The many faces of "okay"

So, texting.  Also, Facebook or Gmail chat or whatever.  We've all had that time, like the common situation I illustrate below, when you have nothing to say but "okay."  But how to do it?  Do you use "ok?" Or maybe just "k?"  Today, I solve the conundrum!

Let's get down to it, then!

Option One: "Okay"
It's simple.  It's classic.  What more to say?

Pros:
- Classy
- Traditional
- Makes you sound British.  Not that British people say "okay" any more than any other people, just that saying the full "okay" makes you sound like the kind of person who sips tea by the fire wearing a bow tie.

Cons:
- Long.  I mean, four letters is a lot to type when I'm such an important person
- Makes you sound formal, like a stuffy penguin who never has any fun.

This penguin is clearly stuck-up and unfriendly.  Don't be like this penguin.

Option Two: "'kay"
A nice abbreviation that lets you skip a whole letter, sort of.

Pros:
- The apostrophe in 'kay makes you sound kind of like Hagrid.  And half-giants are cool.  What's that?  You're just big-boned?  I didn't mean to offend you.
- Sounds kinda ghetto.  'kay, man, fo' shizzle.

Cons:
- Sounds kinda ghetto.
- Apostrophes are hard on most phones.  And skipping the apostrophe and just saying "kay" is just wrong.  I mean, what if it's someone's name?

Gangsta penguins (like this bad guys) say 'kay

Option Three: "k"
One of the most scorned abbreviations on the internet

Pros:

- Short and simple

- Can be used interchangeably with "potassium," to the confusion of all your non-nerd friends

Cons:

- Could get you scorned or killed slowly with a blunt weapon

Option Four: "kk"

For those who want to sound cute, and don't want to open themselves to the derision of the "k" users.

Pros:

Can't think of any

Cons:

- sounds dumb

- could be accidentally mistyped as "kkk," leading to many potentially awkward situations.

This is the penguin that "kk" reminds me of

Option Five: "OK" or "ok" or "Ok"

I use OK because that's what my phone corrects it to.  You might use ok.  "Ok" makes me thing of the alot.  I think that the Ok would would be a cross between an oxen and a kangaroo, and it is summoned in awkward conversations when the only thing left to say is "Ok."

Pros:

- Simple.

- Socially acceptable

Cons:

- From this point on, whenever you see the word "Ok," you will now have the image of the terrifying ox-kangaroo cross-breed I have created.  I am very sorry.

That came out looking much less cool and much more demented-centaur
than I was intending.  I apologize.

Wait, what's that you say?  This post needs more penguin pictures?  All right.  I comply with your demands.

I urge you to watch this video. 

I have a problem

See, I know a lot of facts.  And I like to tell them to people, because having a more informed populace is good, right?

Well, I'm just afraid my friends will hate me.

Consider the following, which was posted on my Facebook wall by a very good friend, whom I'm very close with:

My first reaction was to comment something like this:

"Actually, it wasn't a space jump.  People said that Felix jumped from 'the edge of space,' but actually, the (arbitrarily) politically defined 'edge of space' is 100 km above Earth, and Felix only jumped from 37 km up.   However, if we're talking about the scientific edge of space, you could say that there are still remnants of earth's atmosphere as far as 10000 km away.  However, it is the highest he could have physically gotten in his helium balloon, because helium rises only because it is less dense than air.  The atmosphere gets less dense the higher you go, so above 37 km, helium is no longer less dense than the atmosphere, and the balloon won't rise any higher.  I agree though, it was a pretty cool jump."

However, I read that over, and immediately I became slightly worried that my friend would hate me to the end of time for going all factual on what was clearly meant as a fun post.

So, as of yet, I haven't commented.  I don't know what to say!

This problem isn't new, either.  And the last time, I actually posted the comment.  AND it was on a political post, making it 10 times worse.

