Monday, October 27, 2008

Tagged, I'm "It"

It would appear that I have been tagged with some infectious, self-propagating idea by Abel Pharmboy.

Well, I've only got five exams this week. Why not take a few minutes to answer some simple questions?

Here are the rules for the game.

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.


One and two are done. Six random things? You'll have to settle for six pseudorandom things since I don't feel like making a list of personal traits with more than six elements and generating random numbers to determine which things to include. Yes, settle for pseudorandomness. Settle...and suffer!

1. If you ever need to bribe me with something, I suggest a Japanese dinner. I can't get enough salmon sushi, ever, and will continue to eat the stuff until I explode. Please stop me before then so that the restaurant staff doesn't have to clean up N.B. bits.

2. My university was not my first choice school; my actual first choice was Duke University, which, in retrospect, would've been a terrible idea. Duke has no pharmacy program, so I would've needed to transfer after two years. My reasons for wanting attend Duke despite its lack of a pharmacy program? Like so many other messes guys get into, it was because of a girl. Not the most rational motivation.

3. Over the past four years I have transformed from passionately foofy-doctrineless liberal Christian to skeptic and atheist. My conversion to skepticism is actually a result of my studies of alternative medicine. I was first exposed to altmed two years ago when I inadvertently wound up at the Quackwatch website while doing a research project. Thorough investigation of the subject really improved me as a scientist; I would say that before poking into the innards of altmed that I wasn't thinking like a scientist.

Of course, skepticism in medicine led to me applying skepticism to other areas, and when I was exposed to atheism as "skepticism of religious claims" instead of "disbelief in god--as much a matter of faith as any religion" it hit me that there was no other choice than to turn the skeptical eye in the direction of my religious beliefs. They were predictably destroyed once suitably scrutinized.

4. I own a cat. True to family tradition, I didn't get the cat at a pet store, nor did I adopt her from an animal shelter; I simply picked her up off the street as a kitten (roughly 6-8 months old, by the vet's estimation). After pulling onto my street and nearly hitting the poor thing with my car I stepped out of the driver's side door and there was a tuxedo-print cat mewing at me. I did what any soft-hearted but clueless animal-lover would do and took her inside for a saucer of milk (and, when that seemed insufficient, a can of solid white albacore tuna)--all this despite the fact that my lease specifically prohibited pets. I spent the next two hours thinking "what do I do with this animal now?" until I picked my girlfriend up from the airport and informed her that we needed to stop for cat food. She'd owned cats; I hadn't.

5. I used to live in Dayton, Ohio, the so-called "birthplace of aviation" as it is home to the Wright Brothers.

6. I was a Boy Scout as a teen, but I never achieved a rank higher than First Class. I was the first member of my troop to earn a climbing merit badge; I didn't care about promotions or decorations, I just wanted to go camping. I still can't reliably tie any knots.

Tag six, you're it! Go to!

Cobalt at Secher Nbiw
James McGrath at Exploring Our Matrix
Bad of the Bad Idea Blog
The Bronze Dog of The Bronze Blog
Dana of En Tequila es Verdad
and Greta Christina of the aptly-named Greta Christina's Blog!

6 comments:

Cobalt said...

Egad! I am tagged! D:

Dana Hunter said...

Crap in a hat. Another bloody meme.

Ah, well. Cannot decline the tagging of a fellow tuxedo cat owner! LOL.

Besides, I now have another blog to add to the blog roll. All good!

Anonymous said...

Well, UNC-CH had a pharmacy school and is only about 10 miles from Duke.

Ah, Quackwatch - that'll do it every time.

Dana Hunter said...

The deed is done.

Bronze Dog said...

And mine's up.

Verification word: Bonay. Sounds dirty, doesn't it?

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