Plans for the Future

I've been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I've come up with a solution what will work for everyone. I won't be at IA next year, but I'd like Only At IA to continue. I considered passing it on to one person, but I know no one else will be willing to donate as much time as it takes to run the site alone. I considered keeping it and expanding the subject matter, but I think that would ruin the essential IA-ness that makes the site what it is. I also considered all sorts of other options, and I've finally picked one.

I'm going to pass it on to a carefully chosen task force that will have the job of maintaining the site and supplying it with new material. I'll still post occasionally, but most of the writing will be done by them. See where it says "Posted by Jösh" below this post? If not, then I'm still working on fixing that. If technology agrees, you'll be able to see who posted what in case it's not obvious. I've asked eight people to be on the team and so far I've heard back from three, all interested. I just sent the email yesterday, so I'm optimistic about the rest. Here's the list of people who've agreed so far (I'll update it as more people sign on):

*Change of plans: check the sidebar for the most recent version of this list*

I chose people whose unique senses of humor I appreciate and who have a certain connection to OAIA already. Special thanks to everyone who's opted to join, and also to all the readers for making the site enough fun to be worth continuing. As soon as I post this I'm going to start granting permissions, so if you're seeing it then the plan is already in action. I've also asked the task force to keep itself populated as its members graduate by finding replacements, so OAIA ought to go on for quite sometime to come. It really has been a wonderful part of my IA experience, and I hope it continues to grow in the coming years. I do plan on reading everything that appears here, and I'll probably comment pretty often. Thanks again to everyone seeing this, and let the invitations begin!

I hate blog posts about controversial topics almost as much as I love irony

First let me say that I seriously considered writing this entire post in the color of the background so you would have to highlight it to see it. Instead I decided text was silent enough already...consider yourself lucky. This past Friday, I and many other IA students participated in the annual Day of Silence. Please read the aforelinked Wikipedia article if you don't know what that means. It was a great experience and for a great cause; I encourage you to participate next year if you get the chance. IA's GSWA (Gay-Straight-Whatever Alliance) handed out stickers to wear, advising others that one was participating. Sadly they ran out of them before I arrived, but Marie got there in time to get one. As you may remember, Marie is a fairly religious person. Her entire church, however, participates in the Day of Silence; they even have a silent service that evening. In her own note-passing, "Not all Christians are confused." Anyway, she happened to have a copy of the bible in her backpack, which she decided would be an excellent place to keep the DoS sticker.


I decided to take another picture, as the sticker in the first one wasn't straight. At the time, the pun was totally not intended.

Hang a left at Annotation Isle

Quite a while ago, Caitlin M. showed me an assignment she had to do in math. According to her, "The assignment was to create a treasure map for math that would have a coordinate system, and give clues so that the person who is given your map can find the treasure, we were told to 'be creative,' which mostly resulted in maps that had pictures of pirates or were supposed to look like authentic pirate maps... except mine :)" I asked her to send it to me, and she kindly agreed to do so. After months of friendly reminders, I have the map (sans grid, but we don't need that anyway) and am ready to share it with you. Take a look (click to embiggen):

Well done, Caitlin! I'm a little curious about the two unnamed Sleepless Nights' Islands (and just a bit annoyed with the erroneous apostrophe), and I recommend that for safely reasons we keep Mr. Giromini away from the Ocean of Tears.

Poll: How many of the mouseovers in SFAOOCQ XXXIX did you find before reading this?

I do mouseovers quite often, as I find them to be a very useful way to insert additional comments and thoughts without disrupting the flow of a post or other text. (This sounds familiar...almost like I've said it before?) I was wondering how many people find them, as the idea is for most of you to, not just an elite few. Unfortunately, the poll results leaned toward the "elite few" model:

"Wait, you do mouseovers?" got an entire quarter of you.

"None, but I often find others" gathered 16%.

"Just one," fittingly got just one vote: 8%.

Another quarter went to "A resounding two."

No one picked "Three...getting better."

"Four, decent" got another 8%.

"Five, not bad!" got 16%.

Finally, not a single person said, "All Six! Go me!" Good.

You see, in addition to investigating how many people found the mouseovers, I also tried a little mind game. Take a look at this video we watched in ToK2. I find the whole thing fascinating, but it's pretty lengthy, so if you don't have the time just stick to 4:20 to 6:30.


The basic idea is that when given the chance to cheat, a lot of people will cheat a little bit. They won't try to get away with as much as possible, but rather increase their "score" by a small enough amount so as not to tamper with their idea of being a righteous person. SFAOOCQ XXXIX had only four mouseovers, and true to the theory no one cheated as much as possible, preferring when they did cheat to do so in smaller increments. Congratulations Mr. Ariely, you got us this time.

Some Fun and Out-of-Context Quotes, Part XL

You know, there are certain numbers that just make you step back and say, "Whoa, that's a lot of quotes." XL is one of those numbers. In fact, I really want to know just how many there are...so I think I'll count. It's not like I have anything better to do. Hang on a sec.

Almost exactly 15 minutes later: 391. Wow. That's including this post, obviously not re-counting the New Year's posts, and counting "This is a classroom copy" only once. If anyone would like to verify, that would be appreciated but not expected. Thanks to Bridget S., I have several new ones to put up; take a look:)

"When irrational people rationalize things, their rationalizations tend to seem irrational to rational people."
-Marie

"It's either this or dum-dums."
-Miss Davey on handing out Smarties before English orals

"Now I know what it feels like to take drugs, so I don't need to do it in real life."
-Tanmay S. on bumper cars

"I feel awkward not being stressed about something."
-Jamie

"Oh wait, history internal assessment."
-Jamie on the above

"Ewww are those brains?"
-Caitlin M. on Ming C.'s Chinese food

"Yeah, yours."
-Ming C. on the above

"Yeah, that would explain a lot."
-Katerina M. on the above

"If homework is like a woman, then turnitin.com is the pimp."
-Anonymous

"Quiz! Take out your brain!"
-Mr. Woods

"We can't do that..."
-Students on the above

"Don't hang around because we start eating students."
-Mr. Woods on staying after school on half days