ewww

Heh, I found this quote on someone's facebook profile:

"I was outside myself, and you within...deeper in me than I am in me" -St. Augustine

Who knew religion was so kinky?

(10:42:12 PM) MalikFalasteeni: see, i was searching for porn - for a respectable college research paper, of course - and it wouldn't show any good ones. stupid safesearch.
(10:42:35 PM) MalikFalasteeni: i'll probably flunk whatever class this research paper is probably for.

I continue to love Nader

(04:15:06 PM) MalikFalasteeni: that's how much your cereal just rocked my face off

Girlfriends

I have no idea how to make friends with girls. I've always had more guy friends than girl friends, and I've always been closer with the guys than the girls. I don't know what it is. I don't know how to interact with girls, or how to develop close relationships with them. I had a female best friend in high school which happened, I think, purely by accident. We both had enormous crushes on the same boy our junior year. We were in the same group of friends, but were not particularly close and hadn't talked much. Then we went on our junior retreat together and there was a whole lot of hugging and crying over the boy, and voila, best friends. After that we discovered all sorts of things we had in common, and were pretty much attached at the hip until college, when for reasons unknown to me we stopped being more than acquaintances. I had another good female friend in high school, but I'm certain that it was only due to her gregariousness and nothing to do with any effort on my part - not for lack of interest on my part, but because I'm completely inept. We, too, bonded over boys as we had huge crushes on two guys that were good friends.

Aside from these two, I have had no close female friends in my adult life. I just don't know what to do with girls. I don't know how to meet them, I don't know how to talk to them, and I don't know how to get to know them. I don't know why it should be any different with guys, but I find myself without any female friends with whom I can share intimate details of my life or to whom I am comfortable going for advice. How do people do it? How do you other women do it?

There are three girls in my department at work who are my age. They are all lovely, interesting people whom I would be delighted to get to know, but I have no idea how to do it! Do I invite them all over for dinner? Out for drinks? Some kind of woman date? Is that weird? This was so much easier in grade school when my mom planned sleepovers.

Am I just retarded or do other girls have this problem?

i bet you have

(17:11:26) MalikFalasteeni: i'll just get a catnap on the bus
(17:11:42) MalikFalasteeni: and then luxuriate at the dead sea spa
(17:12:05) MalikFalasteeni: while virgin maidens rub my muscles and pour oil on my skin
(17:12:13) MalikFalasteeni: i've imagined the day many times

bicurious?

(22:49:57) tallbladeofgrass: but the point is, if i had to choose between a hot guy who is a communist and an objectivist girl, i'd obviously choose the girl
(22:50:11) tallbladeofgrass: no contest
(22:50:12) MalikFalasteeni: oh man, this conversation is turning awesome

The standard deviation of the average

I get really angry when people misuse statistics. I get even more angry when people who don't understand statistics accuse other people of misusing them. Take this letter to the editor from the Daily Bruin. It contains this gem of wisdom:

"Without knowing the standard deviation of any of the presented averages, it's impossible to say with any confidence the averages are different."

The "presented averages" he refers to the average GPAs and SAT scores of students admitted to UCLA. This article notes that the average GPAs and SAT scores of white and asian students admitted to UCLA are higher than those of black and latino students. The author of the letter to the editor takes issue with the fact that some people conclude from this that white and asian students are held to higher academic standards.

As I said, I hate when people misuse statistics, so I sympathize with Menke's desire not to let people get away with that sort of thing. The trouble is that he has no idea what he is talking about. The above quote bears no relation to reality whatsoever. First of all, there is no such thing as the standard deviation OF an average. The average and standard deviation are two statistics that can be calculated on an underlying data set. You could talk about the standard deviation of a distribution of sample averages, but even that isn't a standard deviation OF an average - it's a standard deviation of a data set, the members of which happen to be averages of other data sets. Secondly, whether two averages are different has nothing to do with the standard deviations of the data sets they describe. Standard deviation describes the spread of a distribution. When you calculate the average height of everyone in your LS1 class, the number you get is IN FACT the real average, regardless of the standard deviation. The relationship between standard deviations, averages, and confidence only comes into play when attempting to estimate population parameters from statistics on a random sample. When given two different sample averages, the confidence with which you can conclude that there is also a difference between the averages of the populations from which these samples were taken depends on the sample standard deviations. Even in these cases, the averages of the samples ARE different - it is only the averages of the underlying population that have an unclear relationship. The data set described in this article, however, was the population - no parameter estimation was occurring.

I think I should start a Nader fan club.

(12:12:41) MalikFalasteeni: girls can't help but stare at me, because i dress so manly that they can't keep their panties dry. they're just not used to it. it's a little dangerous, but i know how to control it.