The Mama’s Health Scholarship asked its applicants to consider HPV: “Should states enact laws that would require girls to be vaccinated against Human Papillomavirus (HPV)?” If nothing else, an interesting topic and motivated me to do some research on the subject. I feel… what’s this feeling? Oh. More informed. Mama’s Health Scholarship Essay

I recently re-read Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five in preparation for a scholarship essay. I finished it in two days, and though some read like that or more all the time, I can’t remember the last time I plowed through a book like that. I felt accomplishment.

Elder and Leemaur Publishers put on a scholarship every year, and this is my most recent submission. The question I selected to answer was “What do you believe is the greatest literary work of all time, and why?” Using all of the only 500 words allowed for an essay, I answered this awful question. Other equally meaningless questions you could answer were “Who do you believe is the greatest inventor of all time, and why?” and “What single event in the period of the 20th century (1900 – 2000) do you believe will have the greatest influence over the 21st century?” Questions like these make me so frustrated, and then to try to condense a review of what’s presumably one of the best books written into 500 words. Disgusting, but I would like them to give me money. This is my selling out:

“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five is one of the most incredible books from the 20th century. It’s well-written and uproariously funny; but most importantly, it’s timeless.

This book is about coming to terms with atrocity. Our ability to find humor and irony during unfortunate times is our saving grace. It’s not meant to trivialize tragedy, but simply to say that if we are to survive, we must learn to laugh. We are “stuck in the amber of the moment,” Vonnegut says, reminding us that all horrible moments are now and always, but more comfortingly, so are beautiful ones.

That idea brings an existential peace with the world to Slaughterhouse-Five. The Tralfamadorians (an alien race who temporarily put Billy Pilgrim on display in a zoo on their planet) see time and space “just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains;” all moments are. Friends who have passed away are simply in an unfortunate state at that time, but in other moments, they’re in perfect health.

Books from Tralfamadore are a series of moments, carefully chosen by the author to be considered simultaneously to describe something beautiful. Slaughterhouse-Five is one such book. It’s filled with two-paragraph passages describing disjointed moments: a young boy is thrown into a pool at the YMCA; English POWs put on a production of Cinderella for American prisoner; a man is executed for stealing a teapot.

The central tragedy of the book is the firebombing of Dresden. Kurt Vonnegut was one of seven Americans to survive it, and he encourages us to remember that it was the greatest massacre in world history - 135,000 people were killed.

Billy Pilgrim’s comforting dissociation from the world lets us see the tremendous irony that abounds in the war. As he and other American POWs are sent to a prison camp, a hobo’s dying words are “You think this is bad? This ain’t bad.” While in Dresden, a hundred American prisoners are watched by eight guards, including a man with a fake leg and a grandfather and his grandson - one too young to guard and the other far too old. Many of Vonnegut’s war criticisms are presented through these absurd situations.

The book is lined with motifs that help with continuity: virtually every mention of death is followed by the phrase “So it goes,” a sort of “c’est la vie” popular with the Tralfamadorians. Mrs. Pilgrim dies from carbon monoxide poisoning on the way to see her husband. So it goes. These motifs conjure passages from elsewhere in the book, sucking the reader into a Tralfamadorian perspective where all moments are happening all at once.

Vonnegut urges us to dwell on the positive and remember that all moments are: “Be patient. Your future will soon come to you and lie down at your feet like a dog who knows and loves you no matter what.” Billy’s self-written epitaph presents it concisely: “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”

This weekend I submitted three scholarship applications totaling about $12,000; the third of these was the Alvin J. Cox Memorial Scholarship. Applicants were allowed to pick their own topic, and no word limits. This essay is a little more free-form, but it roughly about my enjoyment of science and technology. Alvin J. Cox Memorial Scholarship Essay.

I’ve been putting together a media server for my newly-hacked XBox media center, and I had an old 120 gig hard drive laying around that wasn’t seeing much use. I thought I’d throw it in the box, giving me 240 gigs total to keep online for my viewing pleasure. The problem was, however, that I had removed the shunt at some point, and couldn’t find one around the house (who keeps these, anyway)? So, presenting my very ghetto make-shift shunt:

Made from one of those yellow connectors (if you know the name of what I’m talking about, please let me know), I snapped off the part where you put the wire in and then clamp it with pliers. Before using that, I made sure I had the right setting (I wanted this one as the slave HD), by touching a screwdriver to the two pins associated with that setting and held it there as I booted the machine. Probably a safe/smart move (but in all reality, how much current flows through those pins, anyway?).

As I read today, Amazon is selling DRM-free music for 89 to 99 cents. As much as I love Apple and want it to bear my children, DRM irks me in so many ways; though they’ve begun selling DRM-free music for $1.29 (since May), whenever I find myself looking for music on iTunes, none of it is ever available for as such. And even then, I think I’d find it hard to man up the extra 30 cents per song.

I appreciate that it’s probably not Apple’s choice or “fault,” and it’s a product of some record companies wanting a little bit of an extra “guarantee” (though it’s hardly anything at all - try googling “break apple drm”). Still, it’s sad. I mean, you go and buy the physical CD, and you can do whatever you’d ever want to with it pretty easily.

In celebration of Amazon’s new feature, I decided to buy Feist’s “1234.” Ironically featured in the TV spot for the new (and impressive) iPod nano.

My XBox is now my gateway to my media. $4.73 for Splinter Cell (how this particular hack gets the Linux installer running), and $21.81 for an Action Replay kit to transfer the files. Now, all the media on the LAN are at the fingertips of my XBox. Music, Pictures, Movies and TV Shows - the whole gambit.

I used this Lifehacker article as a guideline. All in all, it took about an hour.

I’ve been wanting to make myself a nice little iPod case out of a book. Until now, I had been waiting for a sufficiently nerdy book to find its way to me.

I had to go to the Longmont Public Library to get a copy of Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut), and thought I’d check their used books table. Nothing quite nerdy enough. In the basement, however, where they keep all of their free books, I found a book from simpler times: Introduction to Logic. Old, antiquated (this edition, not logic itself), and just nerdy enough. I spent about $2.60 on magnets to embed in it so that it would remain closed when jostled, and a little Elmers glue, an razor blade, and a little bit of time, and I’ve got myself a nice little iPod case.

The process will invariably have to begin again when I finally decide to go for a next generation iPod, but until then.

I have been dying to try out Mint, but unfortunately it doesn’t support my local bank at this point. They recently reworked their setup so that it’s much faster than it was a couple of days ago, and it looks so incredibly amazing. What it does is it keeps track of your various credit cards and bank accounts by logging you in and retrieving your recent activity. I’m not sure to what extent it automatically sort things, but my understanding is that it will do its best to pick out things like gas and groceries and sort them accordingly. See the changes in your monthly entertainment spending.

All in all, it looks very sharp. I emailed them about adding support for my bank, and hopefully they will do so soon.

Via LifeHacker.

A very funny clip epitomizing forum life on the web. Via 43 Folders

I’ve only been waiting since the tenth grade to see They Might Be Giants.  Every time I’ve wanted to see them when they come to Boulder, it’s been a 21+ show.  But this time, something is different.

No.  I’m not 21.  It’s a 14+ show.

Tomorrow (Thursday), Boulder Theater.

Alan and I are going to rock our faces out and then get ready to atone, ‘cause Yom Kippur starts on Friday night.

w00t