Sharp but round and not too bitter. Rating: super extra nummy.
_
respond?
06:43:32 PM,
Sunday 15 October 2006
-
Applications of computer science in real life:
The other day I performed a hill climbing algorithm. To climb a hill. Seriously. I had no idea where I was going. At each intersection, I chose the direction that seemed the steepest. When I couldn't tell, I chose at random. It did, in fact, work.
_
respond?
(1)
04:47:27 PM,
Saturday 14 October 2006
-
Experimental cooking log: tofu stir-fry
I can't remember where I got the idea of dredging tofu pieces in cornstarch before stir-frying them, but it is a good one. Adding a bit of salt (and a tiny pinch of msg) to the cornstarch is good too (that was the experimental part). Then I stir fried some snap peas, added the tofu back to the skillet, and glazed them in a mixture of soy sauce, fish sauce, and brown sugar, then sprinkled some cilantro over it, and yum, it worked well.
_
respond?
(2)
01:09:32 PM,
Saturday 14 October 2006
-
People with high IQs, on average, have more symmetrical ears than people with low IQs.
From this book.
_
respond?
10:07:18 PM,
Friday 13 October 2006
-
There is something satisfying about having your computer perform operations on 2 million rows of data. Feels like it is living up to its potential somehow.
_
respond?
(1)
01:58:09 PM,
Tuesday 10 October 2006
-
What we are now witnessing is nothing less than a precipitous collapse of elephant culture. Fascinating. Also, "after the man's killing, the elephant herd buried him as it would one of its own, carefully covering the body with earth and brush and then standing vigil over it".
_
respond?
(2)
07:01:05 PM,
Sunday 8 October 2006
-
No good beach glass today, it was all too sharp. Found some very nice snail shells, however.
_
respond?
04:12:47 PM,
Saturday 7 October 2006
-
Ok, here's my attempt to be somewhat more intelligent and less whiny (note that I am mainly responding to this conversation). I apologize in advance for the ignorant and half-baked political philosophizing (not that anything in this conversation has been fully baked). So. What is power? It seems like there are a lot of things that are involved in power. Money, guns, courts, contracts, votes, positions, traditions, etc., etc.. It's hard to see how it all fits together, what it is that makes someone in the position of the President of the United States powerful, for instance, and me not, for instance. I guess most of the time one simply takes for granted that there are positions of power and someone's going to fill them, but this doesn't satisfy me (why do we form these huge heirarchies? why does power focus on particular people? what makes people accept other people's power over them?).
The point of all this is: what power do we, as citizens, really have? Mr. Findler makes a good point with his Turkey example-- just squeaking up can be power in itself. Whining about President Bush on this blog is a political act, and would certainly be treated as such in a more repressive regime, even if my audience is really only ten people or so. I suppose I really did want someone to tell me I was being silly and of course I have some amount of power (and therefore some amount of responsibility). I find national politics to be frustrating because it makes me feel angry and impotent. But perhaps there are things I could be doing to make me less angry (or more focussed in my anger) and less impotent. I think that's what we're all looking for. It would take work though. And I'm still not sure whether it's worth sinking the time and emotion into it. It may be better to just knit and let politics take care of itself. But when I think of the issues, when I think of what's going on in the world, I do care about a lot of that (torture and detainment, Iraq, the environment, health care, etc., etc.), I do feel that I'd like to be doing something if I could. So. Any suggestions? What are you all doing?
_
respond?
(1)
04:17:02 PM,
Thursday 5 October 2006
-
snicker (geek humor)
_
respond?
(2)
01:14:48 PM,
Thursday 5 October 2006
-
Politics makes me queasy. Though I had a nice person from the Deval Patrick campaign call and simply answer questions, which I thought was a much better approach than the usual recorded messages. Unfortunately I'm disengaged enough not to have many questions.
On the national level everything I hear about the current administration with half an ear to the news (less than half during pledge drive) makes me sick. I guess I feel some vague sense of responsibility, like I'm living in a democracy so I should be politically engaged, but I don't know what's in it for me. My vote is infinitesimal on the national level. I think I will just stick my fingers in my ears and hum until someone gives me a good reason to do otherwise.
_
respond?
08:28:36 PM,
Wednesday 4 October 2006
-
_
respond?
(4)
01:37:47 PM,
Saturday 30 September 2006
-
The Bach cello suites are an excellent way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Refreshing to hear something other than Yo-Yo Ma's interpretation. A podcast of the concert will be available here soon.
_
respond?
06:54:54 PM,
Sunday 17 September 2006
-
Naked mole rats are weird. They live in tunnels and have queens and workers just like ants. So I'm wondering, is there something about living underground in tunnels that leads to that social organization?
_
respond?
(7)
11:56:28 AM,
Friday 15 September 2006
-
Boerenkaas: This cheese was from Gouda, The Netherlands, so I suppose that makes it a Gouda. It's rather different from other goudas. It's softer for one thing. The flavor is bright and mildly sharp, if that makes any sense whatsoever. Rating: nummy.
