| My high school; big numbers |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|04:52 am] |
Two entirely disparate topics for one post. Those who don't want to read about my ruminations on my high school and its religious nature, i.e. most of you, should just go straight to "Who Can Name the Biggest Number?" by Scott Aaronson (who claims to be a professor at MIT but who, based on the picture on his home page, is clearly actually David Duchovny). It's mathematical in content, though written perhaps for the layperson, but if you're anything like me you'll find it utterly compellingly fascinating.
All right, on to dear old Westminster, hidden behind a cut tag.
( C'mon, you don't want to read this. Seriously: big numbers! How cool is that? ) |
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| Moving |
[Jul. 4th, 2009|05:28 pm] |
I'd like to take a moment to remind everyone out there that academia is one of the worst ways to try to make a living. An unemployed ordinary person who wants to move will do one of the following:
(a) Stay where he is until he finds a job, and then move to wherever that is;
(b) Move to where he wants to be, and then look for a job there.
An unemployed professor has neither of these options. We're not like accountants and programmers and salesmen and what have you; we don't have the option of looking for a job in May, and if we fail we look in June, and if we fail we look in July, and so forth. There is no searching until you find a job. There's the tenure track search around January, and there's the one-year positions around June (give or take a month in both cases), and that's it. So if a professor hasn't found a job by, say, July, he's not going to have a job for another year. And there's very little point in going to your favorite city and looking for a job there. No matter what city you're in, if it's of sufficient size, someone will be looking for an accountaint or a programmer or a salesman, but academia just doesn't work like that.
The upshot, for me and my wife, is that we don't really like Philadelphia at all and have no desire to stay now that my time at the University of Pennsylvania is over. Which means that right now we're packing so that we can move to...well. Boston unless I get a job elsewhere, in which case elsewhere. And that makes it really hard to plan, which is why we don't have a place to live in Boston (what were we going to do if we signed a lease and then I got a job in California?), or for that matter anything lined up there workwise. All we have is three weeks in which to pack up this apartment and drive the stuff, well, somewhere, and we'll kind of see what happens from there.
All things considered, this is far and away the worst year I've had since around 1995. |
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| The King of Pitch |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|01:55 am] |
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Lest it be lost in the shuffle: pitchman Billy Mays, who was born forty days before Michael Jackson, died three days after him. Man it's been a strange year. |
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| Stupid stupid everything at once things |
[Jun. 11th, 2009|08:04 pm] |
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He had noticed that events were cowards: they didn't occur singly, but instead they would run in packs and leap out at him all at once. —Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere |
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| Anyway. |
[May. 27th, 2009|05:38 am] |
Though I expect they won't see it: just a note to Kate Guyton and Linnaea Stockall to let them know I'm thinking of them today. Hope all's well.
And that's all. No comments necessary, and you oughtn't post any sort of response on your own LJs, unless you happen to know Kate or Linnaea. |
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| Yikes |
[May. 12th, 2009|05:05 am] |
Today, I received my (first!) passport in the mail. And just now, I have bought plane tickets to Frankfurt.
I've been out of the country twice, both times to Vancouver. And I haven't given all that many conference talks. So this is both exciting—and increasingly very scary. |
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| Late night thought |
[May. 11th, 2009|04:32 am] |
With the upcoming Julie & Julia, based on the book based on the blog (side note: I hate her hate her hate her for being all famous just because she's got talent and stuff why can't I be famous), and of course Secret Diary of a Call Girl based on the book based on the blog, it struck me that movies-from-blogs may be the next Big Thing.
And what else has Hollywood liked recently? Well, Stardust and Coraline and the apparently-in-development Graveyard Book...
So it's obvious to me that if only a studio would make neilgaiman.com: the movie, it would break box office records! (This, incidentally, is why I am legally barred from coming within 150 yards of Hollywood.) |
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| CiSRA thoughts |
[May. 4th, 2009|05:59 am] |
All right, all right, I should get these down on metaphorical paper. I'm going to talk freely about the answers to the puzzles, so if that bothers you, go do the puzzles first or something.
