostly it was interesting, but unfortunately they had an agenda. They were postulating that all of the specific factors that led to life on earth were so extremely rare that 1) earth was the only planet with life and 2) there must be a god. Now this is fine on some level, I understand that line of thinking. What really bothered me was that they didn’t look at the evidence and conclude this, they started with their conclusion “there must be a god! there’s no other way to explain this” and then worked backwards. It doesn’t work that way. You end up only seeing the evidence that supports your conclusion and ignoring the other things. Also, there was quite a bit of specious reasoning going on in there. Ultimately, in the end you could say that sure, there might be some sort of worked out plan by some sort of system or whatever, but they took a leap beyond the actual evidence to anthropomorphize whatever system started the whole thing and in anthropomorphizing it, they concluded it had to be god. You can’t do that. You can’t make a leap like that based on nothing but emotion and then say that proves your theory. It doesn’t hold out.
And frankly, you all know my opinion…yeah, maybe something started things rolling, a prime mover of sorts, but that prime mover does not in any way have to be anthropomorphic. it does not have to resemble humans in ANY way. It doesn’t even have to resemble life as we know it, it could just be a collection of protons that spin funny and made everything explode. As such, it does not matter to me how plotted or planned or tuned the universe is, it still doesn’t translate down to a set of arbitrary rules about who I can fuck or what I can eat. It’s really hard to see a moral code in the universe.
AND I think that anthropomorphizing things is the biggest mistake scientists make. It is scientific hubris.
After the documentary they had one of those “interviews” with the guy who did the documentary. Totally fake, completely scripted. The issues at hand was “knowing what we know about the creation of the universe, which religion is the right one” and again they already had their conclusion and worked back. Of course they concluded that Christianity was the correct one. Interestingly, they spent a LOT of time disproving Mormomisn. I thought that odd. i also thought it was strange that in discussing the Hindu creation myths they totally discounted the same elements that they ended up holding up as proof in the Christianity creation story.
They totally dissed animism too!
I watched the documentary 2 times, the faux-interview once.
On to less nerdy things, I am finishing up my hoodie (after having to frog most of it and start over). I should be able to piece it together by the end of the week. Then off to new and bigger and cooler things.