Man-bashing

So, I saw this (I assume) erronelously forwarded message, essentially bashing men with a whole swath of woe is me yammering, I've decided this needs a line-by-line breakdown. Items I have a problem with are highlighted in red

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED:
Men Are Just Happier People --
What do you expect from such simple creatures?
Your last name stays put. -- In this day and age you can choose to retain your last name.
The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
Chocolate is just another snack... -- It can be for you, too ...
You can be President. -- Umm, didn't Hillary make a bid for this?
You can never be pregnant.
You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.
You can wear NO shirt to a water park. -- I've seen plenty of women go to a waterpark sans-shirt, sure, they're still wearing their swimsuit top ...
Car mechanics tell you the truth.
The world is your urinal. -- Only if you're homless and/or uncouth.
You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky. -- Wanna bet? Men have standards too, y'know.
You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. -- Pop quiz? Is this because you're female, or just ignorant? Seriously?
Same work, more pay.
Wrinkles add character.
Wedding dress $5000. Tux rental-$100. -- Stand back and look at the requirements here: Wedding gown: Needs exquisite material, is usually kept as a 'souvinier', Is custom designed and tailored. Tuxedo: Thrown on our back, worn, turned in the next day, no requirements for type of material except color, which must meet the exacting demands of the bride. Oh, and not all wedding gowns cost thousands of dollars-- that was your choice, there are less expensive alternatives, sure, they're not as fabulous as the one that was spun and hand-woven by the finest and most highly trained of japanese silkworms...
People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. -- Again, wanna bet? Oh, and you chose to wear the uncomfortable showpieces.
One mood all the time. -- What planet do you live on?
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. -- There's a way to resolve that! Don't prattle on about what so-and-so is doing with mr so-and-so if you want a 30 second phone conversation. You have this choice.
You know stuff about tanks. -- Personally, I don't no squat about tanks. Just because you're female doesn't mean you also have to be stupid. If you want to know stuff about tanks, then get up off your duff and learn something about tanks instead of moaning about how great men have it because they know stuff about tanks!
A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. -- You can choose what to bring, if you want to pack light, pack light. There's no reason to bring an entire trunk containing your 64 different pairs of shoes, and 1000 different ensembles for each subtle difference in room lighting and decor. Again, a choice you can make, so make the choice instead of frowning about your overloaded pack mule of crap you won't necessarily need.
You can open all your own jars. -- In what reality is this true? Oh, sure, I can open any jar I want. Now where's my hammer?
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
If someone forgets to invite you,
He or she can still be your friend. -- Then don't be so damned petty and quit holding a grudge just because you were overlooked on the list of invites. Good god.
Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.
Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.. -- Think hard. Do you really need dozens of pairs of shoes with subtle differences between each one?
You almost never have strap problems in public.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.. -- How about saying 'choose to ignore' the thing is, this is a choice.
Everything on your face stays its original color. -- Huh? If you're talking about makeup, and you don't want to wear make up, then choose not to and stop whining.
The same hairstyle lasts for years, even decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.
You can play with toys all your life. -- And women can't? You can choose to "play with toys" or not. Nothing stops you from doing that.
One wallet and one pair of shoes -- one color for all seasons. -- And you can do the same! Imagine that!
You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife. -- Is it necessary to get the expensive manicure or pedicure? You could do the same, but you have to choose to!
You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.
You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives -- And so can you! It's all about choice
On December 24 in 25 minutes.
___________________________________
Men Are Just Happier People
NICKNAMES
If Laura, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Kate and Sarah. If Mike, Dave and John go out, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Bubba and WWWildman -- If any friends of mine did that, I'd cease to be friends with them.

EATING OUT
When the bill arrives, Mike, Dave and John will each throw in $20, even though it's only for $32.50. None of them will have anything smaller and none will actually admit they want change back.
When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators. -- So women are cheap?

MONEY
A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he needs.
A woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale. -- If you're whining about this here's a hint: DON'T BUY SHIT YOU DON'T NEED!

BATHROOMS
A man has six items in his bathroom: toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, razor, a bar of soap, and a towel.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. A man would not be able to identify more than 20 of these items. -- And how much of this crap is actually necessary?

I don't really have anything specific about the rest of this...

ARGUMENTS
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

FUTURE
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.


MARRIAGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change, but she does.

DRESSING UP
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the trash, answer the phone, read a book, and get the mail.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.

NATURAL
Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

OFFSPRING
Ah, children. A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.


THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
A married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!

---

Ok, so what annoys me about this more than anything is the tone of this message, the constantly whining about how bad they have it, when just about everything they are whining about they can change. If you're unhappy with the way the world is, then take a step back, look at what you're doing and change what you can! Is that so hard to do? Don't give into the consumerist bullshit. Make your own choices, and live your life the way you want, and quit whining about how much better men have it. You can choose to forego that 32nd pair of shoes, you can choose not to slather your face in toxic sludge to make yourself "pretty", because the truth is, beneath all of that horrible goop, you really are beautiful. Don't be afraid to be who you are, instead of what the marketing folks want you to be. If you can just be yourself, you'll be happier, too!

