Enjablog

Basics of my last 10 days… Might elaborate on some later, but the highlight was obviously rioting after the Red Sox swept the World Series.

Friday - BFF’s sister’s birthday doober

Saturday - Journey up to Boston with Ian. Game 1 at Luis and Krissa’s place.

Sunday - Loafing around reading day, Burdick’s hot chocolate (mmm… chocolate…), magical meat place, then Game 2 with Luis and Krissa.

Monday - Burdick’s, Sackler Museum (pictures are a little blurry because I couldn’t use flash), hotel searching, pool at Boston Billiards and Bar with a couple of Ian’s friends and their pool league doober

Tuesday - met up with people at the mall for lunch, went around Ian’s former company’s new office, saw I Heart Huckabees (liked this a lot… weird in a random philosophical way. Two words: existential spies. I found it very funny. Still don’t know what about Napoleon Dynamite rubbed me the wrong way, but the people who tried to convince me that ND was good might like this one.), then Game 3 at Whiskey’s

Wednesday - Mall to buy hats, took some pictures around Fenway, more pool at Boston Billiards while waiting for Game 4, watched at Boston Beer Works. Weirdest thing on the menu: fried pickles. Strange, but surprisingly good. Anyway, the important part of the evening: rioting (pictures are a little blurry due to lack of light when cops were chasing us). Ok, so we leave this bar, which is across the street from Fenway and the cops have the street blocked off so people won’t rush the stadium in their riotous madness. They block off both ends of it, leaving this bar in no-man’s land in the middle. We leave the bar and get herded into this parking lot next to it and they promptly close the gate behind us. We hang out with the riot cops for a while. They seemed pretty nice. But then we decide to head back toward the back of the lot, where we were supposed to be able to exit. There is another line of cops down at that end. We hang out with that crowd for a bit. Much rowdier than the first group. Try going up one of the side streets, then again get trapped between two lines of cops.

They finally allow us to leave out one end and we try to find Jessica (girlfriend of one of Ian’s former coworkers). Get to her street which is completely jam-packed with people and find that the line of cops in that area is two buildings away from her building. Not only that, but there is another line of cops about a block away, which means her building is in yet another no-man’s land. They, of course, would not let us through. Not that we actually got a chance to ask. A few other people wanted to try to get through, but they were told to go home. Before we got a chance to ask if we could go to the building behind them, the mounted cops come riding up, they start beating their beating sticks against their pads and shields, chanting, and then started marching toward the crowd. We ran away, but most of the crowd just amoebically shifted away from the police line.

Throughout all this was also people setting off fireworks in crowds of people, as well as many overly drunk people. The cops set off some flash bombs and smoke bombs to disperse the crowds, but for the most part though, it was just very happy people celebrating. No fighting or anything like that that I saw. Some huge concrete decorative spheres got ripped out of the ground and rolled around and a tree was falling over into the street. Anyway, lots of rioting, but no looting. Still, by far the best rioting adventure I’ve ever been on (also, only rioting adventure).

Thursday - wandered town in a haze, hung out in a library for a bit, napped

Friday - bought World Series stuff, went on a journey for candies, hung out with peoples, played scrabble and video games

Saturday - rolling rally day, way way too many people in a very small area. I heard the count was 3 million people along the 3-mile route for the rolling rally. Absolute madness. video games, trivial pursuit

Sunday - journey home

Red sox won! Red Sox won!! So anyone interested as to why I’ve been missing this past week, I took a trip up to Boston with Ian to celebrate the Sox making it into the World Series. And even better than that, we got to do some rioting while we were there. Still haven’t made it home yet… hanging out at my parents’ place until they get back. Will update pictures and last week’s adventures when I get home. That’s all for now! Hope y’all had a good week. :) -J.

Happy birthday to Tom and my grammy. You are both old in your own, unique way. But also chronologically.

Happy birthday, Sonny! Woo! Hope you’re enjoying your “cake.” heh heh… :) -j.

