Sunday, July 30, 2006

For the benefit of one reader

I saw a movie tonight.

There is a new set of Fantanas. Given a certain person's recently found happiness, and given that improved perkiness of the spokeswomen, I think a certain deal regarding how we'd split up the Fantanas when we took over the world needs to be renegotiated...

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Science Against the Public Interest

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060726/us_nm/watermelon_dc

I don't care if it is more nutritious, watermelon shouldn't be served warm.

Yankees. Harumph. What do they know.

Friday, July 21, 2006

Stupid Visual Physics Puns

http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2006/07/bra-cat.html


Warning: following this link will be either painful or confusing, depending on how much quantum mechanics you've taken.

Shades of Eden

http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/060721_snake_primate.html

According to a biologist, early human development was shaped by our struggles against snakes.

This is a cool idea. It makes sense, and it lets you put an interesting spin on a famous story from Genesis 3 (in accord with my noted habit for interpreting the Bible in a way most guaranteed to drive the religious right bonkers).

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Pre-Coffee Haze

I'm here, at work, sitting at my computer. In every thesis, there is one faculty member who makes substantial demands that will be a pain in the rear to handle.

I have mine. Lsat night, I had a plan for handling all of his demands, only some of which involved telling him to go jump in a lake. But that's gone. All I have are some scattered notes that involve "finite sampling" and "smoothly varying"--words that apply to my entire thesis.

It's gonna be a long day...

Friday, July 14, 2006

Do NOT Say This

All I'm going to say is that the last thing a secretary should EVER, EVER say to a grad student who has spent two weeks trying to schedule his defense is "I don't know if he wants to stay until 5 on a Friday."

He won't care. He really, really, won't care.

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Um, yeah, that's odd...Again

I just paid cash for a slice of pizza at the cafeteria. Why, oh why, would the cashier pre-wrinkle the virgin $5 bills?

I just don't get it...

Monday, July 10, 2006

Products with No Audience

http://news.com.com/2100-1012_3-6091872.html?part6091872subj=news

I find it hard to believe that anyone who knows enough about computers to use Linux wouldn't refuse to install that awful horrible Lotus Notes...

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Some Cool Science

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/ap_060705_coma.html

A man recovered from a coma after his brain rewired itself. From the description in the article, it sounds like they tracked the neuronal connections with DTI--Diffusion Tensor Imaging. It's one of the hot research areas in MR right now; it acquires multiple images and causes them to have contrast that depends on the rate of diffusion in a specific direction. By doing some trickery, it can tell that direction of diffusion in the image.

Annals of Boring Science

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060706/hl_nm/bullied_kids_dc

A study has shown that children who were bullied showed more psychological problems than those who weren't. This same study showed that bullies were less considerate of other children's feelings.

Wow.