( cut for extraordinary length and because mostly you don't care )
So, overall impression: There were a few nice standalone puzzles here and there, but overall I'm glad I didn't put too much time in it, and kind of sorry I put in as much as I did. |
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| CiSRA, revisited |
[May. 3rd, 2009|11:23 pm] |
The CiSRA competition having ended, I have any number of thoughts which I ought to get around to posting, but lest I forget, the two major lessons I learned are:
1. If there aren't any other particular constraints on either your clue phrase or your answer, you might as well make it unambiguous.
2. If the theme for your puzzle very nearly works but doesn't quite, maybe you're better off not using it instead. |
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| Ah, puzzles |
[Apr. 27th, 2009|04:45 am] |
Why can't I get a job solving puzzles all day? I suppose I have one, in some sense, but. Saxikath and I are now in fifth place in the CiSRA puzzle competition, not that we're competing for anything, but they're good puzzles. We're "Just a Couple of Hacks" (because Tah + Saxi = Taxi, taxis are hacks, get it?), and have gotten the exalted position of "fifth" by being one of the five teams who's solved six puzzles (and thus behind the team that's solved seven); fifth and not sixth by dint of my having hit on the right format for our sixth answer about fourteen seconds before the sixth-place team. And, you know, five hours behind plugh. Hi, plugh!
Anyway, I like solving puzzles, which is more or less the entire point of this post. |
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| Vista networking |
[Apr. 17th, 2009|09:17 pm] |
OK, I give up. Who here knows anything about networking in Vista? Because I don't, and it's starting to get stupid that every time my wife's computer tries to connect to our network, not only does she get no internet connection, but it crashes the network, insofar as my computer can no longer even see the network until hers stops trying to connect to it.
UPDATE: The exact same thing happens when I physically connect her computer to the (D-Link) router with an Ethernet cable. That is, she has an unstable connection to the device that comes and goes but never connects her to the Internet, and meanwhile my computer stops being able to see the wireless network. Similarly, if I physically connect my computer, it works fine until I connect her computer to the wireless, at which point etc.
I've just updated the firmware on the router (D-Link DI-624). I should also note that she has no trouble connecting to another wireless network that isn't ours, which suggests that the problem could be with the way Vista talks to the D-Link router. |
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| Things that make me extraordinarily happy |
[Apr. 10th, 2009|02:47 am] |
Some things that make me extraordinarily happy:
- Rachel Maddow speaking extensively on the GOP movement to Teabag the White House, i.e., to mail tea bags to Washington, D.C., in protest ofsome sort of tax thing or other.
- Puckishly gorgeous commentator Ana Marie Cox one-upping Maddow by discussing teabagging with her without breaking. ("Who wouldn't want to teabag John McCain?")
- But really, most of all: after I've had to bail on going to my cousin's Passover seder due to waves of nausea, and facing a second night without a seder, having friends set up a webcam so that I could join in their seder in Massachusetts. Seriously, thank you guys so much. You have no idea how much it meant to me.
(On the other hand, things that make me extraordinarily irritated: not being able to avoid a major spoiler for a TV show I'm ostensibly trying to follow, because it has political ramifications which therefore show up on things like the Rachel Maddow Show.) |
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| You really ought to give Iowa a try |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|08:12 pm] |
One of the more adorable introductions I've read to a court decision:
This lawsuit is a civil rights action by twelve individuals who reside in six communities across Iowa. Like most Iowans, they are responsible, caring, and productive individuals. They maintain important jobs, or are retired, and are contributing, benevolent members of their communities.... Like many Iowans, some have children and others hope to have children. Some are foster parents. Like all Iowans, they prize their liberties and live within the borders of this state with the expectation that their rights will be maintained and protected—a belief embraced by our state motto.1
1The state motto of Iowa is: "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain." It is inscribed on the Great Seal of Iowa and on our state flag. See Iowa Code ยงยง 1A.1, 1B.1 (2009). I mostly don't regret not becoming a lawyer, but I do kind of like reading court decisions.
(Also: one of the plaintiffs is named Otter Dreaming. Otter Dreaming!) |
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| Barron Lands |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|03:18 am] |
You may recall that, several years ago, I took a careful look at the prologue to T.A. Barron's The Great Tree of Avalon.