Press Release

3-116th Infantry Battalion (Light)
Task Force Normandy
25th Infantry Division
Release number: 116-13
October 17, 2004

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Virginia Guardsmen and Afghan security celebrate collaborative efforts of Afghanistan’s first national election.

By Capt. Jim Tierney

Ramadan is a month long celebration of Muslims who believe the Holy Quran was sent down from heaven. It is a time of worship and a time to strengthen family and community ties. On the first night of Ramadan, another important celebration was held in the dining facility of the Third Battalion, One-Hundred and Sixteenth Infantry of the Virginia Army National Guard. It was a celebration of the cooperation between coalition forces, the Afghan National Army (ANA), local police, and the community during Afghanistan’s first national election held one week ago.
Leaders from all aspects of the community joined for a late night dinner to honor the efforts of all involved. Muslims fast during daylight hours during the month of Ramadan.
“Afghans have been waiting for these elections for many years,” Ghazni Governor Asudallah told the crowd of nearly one hundred soldiers, police and civic leaders. “We will never forget the help of the U.S. and coalition forces.”
Large numbers of voters turned out to cast their ballot for president in the nation’s first democratic elections. A country, where only three years ago women were forbidden under Taliban law from holding a job, now has female doctors, lawyers and even a presidential candidate. Virginia Guardsmen were there to help ensure the security of the election process
Members of the Third Battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment worked with the ANA and local police planning and preparing security measures for Afghanistan’s first national election. The Third Battalion has been in Afghanistan for four months supporting the Global War on Terrorism. The Virginia Guardsmen conducted searches and set up control points outside of villages where Afghans traveled to vote.
“Our soldiers were proud to be a part of this important time in Afghanistan. This was one of the key events we have been preparing for since we were mobilized. The cooperative efforts between the ANA, police and coalition forces played an important role in the success of Saturday’s elections,” commented Lt. Col. Blake Ortner, the battalion commander of Task Force Normandy.
Members of Task Force Normandy, comprised of units from 3-116th and the 25th Infantry Division (based out of Hawaii), spent the preceding week securing election sites and escorting vehicle convoys delivering ballots to the polling sites. During the election, Task Force Normandy supported the ANA and local police by patrolling areas in villages to ensure citizens could make it to the polling sites. There was an increasing number of threats by Taliban forces in the weeks leading up to the election. Very few attacks against polling sites or voters actually occurred in the province of Ghazni, where Task Force Normandy operates.
“We proved to the world that Afghans want peace,” declared one provincal elder. “Nobody expected this much progress in two and a half years. The Afghan nation will never forget this. We will always remember our coalition friends.”
Regarding the excitement of the elections, Capt. Scott George, commander of Alpha Company 3-116th, remarked, “It was a privilege to be witness to the first steps of the birth of Afghanistan as a democratic nation. They were very proud of their ability to vote. It seemed like everyone would come up to us to show their voting card. There was an extreme amount of excitement. You couldn’t stop the people from voting.”

The 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, Virginia Army National Guard is headquartered in Winchester with units from Bedford, Leesburg Manassas Warrenton and Woodstock, Virginia. Mobilized on March 1st, 2004, the unit is stationed in Bagram and Ghazni, Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom as a part of Combined Joint Task Force 76. For more information about this story or for more information about the 3rd Battalion, 116th Infantry, contact Capt. Jim Tierney at james.tierney@us.army.mil.

Happy birthday, Lenny! woo! Happy and stuff! La la la.

I’m *speechless*. Wow.

LOTD: Yahoo! News - Political Yard Sign Wars Wage as Election Nears:

In Ohio, two men were reportedly caught on videotape urinating on a Bush-Cheney sign, and in Madison, Wisconsin, someone burned a swastika into a lawn with a Bush sign.