One of my friends was talking about the news that Romney was using a KKK slogan in his campaign.  This sounded ridiculous to me, so I googled it.  I found the following sources of information:
a) The campaign video that used the alleged KKK slogan
b) The Washington Post article that accused Romney of the deed
c) The editor's note at the top of the article, which admits that the article "contains multiple serious, factual errors" including that fact that the video that sparked this whole debacle says, at the end, "Mitt Romney does not actually support this ad."

So I commented on my friend's post with this news.  I was pretty polite about it, I think.  I guess my friend was a bit unhappy with how I had ruined her anti-Romney post.  Oops.

I just don't know what to do.  I try to tell my friends interesting things (like, last week I enlightened them about how the Earth is in a stable orbit with the sun, which is what prevents us from spiraling inward into a fiery combustion).  And the other day, when we walked by a creepy winged angel statue, I educated them all about the dangers of blinking.

Seriously though.  I don't know how to reply to the Felix post.  What do I do?

Also, here's my Felix Baumgartner artwork!  The Gallifreyan text says "Sometimes you have to get really high just to see how small you are."  Which is an actual Felix quote before he jumped.

Ding-Dong Ditching with a twist

So I was inspired by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and John Green's videos on Positive pranking, and decided to trty it out myself.  My sister and I went to Stop & Shop and bought a box of Hostess Ding-Dongs.  Then, we attached notes to them, and "ding-dong ditched" some random strangers.  That is, we put attached an explanatory note to the Ding-Dong, left it on their porch, rang the doorbell, and bolted.

That's a Ding-Dong with a note on it.

Overall, the whole thing made me really happy.  I got to go around watching people discover food left on their front porch.  I really hope they enjoyed the gift.  It makes me feel good to think I might have made someone's day better.  I mean, my day would certainly be better if I discovered someone had left a Ding-Dong on my porch.

The only annoyance was when people weren't home and didn't answer the door.  We couldn't exactly leave chocolate covered food on their porch when it was a sunny day, so we had to go collect it and move on.  We started only targeting houses that had garage door open, because it meant they were almost definitely home.

I strongly suggest trying a "Positive Prank" yourself.

Colleges are pretty un-creative when it comes to photos

So I'm a junior in high school, who did reasonably well on the SATs.  So colleges are sending me things in the mail.  Also, I'm touring colleges, so I have a lot of brochures.

When I get these, I like to play a game called "Spot the Cliche College Photo."  Basically, I've noticed that the majority of pictures used in college brochures are variations on the same basic idea.  It's fun to go through and see them all.  All are actual photos from college websites or brochures.

I just find it really funny how all their pictures have the same theme.

I grouped these based on the major categories I usually find.  Some fall into multiple categories.  There are a lot of other groups that I didn't include, like "Students with Face Paint in the School Colors" or "Students Standing in Front of a Blackboard With Complicated Equations Written On It."  Let me know what ones you notice!

For example:

The "Smart Kids Wearing Lab Coats"
(this category may also contain "Students Looking Through a Microscope" or "Students Waering Safety Glasses" or "Students Holding Up a Test Tube and Peering Into It")

The "Students having Fun on the Quad"

The "Students Working Together, Because We Are All One Big Happy Community"

The "Students Doing Things With Complex-Looking Mechanical Items"

The "Our Students Have School Spirit!"

There has been too much action in reaction to political scandals. Please write to your congressman to repeal Newton's third law.

Ahh, physics.

So, I have a physics project that I have to do.  It's meant to help us learn about torque.  Basically, we have to make a mobile.  You know, those things with sticks and objects hanging from them, most often seen above baby cribs?  We have to use the laws of torque to create a mobile out of any objects we want, and make sure that it balances.

So originally, my friend and I planned to use fuzzy dice (those things people hang from their rearview mirrors) as our hanging objects, because fuzzy dice are sort of a running inside joke in our physics class.  But I told my circus teacher (yeah, I take circus classes) about the project, and he suggested that I make my mobile out of people.

