I cannot judge my own performance

So, apparently, the test was a psych-out. I did tolerably well--I got the exact class average--and all the questions that had me despairing were both misleading and evil. For instance, we were given a molecule made up of 10,000 glucose molecules and asked, given the way it was constructed, to number the reducing ends and determine the reducing power of the sugar. There were three or four questions in this vein, suggesting, if you read into the psychology of such a question, that there should be some complicated answer. You don't keep asking questions about this unless there's an interesting or varying answer. I kept looking and looking and looking and all I could come up with was that it had one reducing end and, as a result of having one reducing end to 10,000 glucose residues, it basically had a reducing power of 0.

Turns out, that's right. Do you see what I mean about it being misleading? There was another question where the bulk of the points went to drawing the molecule and then there were two more questions: 1) Are there any reducing residues? and 2) If so, which residues are reducing? To my logical mind, you don't ask that follow-up question unless there are reducing residues. But there weren't. So I felt like I must have been missing something major when I wrote 1) No, and 2) None of them. I wanted to write "...none?" 'cause that's how I felt. I thought for sure I'd screwed something up majorly. Nope. Psych!

I can breathe a little easier now that that worry is off my mind. Just in time to start panicking again for the next midterm! Joy of joys!
 

It's not optimal, but it's sexful, so I'll take it

Comic nerd friends, we need to talk. Specifically, we need to talk about Ryan Reynolds. I am still hopeful about Green Lantern, or whatever fifteen-word-title they end up giving the movie, but I think he's been miscast. Some four-five years ago, back when David Goyer was still writing a Flash movie, and he and Ryan Reynolds were BFFs from Blade: Trinity, there was talk about Reynolds being the Scarlet Speedster. If you've seen any movie Reynolds has been in (with the possible exception of the one where he's, like, buried alive), you know that that is just about perfect. He's got the comic timing down, and, hey, he'd look good in tight clothes, amirite?

Flash forward (oh, oops, pun) to 2009, and he's gonna be Hal Jordan. Eh, not as good, and there's this all-CGI suit that is really not necessary, I think, when your leading man looks like this:

We don't need CGI to put some spandex on that, do we?

Anyway, I bring all this up because I have just heard a rumor that Bradley Cooper is likely to be the Flash in the ongoing attempt of Warner Bros. and DC to catch up with Marvel on the movie front. It's not as good a match. If anything, he and Ryan Reynolds need to swap places, and then the Lantern star should be Kyle Rayner, not Hal Jordan. (Fuck, it should John Stewart, as played by someone sexy like Idris Elba.) Cooper's humor is just more mean-spirited in delivery than Reynolds' ever has or will be, and I like my Flash cuddly and funny.

Then again, Bradley Cooper as the Flash means we get this in spandex, and I suddenly have no complaints:


He's leaner than Reynolds, too, as a Flash should be, if he can help it. Here's hoping those rumors pan out!

(To the ladies and gay men: You're welcome!)