Are you as excited as I am that I've finally gotten the chance to read the first chapter of the sequel?
(Finally got some things transferred over to a more permanent website, from the webarchive of my MIT pages. Still playing with the colors though.) |
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| Farewell, O "Sci Fi" Channel |
[Mar. 17th, 2009|06:07 pm] |
I've complained about the idiocy that is the Sci Fi Channel before, and had it pointed out that "the people who run the SciFi Channel HATE sci fi".
But I had no idea how deep that hatred ran until I saw the news that they're changing their name to Syfy. Among other noteworthy points in the article:
1. The quote from the president of the channel—"We'll get the heritage and the track record of success, and we'll build off of that to build a broader, more open and accessible and relatable and human-friendly brand."—that shows he's a whole lot more steeped in corporate culture than science fiction culture.
2. The quote from one of the channel's creators: "We spent a lot of time in the '90s trying to distance the network from science fiction".
3. They'll be using the slogan "Imagine Greater", which they think "will resonate with both consumers and media buyers". It resonates with the prescriptivist in me, who looks at that and says, "Seriously? You're modifying a verb with an adjective?" (And I'm perfectly willing to accept that the second word in "run faster" is an adverb; I was even OK with "Think Different", in which the second word is still an adjective but is...I don't even know, it's just better than "Imagine Greater".)
If you'll pardon a quote from an actual science fiction TV show: "Weep for the future, Na'Toth. Weep for us all." |
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| Crossword Tournament - Final Results |
[Mar. 1st, 2009|04:56 pm] |
Pending any scoring changes, the results are up. Congrats to Tyler "Chicago Bulls" Hinman on the victory, and of course to Trip and Francis on their A-finals appearance. And congrats to Dan Katz, second in the B finals! (Curse you, Dan "possibly not actually human" Feyer! His minor lag on the seventh puzzle, which put him in a four-way tie for first, the tie being broken by times on the seventh puzzle, kept him out of the A finals and thus put him in the B finals).
Most readers of this LJ who want to know how other NPLers did are probably already looking at the rankings, so for the non-NPL-oriented folks, I'll happily report another top-ten showing for Katherine. And congratulations again to Erhard Konerding, who placed 94th in the pool of six hundred something competitors, and third among the rookies! (I don't know Erhard Konerding; it's just that Erhard Konerding is my favorite name on the list. No, totally lying. I know Erhard. It's also my favorite name on the list.) |
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| For those of us watching the ACPT from home... |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|09:38 pm] |
...Trip Payne and Francis Heaney are currently tied, minute-for-minute on each puzzle, for second and third place. (In first place: last year's C-division winner and current B-divisioner, Dan Feyer.)
Excluding Feyer, there're three B-division contestants clustered together at 17-19, one of them being Dan Katz, so there's a decent chance of seeing him in the B finals. (Go Dan!)
And fourth in the rookies: Erhard Konerding. (Go Erhard!)
Full (well, full-to-date) results at http://www.crosswordtournament.com/2009/index.htm. |
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| Sigh. |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|04:42 am] |
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Most of my friends list will be confused, and perhaps some will be as saddened as I am. And it's odd, because pictures of cute three and a half year olds, even those from a year ago, don't typically make me sad. But this one does. |
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| The state of Bobby Jindal |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|04:35 am] |
I know I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been said everywhere else, but nevertheless, a few thoughts:
- Barack Obama could probably read the D.C. phone book and I'd feel better about myself and my country. I'm glad he didn't, because there were some nice rhetorical flourishes in there—not just the part about how staying in school is an investment in America, but more particularly the times that he referred to the American public as "the people who sent us here". It's a nice reminder, to Congress but also to us, that these people are in Washington to represent us.
- Bobby Jindal. Wow. I'd never heard him speak before; I was mildly inclined to like him based on a profile a few years ago in the Brown Alumni Monthly. Halfway through his response, which I'm listening to now on c-span.org, I feel really condescended to. ("But Democratic leaders in Congress? They rejected this approach. Instead of trusting us to make decisions..." His tone makes it sound like he's explaining civics to a class of third graders.)