It was great.  We had these 20-foot metal Chinese poles lying around, and we weighed everyone, and did the calculations, and spliced ropes, and constructed this enormous mobile.  And we put people on it.  The surprising part was that it actually balanced, and we didn't all die.

But yeah.  I wasn't sure how my teacher would react to my, erm, creative project. (Especially since the assignment sheet said a) that the mobile should be less than 100 cm tall and b) you should not use fragile or valuable objects.  I'm honestly not sure whether humans count as valuable or fragile.) But I showed him the video and he freaking loved it.

Here it is.  I'm the one in yellow, though I'm sure you didn't need me to tell you that.  It's obvious that I'm the awesome one.

That's all, folks.  May the mass times acceleration be with you.

I'm a sucker for nerd jokes.

The urban dwelling resembling the village of York in England (and SCIENCE!)

My title is a cryptogram.  Can you solve it?

(Hint: It means I went to New York City.)

Didja figure it out?  It means "New York City!"  You must be so smart.

It was pretty darn epic.  I mean, it was a school trip, to go to Columbia University for a publications conference. It was a school trip, and they basically gave us free reign to wander anywhere we wanted in Manhattan.  Crazy fun things went down.

However, as cool as it was to watch my English teachers sing karaoke to Lady Gaga, I doubt it interests you.  And I would like to keep you interested.  I think the most interesting thing is my Science Olympiad competition on Saturday.  I mean, New York is way too boring.  But science?  Now THAT'S exciting.


 I mean, you can even write "science" in a science-y way:

Sorry it's blurry; it's my friend's cell phone camera.  I wrote it.  I'll tell you what each letter is, because I'm REALLY proud of this thing.  Took me ages.
S - DNA strand
C - magnet
I - test tube
E - It says mc^2 because E=mc^2
N - a bunch of rulers
C - It says 3.0x10^8 because that's the speed of light, represented by "C"
E - Not sure what the name of this molecule is, my AP Chem friend made it

O - gear
L - fingers (you know, physiology!)
Y - inverted lungs.  Yes, inverted lungs.  Quit laughing, it was hard to draw lungs upside down.
M - triangles with angles
P - phosphorus
I - rad -1.  i
A - deathly hallows symbol.  This was an object of controversy, but my argument was that it related.  Harry Potter is geeky, science is geeky.  It works.
D - atom. In a D shape (I was running out of ideas by the end)

You'll notice that we had a chalkboard in our "home base" classroom, where we relaxed between rounds.  So what did we do? Play games!

First, chalkboard chess.  This was easy, we just made up symbols for each piece (pawn was circle, bishop was triangle, etc).  I was shaded, my friend's pieces were open.  And we erased each piece and redrew it to move.  Simple.  I won after an hour, when I cornered her king and she had no more moves.

Second, chalkboard Monopoly.  This was far more complicated.  First, we redrew the board and simplified the rent amounts and property prices.  We used the random integer function on the graphing calculator as dice, and kept track of money on the side.  It was really complicated.  For chance cards, we had a friend make up things to say.  That was how I ended up losing $2000 in one turn.  The chance cards were all mean.

Third, Pictionary.  This was exciting because I instituted the rule of "abstract Pictionary," stolen from the idea of Metaphysical I Spy in Paper Towns.  Basically, it had to be abstract.  No physical objects allowed.  That's how we ended up trying to draw things like "Neo-Confucianism," "schizophrenia," and a "Mongolian Death Worm."  Yes, we are awesomely nerdy like that.  Let's see YOU draw the "Harvard Sailing Team."

Am I really the only one who sees the resemblance?

This is the Puma logo:


So here's what I noticed: what if you turn the puma sideways?  Looks something like this:

Which, I think, looks something like a deranged monkey doing the Thriller dance.  This is my sister, who doesn't resemble the puma as much as I'd like, because she was pretty stubborn when I asked her to pose like a deranged monkey doing the Thriller dance.  But seriously, am I really the only one who sees what's going on here?

