Electric Lib

Good Ol' James Madison

I'm reading Federalist No. 51 for an essay that I have to write, and it is generally interesting and understandable, but this one sentence seemed a little long and crazy, so I laughed to myself and then decided that I needed to point it out. So here you go, an exceprt from Federalist No. 51.

"May not this defect of an absolute negative be supplied, by some qualified connection between this weaker department, and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own department?"

There's the sentence of the day.

Dream Machine

I'm writing an essay right now, but I had to interrupt it because in a moment of writers-block (the topic is stupid), I noticed that my alarm clock has, in a very sublte, understated font, at the very bottom, a name. Sony named my alarm clock "DREAM MACHINE." Which I find slightly ironic because I have generally found that it is in fact a dream crusher. There you are, sleeping peacfully, soundly, deeply, dreaming of a warm beach with the ocean quietly whooshing in the background and a gentle breeze blowing over you and then "WAH WAH WAH WAH WAH." And then you must hook your feet over the other side of your newly lofted bed so that you can lean dangerously over the far away floor to reach for the "off" switch on your alarm clock before you wake up your poor roommate, who has a very nice, quiet alarm. And then you reset it for fifteen minutes later. A couple of times. And then you think that you should have gone to bed earlier. You wish you had not procrastinated your essay so long that you would have more time to sleep. Then you thank the DREAM MACHINE for such a pleasant wake up.

Shakira and Macroeconomics

I had my first Spanish class today which inspired me to bust out my Spanish Shakira albums, because they're both musically wonderful and also helpful in retraining my ears to hear Spanish. I also happened to be in the middle of a very exciting macro-economics chapter in my textbook... Generally, I consider myself unable to listen to music and read at the same time, however I decided to do it. I realized that quiet music in a foreign language (that hopefully won't be foreign for long!) is the perfect compliment to textbook reading, which is dry even when it's trying hard not to be. I used to space out while I read and not pay attention to the words so that I'd have to reread. The music helps to keep my other senses (hearing, obviously, but also movement--which I guess would be touch, or feeling in sense terms-- because you move your feet a little with a Shakira beat) busy so that they aren't wondering off while I try to read. Plus the constant beat of the music kind of pushes you along in the reading so that you don't stall on things, and your mind is so busy it can't wander too much. It's the perfect solution. Anyways, I meant to keep that paragraph much more concise than I did, but I didn't have my usual textbook spacing out time to write it over and over in my head.

P.S.- It turns out I have inherited the Ripley ability to wiggle my ears. I began discovering this ability around two years ago or so because I noticed that while I was reading, the muscles around my ears would tense up and my ears would lift up a little. I found it a little annoying and distracting, so I had to learn to lower my ears. Eventually, I learned to control the muslce, and ta da, I can wiggle my ears.

P.P.S.- I got deja vu while writing that last paragraph, although I don't know what I got deja vu of... I got the feeling that that story was familiar, but none of the memory. I also recall that whatever it is that I can't remember was not really like that story at all, only in the sense that it was kind of bragging in a weird way. Maybe that isn't deja vu. Anyways, that's all!

Oh, one last note, my fabulous ISSP buds just made lentil soup and it was delicious. See, I do occasionally eat well at school. It saved me from a night of a rock hard bagel, ew.

First Day of Classes

Quick, interesting and relatively unimportant factoid: I went from having zero female professors last semester to having 4/5 of my classes taught by female professors this semester.

Today was the first day of classes and they went well! My first class was at 11 and and my second, and last class of the day, was right after. In the second class (Biological Anthropology) the TA informed us that the professor was sick, handed out the syllabus and let us go! What a lovely day. So, I am officially, and happily back to the old grind of school.

Oooh oh, and just to pat myself on the back a little, I was the only person in my econ class (out of about 100 or so) who had heard of Keynes... Thank you Professor Thomson!