Great Moments in Professorial Honesty

Student: "So I can buy the 5th edition for $25, or the 6th for $115..."
Teacher: "How much do you think statistics have changed in 5 years?"

Paying More Attention to Narcissists

I finally got around to checking out the "Fictional Narcissists" category.

Narcissus is not in the category.

More Things Unheard Of

So, for reasons unknown, I have received an issue of an Egyptian imaging journal.

Whether or not this is stranger than the fact that the amount I pay for parking has decreased, I know not.

More Things Unheard Of

So, for reasons unknown, I have received an issue of an Egyptian imaging journal.

Whether or not this is stranger than the fact that the amount I pay for parking has decreased, I know not.

Lame Spam

Surely the spammers have better things to do with their time than send out offers of free Taco Bell food?

Who precisely will be tempted by that one?

Eh?

Again, if you're making a prank phone call, why do you let it go to voicemail?

I don't get it.

Back to Work

I have had a wonderful weekend, during which I did nothing productive. It was enjoyable.

I had, for example, forgotten that I enjoyed playing video games. I spent a few hours in front of the TV defeating bad guys and enjoying the perverse pleasure of summoning Bambi to help me blow up evil wizards (yes, in Kingdom Hearts you get summon Bambi to help you in combat--and he rewards you for killing monsters with items!)

I also made an excursion to a distant Half-Price Books, during which I added a couple of kilopages to my reading list (and picked up a couple of movies, too).

And I engaged in social activities almost every day for the past week.

And tomorrow is Monday. Darn.

More from Wikipedia

Wikipedia has a "Fictional Narcissists" category.

Why?

Snakes on a Plane

I saw this movie tonight.

It was, to put it succintly, everything you had hoped a movie titled "Snakes on a Plane" could be.

I can describe the movie in no less terms than "evolution in action". For, you see, the movie takes every B-movie cliche, and uses them. It takes everything that directors have learned from years of creating low-budget movies, and distills them into a more perfect form. This "Essence of Cheese" is then grown with big budget flash and style.

I believe that here and now, we have witnessed the apex of silly movies. I doubt that I will not see another movie like this in all of my days.

Accession

Dustin Ragan, Master of Science

Enough is said

Quotes from Wikipedia

There are no known instances of someone dropping a gorilla into a body of water to prove or disprove the swimming gorilla hypothesis.

The VAB's interior volume is so vast that it has its own weather system—"NASA employees report that rain clouds form below the ceiling on very humid days"

Files of the Weird

I'm trying a new brand of noodle box today for lunch.

Included: a spork, which requires assembly.

It Hurts, It Hurts...

So I spent the weekend in less than peak condition (i.e., unable to eat or drink) for reasons uknown.

I decided that, having gone through two days of caffeine withdrawal already, I would abstain for a little longer, in order to make optimal usage of java on Friday.

I'm REALLY, REALLY glad that I don't have lot to do today, because I'm not fully functional...

Canadian Terrorists

So apparently our neighbors to the north have their own terrorists now.

Not much is known about them, however they refer to themselves as "Al-Berta", which is Arabic for "The Moose". They are ultimately more doomed than other terrorist groups, because they don't seem to grasp what terrorism is all about.

You see, being from Canada, they are too polite. They ask the security officers "May I carry this weapon of mass destruction on the plane?".

This is not as bad as the fact that they consider weapons of mass destruction to be DVD box sets of American TV shows.

9 Days

I defend in 9 days.

I have turned in a revised thesis. I have a few minor corrections to my presentation, mostly consisting of adding an outline.

Yeah...this is gonna be thrilling...

Any suggestions on how to spend this week of freedom?

Guided Tour of the Blogroll

My blogroll, which exists in more or less the order I found out about the blogs in:

Gibbie's Bioscience World
My friend Rob's blog, a mixture of political comments, biology, and cycling.

City of Brass
Haibane.info
These are Aziz's two blogs. One deals with Islamic issues, the other deals with the ars geeky.

Dartmouth Physics Blog
This is the blog my friend Tim from undergrad posts to. It has one of the most random selections of topics around.

The Palmer Perspective
This is the blog of one of the ministers at my church. As you may guess, he talks about religion every once in a while.

Sydney's Soccerball
This blog does not strictly have the right to be in the "friends" section of the blogroll, given that it's actually the blog of my friend's dog, and I haven't met the dog yet. But I'm giving it a dispensation.

The Volokh Conspiracy
Orin Kerr.com
The only two political blogs that I read these days.

Lifehacker
This makes your life just a little easier...

The Wandering Heretic
The Internet Monk
Two blogs on religion that don't make me want to throw objects. It's a high complement, honest. That may be a sign I'm falling into a bubble, though...

Photon Torpedoes
Comic book news and gossip. Because sometimes you have to be geeky vicariously.

Pun Intended

Irony is when you clumsily induce wrinkles by knocking your suit onto the floor when you are putting the your new ironing board in the closet.

Tax-Free Weekend

This weekend, residents of the state of Texas did not have to pay sales taxes on their purchases.

I decided that I wanted to save a few bucks. I spent an additional 25 minutes in line to save $10. I suppose that, when you consider my effective hourly wage, I came out ahead compared to working. It just doesn't feel that way.

In any event, I have further increased the amount of gray and black in my wardrobe, progressing further along the path to fuddy-duddy-dum.

Rain

http://www.poetry-archive.com/c/rain_music.html

This is one of my favorite poems from high school; the last stanza is one of my favorite images of all time.

I just got back from reading over my thesis--after so many revisions, I needed to restore an awareness of what was in it--and I could only find empty space on the top floor, near the auditoriums. I sat by a window and somewhere in the middle of the second chapter, it started to rain.

I quit paying attention to my thesis, for a few minutes. I haven't sat and watched and listened to the rain in far too long: another joy offered up to the demons of the laboratory.

For that matter, I need to spend more of my life dancing with a beautiful woman in the rain, drinking a glass of wine...

Guilt lasts a moment; regret, forever

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060801_work_regret.html

Again, science has shown something that many people seem to notice on their own...eventually.

Thus says the grad student, who is on the wrong side of the guilt/work equation...