The Dennis Hou Blog

Today, I just wanted to give a shout-out to SOS math. I know that off the bat, this sounds like some ad, but it isn't. Backstory is that, when you look up "trig identities" on Google, the first link that pops up is SOS math. It turns out that subconsciously, over my many years of undergrad studies, I have been using this site; well, this one page, as a reference. I remember that in first and second year, before my calculus midterms, I would go over this site rigorously-just because it was the first link. For those who are curious, I needed them for integral trigonometric substitutions, and those pesky integrals of sin^2(x) and cos^2(x), which you see a lot in physics (electrodynamics and quantum mechanics, but not so much in Newtonian/Lagrangian mechanics).  Right now I am using it to study the Infinite Square Well for Perturbation Theory in Quantum Mechanics Also, the reason I feel that this site deserves a shout-out is because it was released in Dec 3, 1996 and is st

Recently I was looking through my Facebook news-feed and saw a video from 2005 by the Conservative Party candidate Andrew Scheer ( https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/andrew-scheer-gay-marriage-lgbtq-goodale-1.5256095 ), where he talks about how gay marriage is unnatural because gays are incapable of having children of their own. As someone who has studied biology and genetics to some extent, the thing I find most ironic is that these people typically also have the "pro-life" stance. It bothers me when people use specific components of biology to further their argument, as they nit-pick points for a misleading portrayal of the data. "Science" is a powerful and misleading way of showing credibility, but of course in the end one must take in the whole picture, which unfortunately Andrew Scheer does not. To get into the details, the video shown in the article portrays Andrew Scheer claiming that gay marriage does not make sense due to the fact that homosexuals cannot

At this point in time, it’s been about three weeks since my last final, and it is safe to say that at this point I feel relaxed and extremely unstressed. My marks aren’t the best, but I will try to push that out of my mind so I can enjoy my summer. Lately I’ve been looking for volunteer research positions in some sort of lab setting, because I have, from my biochemistry courses, read through enough research papers and been taught enough biochemical techniques that I just am itching to use some of them in real life. But being of a mainly physics background puts me at a rather large disadvantage from my peers in my biochemistry courses, who are either majoring or specializing in biochemistry for the most part. The fact that my anti-psychotic medication makes me oversleep does not help in that regard. Sometimes I do wonder if I should have gone into neuroscience. Not so much as having a “sob story” to reference to, but rather because one of the reasons I am in looking to pursue

I currently sitting in a building on campus studying for my last final exam on April 24th for Biochemistry. For some reason, as happy as I am to get it over with, I cannot help but think about one thing. About a month ago there was a suicide in the building where I am sitting in right now. All I can think is what if it happened due to school pressure? Would the person have been fine if he/she had gotten to this date right now and finished all his/her exams? Would the person not have done it if he/she was able to actually talk to an mental health adviser? I think this because I have heard online and from others that it takes a ridiculously long time, a couple of months, to see an adviser at the Health and Wellness Centre here at U of T because they are short-staffed - which is a ridiculous excuse. Furthermore, apparently they are not very helpful and extremely rude. I do not know why, but sitting here thinking back to the incident, it makes me wonder how important my schooling really

So I recently watched "Limitless" over the weekend and realized how applicable the movie would have been if the protagonist was originally a schizophrenic who found anti-psychotic medication. Of course I will go more into depth about this in the post, but please do not read this if you do not want any spoilers for the movie. I would definitely recommend the movie it was quite an intriguing journey. Image from https://deadline.com/2014/10/limitless-series-from-movie-bradley-cooper-alex-kurtzman-bob-orci-set-atcbs-1201268933/ How Limitless Could be About a Schizophrenic The movie starts off with the protagonist, Eddie Morra, who is struggling in his day to day life as an author. While this part may be a bit of a stretch, it seems that before the start of the movie, he was living a normal life, having both a girlfriend and a contract on a book, though the book hadn't been started in any serious manner. He seems to struggle in a manner that I was like when I was psyc

I do apologize for not posting for so long. I just have been busy with school and then had my laptop stolen and so on. One of the reasons I've decided to write today is because mentally I think I've reached a sort of milestone in my life. It all started with a Facebook post that I was viewing right before my biochemistry exam around 2 weeks ago. For some back story, I live in Canada, and Bell, one of the largest telecommunications companies, runs a mental health campaign every year. My Facebook friend had talked down about it as an unsentimental marketing ploy, a perspective which I completely understand. However, I pointed out that while Bell may be using this as a marketing ploy, they are the only company out there that even acknowledges mental illness as a real issue that affects people. Oddly, I am not here to talk about Bell, but rather about the fact that that moment was the first moment where I really talked about mental health, and in particular my mental health in