Ciabot: This sheep and cow's milk cheese is so soft we had a hard time getting it out of its wrapping without squishing it. The flavor is complex and grassy, but not too weird. Rating: super nummy.
_
respond?
(1)
07:00:10 PM,
Monday 11 September 2006
-
Just read The Progress Paradox by Gregg Easterbrook. It's good, especially the first two chapters. Those chapters summarize the statistics on how progress is real: the world is getting materially better in almost every conceivable way. Health, longevity, the environment, standards of living, leisure time, rates of crime, poverty, etc: all are on a betterward trend in the last 20 to 100 years. It's definitely something to see all that at once, and without the standard negative commentary that goes with such statistics (NPR the other day managed to spin a decrease in poverty rates as negative, which sounded perfectly natural at the time, but upon reflection it's really quite a trick). It creeps me out a bit, and not for any of the cynical reasons he mentions in a chapter entitled "Why the Good News Scares People", but just because I guess it highlights the fact that we are standing at a unique point in history. But, right, better this point than any other.
Then the question is, why aren't we jumping for joy? He goes into a variety of reasons for this, but the main point I came away with is that we are all blinded by materialism, and expect money to bring us happiness, when it won't. I guess it just seems to me like this is not the case. I've met very few people who spend their lives desperately chasing after luxury goods. Most people are more sensible than that. Nevertheless, ridiculous amounts of luxury goods get produced and bought, while things which might make people happier, like, I don't know, tighter-knit communities, are neglected. There's one sentence in the books which holds the key to the reason why: "All any economic system will ever 'care' about is the manufacture and distribution of the maximum volume of goods and services".
That's just it. It's not that we as individuals need to be exhorted to care about things other than money, we already do. It's just that as a system society has worked out this neat trick for producing a wide variety of things, which is to exchange them for money.
We're all completely entangled in this money system, and when we have extra money, most of us spend it, not because we necessarily want luxury goods more than anything else in the world, or are under any delusion that they will solve all our problems, but because the money's there and you can only spend it on what money will buy. Some things we do value just don't fit the market system. However, that doesn't mean society can't do anything to promote those things. Take the environment. That's one of the positive trendlines mentioned above. That's positive because society has effectively used government to correct market forces. If we ever get solid data on what really would make people happier, I bet there's things we could do to encourage that as well.
_
respond?
06:24:59 PM,
Thursday 31 August 2006
-
Pizza with honey mustard sauce. This is a very good idea. It needs something, however. Possibly tomatoes. Or caramelized onions.
Pizza with Trader Joe's fresh salsa. This is not such a good idea. Even with draining and pressing the water out, the water content was such that the pizza took five minutes longer to brown and ended up soggy on the bottom. Though it tasted alright.
_
respond?
(2)
09:04:51 AM,
Tuesday 29 August 2006
-
The Devil Wears Prada was surprisingly good. Mostly because you get to watch Meryl Streep being bitchy. I was somewhat surprised by how positive her character ended up seeming, given how upset people were at the book for its negative portrayal of the character. In general it was much, much more a celebration of the fashion industry than a critique of it: even if the main character does get fed up with it in the end, you get the impression that it was more fun than law school would have been.
Cars, on the other hand was awful. I tend to find Pixar films obnoxious; this one was especially so.
_
respond?
(2)
05:38:58 PM,
Sunday 13 August 2006
-
The sound of a cottonwood tree (explanation) (found here)
_
respond?
(1)
08:20:28 PM,
Monday 7 August 2006
-
The John Kenneth Galbraith book previously mentioned was The Great Crash: 1929.
The Great Depression has always confused me. How is it possible for people just to stop making and trading stuff, when everyone wants stuff and they are perfectly capable of making and trading it? How is it possible for money to just vanish out of the stock market and the banks? Why can't everyone just get together and agree to just pick up where they left off? Since all that this money and stock was in the first place was a complicated system of formal agreements, right? But somehow it doesn't work that way. Somehow money has a life of its own. It's very odd. And to just get together and make an agreement, that would be communism or fascism I guess, and that doesn't work very well either. Also I suppose part of the problem was that people stopped having faith in the the whole system of agreements, so they couldn't just go back and re-agree.
This book wasn't exactly about the Great Depression, which was one thing that was helpful to learn: the Crash may have been part of the cause of the Depression, but it was a separate thing. In the book business leaders keep saying as the market is coming to a crashing halt: "the fundamentals are sound, the fundamentals are sound". Clearly they, like me, had a hard time seeing the connection between games played in the stock market and the fundamentals of the economy. I'm not sure whether it was reassuring or not to see that smart financial wizards playing complicated games with the stock market can be pretty dumb about how money works when the game changes, like all the people who bought their own utterly worthless stock in a vain attempt to keep its price up. Politicians and economists didn't come off well either. It's like there's the great big thing that we all depend on, which is made of our own choices, which we don't fully understand, and which furthermore has lurking weaknesses. Hopefully those weaknesses are somewhat mitigated by new policies since 1929-- Galbraith thinks Federal insurance for banks is esepcially important.