- "Wasteful spending". Like, oh, no, buying new cars for the government (heaven forbid we buy the product of a troubled major American industry!), and building a train "from Las Vegas to Disneyland" (yes, thank you for trivializing infrastructure), and "something called volcano monitoring" (got it, you don't know what it's for, and it sounds sciencey, so it must be something dumb, because why would we want to know when a volcano might erupt? Insert your own editorial cartoon here of Jindal wearing a toga and giving that speech in the forum of Pompeii). Won't they please just stop?
- Also, Rachel Maddow's reponse to Jindal invoking the reponse to Katrina is about right: "Um, ee-um, ahm, a, a ba ba ba ba ba".
- Maybe these responses always sound like this, but: Obama laid out policy goals and particular policies. Sure, Republicans might disagree with the policies, but Jindal isn't discussing the policies, he's going through this long spiel about how you should once again believe in the Republican Party, and how members of the Republican Party are willing to work for you, and we're restoring faith in the RepublicanTM brand. For comparison: Obama mentioned the Democrats as a party exactly four times; three of them were in the phrase "Democrats and Republicans" and the fourth in the sentence "That is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue." That is to say, while there may have been a few nods to party divisions ("I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work..."), not once did he explicitly contrast the two parties; he never called on Republicans to do the right thing, or thanked the Democrats for their work in passing the stimulus bill, or anything else that would make "Believe in the Republicans" a sensible response.
Also, was this really more important than new episodes of Scrubs? Sheesh! |
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| On the human cost of "free speech" |
[Feb. 22nd, 2009|04:04 am] |
This post was sparked by a comment elsewhere in which S said "Freedom of speech and all that jazz" as a defense of a post by J that sparked an extended argument in J's LJ. Rather than post extensively in J's comments, I'll post it here. I fear I'm going to have to make some specific reference to J's original thread, but I'm not linking to it, so you'll just have to infer.
The following are some useful facts to remember about freedom of speech:
1. Freedom of speech is a legal defense, not a moral one. When J made her original post, no one attempted to violate her freedom of speech: no one called the police or otherwise took non-verbal action against her. Nor did anyone say "You aren't permitted to say that!" J's right to make her statement was never in doubt. The corrolary of the legal-vs.-moral fact is, to paraphrase Miss Manners, not everything permitted is obligatory. Just because one has the right to free speech does not mean one must, or even should, say everything one thinks at every moment.
2. Speech is an action. The philosopher J.L. Austin coined the term "speech act" for this very reason: every instance of saying (including writing) is an act, which in addition to its semantic content ("locutionary act") has a particular force ("illocutionary act") such as asking, ordering, requesting, warning, informing; and also has further effects ("perlocutionary act"). And even in a legal sense, while you cannot be punished in America for the content of your words, you can be punished for your illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. An example of the former is "incitement": if your uttering a sentence is also an order to riot, you can be held responsible for that act. An example of the latter is the classic "shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded theatre": even though the content of your speech is protected ("there is a fire in here") and there was nothing illegal about your illocutionary act ("I warn you that there is a fire in here"—inappropriate when there is no fire, but legal), you can be held responsible for the consequences of your action.
J neither incited to riot nor shouted "Fire" (though again, no one has suggested a legal offense). Nevertheless, her speech—free though she may be to say it—has consequences, just like any other action she takes. She, like any other student, is free to take the action of never turning in a homework assignment, but that act has consequences (e.g., her professor may fail her). Similarly, she is free to take the action of saying "I cannot believe that some people are so babaric that they believe X"—but there are consequences, and one of them is that people who believe X may infer "She thinks I am stupid and barbaric" and may then not wish to speak to her.
Let me stress, too, another lesson from the study of linguistic pragmatics: some implications of the speaker may be detachable from the particular form of the utterance. J's opinion being "X is wrong", she could have expressed it in a number of ways: she can say "I believe X is wrong", "I'd never do X", "I don't think anyone should do X", "Only barbaric idiots would do X", and so on, and while they may in some sense carry the same message (J believes X is wrong), they will have different effects on her readers. A sizeable portion of the negative reaction to J's post was not to the content of her message (though there was plenty of that, to be sure), but to the way in which it was communicated—to the action, not the content.
