Economics Test Incoming

I will be taking the final exam for ECON 270 (international business) on Wednesday, two days away. There wasn't a midterm for this course, so I really have no idea what to expect. All I know about it is that it's pencil-and-paper; whether it's multiple choice or essay I do not know. The instructor did publish the learning objectives for the book, of which there are almost 70 total. The final will be one hour long, so if it does cover all those objectives, it'd have to be multiple-choice. Otherwise, it's probably a sprinkling of material from each chapter (maybe the last learning objective?) for an essay each. I am not extremely confident going into this.

Downtime

Lately, it has been really difficult for me to produce any video or code of any kind. This is due to college classes finishing up. Economics especially is difficult, especially because the teacher does not give any information at all concerning what will be on the final (there was no midterm). I'm working on econ assignments pretty much all day, doing some tinkering but really making no progress on my programming projects, and generally idling my mind when not doing such things. In other words, I am just really tired and I think I need to sleep more. Once classes get over, I'll have a lot more time to put into interesting programming things and YouTube videos.

The End of SPEC 101

Just a few hours ago, I gave the last of three speeches for SPEC 101, Introduction to Speech Communication. It was a persuasive speaking assignment, and I chose the topic of persuading people to learn/study the excellent constructed language Lojban. It went well, but (as always) I went over the time limit.

This marks the end of SPEC 101, or at least the major part of it. There are actually two more assignments left to do, but they are very small. There's the self-review for this speech and the last unit test, both of which are very easy; it is almost certain that I will get perfect scores on them, thereby securing an A in yet another course.

Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition

While researching for an upcoming speech, I discovered a fascinating linguistic anthropology paper called "Cultural Constraints on Grammar and Cognition in Piraha." The writer, a Berkeley professor, stayed in a Piraha village for years, studying their language and culture. What he discovered is that their way of life doesn't necessitate a complex language, so their small language constrains their grammar, expression, and thought.

A salient example from the paper is that the Piraha people do not refer to their fingers as distinct things. Instead of pointing with one finger, they wave their entire hand. There is not even a word for finger; the people would call them "hand-sticks", and only when pressed to identify them as a separate thing from the hand.

I suggest you go read the paper (PDF) - it's fascinating.

Blitz Chess DRR

Ugh, I am really tired. I just participated in a three-and-a-half-hour long double round robin blitz chess tournament. It was originally going to only be a single round robin - there were 12 people and we were playing G/5 sudden death games - but some people really wanted it to be a double.

Of the 22 possible points, I came out with 17, which is way better than I expected. This has been the second blitz tournament in which I have played; it should positively affect my rating.