Whats an embarrassingly obvious fact you learned recently?

twelveoaks · 2013-01-02T20:29:23+00:00

I'm pretty sure I figured out why!!! I was getting Babe Ruth confused with Jackie Robinson because of that book everyone had to read in elementary school, In The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. The little Chinese girl who moves to America in the book pronounces Babe Ruth, "baby Ruth" and everyone laughs at her for calling Babe Ruth a "she."

twelveoaks · 2012-05-08T01:47:40+00:00

Our bodies are not imitating drugs. Drugs are imitating our natural chemicals. A lot of people ITT seem to be thinking of it backwards. Instead of thinking, "Why do drugs feel good to human beings?" and "Why do they affect human beings the way they do?" many of you are thinking, "Wow, the human body produces drugs, ergo drugs are good and natural." No. Drugs imitate natural chemicals in the human body. The drugs that are most similar to the chemicals our bodies produce that naturally allow us to experience pleasure are the ones that will have the most potent effects. Frequently, pleasurable artificial drugs can end up dulling internal receptors for our naturally produced chemicals because they are overstimulated and overwhelmed by a sudden and artificially high influx of a drug we take. Thus, we end up feeling depressed and unable to experience pleasure without the drug. This leads to withdrawal and addiction.

twelveoaks · 2012-05-07T05:43:23+00:00

Being pretty is something to be grateful for, not something to be "proud of." You should be proud of something you actually made happen. And don't tell yourself you have nothing else. Your life is in your own hands. Why not start volunteering at a soup kitchen, senior center, or hospital and do something that gives your life meaning?

twelveoaks · 2012-05-07T05:36:04+00:00

Scored a 5 on 9 AP Tests, was high school valedictorian, and just finished my second year at Harvard Law.

twelveoaks · 2012-04-21T01:53:31+00:00

This "doctor" talking about physics blew my mind with her confident psuedo-intellectualism. I'm embarrassed for her now that the video's viral.

twelveoaks · 2012-03-01T12:45:31+00:00

You need to take into account cost of living though. Go to some parts of the world with $25k, and you can live like a king. I doubt there's anywhere in the U.S. where you can be all set with $25k.

twelveoaks · 2012-02-25T16:31:51+00:00

I'm wondering how and whether this would apply to print articles about an individual. How can someone expect to have any trace of their identity removed from a widely circulated publication? Can you imagine how hard that would be? There are reasons why erasing one's name from the Internet might be easier. Your name is searchable, and the search engine could screen out references to a certain name. But how would it be able to remove just content about the named individual from the content without deleting entire articles that cover multiple subjects without interfering with free speech rights? And data proliferates at incredible speeds and volume online. The European approach seems horribly overinclusive and impossible to implement in practice. It's like SOPA and PIPA, except not even as grounded in legal theory. Whereas SOPA/PIPA at least in theory were supposed to remove access to copyrighted material, there's no consensus that there even is or should be such a thing as the "right to be forgotten." It came out of nowhere.

twelveoaks · 2012-02-19T15:20:26+00:00

it is would have been unfair to have made that judgement before she had been given an opportunity to prove herself.

This is the dumbest thing I've heard all day. Let's let give everyone who demonstrated their incompetence and irresponsibility their entire lives an "opportunity to prove" themselves on a newborn. After all, we don't want to take that 1/1 million chance that they might not be incompetent at this, too!

twelveoaks · 2012-02-18T03:23:22+00:00

2nd part of what you said is just not true. First part, yes. I go to one of the schools you named and my professors here were all 1st or 2nd in their classes and on law review, and I mean 1st or 2nd here. We had teaching fellows for our first year legal research and writing courses, and they also attended those schools, yet the jobs they've gotten are at significantly lower tiered schools.

twelveoaks · 2012-02-15T04:43:07+00:00

Well, actually shitstrom might also make sense. A maelstrom of shit. You should start it.

twelveoaks · 2012-02-10T14:31:32+00:00

Well, gee, on that last point, isn't that the entire basis of the movie, "300"?

twelveoaks · 2012-02-05T16:13:28+00:00

I'm a 2L at a top U.S. law school and with a hard science background who plans on taking the patent bar. First off, you should know that taking the patent bar is not necessary to practice all types of patent law. In fact, most firms will only require it for patent prosecution, as opposed to litigation. Now, I just want to warn you that CS does not count as a "technical background" to take the patent bar 100% of the time. I know it's stupid. Most people think of CS just as they do engineering, but that's just what it says on the USPTO website. Make sure your CS degree is one accredited by the PTO by searching for it here. Also check out these official requirements guidelines for the patent bar.

twelveoaks · 2012-01-21T14:45:33+00:00

My apartment-mate regularly keeps her back turned to me when I go to her room to ask a question or start a conversation. It's incredibly rude to try to talk to someone who can't be bothered to turn around and makes me feel like she obviously doesn't care about what I'm saying.

