Pronouncing the w in cool does not necessarily make you a bad person.
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11:20:44 AM,
Wednesday 23 February 2005
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I'm not going to be able to explain this well, but it troubles me. I just found a minor obscure error in some of my results, some numbers weren't totalling up right. After fiddling about for half an hour, I suddenly know with complete certainty where and what the bug was. I didn't have nearly enough information available to solve the problem, I didn't put anything together, I just knew. It was something I had no right being able to find at all, a missing key between two tables, a mistake I have no memory of making. I feel strangely put out, having squandered a revelation on something so trivial. And yes, it's 6pm on a friday. Yes, I'm going home now.
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05:52:28 PM,
Friday 18 February 2005
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Both Terry Pratchett and Jane Austen started writing parodies of their respective genres, and gradually (very gradually, in Terry Pratchett's case) life crept into the framework of the parody.
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08:46:29 PM,
Tuesday 15 February 2005
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Having successfully boiled peat, I am now trying same procedure on a stick. I'll let you know if it works.
Ooh! The water has gone tea-colored! Oak tea?
On being shown some of it in a glass, Erika informed me that the thought is yucky. I had no idea.
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(2)
08:27:55 PM,
Tuesday 15 February 2005
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New fish:
2 Opaline Gourami
2 Clown Pleco_
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(3)
05:28:32 PM,
Monday 14 February 2005
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Zoloft induced mania in the news. Not sure what to think. Will try thinking about it anyway.
Antidepressants are used too casually. I don't mean too often, though that too, I mean with too little supervision. So are shotguns, if it comes to that.
Crimes committed while manic are difficult. Some crimes are easy to deal with. If there's a profit motive, if someone is making a living in a way detrimental to society, say, highwaymen. Easy. You want to stop highway robbery becoming a cottage industry, so you throw people in prison, to stop it being economically viable. Maniacs, pretty much by definition, aren't doing something sensible or profitable, and aren't going to be deterred, because they are misunderstanding the world around them. In that case, preventing a recurrence is enough. Now, this gets very messy because then the appropriate legal penalty depends entirely on whether treatment is likely to work, and no one has any idea if treatment is going to work, ever.
One thing to notice is that this approach means minor crimes committed while manic should in fact be treated far more seriously than minor crimes committed by the sane, because the social system of restraints can't be trusted, and must be supplemented. Someone who shoplifts because their hamster told them to is potentially more dangerous than someone who left their wallet at home, though quite possibly a far better person from a moral perspective.
Back to deterrence: If in fact they decide that he's only a danger when on antidepressents, the prescribing physician in this case should have the keys to the pharmacy taken away. Something that can't be insured against. The whole idea of socializing the cost of malpractice assumes that medicine is between the customer and the doctor. However, in this case it was society that was harmed, not simply the patient. Also, if doctors start having their licenses removed for prescribing Zoloft, that elegantly puts the question of what responsibility the drug company has to provide good information to the medical community back between the doctors and Pfizer. If Zoloft were over the counter, then responsibility, once it glanced off the kid, would go to the drug company. It isn't, so it goes to the doctor instead; otherwise the whole pretense of doctors being distinct from pharmacists breaks down._
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(5)
05:28:28 PM,
Monday 14 February 2005
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Henceforth, PhD will be prounounced "fffhut", much like a cartoon arrow. All the MD's, BS's and MS's will have u's with umlauts inserted in them. Sheep and goat noises will continue to be used for MA's and BA's.
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(3)
11:58:54 AM,
Monday 14 February 2005
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Someone, I'm not sure who, brought in chocolate covered potato chips to work. I had only just got used to the idea of chocolate covered pretzels. Will chocolate covered doritos be next? Has anyone ever met a chocolate with a spicy filling? Did it work?
Update: I may be in strange company, but I am not alone.
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(6)
11:45:30 AM,
Monday 14 February 2005
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This morning I've been boiling a batch of peat moss, because the computer told me to. It smells wonderful. Also, I just tested the aquarium water, and our nitrogen cycle is complete. This means we can go get more fish, without worrying about poisoning them! The fish eat the food, and produce ammonia. Then some bacteria eat that, turn it into nitrites. Some other, unrelated bacteria that we didn't have last week are now eating that, and turning it into nitrates, which the plants and algae eat. Particularly the algae, but that's because I've been using phosphate buffers to lower the PH of the water, and algae like phosphates. Ammonia and nitrites are poisonous, which is why you can't have too many fish before you've got a full compliment of bacteria.
Back to the peat. Peat produces acid. I'm going to keep a bucket of water with peat at the bottom, and mix some of that with the tap water to lower the Ph to get the aquarium water for water changes. It also turns the water the color of tea, but that should be all right.
The new fish shall be algae eaters.
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(1)
02:09:20 PM,
Sunday 13 February 2005
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A Skid-Steer Loader Simulator game with Sokoban style warehouse puzzles, timed snowplowing challenges (don't ding the cars, find places to put all the snow quickly) construction site steeplechases (do you have time to put the obstacle back before the others catch up?), and some sort of Go-ish SSL duel involving trying to trap your opponent. Possibly with an overall structure like the old old MechWar computer game where you choose contracting jobs to accept while raising money for new attachments and completing some sort of mission of your own; saving the universe, reclaiming your throne, finding the crystal or similar.
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03:12:34 PM,
Friday 11 February 2005
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Just went and looked up the consumer price index data. Inflation was around 3.7 percent in Boston, 3.3 nationally, and 2.2 in Michigan. Useful when contemplating your annual pay increase, and whether you need sulk about it. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has lots of other amusing data as well.
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02:40:31 PM,
Friday 11 February 2005
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This Roman Polanski thing has been bothering me. He has every right to bring a libel case. That's fine. If he were unable to travel to England, because, say, he was in prison, I could understand making arrangements. But he is perfectly free to travel to England, he is simply choosing not to. One should not be allowed to pick and choose which parts of the legal machinery you are fugitive from.
Am I allowing the fact that he's a loathsome twerp cloud my thinking? What if Salman Rushdie had wanted to testify remotely in a libel case while he was in hiding? But in that case, the English legal system wasn't going to extradite him to Iran. He was hiding from assassins, and had a compelling case that his life was in danger. It's the gall of it that grates; that it's libel, that he's asking the law to protect his character while simultaneously ignoring it. I'm just not convinced that fugitives have the right to remain fugitives. Perhaps the extradition order is unreasonable, if that's the case, he should be willing to fight it in British courts. If he doesn't trust the British system to treat him justly, where does he get off entangling other people in it? Would it be any different if it were a more serious matter, say, someone owed him immense sums of money? The danger is that if we don't let fugitives access courts, fugitives become unable to do business in the jurisdiction they're fleeing from without turning themselves in. But that option is enough. If a robber is robbed, the fact that they tend not to want to go to the police doesn't bother me unduly.
Not to say that Mr. Rushdie is not also slightly loathsome.
Also, just as a matter of style, skip bail and flee to France before you plead guilty.
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(7)
02:20:23 PM,
Thursday 10 February 2005
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site & script courtesy of Moss