Some people are working overtime to protect their signs. Mark Shemet of Jaffrey, New Hampshire, has had to replace two stolen Kerry signs in the last week alone. Pennsylvania Democrats have threatened to spread itching powder on signs to keep the opposition at bay, and an Illinois family last week covered their yard sign with petroleum jelly to repel thieves.

QOTD: “hey, want to go in halfsies on a house?”

Holy shmacks! Never been done before. This is statistics being thoroughly rejected. I don’t know what to do. I even missed Gilmore Girls last night for this. What is the world coming to? Yeah, yeah, so I had 2 people recording. But that’s ok. Woo!

Happy birthday, Mars-girl!

So angry… must rant…

I was playing trivial pursuit with people at lunch today and one of the questions was, “What is the third smallest prime number?” And I said 5, but someone else in the group said that 1 counted as a prime because it is divisible by 1 and itself, so it should be 3. And trivial pursuit was wrong. I’m very disappointed. I still maintain that 1 is not a prime. The answer should be 5.

References:
Wolfram
Wikipedia
UTM’s prime number researchers — List of prime numbers

I can’t believe:
1. someone tried to tell me I was wrong about math.
2. it was an engineer.
3. the engineer thought 1 was a prime number.

I can believe that Trivial Pursuit was wrong (the infamous moops). That wasn’t the problem. It was also an old set, for which I could possibly give them leeway. But, honestly, in this day and age, no one who uses math for anything worthwhile would consider 1 a prime number.

A prime number is a positive integer that has exactly two positive integer factors, 1 and itself.

Yes, that’s right. Exactly two. One and itself. That doesn’t mean you can count 1 twice. That means one and itself, which is a distinct integer value that is not one. Dammit. I don’t argue unless I know I’m right. I mean, I argue all the time just to be argumentative. But I’m rarely confrontational about it unless people are being blatantly stupid. And even less often than that, I won’t tell someone flat out that they’re wrong unless I know that they are. And this, I was right about dammit. One does not count as a prime number.

And see, the thing is… I can’t even show him that he’s wrong because this is so stupid to get worked up over. But I take math very seriously. When someone tried to tell me a few weeks ago (again, while playing trivial pursuit) that a heptagon wasn’t a seven-sided polygon because sept- was the correct prefix, I had to just keep repeating myself until she flipped the card over. It’s not about being right or wrong on this. It’s about appreciating math and understanding it. Actually, it is about being right or wrong. And, today, math was done a disservice. A line was drawn between right and wrong and I stand proudly in the right quadrants defending math in all its glory.

EDIT: (Yes, I’m still worked up about this.) Ok, so I take it back. It’s not ok that Trivial Pursuit got that wrong. The moops was a typo. They had the general answer right. In this case, this was an error. There was a fundamental misunderstanding of a concept. It wasn’t even a missed fact-check. This was a question that they answered wrong. Stop letting 1 get away with masquerading as a prime number. Next thing you know, we’ll be letting the fundamental theorem of arithmetic get away with using composite numbers. Heathens.

Maureen Dowd: Cast your vote and be damned:

“Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a Treasury official for the elder George Bush, told Suskind that some people now look at President Bush and see “this instinct he’s always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.” He continued: “This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy.

“He believes you have to kill them all. They can’t be persuaded, that they’re extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them because he’s just like them.”

The president’s certitude - the idea that he can see into people’s souls and that God tells him what is right, then W. tells us if he feels like it - is disturbing. It equates disagreeing with him to disagreeing with Him.

These people can fly to the sun, but can’t tell which way gravity goes?

$264 Million Thud Caused By Upside-Down Switch:

It appears that a gravity switch that should have triggered the two parachutes on the spacecraft was installed backwards, and the Moon’s gravitational field was just not quite strong enough to trigger the opening.

Woo how exciting! The game lasted just under 6 hours. I guess they’re all earning their money’s worth.

Anyway, this tagboard thing is giving me trouble. Actually, IE is giving me trouble. Everything works so happily either in firefox or in IE, but not together. I think it works now. Let me know if it gives you any trouble. Off to bed. -j.