euziere

Unveiling the beauty of statistics. Watch this now. Really.

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:43:25 GMT

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

I found this literally jaw-dropping. It was amazing. And I hate talks with a passion. Watch to at least five minutes in, until you've seen some of the animated stats.

their site: http://www.gapminder.org/
"Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view."

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:25:03 GMT

My Calvin and Hobbes userpic mysteriously changed to this one, which I've never seen before. Huh?

I changed my password.

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:33:33 GMT

For anyone who moderates any part of the internet:

Obey the Moderator! (youtube)

discoveries

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:22:31 GMT

I recently discovered that there's an old road (now grass-covered) near my apartment complex that leads down and around and along a stream (well, a ditch). There's a man-made embankment that may be part of a golf course on the other side of the ditch and some intervening woods. The first time I walked down there, I found a big plastic tub lid, some animal bones, a hubcap, and a golf ball. This time, I saw a hawk circling around, and what was probably a bat! And possibly another bat, or maybe the same bat.

Pretty exciting. Mostly when I go for walks I just find rabbits, which are very cute but they all kind of look the same.

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:45:33 GMT

me: will you be online for a bit?

Michael: yep
ping me when you're ready.

me: pinguin!
that was a fake ping.

Michael: win

me: penguin.
peng-win.

Michael: pongwin

Jim Adkisson receives life in prison without parole

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:58:18 GMT

Knox News story

Ongoing coverage

"This was a hate crime," Adkisson wrote in a four-page "manifesto" he had left inside his truck and intended to serve as a suicide letter.

Adkisson, 58, wrote that he wanted to kill the "generals" of the liberal movement, citing Democrats in Congress, Supreme Court justices and then-candidate for president Barack Obama.

But he said he couldn't get to those in power so he opted instead to attack liberalism's "foot soldiers," specifically citing the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church.

....

"This was a symbolic killing," Adkisson wrote. "Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate and House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I knew these people were inaccessible to me.

"I couldn't get to the generals and high-ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chicken (expletive) liberals that vote in these traitorous people."

....

"I'd like someone to do an expose on this church," he wrote. "It's a den of un-American vipers.'"This was a hate crime," Adkisson wrote in a four-page "manifesto" he had left inside his truck and intended to serve as a suicide letter.
"I'd like someone to do an expose on this church," he wrote. "It's a den of un-American vipers.'

Edit: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/02/09/tennessee.church.shooting.plea/index.html

District Attorney General Randall Nichols said that Adkisson "knowingly created a great risk of death to two or more persons other than the victims murdered" and that the murders "were committed in the course of an act of terrorism."

stapler haiku

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 02:09:25 GMT

http://www.virtualstapler.com/poetry-haiku.php

I'm gonna start posting stuff again soon.

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 00:10:41 GMT

Why the Moon? Enabling Research and Discovery (pdf)

This is the best set of powerpoint slides I think I have ever seen. Scientist explorer heroes!! History! The Moon!!

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:35:53 GMT

Where might I go to get an adorably quirky soap dispenser? I have one that has a compartment with water and little floating plastic fish that figent_figary gave to me because hearth_spirit was unnerved by the fish. The pump has stopped working well and I need to get something to replace it but the ones I've found in Linens'n'Things and department stores look too much like soap dispensers that my friends' parents might put in guest bathrooms where the towels and decorations all match each other and also match the potpourri.

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:06:24 GMT

It's the wall map of milk products and production relationships! It's like XKCD but with dairy!

Book View Cafe

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:58:36 GMT

http://bookviewcafe.com/">Book View Cafe: Free, good fiction by professional authors, with new content daily. SF/F and other genres, including out-of-print, experimental, and otherwise unavailable work. Featured in guardian.co.uk as their site of the week.

Cast:

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Brenda Clough
Kate Daniel
Laura Anne Gilman
Christie Golden
Anne Harris
Sylvia Kelso
Katharine Eliska Kimbriel
Sue Lange
Ursula K. Le Guin
Rebecca Lickiss

Vonda N. McIntyre
Nancy Jane Moore
Pati Nagle
Darcy Pattison
Irene Radford
Madeleine Robins
Amy Sterling
Jennifer Stevenson
Susan Wright
Sarah Zettel

Created by sazettel.

Also I made lolcat fanart and it was featured on the blog.

yes we can: 11/16/08

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:42:54 GMT

From last week: What small, concrete steps will you take, and keep taking, to build a better nation? Analogous to making multiple $5 or $10 internet donations.

