Where Is Joel?

I have a pet peeve.  And that is with stupid HDR photos  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is the latest “cool” thing in digital photography.  The theory and concept is reasonable and many shots taken using this are awesome. The thought is that at most exposure lengths most photos we take have under/over exposed parts and so if we merge several exposures together then we can recover the parts of the image that are correctly exposed from each to get a better image.  The following is a good example.  The first pic is a picture of a tractor properly exposed.

It’s fine.  But you’ll notice there are things like the barn on the right that are black.  We have no idea what is happening on them.  Enter HDR.  By taking 3 images at different exposures and combining them using software I get the following.

Now that’s nice.  We have recovered more detail and the image doesn’t look stupid.  This is more like or eyes perceive.  We can normally make out details like the lines on the barn on the right just by looking.  Also, the image doesn’t look stupid, just better than the normally exposed image.  Now this same software allows people to make images like this using the same technique:

That image just looks stupid and it is things like this that give HDR users everywhere a bad bad rap.  There are many beautiful HDR images.  Please I implore you all, use HDR responsibly and don’t make things that are crazy or bad.  For the rest of us!

The absolutely most flagrant violation *ever* of public shower etiquette happened to me yesterday.  Seriously creepy!!!

The shower room at U of A has just installed private stalls.  While I don’t mind showering out in the open I love the private stalls because I can stretch in the shower which is awesome.  So I’m showering in a stall yesterday and this guy comes up to the stall and pushed his head through the shower curtain then proceeds to stare at me less than a meter a part for a good several seconds.  It was obvious there was someone in the stall showering!  WTF!?  Really really creepy.

THEN he proceeds to the stall beside mine and somehow manages to splash huge amounts of water over the edge of the shower stall.  I don’t even know how you splash water over the top of stalls, but I did not enjoy being soaked by his dirty water!

mad and gross.

Saw the following lock on the high level bridge. A couple wrote their “names” on it as well as a heart, the date and the word “Forever”. Very cute.

I got my sigma 30mm back from repairs today. Very exciting. The above picture was taken with it. On the way to pick it up from the post office I ran across this garbage can that someone had tipped over and rolled down the street, leaving a trail of garbage.

In safeway by the U of A campus at 10:30 PM I ran across this lineup which went all the way across the store…  Yes, that is ONE lineup. Why were all these people shopping?

While crossing the high level a guy on the other side of the bridge got jumped. Fortunately the crowd around was able to pitch in a hand and subdue the attacker. The police arrived with a few squad cars *really* fast. Well done EPS!

Lastly, check out this cool car:

Go here. Just do it! It’s amazing, the artist has somehow taken garfield and made it more relevant to our generation by removing garfield and odie.

Awesome. On that note I HATE working on Saturday nights.

Just waiting to meet a friend and back from a *really* cool meeting with Dr. Liang Li at U of A. Thought I’d share some quick thoughts before going.

The things we can do with High throughput Mass Spectrometry these days are amazing and the world is changing faster than I think any of us even realize. Thanks Dr. Li.

Best quote I read today or in a while:
A man is like a cat; chase him and he will run – sit still and ignore him and he’ll come purring at your feet.

Fave two songs lately: Ashes and Wine: A Fine Frenzy, and Cannonball: Damien Rice. Damn A Fine Frenzy being on piano. Must figure out a guitar version of this one. Neither of these songs do I find topical to my life right now if you’re wondering why I picked a song about falling in and a song about breaking up. Seriously though what I really want right now is a cheeseburger, I’m really hungry. Now where is Ashley?

I read the absolutely *most* fascinating article in Scientific American on the evolution of the human penis yesterday. I will first a) surmise the article for you then b) share my thoughts on why this is so interesting.

a) Summary: Humans, as it turns out, are the only primates with big penises. Others, even huge primates like silverback gorillas, just have little eeny weeny members. We also have a really wacky mushroom sorta shaped head at the end. The question is why are we so different from every other primate?

The answer lies in the social structure of humans. Most primates live in bands and have defined social structures defining who is allowed to sleep with who. Humans on the other hand have “monogomous” relationships, but on average are actually cheating jerks who run around fucking each other like gophers. We have therefor evolved a penis that maximizes the chance that *we* are the one who impregnates a woman several guys have had sex with. There are two ways we do this. Firstly we have big penises that push right on up into the cervix and fire of our semen pretty violently so as to push the most possible semen through the cervix. A gentleman who has a smaller penis is at a disadvantage in terms of getting the maximum amount of semen though the cervix to the guy who is packing 10 inches. Secondly the head of our penis with it’s weird mushroom shape actually acts sort of like a pump as we have sex, sucking any other semen that may be inside the woman out so that the previous semen has a smaller chance of impregnating the woman. Insane right?

b) Here are my thoughts:
1) This subject is SO taboo that I’ve never even pondered it before. I actually wonder about everything in the world around me all the time. I’ve thought about how virtually every other body part in our body works and why it is as it is, but not the penis. This from someone who not only is so fascinated with the world around him it can actually get annoying (Ashley, care to comment?), but is also in the field of biology. It’s funny how the evolution of our society makes things so taboo we don’t even think about why we don’t think of them any more.