Molecular Monday: The Answers

Yesterday I posted a bit of a quiz. I really shouldn't do these things unless I have a bigger readership, but you never know when a stray will come by and maybe post something. :)

If anybody has been following along at home, the answers are:

I was actually shocked by the similarity between Adderal and Methamphetamine. I mean, I know Adderal is an amphetamine, because that's what the generic comes in as, but meth?

But, that's just a digression, the interesting part (and why there is such a tight control on ADHD medication) is the portion of the structures in blue: Both match dopamine in their basic structure. If you don't know what dopamine is, it's essentially the neurotransmitter related to pleasure and addiction. Most (if not all) addictive substances do something with dopamine.

Now, this is my guess as to why Adderal affects ADHD in the way it does: People with ADHD need constant stimulation, doing something stimulating releases dopamine, and those who have ADHD either don't produce enough, or aren't sensitive enough to the neurotransmitter. Enter the stimulant: By mimicking dopamine the drug fools the brain into thinking it has enough, allowing the user to feel stimulated and granting better concentration and focus.

Amphetamines are not without side effects, though, in addition to allowing better focus, taking the medication late in the day can make it difficult to sleep, it also increases heart rate and causes dry mouth; but, the medication works well for me and has made a huge impact on my life, so I'll stick with it, similarity to street drugs notwithstanding.

Molecular Monday: Guess These Molecules

So, this is just a quick quiz; identify these molecules:

Hint: One is an essential neurotransmitter, one is an illegal street drug, and one is a treatment for ADHD. Which one is which, and what are they called?

Chemistry Library: Using CIE lib and spectral data together

I've been working on a coding project in my spare time to do various computational things with Chemistry. One of the requirements being that I have a rather complete data set to work with, which includes-- among other things-- The complete spectra of every element possible in the periodic table in all of the various ionization states. This is a result of using CIE Lib to display the spectral power distribution of the line spectrum of the element Neon:

Click on the image for a larger size

Each spectrum is displayed in ascending ionization levels from top to bottom with the topmost line depicting the standard observer, so the neutral Neon atom is at the top, then singly ionized and so-forth. I've seen lots of graphical representations of spectra on the web, and I think I know why Neon seems so weird: They all show the singly-ionized atom, rather  than the neutral atom.

One item to note: In the full-size image, you may notice that the spectral lines are a bit thick, this is because the rendering method used in this application is to sweep the extremes of the visual spectrum and getting a value within a certain tolerance, the other way to render would be to just draw the spectral lines in order, which would give a much more crisp and accurate result. Maybe I'll do that on the next post!

CIE Library: Illuminants

And, here's an image of what the illuminants look like using the 1964 observer:

Just a couple quick notes about this image: The spectra are rendered using a gamma of 1.8, which seems to work best, aesthetically, however, I do think they're meant to be rendered with a linear gamma. The first is the standard observer, second is CIE Illuminant A, and the third is D65, after that are the fluorescent illuminants, F1-F12 the first 6 are standard fluorescent illumination the next 3 are high CRI illuminants, and the final 3 are described as three band illuminants.

You'll note in all of the fluorescent samples that the light has strong peaks in the green and blue ranges, and with the exception of the 3-band examples, they all have a relatively weak yellow peak.

The high-cri examples do a little better than the standard fluorescent ones, but not much. I imagine you'd get less metameric failure with that lighting. This also explains the green cast in camera images recorded under fluorescent lighting conditions. It appears F3 and F4 maybe "warm white" while the rest are cool white.

CIE library: The Observers

First, this is not official CIE anything (except the data for standard observer, white points, and illumination sources)

As a test, I wrote a quick program to draw the standard observers from 250nm to 750nm on a window and compare the two, the top observer is the 1964 10° data, the bottom observer is the 1931 2° data. This is approximately how you perceive the spectrum. The colors have been converted from the CIEXYZ color space to the sRGB color space, and have been mapped using a source gamma of 1.8, which is likely incorrect, but gives a nice display for me.

This was a quickie, and I'm sure I could get a better rendering, but that wasn't the focus of this exercise. and yes, I realize that 250-750 is way overkill for these, but this gets into all of the UV and Near IR ranges common in such sources as sunlight.

Real Work Conversations

The other day, I was showing a coworker a REST api that I recently discovered and had been playing around with. I got a bit excited and lapsed into Previous-to-previous-employerspeak, and pronounced url like "Earl". This follows:

cw: The what?

me: Earl... sorry, a pronunciation that I got from a former job, I mean U R L.

cw: Don't ever do that again.

me: (laughs)