This week I thought about and went with more-diplomatic replies to a couple emails...no major challenges presented themselves although I'm sure they'll come up in the future.

How's it going for you?

yes we can

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:33:16 GMT

OK. The election is over. This post is aimed at fellow Obama voters/U.S. citizens, but anyone is welcome to play.

What small, concrete steps will you take, and keep taking, to build a better nation? Analogous to making multiple $5 or $10 internet donations.

I'm going to build bridges with people who devalue others, by looking for ways that treating others better could help them meet their own goals, and encouraging them in that. Concrete example: A very new hire at work is complaining that he's being given administrative work instead of work "of any importance". On behalf of everyone who's ever done the routine, frequently unsung work that keeps an organization going...ow. On behalf of anyone who knows how organizations really do run: *facepalm*.

When an opportunity presents itself, I'm going to float the idea that administrative work is a fantastic way to learn how an organization *really runs* and what it needs to run better. Since his goal is to play a big influential role, understanding how an organization runs (and what its administrators need), on a nuts-and-bolts level, is one of the best things he could do to build the necessary knowledge base.

Idea and some text via bigby.

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:57:26 GMT

http://pixdaus.com/pics/1226001873yuF5iwJ.jpg

Completely work-safe. Work-supporting, even.

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:59:46 GMT

Via Sammka, who made this, which I can't figure out how to display smaller so here's a cut:

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 23:04:18 GMT

http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com

The international source for pictures of Obama holding babies.

Via inhumandecency.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:31:28 GMT

http://www.onelook.com/

Type in the definition and it will try to find the word for you. Useful for the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.

Or, better yet, just type stuff in and see what it gives you.

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 21:52:00 GMT

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

My favorite: http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/2008/03/actually-front-for-mob.html

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 11:55:29 GMT

I'm supposed to do the 30 questions meme that's been going around...but I don't know enough people well enough to answer most of the questions. Sorry about that.

In lieu of that, here is a useful link: http://jonathanfields.com/blog/neck-pain-relief-for-alpha-geeks-and-desk-jockeys/

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 22:28:30 GMT

Rolled Fondant recipe photo.

Caption 1: The Cake Is A Cow!
Caption 2: Beeeeefcaaaaaake!!

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:44:26 GMT

You know those little condensed sponges that come inside gelcaps and you drop them in water and they turn into big sponges shaped like animals? I wonder if there's a way to make them out of edible seaweed.

Also, I think socks should come with matching colored rings around the top, and you should be able to get twelve different colors' worth, so that then you don't wind up with mismatched pairs of socks that are the exact same socks from the exact same manufacturer that you just happened to buy at different times.

Sustainable sustainability

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:03:50 GMT

"The new trophy home, small and ecological" (NY Times)

Ms. Meyer said their goal was to show that something energy-conscious “doesn’t have to look as if you got it off the bottom shelf of a health-food store.”
“It doesn’t have to smell like hemp,” she said.
That was probably a good thing. The four-bedroom house was for sale, with a $2.8 million asking price.

I've been thinking a lot about sustainability, in the context of what movements need to become broadly accepted. A few years ago I read an article on ethical use of money by Peter Singer, a philosopher more famous /infamous for his views on animal rights and on abortion/euthanasia. His argument was that once we've achieved a minimal standard of living, it is immoral to not donate all the rest of our money to charity.

I've thought of a lot of snarky things to say. What they come down to is: Most people don't find maximum possible deprivation attractive, unless it carries a lot of benefits. Most people don't even find limited deprivation attractive, unless it carries some benefits. Enhanced social status, moral superiority, and reduced guilt are examples of underacknowledged benefits that help drive arguments that deprivation is the right thing to do, but social status and moral superiority tend to work in limited social circles, and moral superiority and reduced guilt are adequately motivating for limited numbers of people.

Deprivation also seems like a better idea when you don't look its effects on people who haven't bought into your moral system and aren't part of your social set, which is where I'm going with the quote from the NYT article above. I like the fact that ecological consciousness is getting extended beyond a small set of people who are Others to most Americans (hippies), but I'm not sure that trendy ecological consciousness among a different small set of people who are Others to most Americans (people who spend a fuckload of money on teeny ecologically-friendly houses) is that great either.