_
respond?
(4)
12:11:46 PM,
Sunday 6 August 2006
-
Tim warned me of this but I didn't believe him: if you read John Kenneth Galbraith on the Red Line people in business suits who get off at Harvard will compliment you on your taste in books. It's true.
_
respond?
(1)
02:48:26 PM,
Saturday 5 August 2006
-
Oh my god that's awful.
_
respond?
(6)
10:01:57 AM,
Wednesday 26 July 2006
-
On the subway this morning I saw a large gaggle of Falun Gong practitioners. Many of them wore T-Shirts saying "Chinese Communists harvest organs from live Falun Gong practitioners, and then sell them for profit!" This seemed a bit too Monty Python to be true, but then again, maybe it is.
_
respond?
02:56:15 PM,
Monday 24 July 2006
-
Ok, so, we went to this restaurant. It's supposed to be all fancy. $25 entrees. There are candles on the table. They're in these rather tall, plain frosted glass holders. I thought early in the meal, huh, someone must have thought they were nice. Or maybe they were cheap. Anyway, so far so good, until halfway through dinner Tim picks up the candle and empties it into his hand. I was like, what are you doing? It turned out that the candles were fake! They were made of two yellow LEDs which blinked on and off. Once you noticed, it was really, really obvious. Especially looking through the whole restaurant, all these candles going blink blink in unison. Astoundingly tacky. But we never would have noticed if Tim hadn't put his hand over the candle and not felt any heat. As if that were not all one needed to know about this restaurant, the food was middling and bland.
_
respond?
(3)
08:01:23 PM,
Sunday 23 July 2006
-
So I was playing with a high pitched hearing test (Gillen linked to something like it a while back, I can hear up to 17000), and I'm wondering something. I have extremely high pitched tinnitus-- I always hear several extremely high pitches. I just sort of thought this was normal. But Tim tells me it's not. Weird. They're about in the range of the television squeak, when a television's on it blocks them out. Anyone else have this? I'm so used to my little squeaky noises. Silence would be so silent without them.
_
respond?
(5)
07:23:21 PM,
Friday 21 July 2006
-
Self expression in corporate work! "Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky" was a sample long name used in the test suite I'm working with.
_
respond?
(2)
10:55:44 AM,
Thursday 20 July 2006
-
and then about a dance
_
respond?
08:56:19 PM,
Wednesday 19 July 2006
-
Research I am not doing (but could easily have been doing something similar. Had I stayed in grad school). I wonder if anything will come of it?
_
respond?
11:05:51 AM,
Wednesday 19 July 2006
-
The MONIAC was an analogue computer which used hydraulics to model the workings of an economy. That is so cool.
_
respond?
11:08:04 AM,
Tuesday 18 July 2006
-
I was just bitten by a duck.
_
respond?
(4)
07:00:38 PM,
Friday 14 July 2006
-
This is really not the sort of press the Big Dig wanted. I mean great, so it really is falling apart at the seams.
_
respond?
11:22:21 AM,
Tuesday 11 July 2006
-
Discovery while discussing Life of Pi: I cannot tell lions and tigers apart. Kept calling the bengal tiger a lion. Drove people up the wall. I have a long history of this. When I was a kid, I had a stuffed lion, no stripes, which I insisted on calling Daniel the Striped Tiger, after the Mr. Rogers character. I cannot explain this.
_
respond?
(2)
07:40:09 AM,
Friday 7 July 2006
-
An Inconvenient Truth was more entertaining than I thought it would be. Which is not to say there was never a dull moment. There were dull moments, especially when Mr. Gore went on about his childhood. But he was surprisingly not wooden and his main point was enough to keep my attention. Global warming, ok, that could be bad, right. It's not as if I didn't know that but I feel somewhat better informed now. His little chart of CO2 levels over geological history was attention getting enough.
I'm not sure why he brought avian flu into it, that seemed like a mistake. CO2 emissions are not the cause of all the world's problems. At least he didn't somehow blame it for terrorism.
I wish he had said more about what exactly was the cause of the CO2 emissions. Is it mostly cars? Coal burning power plants? What are the percentages here? I suppose I can find out for myself but that would have been nice to include in the movie.
_
respond?
(18)
10:57:30 AM,
Wednesday 5 July 2006
-
There are advantages of strongly typed languages. There are also disadvantages. Today I am noticing the advantages.
_
respond?
(2)
02:45:28 PM,
Friday 30 June 2006
-
A box of Lapsang Souchong appeared amongst my company's tea offerings today. I had forgotten how much I liked it.
_
respond?
03:36:12 PM,
Wednesday 28 June 2006
-
The ants are winning.
_
respond?
09:07:04 AM,
Wednesday 28 June 2006
-
I find that it is worth having cygwin on my system just to have grep. I don't know what I'd do without it.
_
respond?
(6)
10:52:14 AM,
Wednesday 21 June 2006
-
site & script courtesy of Moss