As an addendum to the below, in high school I wrote a 1,200 word paper that was one long grammatically-correct sentence. That was difficult, but fun.

Oh, bullshit.

There are many reasons this “result” is invalid, but the main one is that these tests of complexity are skewed by archaic words that were used (surprise!) more frequently as one goes back in time.

There is also the fact that the circumlocutory style used up until about the early 1960s in formal writing and speech is profoundly unnatural and actually more difficult to understand than phrasings without a hundred barely-connected dependent clauses. (This style of writing is now almost exclusively found in academic papers where it is used as a signaling mechanism.)

Speech and writing complexity does not equal conveyed information or intelligence. Most often, it’s deliberately obfuscatory.

Try reading Richard Feynman write about something extremely complicated and see how clear it can be, and then try reading an average paper about the very same topic to see what I mean.

As another for instance, Shakespeare is only difficult to understand for modern readers due to the archaic and obsolete words, not due to textual complexity. I always laugh when people cite Shakespeare for its awesome complexity, when it’s mostly about as complex for its time as the average Firefly episode.

But it’s greater for that reason, not in spite of it.

I could go on, but don’t put much credence in things like this as it totally ignores the cross-cultural differences, obsolete and archaic words, not to mention that the complexity tests themselves are not in any way a good method of assessment for information actually conveyed.

As if the interface of Office 2013 were not shitty enough, there’s this too.

Only install it on one computer – ever.

Terrible interface, user-hostile licensing, bloated and with no compelling reason to use it. Great job of competing with Google Docs, there.

This is a list of some of the things wrong with our old place, the one that we hated so much. Some of these we perhaps could have realized before we moved in, but others you only learn by experience. Bitter, terrible experience.

• no key for front door was ever given to us
• front door had to be forced closed
• back door slammed into house, leaving damage
• back door lock froze up
• door between kitchen and laundry didn’t have a plate and didn’t close right
• dryer destroyed clothes
• floor was uneven
• couldn’t put cable modem in bedroom because the line under the house had gotten smashed by blocks holding up the house
• art supply cabinet in kitchen: smell never left and made unsealed food taste bad
• pull drawers were broken
• kitchen was too big and poorly designed for its size
• dark variegated granite kitchen counter tops are impossible to see if they are clean
• one outlet in kitchen internal breaker was blown and wouldn’t reset
• drain in kitchen sink occasionally backed up (not a clog)
• faucet handle had to be in a special position to turn off the water
• kitchen sink was mounted incorrectly under the countertop leaving a seam that filled with gunk and difficult to clean
• kitchen sink leaks a little bit
• ants in kitchen, impervious to the poisons we tried
• hot water was unpredictable and never hot enough
• dumpster next door for Asian market left backyard smelling like rotten food
• garbage from Asian market frequently blew into our backyard
• noisy fan from Asian market prevented initial computer room layout by making too much noise
• gate prevented two cars from parking on paving stones
• gate frequently refused to close, was hard to activate, and broke once
• garage roof leaked, and infested with rats, mice and cockroaches, ruined many items stored in garage
• garage car door finicky and wouldn’t close with single click
• screw and nail holes were left in every room, sometimes holes larger than 1″ diameter
• possums occasionally banged against the bottom of the house at night
• hot water didn’t work in the tub in 2nd bathroom
• hot water heater behind screwed shut wall
• handles for cupboards in laundry room only attached by one screw
• tiles layed in bathrooms and laundry room were incorrectly installed and left gaps
• toilet broke in the 2nd bathroom, with disintegrating rubber in the tank, and so old shutoff valve wouldn’t turn nor could find replacement parts
• fan broken in 2nd bathroom
• towel rack was unassembled in the 2nd bathroom
• only half of paint job was finished in 2nd bedroom, with blue on half and white on half of the floor boards
• frequent inexplicable power blips (not during thunderstorms)
• closet door in 2nd bedroom didn’t fit right in the door frame and sometimes to be forced to open
• lights in master and 2nd bedroom closets were failing. We replaced the master bedroom light fixture
• water bills were very high due to sprinkler system mostly watering shitty half bare lawn
• nasty brown carpet color and dingy wall color in master bedroom
• master bedroom door was falling apart, didn’t have clearance over the carpet, wouldn’t close due to not fitting in the door frame right
• master bedroom closet door not fully installed, leaning against the closet door frame and won’t clear carpet
• 3rd light in master bedroom fixture was intermittent
• master bedroom closet shelving not mounted to stud and screws pulling out the wall
• missing door between master bedroom and bath
• master bathroom toilet would keep running unless conflobulated*
• master bathroom toilet seat not anchored very well and shifts around
• master bathroom toilet paper holder fell out of wall (not mounted to a stud)
• master bathroom shower custom sized and too long for standard shower curtain
• no fan in the master bathroom leaving bathroom and bedroom damp for hours after a shower
• shower rod in master bathroom fell down and had to be reglued
• shower floor in master bathroom was barely angled enough to drain water and so a lot of standing water and soap scum accumulated
• missing doorstops
• breaker box outside, and labeled incorrectly
• renovation done inexpertly and by amateurs who appeared to just “eyeball”, not plan, or measure correctly
• front door steps were broken and worsening
• home alarm system disarmed but beeped constantly
• phone line was lying on the garage roof and then broke, tearing down some of the roof eaves edging
• third bedroom bedroom coat hanger racks were too close to the wall to let normal hangers hang freely
• third bedroom closet top shelf was not braced so could hold very little weight
• ac thermostat temperature increased when ac turned on (short?), and so only functioned as on/off, not temperature regulating