As a final side note to S, though there are a few other people reading who might do well to be reminded: "overreact" is rarely acceptable in civil discourse. It's inherently dismissive of the feelings of others to tell them that they've overreacted. |
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| Ah, Bishop Williamson |
[Feb. 13th, 2009|01:33 am] |
Let's be clear on the fact that I don't have a deep love for the Catholic Church to begin with. And when I heard that Benedict was de-excommunicating "Bishop" Williamson, well, that wasn't a high point for them.
Now, though, I've discovered that denying the Holocaust is one of his more endearing qualities—and my apologies if this is old news, but somehow in my reading "Holocaust denier" overshadowed everything else the guy had said (even the rest of his anti-Semitism, such as his belief in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; best quote from the article is a director the Simon Wiesenthal Center calling Williamson "the Borat of the schismatic Catholic far-Right", but don't miss the "saying" at the bottom). Alas, the Society of Saint Pius X has removed the archive of Williamson's letters, as it's moved to the Saint Thomas Aquinas Seminary's website; and the latter has the occasional odd gap—for instance, it jumps directly from his August 2001 letter to his November 2001 letter.
So here, presented without further comment, is the Google cache of his September 2001 letter the archive.org archive of his letter (thanks, /dev/joe! Must remember to use archive.org!). I was going to pull out the singularly worthwhile quotes, but honestly it's just plain impossible to pick one or another, and I'd hate to take anything out of context and thereby keep you from tracking the full logical force of his argument. |
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| Springing in the Rain |
[Feb. 6th, 2009|05:31 pm] |
It took me a minute to parse the following sentence (in a letter from the administration):
If enrollment in this course Springs below nine students between January 14-February 2, contact me immediately... |
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| A random puzzle |
[Jan. 24th, 2009|08:08 pm] |
Before the Hunt, I mentioned that I'd written a puzzle early Friday morning. Specifically, I'd promised a puzzle to my aunt in North Carolina for an inauguration-themed party.
So if anyone's curious: Four More Years?. It's designed to be solved by non-puzzlers, of course; it's geared to be of fairly easy difficulty. |
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| Puzzle weekend |
[Jan. 16th, 2009|09:56 am] |
As for me, I have, this morning, already:
- Written a puzzle
- Had the puzzle testsolved
- Printed it and prepared to send it out
- Discovered that I'd written it to lead to the wrong final answer
- Rewritten the puzzle
- Printed it and sent it out.
And the Hunt starts in two hours. How was your morning? |
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| Gentlemen, start your "offended" engines |
[Jan. 10th, 2009|09:43 pm] |
The never-ending story, on the Boston Globe. A few highlights:
The subhead: "Some men have been secretly playing Dungeons & Dragons for decades".
"Individual games can last several hours.... But for some gamers the adventures never end, because players can choose to recast themselves from a previous role." (Followup quote from a player: "The longest adventure I was in lasted about half a year or so.")
"Two Thursdays a month, he and four other men gather in his Holliston basement - a sign calls it the 'Game Room'... They alter their voices to make their characters sound real."
Also, Johnny Diaz should be fired just for writing "surrounded by tomes of books". Tomes of books? |
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| Why I hate USAir |
[Dec. 29th, 2008|06:59 am] |
People who have traveled with me know that I sleep in transit. Cars, trains, buses, subways...but especially planes. It's a serious challenge to keep me awake on a plane. (Cordelia's Honor did it once, on a cross-country redeye.) Often I'm asleep before takeoff.
So why, twenty or thirty minutes into a 12:40 am flight from Tucson, was I still awake? Given that, for context, the only caffeinated beverage I'd had in the last 36 hours was a 32-oz Coke at 11am; and the night before, I couldn't get to sleep until 4am (local) and had to get up at 10am for checkout, so I was a little underslept?