Well, the point of this post was to teach you that a new way to look at a puma logo.  Go forth and share the enlightenment with the world!

Snow Day!

This is what I put on Facebook yesterday, when it started snowing, and people were predicting the statistical likelihood of a snow day:

After that, I did notice there were fewer statuses that looked something like "It's snowinngggg!"  or "Guyz, its lyk snowing rite now!!!1!111!"

But whatever.  I'm not here to criticize annoying Facebookers.  I'm here to share the results of my snow day with you.

Did I start my history essay?  No.  Did I finish my history outlining?  No.  Did I research my forestry topics?  No.  Did I call my Gold Award project adviser?  No.

I had a great list of all the things I would do today.  Very few got done.  However, I made this!  IT'S A SNOW DALEK!

Who says I'm unproductive?  Psshh.

I enjoy messing with people

I went to the bank to get money the other day, and the bank teller guy asked me how I wanted the bills.  I said "Um...how about in two-dollar bills?"

He paused, and looked at me with a face vaguely resembling this:

But he didn't say anything, and proceeded to pull out a little official-looking envelope from a little cabinet, and counted out a whole bunch of $2 bills.  The other tellers sort of looked at him weirdly, and he didn't say anything, just handed me my stack of two-dollar bills.

Great.  My bank thinks I'm a freak.

But this doesn't matter, because I am dancing around with my fresh stack of two-dollar bills.  I love these things so much, for several reasons.

1) Sometimes, people don't know that you can just ask for them at a bank.  They think $2 bills are rare.  Therefore, if you're convincing enough, you can persuade your friends to buy them off you for $3 or so.  I haven't had any success yet, but I'm working on it.

2) My brother likes to spend them all the time because he says he's "trying to bring them back into circulation."  I love spending them too, but for a different reason.  First, the cashier always looks at me, and the bill, really weirdly.  In some cases, I've heard that cashiers vehemently accuse you of counterfeit (or just refuse it), because they don't believe there's such thing as a two-dollar bill.  Hasn't happened to me, though.  But here's my favorite part.  See, cash register have specific slots for different types of bills and coins, and they don;t have a $2 bill slot.  So their hand sort of hovers between the $1 and $5 slots, trying to figure out what to do with it.  It reminds me delightfully of the spork scene in Wall-E.

It makes me crack up every time.

So, we had some snow...

You know what the Nazca lines are?  They're these huge giant lines in the middle of Peru.  On the ground, they look something like this:

Not very impressive, right?  Just some dusty lines in the sand.  Well, these lines go on for miles and miles, and when you fly over them and look from above, they look like this:

Crazy, huh?  They were somehow made before the people were actually able to look at them, and make sure they looked right.  Impressive.

So anyways, my sister and I decided to make our own, reduced-size version of the Nazca lines in the snow.  Here's what we ended up with:

It doesn't look quite right because the photo is taken from our second-story bathroom.  We couldn't convince our mom to let us rent a helicopter to fly directly over it and take a proper picture.

I wonder if it can be seen by people in airplanes.  That would be SO COOL.

Making my very own hipster photos

I wanted to try it out...here's what I came up with.

1) Start with a crappy picture of a person in a random pose.  (Yes, I took that...a while ago)

2) Now, first I opened it up in the Microsoft equivalent of Photoshop.  Crank up the contrast and down the brightness.

3) Already looking pretty hipster, isn't it?  Next, I blurred the whole thing a bit.

4) Now, I scrolled through the filters until I found one that made it look old and stuff.  Choose your own and apply.

5) Not done yet!  Next, Rotate and crop the image to make it artsy.

6) Note the artsy tilt of the horizon.  Finally, our final step is to add an angsty, nonsensical statement about the meaning of life or lost love in white helvetica text.  I didn't have helvetica (gasp!) so I used the most hipsterish font I could find.

And you're done!  Are you proud?  Now post it on your tumblr and be proud of your obscure photography style.  You are so not mainstream.