That list is not comprehensive. That place was worse than many places I’ve lived in and stayed at in the 3rd World. So glad to be gone.

*A combination of wiggling it, cursing, and wishing for an arsonist to burn the whole fucking place to the ground.

I am not a gamer, not even really a casual one, but I’d never, ever buy a game console that blocked the playing of used games.

Not in a million fucking years.

If I feel so strongly about it, just guess how real gamers feel about it. And then guess how well that console will do.

I remember hating these standardized tests because they seemed like a huge waste of time, not because I didn’t do well on them. For instance in nearly every subject, I scored in the 99th percentile and in 5th grade scoring in the 99th percentile of high school students in science, social studies and reading comprehension. (And maybe other subjects; those are just the three I liked so I remember them.)

So, yeah, I never gave a shit about them either way, didn’t prepare for them and barely bothered to read most questions. I knew even then that my future was not in a college classroom.

Looking back, it wouldn’t have mattered a whit if I’d just filled them in randomly, but back then I took more pride in my intellectual prowess* than I should have and knew I could blow those tests out of the water with no effort. Which I did.

But standardized tests tell you very little about someone, really. I’d make a terrible college student, which is what many of them propose to predict, as I learn about what I want to when I wish to learn about it. Putting me in a college classroom, especially at age 18, wouldn’t have really changed that.

I just can’t believe we are going to base a society and so many people’s place in it on some test that many of the luminaries of science and technology from ages past would’ve failed utterly, or neglected to show up for altogether.

*I report my results not to brag about them, but to show that I am not inveighing against these tests because I did poorly on them – no, I destroyed them like the fist of an angry god.

We’ve moved to a new place. There are coyotes yowling and howling in the area behind our building.

This is much better than where we used to live, which was pretty much an expensive dump.

I like the coyotes, and the nice new windows we have here.

On my other blog, I linked to the parent post, but this comment reminded me of how true this is.

Next time you’re traveling and see someone stopped to help someone that has broken down by the road, if the break-down isn’t with the vehicle of a pretty girl, pay attention to who has stopped to help. It won’t be a late model Mercedes, Beemer or Cadillac driven by someone well dressed that’s stopped to lend assistance. It will be someone working class, or poor. Almost always.

One time I lost control a little on the ice in NC and not wanting to crash into oncoming traffic, I took it off the road. No real danger, but it would not move after that. Completely stuck in the thick mud-ice crappiness that NC gets a lot.

This was before cell phones were common, and I was looking at the car pondering what to do. Not a lot of options. Long way to walk back to civilization in the bitter cold.

Then out of the darkness comes this ratty-ass pickup that looked like it had been through an apocalypse. Guy pulls up beside me, wearing clothes and a hat that looked like they might’ve been new in 1975, and said, “Need some help, padnuh?” in a thick Appalachian accent.

He then spent 30 minutes of his time in the hellish cold pulling me out of the muck and asks for nothing in return for it at all. One of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, and just judging by external appearances (which isn’t always accurate, but in this case, probably was) probably never cleared more than 15K in a year.

If you think this has no veracity, where do you think you’d most likely get help if you broke down in an old car:

1) In or near a gated community in an upscale neighborhood.

2) In a poor or lower-middle-class neighborhood.

Well, in America at least, you’d likely get arrested in scenario 1, and almost certainly would if you were to make the mistake of being black or Hispanic. So I guess at least you wouldn’t have to worry about your broken car anymore.

What the fuck does being straight or not – or even male – have to do with making cheesecakes or brownies?

Some days, I beg for the asteroid to come kill us all.

Thinking about the below, the US might be the first rich Third World country.

Our infrastructure is failing, our social programs that make society itself prosper are being dismantled, and we have a higher GINI coefficient than even some of the former standard-bearers of inequality.

We have a lot of wealth, but the average person lives a precarious life where one mistake, one missed paycheck or one arrest could destroy them forever

There aren’t a lot of people starving, but contrary to popular belief in most Third World countries that is also true.

I don’t even like the term “Third World.” I’ve lived in the so-called “Third World” and it’s all just people trying to get along, like anywhere else.

That said, it’s a useful term still.

Yes, I do think the US is the first rich Third World country. Things are only going to get worse from here, too.