Probably it wasn't the fact that the in-flight magazine was from September; that's merely stupid. Nor was it the fact that, reportedly to cut down on weight, USAirways has removed not only the movies but also the music channels. It wasn't entirely the fact that my seat didn't recline, since again I'm often asleep before takeoff, though that can't have helped. Probably more of a factor was the unpleasantly high temperature, coupled with the fact that the airjet over my seat wasn't particularly strong.
Maybe it was the general discomfort. I can't help believing that part of it, though, was that, with me feeling hot and a little dehydrated and needing to take a couple of pills, I couldn't get a cup of ice water. I could buy bottled water for $2 (and even if I didn't mind the principle of paying $2 for a bottle of water or a can of Coke under any circumstances, but especially after giving them $500 just to get on the damned plane, I didn't have the cash for). Or I could drink what I could get, which was a cup of hot water. With ice. That melted quickly to turn it unappetizingly lukewarm.
I swear to god, Karen's lucky I like her enough to have taken USAirways, because in general, given the choice, I'd genuinely rather not travel at all than fly them.
[Travel note: from Friday, December 26 through Wednesday, December 31, I will have slept in a guest bedroom in Alabama, a Days Inn in Tucson, an eastbound plane, my old bedroom in Atlanta, and my bed at home. My computer, meanwhile, will have connected to an unlocked Netgear wireless network, the Montgomery airport wireless, the Charlotte airport wireless, the Days Inn wireless, the Tucson airport wireless, Charlotte again, my parents' wireless, and finally our own at home. I can plz stop now?] |
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| Thankstaken |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|03:04 pm] |
So far today:
- The ice cream maker has failed to in fact freeze the ice cream, producing instead a liquid that was, well, exactly what I put in, only stirred a little more;
- The cutting board fell from the counter, destroying what was on it, i.e. the turkey giblets and one of my favorite glass mixing bowls (seriously, I bought them at a Crate and Barrel outlet in like 1997 and they've been my most constant kitchen companions ever since—I think the only thing in my kitchen that old is the toaster oven, and my wife wants to replace that anyway);
- We came this >< close to running out of aluminum foil before I finished wrapping the turkey.
And that's before the cooking starts in earnest. Honestly, it's a good thing we have no friends here, so that only my wife and I will end up having to call Domino's. |
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| ATMs in Philadelphia |
[Nov. 15th, 2008|05:31 am] |
Just in case anyone thought the city was warming to me, a true story from this morning:
Philadelphia ATM: Would you like to withdraw, deposit, check balance, or get $50 fast cash?
Me: Hm. $50 fast cash sounds about right.
Philadelphia ATM: Transaction cancelled. Amount is not a multiple of $20. |
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| Election thingies |
[Nov. 5th, 2008|04:46 am] |
Yes, I'm excited. Yes, I can breathe again. Yes, this is a hell of a lot better than, say, 2004, when my wife and I were hoping for a better wedding present from the electorate.
But I don't understand how CNN gives the figures as 60.5 million to 54 million, i.e. maybe 115 million votes, when the turn out in '04 was 122 million and the numbers are supposed to be so much higher this year. And I really, really don't understand how California could have gone 53/47 in favor of Proposition 8, which is where it is now and which is how it looks like it's going to go.
(And I'd really, really like to see someone challenge the amendment, which reads in full Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California., on the grounds of the ambiguity discussed in this LanguageLog post. In particular, I was struck by the same reading that Aaron Dinkin found, i.e. "It's only marriage that is recognized between a man and a woman in California", which entails that California doesn't recognize "dating" as a valid relationship between a man and a woman, but leaves entirely open the question of what's recognized between two men or two women. I'm not remotely a lawyer and I'm fairly sure that there's a "reasonable interpretation" basis for not allowing that kind of challenge, but (a) if you write something semantically ambiguous, you should suffer the consequences, and (b) frankly, anything that would get rid of this abomination of an amendment is just fine with me.)