2) The terrible nightmare of the average man: “Size Matters” actually has evolutionary backing. Men with bigger falli attached to their groins have a higher chance of reproducing. As women want their children to have the highest chance of propagating their genes they should generally evolve to be attracted to guys with bigger penises, whether the behavior is conscious or not. This should be taken with a huge caveat, I’m not saying that penis size should determine relationships or fidelity or anything like that here. Just saying that biologically an evolutionary push in that direction makes sense. (Please excuse me while I go cry about my lack of a 9 inch penis.)

3) Lastly, what the hell humanity? We actually cheat on each other SO much that we needed to evolve a specially shaped penis to help us conceive with people we are having sex with because they (and we) cheat so much? Pseudo monogamy goes back very very far in recorded history, so it seems likely that the whole time this evolution has been going on we were a monogamous species. What a horrible indictment of our ability to treat the people we love with the respect they deserve.

That’s all for now.

Joel Out.

Haha. The tags for this post are going to be so sexual… I wonder if I will get any random google hits by interneting guys looking for porn? That would be hilarious and give me many utils. Maybe I’ll add some superfluous tags like “enlargement” and see what happens. Oh internet fun. I have a meeting I need to go to now though. I’m actually leaving.

So not, under ANY condition, drink crunk energy drink. Even if someone actually offers you free crunk and you are desperate for caffeine, walk past them and spend your money on the non-free other energy drink. or just don’t drink an energy drink, the suffering will be less than the suffering you will experience while drinking Crunk. Not only is this drink revolting, it also smells revolting and made me sick. It’s basically a disaster in can form.
On a more hilarious note the moment I saw the name “Crunk” I immediately thought of “Booty Sweat” from Tropic Thunder by “Alpa Chino”. Then as it turns out Crunk is by Lil’ Jon. Crunk Juice is in fact so bad that I will be henceforth be boycotting Mr. Jon. Awesome. Awesome.

Don’t drink it. You’ve been warned.

I’m coming back to something I talked about a while ago. Scott Reuben, the biggest jerk in science, fabricated the data for 21 studies which were then used to justify the use of drugs that killed many many people. In short the guy committed fraud to further his career and thousands of people died because of it. Somehow, some way, his punishment was firing from one of his jobs and forced leave from the other. Seriously, he wasn’t even fired from all his jobs. More importantly it quite frankly stuns me that there was no legal action here. He killed people through scientific fraud. If there is no law against that then one should be made El Pronto. I think most of the problem here is people don’t quite understand the scope of the crime. So he faked a few clinical studies, who cares? BILLIONS of dollars of drugs that may not be effective for treating pain, but that are effective at killing people with heart attacks were sold based purely on these studies.

The man belongs in jail. It’s sad that he remains at large, even if he is too discredited to do more damage. In this case the punishment does not fit the crime and unless scientists are held accountable for actions like this they can continue to perpetrate them.

a) Homeless man. Looking like he is applying deodorant under his shirt. Clearly rubbing something on his armpits. Pulls out razor from under shirt. ???
b) Man walks out of Zellers. Takes off his shoes, looks at them disgustedly, and throws them in the Garbage. Proceeds to walk barefoot across the parking lot barefoot to his pickup truck. Gets in and drives away. ???

I’m in the mood for a blog post right now, so here I go. This is a subject that I have been pondering since I turned 25, hopped in a car and travelled my way across the good old U S of A. Was a very stereotypical mid-life crisis reaction, but doesn’t really embody the real dilemma that 20 some year olds now feel in their lives.

Symptoms of said quarter life crisis are said to include:
-Feelings of not being good enough because our jobs don’t satisfy our intellectual level.
-Insecurity over the future.
-Blah Blah Blah (See wikipedia for more.)

At it’s core the quarter life crisis is the pulling of ourselves in both the direction of picking a path and doing it and keeping the doors open. When we commit to a career, or marriage etc. we close doors and there is inherent fear that in doing so we decrease the highest total potential we could achieve in our lives. While this makes sense, the natural question to ask is why has this phenomenon not occurred in previous generations?

The answer lies in that we are the first generation with the massive media and information access that is now prevalent in the world. This article discusses two types of consumer behaviour, maximizing behaviour and satisfying behaviour. Maximizers need to make the best consumer choice at all times. They do copious amounts of research, they make the better choice on average than the satisfiers, but they are less content with their decision. Satisfiers make a choice with minimal research and are happy with it even if the choice is less good than it might have been.

Although the article discusses consumer’s choices in purchasing goods we can expand the concept to life. Our generation is a generation of maximizers at life. With all the information available to us people with inherent maximizing personalities can begin to explore issues such as “Am I with the best possible person for me”, “Is this the best job I could possibly be at” etc. much more easily than before. The answer is usually, “No, your life is not the best it could possibly be”. But even if their is no possible way that life could be better the maximizer now exhibiting his/her maximizer behaviour is discontent. The result is a wanderlust that affects us all. We always crave change to try and make things better. We desire to put off important decisions in case something better comes up. We marry later. We take longer to make career choices and then stay less long at our choice.

It’s interesting to watch and hard to say how to solve, but everyone has to make choices eventually. The worst thing we can do is put off making these important choices until after we have frittered away too much of our lives. Anyway, I started this post without any thesis or plan and have now rambled enough. Just wanted to explore this phenomena a little in my own head before bed tonight. Anyone with thoughts about how this affects them, feel free to share. But seriously who am I kidding, no one reads this. Nighty Night!