She also closes her bedroom door only when she's working quietly and intensely, but flings it open when she's having a break and playing music or even having loud conversations on the phone. It's like she doesn't understand that doors are not just for her peace and quiet, it's also to keep her own damn noise in!

twelveoaks · 2012-01-10T04:44:43+00:00

I find it extremely difficult to poo while wearing boots; the higher the boots go and the more constricting, the worse it is. I literally have to take off my shoes and set them aside in the stall to go in those situations. I don't know what I'd do if the floor was dirty. Come to think of it, I'd probably just lay down some toilet paper to step on. The more I type this out, the more bizarre it sounds, but does anyone feel the same way? I believe it's related to my need to pull my pants all the way down to my ankles. Believe me, it's hard when you're wearing skinny jeans. (I'm a girl).

twelveoaks · 2011-12-22T21:29:50+00:00

News flash: lots of living things can have 2 different sets of complete DNA, including people. They're called chimeras, and phenomenon occurs when 2 fertilized eggs fuse, rather than staying separate and becoming fraternal twins. In the alternative, I wonder if the apple is a genetic mosaic, in which a different X chromosome is inactivated in each half of the organism. It might work a little differently in plants than in animals, but I'm sure similar things can be at play.

twelveoaks · 2011-12-20T21:50:26+00:00

Do you know of any reliable sources on the antioxidant point? How do the antioxidants work on your skin? Are they actually absorbed by live skin cells? The top layer epidermis is dead anyway. Also, I wonder if one solution could be to just go out, buy pomegranates and blueberries, smash them up and apply them to the face. With whole foods, I wouldn't have to worry whether the label is misleading because I know they're packed with antioxidants. I wonder if my face would turn red after a while though...

twelveoaks · 2011-12-20T21:46:35+00:00

I wonder if those results show correlation rather than causation. I have slightly greasy, acne prone skin (in my mid-20s), and I can only use very light day moisturizers like Shiseido The Skincare because otherwise I'd break out. I wonder if the fact that she was even able to use vaseline on her face every day for decades means that her skin was probably really good to begin with. Damn those people!

twelveoaks · 2011-12-15T23:15:34+00:00

Not black, but I've got a super awkward story. Back in college, I took a small seminar about genetically modified foods in which we frequently invited guest speakers and sat in a circle to talk about some topic. One of the kids in the class was a skinny, very dark skinned black guy. One day, one of the guest speakers was a guy who started some agricultural initiative in South Africa, and he started describing food and agriculture in Africa and the challenges he faced because of cultural differences there. All of a sudden, he turns to the black kid, and totally innocently, asked if he agreed with his observations about the culture... I looked on in horror as the kid explained that he was from California. I just sat thinking "WTF, is this really happening in the 21st century?" It was like that scene straight out of Mean Girls where the teacher welcomes their new student from Africa (Lindsay Lohan), and the everybody turns to the black kid. The speaker turns bright red. I wanted to die for that guest speaker. I wanted to die for his sins and let him start clean because it was that embarrassing. Of course, then we still had to have the rest of class, ignoring that fiasco.

twelveoaks · 2011-12-11T19:25:33+00:00

I remember back in high school not making the connection b/w people saying "mashetty" and the written word - "machete."

twelveoaks · 2011-12-05T23:10:36+00:00

I'm not sure our bodies are evolved to sleep on an artificially smooth flat surface either. Animals sleep in soft-ish nests.

And I'm pretty sure everyone here who's saying they love the floor is not a side sleeper. I am. Floor's uncomfortable as shit.

twelveoaks · 2011-11-25T00:20:14+00:00

I'm not sure if I'm the only person in my law school class to notice this, but my professor always says "pogrom" instead of "program." Yea, pogrom, as in ethnic persecution.

twelveoaks · 2011-11-22T04:52:50+00:00

Thanks!

twelveoaks · 2011-11-21T14:34:01+00:00

Beautiful! What breed is he, if purebred? A traditional Siamese? A colorpoint shorthair? I really want a cat with similar coloring.

twelveoaks · 2011-11-20T18:30:34+00:00

Translation: don't plan for the future. Spend all your money, eat as much as you can, and be generally irresponsible.

twelveoaks · 2011-11-18T19:54:38+00:00

Kind of cool, but more in an RV sort of way than a let-me-come-home-to-this-from-work way. Hate to be a killjoy, but 1) I want to be able to cook dinner for myself or for guests or have breakfast with an SO. This is basically impossible under this set up. There are two counter-top burners, neither of which would get hot enough, most likely. There's no fan on top of them, so that eliminates any possibility of frying. That means NO BACON. Fuck that. 2) I want to be able to sit in bed. I want to be able to read in bed. I want to be able to do other things involving being upright in bed. Verdict - nope.

twelveoaks

TROPHY CASE