tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199876552011-08-19T07:51:50.715-05:00[curious thought]davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.comBlogger721100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-55329935716513680352010-01-31T08:58:00.002-05:002010-01-31T09:00:57.455-05:00

And now, here's the weather. Over to you, Dave.Thanks, Bob. Well, it's just crappy out there. No other word for it. 100% chance of white excretion all over the ground, turning into black ice overnight. Now there's a euphemism for you: black ice. Coming down, it wasn't dramatic at all--kind of a slushy, snow--that amorphous precipitation the just-too-perky weather lass (sorry Brandi) calls "

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-32742447263554337222008-04-13T06:23:00.005-05:002009-10-07T10:28:46.562-05:00

It’s never a pretty sight to see a NaN spoiling for a fight. I try to avoid them and their modern-day conundrums when NOT impossible. In this case, he was an exception and I had to deal with him. As is typical of the breed, he tried to corner me in a logical blind ally, bit by bit. Annoying but methodical, these NaNs. “Are you familiar with the phenomenon called

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-313416956402852982007-05-06T06:50:00.000-05:002007-05-06T07:03:44.152-05:00

A recent little article in a recent Science News (Week of April 14, 2007; Vol. 171, No. 15, p. 229, subscription required) has a mind-bending piece about how plants harvest sunlight. Here's the central mystery:The efficiency of photosynthesis, as this process is called, has long astounded scientists. Virtually every photon absorbed by chlorophyll initiates a photosynthetic reaction. Plants use

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-28032021345690609082007-04-05T09:37:00.000-05:002007-04-05T09:40:08.879-05:00

The last thing Earl Martin ever said was “sixty-seven,” which was quite an extraordinary feat, and one still talked about by the doctors at Burlen County Memorial Hospital. One theory had it that during life, Earl had consumed so many depressants that he was immune to the pre-surgery anesthetic, kind of like the South’s answer to Rasputin. Before they put him down they asked if he was

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-81650597339535342382007-04-03T19:33:00.000-05:002007-04-03T19:36:02.493-05:00

Okay, it's really the "Burger Dance" by DJ Otzi. But it's really annoying, and your kids will love it. In German, "Hut" means hat.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-78597222545073771082007-04-01T13:00:00.000-05:002007-05-06T07:05:52.303-05:00

I've been reading through the articles over at realclimate.org, a blog on climate matters run by climatologists. Check out their hilarious April 1 post. Meanwhile, we spent a weekend at North Myrtle Beach. I started mulling over the connection today after lunch. From a game theory perspective, what would we expect beachfront property prices to do as sea levels rise?To make the problem more

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-44523534375181760462007-04-01T10:55:00.000-05:002007-04-01T12:53:18.650-05:00

A few years ago I found myself in the middle of a faculty discussion about technology literacy. The topic quickly changed to "what is important for students to know about the advances made in science and their impact on society?" This was all irrelevant for the actual point of the meeting, but such things often take on a life of their own. Anyway, a biology professor proferred the opinion that

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-82968484286073515402007-04-01T10:33:00.000-05:002007-04-01T12:54:06.371-05:00

This is one of those things I probably should have known about a long time ago. I've noticed the tinyurl domain from time to time, but just assumed it was a service provider. But I noticed a link yesterday and observed (finally) that it was self-referential: the url actually was tiny. It became obvious that the url was just a hash that pointed to something more substantial. So I checked out

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-60139645842113956992007-03-30T15:34:00.000-05:002007-03-30T15:39:54.791-05:00

In the weird science file, goes this photo from Saturn:The hexagon is presumed to be a weather phenomenon (you can read about it here). Other theories include Saturn's lug nut, and a military headquarters. There's a naming contest on the Times.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-6979708111891575122007-03-18T21:01:00.000-05:002007-03-18T21:04:10.668-05:00

This is pretty addictive.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-41076525486017720732007-02-14T22:13:00.000-05:002007-02-14T22:20:01.995-05:00

Daniel Thompson has a blog where he shares some musical compositions created with unusual scales. The 12-note version that you see on the piano goes out the window. In one case he uses a 26-note scale. I had some fun playing around with the math to see which of these produced the best fit for certain types of note ratios.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-79550444537255631372007-02-14T19:17:00.000-05:002007-02-14T19:24:13.970-05:00

In the seminar class I participate in, we profs decided we wanted to videotape the students so they could critique their own speaking styles. After trying it out with a borrowed video camera, we decided the department should buy a digital cam that records on DVD. I checked WallyWorld and found a Sony in our price range, researched it on Amazon, and decided that was the one. So this morning I

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-75475688108433153812007-02-12T21:33:00.000-05:002007-02-12T22:06:39.957-05:00

