Musings of a half-crazed weazl

The Lost Art of Mathematics

Dimwitweasel — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:34:55 +0000

One of my friends recently introduced me to an essay recounting some of the wrongs of our current education system, with regard to Mathematics. A Mathematician’s Lament, by Paul Lockhart, tells of a society that has taken an art form and utterly defiled it. Our beloved “Educational System,” with its standardized tests, set curriculum, and competitive goals, has removed true mathematics from the eduction process altogether, in favor of memorization and regurgitation. Gone are the days when students were challenged to come up with their own solutions to mathematical problems, no longer do students learn why 1 + 1 is equal to 2, or why the area of a triangle is one-half of its base multiplied by its height. Instead, we are told that it “just is,” “it doesn’t matter why, just memorize the formula, you’ll need it for the test.” No wonder students hate math class so much. Read the essay, its worth it.

Peace.

“Lockhart’s Lament” alternate link

School’s out…

Dimwitweasel — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:07:19 +0000

So… another school year come and gone… what now?? Summer vacation, of course. Not that this summer vacation is to be anything spectacular, as most of it will be spent trying to earn some cash. Still, some fun is bound to be had, the absence of classes and homework almost guarentee it. It is “vacation” afterall…

Peace.

School….. here we go again….

Dimwitweasel — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 03:42:55 +0000

It’s that time again, isn’t it. And no, I don’t mean Christmas. School is starting, and we all know what that means… Late nights spent procrastinating, early mornings spent making up for it. Life’s a bit different for me this semester though, as I have decided to live on-campus. I commuted to school for my first two semesters, and kinda got burn-out on driving here everyday. I lucked out too, I got a room two days before I was supposed to move in, and it turns out that it’s one of the newly renovated rooms here on campus. It’s like staying in a hotel, albeit not nearly as much fun…

I have yet to meet my room mate officially, he moves in tomorrow morning… We have talked, however, and he seems like a nice-enough guy. I suppose we shall find out.

Classes start on Monday, but my schedule is not nearly as full as it was last semester. I’ve gone from 18 credit hours to 16, and two of my classes are cores. Hopefully this will be a relatively easy semester.

Well, anyway… TF2 is calling me… I must answer…

Peace.

Geetar

Dimwitweasel — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 13:06:45 +0000

Les Paul." width="150" height="150" />

So… you may not believe it (heck I don’t even know if I do…) but I built this. Well, I built the body anyway, and I painted the entire thing, but the neck was purchased (I don’t have the equipment necessary to precisely place all of the frets).

It’s modeled after a ‘59 Gibson Les Paul, and took me about three weeks to complete. It is currently on display at the Huron County Fair, where it will remain until Sunday. It recieved a “First Award” and also won “Most Creative”, as an advanced woodworking project for 4-H.

(For those of you who are dial-up users, I apologize for the size of these pictures. I will be downsizing them as soon as possible.)

[Edit] Pictures have been re-sized, and are much smaller now (around 150 kb), so you dial up users shouldn’t have any problems. [/Edit]

Other pictures:

How it looked after I cut out the basic shape, with a scroll saw.

The back, showing the control cavities, before finishing.

After I airbrushed lacquer onto it, but before the hardware.

Close-up of the finished body.

Modifications

Dimwitweasel — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:58:49 +0000

Yikes… 2:00AM already?! …anyway, as you may (or may not) notice, some minor–mainly visual–tweaks are taking place around the site. These will continue to happen as I continue to learn more about PHP and CSS (and more importantly, how they interact). Imagine that, me learning at 2am, on a Fri– I mean Saturday… What is this world coming to??

Once again, if you have any suggestions, leave a comment or shoot an email to layout@weazlrants.com (the seperate email address helps me keep things organized… ).

Welp… I suppose it’s bed time…

Peace.

New Location

Dimwitweasel — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:59:13 +0000

So, as you should already know (you are reading this, right??), this blog is now located at www.weazlrants.com.

This is my first experience with my own website, so any comments or suggestions on site layout/colors/etc. will be greatly appreciated (constructive criticism is also appreciated). You can leave them as comments on this post, or email layout@weazlrants.com.

Thank you.

Dreams

Dimwitweasel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:41:33 +0000

Have you ever had one of those dreams that are so realistic that you don’t realize its a dream until you wake up? Yeah, had one of those this morning, but now I can’t remember it… Made me wonder though (and not for the first time…), what if Life itself is nothing but a dream –albeit extremely vivid– that I’m just waiting to wake up from? What if this entire existence is nothing but a figment of my unconscious mind?

A tad bit deeper, what if this entire existance is a figment of someone else’s unconscious mind? What if I’m just a character in someone else’s dream? What will happen to me when they wake up? Will I continue, waiting within their mind until they start to dream again, or will I cease to exist? Or perhaps I exist in a state of suspended animation while they go about their daily life, and pick up right where I left off when they sleep again…

Wow…

Dimwitweasel — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:08:12 +0000

I never thought that I’d get into this whole blogging thing… To be honest, I believed it to be a waste of time. I’ve never written a single journal entry in my entire life, and found the prospect of publishing bits of my daily life both pointless and frightening. Alas, here I am. I’ve become “one of them,” a blogger. What is this world coming to?

So here goes, my first rant…

What, exactly, is the purpose of Thursday? I mean, it’s just that boring time period between Wednesday and Friday… Think about it, Thursday really doesn’t serve any purpose greater than making the time between the middle of the week and the end of the weak the same as the time between the start of the week and the middle. Like someone decided that a week needed to have an odd number of days so that there was a distinct middle day, and they just happened to settle on Thursday.

Why couldn’t we just jump straight from Wednesday to Friday? Why prolong the weekend, it takes long enough to get here as it is…