I enjoy reading and learning about logical fallacies. After you learn a new one you tend to see it everywhere (unfortunately), kind of like a new word (fortunately). I try and make sure I avoid fallacies in daily thinking, but it’s a constant battle since our minds are often happy sucking in crap in order to bring the thinking to an end. Here is an entertaining math page called Invalid Techniques for Proofs. I can’t help but mentally check off all the creationist argument ones I’ve read over the years. And then there is THISSS awesome logical fallacy poster (printed out by my awesome wife!). And then there is THISSS awesome comic by my favorite internet comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Logical fallacies, they’re EvErYWWHeREEEE!!!

Avatar: The Last Airbender was one of the best cartoon shows I’ve seen. The premise is a boy named Aang (the avatar) runs away from home for some angsty reason and ends up hibernating for some years by accident. He wakes up to find the world in a pretty crappy place. While Aang was sleeping, the fire nation (people who can shoot and manipulate fire) destroyed the air nation and enslaved the two other nations (earth and water) through the use of their fire and by building war machines. The Avatar is a pretty special dood. He can naturally bend (manipulate) all the elements while others can only bend one element. He has to learn to control them though and the four seasons are split up on him learning the different techniques. He travels around with a couple of friends he makes early on, helping people, dealing with the death of his nation, fighting against the fire nation, and learning how to be a good avatar.

Emma and I watched all four seasons our senior year of college (they are quick at 25 minutes an episode, and the fourth season is a movie). The characters were a lot of fun, the story was interesting and often compelling (not always), and the whole fire/water/air/earth bending doesn’t get old. You should watch it if you are in need of a good cartoon. M. Night Shyamalan made a movie out of the first season, but I don’t think it had great reviews. I enjoyed it and it had pretty good effects. They just don’t capture the whole attitude of the characters though.

The Legend of Korra is the sequel to the Avatar and it’s just started airing. Emma and I just watched the first three episodes (damn weekly shows!) and so far it’s been great. Korra is the next avatar (there is only one avatar at a time, and after the avatar dies it is mysteriously reborn as a new avatar under a different nation). Since the old avatar was air-nation, and the whole nation was killed in the previous show, I was curious how they were going to bring it back. Well, they did it and they did it well. Old characters disappear in a realistic way and they make way for the new plot. It looks like the writers have done their homework and thought up new and interesting story lines. The premise of this season is a rebellion against the benders. These ninja-esque non-bending folk are creating an uprising because they are tired of being “oppressed” by the benders (and don’t care to distinguish good benders from criminal benders). Korra was born a water-bender and her character is much different from the previous avatar. She is older than Aang was during the first show and has a decent amount of teen angst. She has a lot more attitude and wants to kick butt immediately. She already knows how to bend fire, water, and earth decent, but struggles with air. The first chapter is air bending and she is training with the only air bender left (son of Aang). I’m not too sure on the other characters yet, but so far so good. I hope the rest of the season (and show for that matter) turn out as well as the first three episodes.

Go watch the show!

Got some fish for my bday! So far I haven’t killed any (whew), but the tank is still ‘breaking in’. I’ve found this and this website to be really helpful. Over the course of a month you’re supposed to build up beneficial bacteria that turns ammonia into nitrite and other beneficial bacteria that turns nitrite into nitrate. I have no idea if that’s true, but it seemed like a reasonable schedule. The ammonia levels dropped much quicker than 5 days as the website suggests. I just did the first gravel cleaning and the tank is looking pretty good. I haven’t bought any nitrite/nitrate tester yet, but I’ll probably grab something this week to see if it’s following the schedule. That website suggested more fish can be added after the nitrate levels rise and nitrite levels drop. It’s still a bit unclear how many fish you can/should have. It’s more of a balancing act between the waste produced and how much the bacteria can handle (plus cleaning/water change every week or two-weeks). A rough rule I keep seeing is 1 inch of fish per gallon, but I think that is a conservative estimate. The nitrate levels should also be brought down, but I’m not sure where that fits into the usual cycle. I’ll probably follow this about page.

We currently have 6 fish in the tank. They are named Cow (Dalmation Molly), Bernard (Pangasius Catfish), Turkey (Turqoise Rainbow), Wiggless (Goldfish), Fred (Black Skirt Tetra), and Delilah (Long-fin Rosy Barb). We’ll probably add a bottom feeding catfish and try and get a handful of smaller fish that would school together a bit. We tried to do research before purchasing the fish, but that was a complete failure. There are so many fish! After we already purchased our 6 we googled about them.

Bernard was having some early troubles. Pangasius Catfish are super skiddish, often running into the tank wall and knocking themselves out. Bernard never went that far, but he he wasn’t swimming around much and kind of stayed in the same place. He preferred dark areas and just wiggled around near the gravel floor. I eventually figured out he was pretty sensitive to the LED lighting from the tank lid. I turned that off and he soon was exploring the tank a bit more. We still haven’t seen him eating much, but he is still alive after two weeks so I guess he is feeding off of something. This was one fish the aquarium enthusiasts wish wasn’t sold to the public so easily. I guess they get pretty big… too big for average aquariums. Oops! We’ll see how he does though.

We went with a 20 gallon tank with only a couple fake plants and fake rock. At the store it is tempting to up that to 50-60 gallons for the relatively marginal increase in price… maybe in the future ;) I would be interested in trying out some live plants sometime too.

I am trying to use a nice slideshow plugin I use on research group’s website. There is a wordpress plugin version called Pixidelic Slideshow WordPress Plugin, but it’s not working at the moment. I’ll be editing this post until it shows up.

This semester has been super busy, so I haven’t had many blog posts. I end up writing stuff on the wordpress app for my phone while on the bus, but I never go back and finish them. After this week (last week of classes and TA) I’ll be finishing the 15+ drafts that have been on the back-burner.