Self-Titled

If you ever have to give a 40+ minute presentation about a paper you don’t adequately understand, the following tips may help:

• Copy every major idea verbatim into your notes and read that to your audience.
• Ask your professor to explain the things you didn’t understand whenever possible.
• Waste time by copying every example from the paper onto the board and explaining them in detail.
• Have a partner and alternate talking about topics. The one not speaking can read ahead in the paper or notes to prepare for the next topic.

I suppose you could play dumb to stretch the second one out. I think that was the longest hour and a half of my life, or close to it. Landin can’t write to save his life and can bite my shiny metal ass.

The average height of Dutch men and women has increased so dramatically in the past century that being too tall for a standard-height ceiling or a standard-length bed has become a common problem. So problematic, in fact, that there is a tall person organization that lobbies on behalf of tall people for more head room:

The Netherlands, as any European can tell you, has become a land of giants. In a century’s time, the Dutch have gone from being among the smallest people in Europe to the largest in the world. The men now average six feet one—seven inches taller than in van Gogh’s day—and the women five feet eight. The national organization of tall people, Klub Lange Mensen, has considerable lobbying power. From Rotterdam to Eindhoven, ceilings have had to be lifted, furniture redesigned, lintels raised to keep foreheads from smacking them. Many hotels now offer twenty-centimetre bed extensions, and ambulances on occasion must keep their back doors open, to allow for patients’ legs. “We will not go through the ceiling,” the pediatrician Hans van Wieringen assured me, after summarizing national height surveys that he had coördinated. “But it is possible that we will grow another ten centimetres.”

What I want to know is where is my college student lobbyist?

When I was young, I wished I could write all my Christmas thank you cards using mail merge and get away with it. Good manners, bah! I think if I did do it, the electronic or printed format would give me away. Maybe if I printed using a cursive font?

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a great night. Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera and snap a few shots of my friends and I. I guess one of these days I’ll remember. Maybe if I get a slimmer camera.

My watch was off by about half a minute from the cell phone network time again, just like last year. The people around me were counting down to my watch while everyone else was staring intently at their cell phone screens, waiting for the minutes to hit zero. So there were two ‘Happy New Year!’ cheers at the party. Aaaaakward. My watch is synced up to a local time reference, so screw network time.

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to take dancing lessons. I’d like to learn ballroom, swing, and salsa dancing. I used to know three swing moves, but I realized last night that I had forgotten the coolest one of the three, so my dance moves are woefully inadequate for impressing the ladies. Learning more about wine would be really cool, too.