I really would like a small-for-the-U.S., ecologically friendly house - say, no larger than 700 square feet for two people and built of all-natural free-range building materials. I'm not clear on how much this is driven directly by reduced guilt and moral superiority, rather than indirectly by reduced guilt and moral superiority and a bit of social status driving my desire to make the future better (i.e., less worse) by lowering my environmental impact. It probably also helps that living in smaller spaces don't feel like deprivation for me per se, and instead makes me feel like the Stuff that I own is kept small-for-the-U.S. and isn't threatening to insidiously take over my life and drain my energy (yes, I recognize that that's kind of pathological). So, yeah, not exactly noble motives, but that's beside or maybe just under my main point, which is:

I want to have the biggest net positive effect, which means living more sustainability in a way that makes it more attractive to other people, particularly people who haven't bought in to the notion of sustainability as a pervasive lifestyle. Doing that means, I think, tacking on "sustainable" to a list of things with direct personal benefits that appeal to a wider range of people. I'm looking at buying a house toward the smaller end of normal and decorating it to make it feel more spacious to guests (cheaper to buy, lowered utility costs, less time to clean; also smaller ecological footprint). I'm also probably going to buy part of a farm share (when you don't have a choice about receiving a crapload of vegetables, you get better health and improved cooking repertoire; also, locally produced).

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:53:16 GMT

High-society dress : Dolly Parton's wardrobe :: Business dress : What the Sephora person showing me how to put on makeup thought I should wear to work

I also explained five separate times that I'd never worn any makeup but foundation before she realized that I really meant that I'd never worn makeup before. Oh well. I bought some concealer, and some nifty eyebrow stuff, and some crap to get any makeup I do use off of my face.

I also finally figured out where to buy 3mm sterling silver ball earrings, after scouring the department stores: The Icing. Of all places. I guess it's easier to find smaller earrings at places aimed at the junior high / high school set.

I'm happy about the earrings, but am feeling kind of fake with the suit thing, although not nearly as fake as the makeup made me feel.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:24:40 GMT

So, Lifehacker linked to an article titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which is a kind of stupid article but not as much so as the title makes it sound. (For example, the article author does note: "Just as there’s a tendency to glorify technological progress, there’s a countertendency to expect the worst of every new tool or machine", and mentions Plato's concern that writing will cause people to think they're educated when really they don't know anything.)

Anyway, the comments to the Lifehacker post get bogged down in standard positions and misconceptions quickly. A few:

Overhyping the power of choice ("The Internet doesn't make people stupid, individual people make themselves stupid and the role of technology doesn't make much difference")

Unquestioned questionable nostalgia (e.g., "When I was an undergraduate, we were brilliant deep thinkers" and "the problem is that these days we don't teach critical thinking anymore")

Inattention to changing demographics (higher education is now accessible to people with a wider range of skillsets; the Internet is increasingly available to people with a wider range of education and technological knowledge; this doesn't mean that people overall have gotten stupider, but that many people don't get to live in the bubbles they're accustomed to)

Ignoring what Kids These Days are doing in favor of complaining about what they aren't doing (e.g., "kids use technology superficially instead of understanding how it really works", while what they're doing is using the Internet to develop skills and friendships that are relevant to their own lives)

Etcetera. Various ways of complaining that other people aren't adopting your moral standards.

Anyway, there was one exchange that I really liked:

A teacher says: "I have noticed a trend in my students where in [sic] they no longer treat knowledge as something sacred or earned through study and contemplation."

Someone responds: "And I've noticed that kids treat milk like it's something you can just go to the store and buy. Because it is."

Regardless of any other issues, I like that. The Internet is about giving knowledge away and (increasingly) about helping people maintain relationships, not about letting knowledge continue to be reachable only through lots of work, or (god forbid) gatekeeping it so that only the worthy have access.

I think it's an open question whether the ability to find information quickly results in less critical thinking, more critical thinking, or an increase in both simply due to there being more things to find and think about; and whether it results in more widespread misinformation, more widespread information, or both. My guess is both, actually, though I don't have guesses as to what the ratios might be.

(If you've read this far, feel free to post your beliefs about why the Internet is/isn't making us stupid...)

Fri, 02 May 2008 23:56:11 GMT

Three successive text-messages from Michael, visiting his advisor in North Carolina:

6:58 PM: Omg surprise party for me!!

7:44 PM: Could you post my previous msg to lj? email it to [gives me email addy, but sending it there doesn't work] and maybe it will work PS they have given me wine o_O

7:51 PM: Wine wine wine wine wine wine wine

ETA:
8:20 now they are giving me champagne!