Maybe when I wake up, things'll be clearer. As it happens, the PA Attorney General race changed significantly since the point at which the state was called for Obama: at the time, the Democratic challenger was up by about ten points, and now the Republican incumbent is up six. I voted for the Republican, incidentally. I wasn't impressed by any of the ads I saw, which were entirely attack ads from both sides. But the Dem's website stressed three issues—restricting parole for violent offenders, cracking down on illegal immigrants, and making it illegal to be a member of a gang even if one's actions are otherwise entirely within the law. These all struck me less as issues and more as posturing (and the third one worried me on First Amendment grounds; I gather that a federal court ruled that gang membership isn't a first amendment right, but it seems to me to be, if not a free speech issue, at least a free assembly issue, and mostly it seems a little like thoughtcrime.)
Right. Bed. |
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| I'm just sayin' |
[Oct. 31st, 2008|09:40 pm] |
Dear Chicago,
So here's the thing, and I'm just sayin' here, is all. Four years ago, my wife and I got married in Boston at the end of October. That year, the Red Sox "reversed the curse" and won the World Series for the first time since 1918. This year, we celebrated our fourth anniversary in Philadelphia, the day after the Phillies ended a 25-year sports-championship drought in this city.
All I'm sayin' is this. Cubs fans, you've got four years to get together a good offer, 'cause I wouldn't mind living in Chicago, but surely you folks can make it worthwhile for us. Just sayin'.
—Tah |
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| stupid exams |
[Oct. 26th, 2008|07:03 am] |
My apologies to Dan, Zundevil, Lunch Boy, and anyone else I ended up having to bail on today. (You did get my message, I hope?) I've been grading exams all day; I was hoping to finish them before bed, but, well, it's 7am and I've got 20 more Problem #7s to go, so that's just not going to happen.
(Note to any students who may be reading: honestly, when the second line of the instructions says "Failure to follow any instruction on this page will cost you five points", with a bold and enlarged font, take it seriously. "Write your name at the top of each page" is not a hard thing to do, and it genuinely makes my job harder when you don't. And I can't believe I had to take five points off because someone failed to follow "Your answers should appear in the same order...as the questions on the exam" and stapled their papers in the wrong order. These things weren't hidden. Or hard. Sheesh.) |
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| Update: responses to divisiveness |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|07:43 pm] |
I posted earlier this morning about my distaste for divisive rhetoric. Some commenters seemed to think that I was advocating that, in response to that kind of rhetoric on the right, people on the left should "be silent [or] join hands and sing Kumbaya". Thanks to Tablesaw, I can give an example of the right kind of response, which is neither mean-spirited nor silent:
At a defining moment like this, we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games and the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another. With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by class or region; by who we are or what policies we support.
There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation - we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it; patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Virginia and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.
We have always been at our best when we've had leadership that called us to look past our differences and come together as one nation, as one people; leadership that rallied this entire country to a common purpose - to a higher purpose. And I am running for President of the United States of America because that is the country we need to be right now. (TS inadvertantly linked to a speech from two years ago about religion in American politics, which is also fascinating reading, and is also marvelously moderate in its tone.) |
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| Political divisiveness |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|04:17 am] |
I've been complaining to friends for a few weeks now about how irritated I am by the divisive language Republicans seem to be using lately: Palin talking about the "real" America, McCain's advisor talking about the "real" Virginia, McCain's well-intentioned but ill-phrased explanation that Obama isn't an Arab, he's a decent man, and so forth. I particularly hate it because it comes from the candidates and their advisors, which gives it a stamp of approval.
Just to be clear, then: I also disapprove of this kind of divisive talk from the left. I could go through it point by point, but it's so not worth the effort. (I will note that it originated, as far as I can tell, around 2005, at which time it included "We get Eliot Spitzer; you get Tom DeLay", at a time that having Attorney General Spitzer on your side was a good thing. Just goes to show.) I've commented as much as I really feel I need to over there, though it might be worth noting that, according to these charts, California voted Republican in every election from 1952 to 1988 other than the Johnson landslide of 1964.
Let me also state that Ms. Loquacious is a delightful person who I'm always pleased to see at conventions. Don't go posting in her comments, or mine, about how she's a terrible person for posting this. For that matter, as far as I know, I'd enjoy sitting down to cosolve a crossword with Sarah Palin, too. But the us-vs.-them has to stop, from all sides. |
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