Link: Rinderpest (species-jumping cow measles from hell) has been eradicated. It's only the second disease in the world to be declared dead.
News: Friends' wedding went well. Couldn't hear ourselves think over the band. Stayed up too late, then got up early for the send-off breakfast. Getting ready to drive back to the airport in Milwaukee. There's a chance that we may get stuck at the airport again.
News: Friends' wedding went well. Couldn't hear ourselves think over the band. Stayed up too late, then got up early for the send-off breakfast. Getting ready to drive back to the airport in Milwaukee. There's a chance that we may get stuck at the airport again.
Have some music I've enjoyed recently:
Steeleye Span - Blackleg Miner
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solarbird performing Paddy Murphy
Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains
Steeleye Span - Blackleg Miner
solarbird performing Paddy MurphyFleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains
Why do I pay so much for granola, when it's so easy to make?
I just tried the above recipe. It's delicious.
I just tried the above recipe. It's delicious.
Hedge funds are now investing in lawsuits, in order to make money off of people who wouldn't be able to afford justice on their own.
I thought I'd have something coherent to say by the time I read to the end of the article, but I'm still just boggling.
I thought I'd have something coherent to say by the time I read to the end of the article, but I'm still just boggling.
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I'm eagerly awaiting the next issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, for two articles that are currently in press:
"Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience", Seery, Mark et. al.
"Feeling the Future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect.", Bem, D.J.
The pre-publication grapevine has it that this one takes standard psychological experiments, like those demonstrating the priming effect, time-reverses them, and gets results which are better than chance. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In other news, yesterday's bio class took a long diversion through the ear, nerve cells, and hearing. It leads me to wonder whether my difficulty deciphering words spoken during white noise or other human voices isn't due to something so simple as slow habituation to the background noise.
Curiosity then had me wander around wikipedia to other sensory oddities, where I discovered that there's a word for palinopsia and a phrase for visual snow. I've had both for as long as I can remember, but have only rarely been able to successfully describe them to anyone else.
"Whatever does not kill us: Cumulative lifetime adversity, vulnerability, and resilience", Seery, Mark et. al.
"Feeling the Future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect.", Bem, D.J.
The pre-publication grapevine has it that this one takes standard psychological experiments, like those demonstrating the priming effect, time-reverses them, and gets results which are better than chance. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
In other news, yesterday's bio class took a long diversion through the ear, nerve cells, and hearing. It leads me to wonder whether my difficulty deciphering words spoken during white noise or other human voices isn't due to something so simple as slow habituation to the background noise.
Curiosity then had me wander around wikipedia to other sensory oddities, where I discovered that there's a word for palinopsia and a phrase for visual snow. I've had both for as long as I can remember, but have only rarely been able to successfully describe them to anyone else.
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Back in April, Tim Wise wrote an article titled What If the Tea Party Were Black?. I recently found out that it's become a music video. (Yeah, I know, only a month late. Video isn't generally my thing.) Props to everyone involved, and I hope it spreads farther than a written article could.
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Last week I assembled some trellising to hide the neighbor's ugly garage wall, and give the pitiful-looking grapevine someplace to grow. It looks good, but the cheap wood of the trellis is starting to bend under its own weight already.
Monday, my housemates and I hauled a massive desk bequeathed to us by the previous owners upstairs for my use. Because it's large, red (cherry stain, if not actual cherry wood), and evil to move in any way at all, we've named it "The Balrog". In retrospect, we probably should've waited for the professional movers, but the three of us got ambitious. We also succeeded with only a minor ding to the stairwell, which speaks for itself.
My own clumsiness and some misfortune in getting the Balrog into position has left a wide, shallow scrape on the wood floor (appears to be finish damage only). While I'm fixing it, I figure I may as well fill in and finish over the 1/8" deep, 1/8" wide cross-grain gouges left by the previous owners. (I can't figure out what they did to make that shape. Fit their kids for iceskates indoors, maybe?) It will be impossible to hide that it's a patch job, but that's preferable to having the unsanded wood-splinters hanging out near my bare feet.
Yesterday, I did battle with the community college bureaucracy in order to establish my student status. A rematch to determine my tuition residency is in the works, but it's waiting on a utility bill so that I can prove I'm planning to stay (in the mean time, they're charging me the out-of-state rate, and the understaffed FinAid office will eventually get around to reimbursing me). It's worth noting that I ache more after standing in lines for 5h than I did after moving extremely heavy furniture the day before.
In this morning's bout of insomnia, I've been reading about the origins of number representation. The results are pretty cool, and I'm not going to spoil the suspense for you. Read it yourself - I'm going to try to sleep some more.
Monday, my housemates and I hauled a massive desk bequeathed to us by the previous owners upstairs for my use. Because it's large, red (cherry stain, if not actual cherry wood), and evil to move in any way at all, we've named it "The Balrog". In retrospect, we probably should've waited for the professional movers, but the three of us got ambitious. We also succeeded with only a minor ding to the stairwell, which speaks for itself.
My own clumsiness and some misfortune in getting the Balrog into position has left a wide, shallow scrape on the wood floor (appears to be finish damage only). While I'm fixing it, I figure I may as well fill in and finish over the 1/8" deep, 1/8" wide cross-grain gouges left by the previous owners. (I can't figure out what they did to make that shape. Fit their kids for iceskates indoors, maybe?) It will be impossible to hide that it's a patch job, but that's preferable to having the unsanded wood-splinters hanging out near my bare feet.
Yesterday, I did battle with the community college bureaucracy in order to establish my student status. A rematch to determine my tuition residency is in the works, but it's waiting on a utility bill so that I can prove I'm planning to stay (in the mean time, they're charging me the out-of-state rate, and the understaffed FinAid office will eventually get around to reimbursing me). It's worth noting that I ache more after standing in lines for 5h than I did after moving extremely heavy furniture the day before.
In this morning's bout of insomnia, I've been reading about the origins of number representation. The results are pretty cool, and I'm not going to spoil the suspense for you. Read it yourself - I'm going to try to sleep some more.
Tags:
Vinay Deolalikar of HP Labs, who's done previous work in the area, has published a proof that P ≠ NP. It will take a few days for other mathematicians to check his work for mistakes. I wish I knew enough math to understand the proof myself.
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Tags:
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issendai, on how sick systems are like flypaper.The New York Times, on the connection between cruelty to animals and cruelty to humans. (May be triggering.)
And one that's old but worthwhile: Disability Culture meets Euthenasia Culture: Lessons from my cat, written by Linda Andre in 2003.
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Sunset I
Closeup Left
Closeup Right
The yellow and red in this one are Rit dye (heat setting), the blue is from the same Tulip kit as the last one (time setting). I had planned for the colors to go yellow/orange/red/purple, but as you can see that didn't quite happen. Other than the fact that you start with boiling water, Rit dye is easy to work with and gives both intense color and fast results. You let the fabric soak in hot dye for 30min, rather than overnight like the Tulip dyes, then rinse it out. The interesting pattern around the ends happened when the Tulip blue wicked up into the red area while sitting overnight.
Closeup Left
Closeup Right
The yellow and red in this one are Rit dye (heat setting), the blue is from the same Tulip kit as the last one (time setting). I had planned for the colors to go yellow/orange/red/purple, but as you can see that didn't quite happen. Other than the fact that you start with boiling water, Rit dye is easy to work with and gives both intense color and fast results. You let the fabric soak in hot dye for 30min, rather than overnight like the Tulip dyes, then rinse it out. The interesting pattern around the ends happened when the Tulip blue wicked up into the red area while sitting overnight.
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