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I accumulate topics to blog about inbetween posts, each too short for a post of its own—in my opinion, anyway—but I keep collecting them for so long that if I were to write them up all at once they'd end up a hugely long disjointed monstrosity. So I'm gonna write about one or two things now, and some more later.

I took the Political Compass test the other day. Here's my result:


I was kind of surprised how far down it is, since I am, you know, quite a fan of governments existing, in general.

But I wouldn't treat the result as terribly accurate, anyway, because it was such a frustrating test to take. More than half of the questions left me sitting there for ages going "well, I kind of agree with this, but under some circumstances I would definitely disagree, too" or puzzling over semantics. Except for the religion and sex ones. Those were really easy.

Me: "'Today's society is too open about sex'... strongly disagree; we're by far not open enough."
Tim: "I knew you were going to say that, pervert."

I also obviously don't know enough about economics. One of the questions asked whether inflation or unemployment were more important to deal with. I do not know enough about the causes of inflation and unemployment and how they affect each other to answer that. Though apparently it's just code for "do you think rich people's or poor people's problems are more important". Rrrrrgh, simplistic questioning! I'm pretty sure you can't disregard the rich or the poor if you want a healthy economy. Maybe I'll move on to economics when I'm a bit further through the maths section at Khan Academy.


Oh yeah, I've been (re)teaching myself math using the videos at Khan Academy (at the recomendation of... FY!Math, I think, or possibly FY!Space). Because, thanks in part to some of those awesome science panels at Eastercon, I remembered that I've always enjoyed it (despite those IB external assessments. What's the point of a test if they don't tell you what you did wrong afterwards? Bastards), and that I've forgotten rather a lot of it of it. And also it'll be useful for me to know my way around statistics for my MA* (which is the reason that seems to fly best in non-geek circles, but they're all equally legit).

I wasn't sure what I still remembered, so I'm just making my way through it all starting at Algebra, doing a problem or two in each section to make sure I can still solve equations and so on. (I can.)


I've noticed the way I enjoy math is a lot like the way I enjoy language. Okay, the rules of any language probably have a lot more irregularities than math, but they're both structured ways of conveying information. They make sense and are aesthetically pleasing in the same way. Translating something or constructing a sentence feels a lot like a mathematical operation: putting words in the correct order so they transform each other's meaning in the way that will result in the overall intended message. And when you read a sentence you solve it, bit for bit, dividing the words into their types, applying the verbs to the objects and subjects and the adjectives to the nouns, and in the end you have a meaning, which is the solution. I'm sure other people have described this in more eloquent ways, but you know what I mean.


Aside: I never know whether to say "math" or "maths". My spell-check says "maths", but "math" sounds more natural to me. Maybe I'll just start saying "mathematics" all the time.


I didn't intend to divide by fiction/non-fiction, but I guess in my next post I'll talk about what I've been reading and watching lately! \o/

And now I'm gonna go watch the new Star Trek film on blu-ray. Again. :3


*What's that, you say, some understanding of economics will probably also be useful for me academically? Why yes, that is correct. So will linguistics, and a number of other things. Fuck, I love my subject so much.
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