So tonight I was working my way through this book on the philosophy of science that I borrowed and want to return soon. There's a bit about Parmenides that gave me pause for thought. According to this interpretation, the universe is full of unchanging stuff, and our perceptions of change are nothing more than rearrangements of it. In other words, combinatorics is what makes the world go '

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-52309573858330459412007-02-11T10:55:00.000-05:002007-02-19T13:30:19.833-05:00

Okay, admit it. At least once when you were a kid, you grabbed the last piece of pizza and put it on your plate while you were still only half-finished with another piece. It seems that some fungi have figured out a more sophisticated way to place food off limits to others. There's a cool article (subscription required) in New Scientist (Dec. 23-Jan 5 2007, page 32) about the yeast used in

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-53512251315525095612007-02-05T09:03:00.000-05:002007-02-05T09:11:56.850-05:00

I went to the dentist for a cleaning (of my wallet, as it turned out) on Tuesday. Whilst I was waiting, these two other ladies struck up a conversation. Something like this:Mabel: You here for an appointment?Gladys: (turns white) Oh no! No! No, I'm here to pick up my husband. (whispers) He's gotta have three teeth pulled. Been in there for two hours already. No, I have to take valium just

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-64952964612388330262007-02-01T18:52:00.000-05:002007-02-01T18:56:32.305-05:00

There's some cool stuff at lunchtimers.com. I like the puzzles the best, but here's a refrigerator magnet set:

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-27528093859797682442007-01-30T20:32:00.000-05:002007-01-30T20:55:17.483-05:00

There are a lot of things in the world. Trillions of cells in your body, for example. But the number of ways to arrange these things swamps the actual number by an unfathomable margin. Suppose there are an even trillion cells in your body. If you scrambled the locations of these at random by swapping each cell with some other chosen in a cosmic lottery, what are the odds that after two such

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1169586377612656802007-01-23T15:59:00.000-05:002007-01-23T16:06:17.626-05:00

Here's my wish for 2007, vis the Web 2.0 universe we inherited from 2006. I would like, pretty please, a web site that allows data and metadata to be attached to conferences. An example will illustrate what I mean.I just got back from the annual American Association of Colleges & Universities conference. As usual I made a slew of contacts, have sheafs of handouts and my own notes, the

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1168997177482308142007-01-16T20:20:00.000-05:002007-01-22T19:08:26.516-05:00

Somebody was telling me about a new kind of noise generator used for office spaces. Instead of creating a 'whoosh' of white noise at low levels, it makes vowel sounds. This is supposed to confuse your brain when you hear a faint conversation. The overlapping vowel noises mask enough of the actual voices so that you can't hear--and don't even notice--the voices. Cool idea.By coincidence I was

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1166464980025847472006-12-18T12:52:00.000-05:002006-12-18T13:03:00.040-05:00

Probably like every other academic in the world, I have a novel that I've been working on for years. I turned it into a screenplay last year, but found that format restrictive. In particular, it's hard for me to develop characters without the prose techniques of delving into thoughts and motivations. Realizing that the novel is never going to be written at the rate I was going, I resolved to

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1165108741569788442006-12-02T20:08:00.000-05:002006-12-02T20:19:01.600-05:00

We got a flyer in the mail from Despair, Inc. , which is a real company, as unlikely as that sounds. The cover of the slick catalog looks like a Mad Magazine version of a motivational products company's. The photo on the cover looks like a typical positive image of a whale's flukes emerging from the ocean. Except that on second glance, it's a ship going under! And the title in big Times Roman

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1161823159596329212006-10-25T19:37:00.000-05:002006-10-25T19:39:19.606-05:00

If you missed the NPR story about the dog addicted to toads, check it out here. I must be truly in the dark--I had no idea that 'lillypadding' was a word, much less that it meant licking toads to get high!

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1160972163411975802006-10-15T23:10:00.000-05:002007-05-09T19:59:38.259-05:00

Commander Mas didn’t fit the stereotype of a ramrod-straight no-nonsense naval officer. He slouched uncomfortably in the plush armchair and avoided the gaze of the senior officers, to whom this pentagon conference room and its glossy oak table were no doubt familiar. He twirled his cheap plastic pen nervously around his thumb, as he’d see kids do in Jakarta about a million years ago.The door

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1159749381221882032006-10-01T17:49:00.000-05:002006-10-01T19:36:21.256-05:00

The No Free Lunch Theorem says that there's no one best search algorithm that works over all inputs. This makes perfect sense from Complexity Theory viewpoint. Suppose you're looking for a point x with some property (maybe we're maximizing a function over a domain). Because we're dealing with all possible landscapes, on average there's no information shared between points about who's the

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1159734574268025722006-10-01T15:29:00.000-05:002006-10-01T15:29:34.286-05:00

Lee Smolin writes, near the conclusion of his new book The Trouble with Physics, that the key to cracking the problem of linking quantum mechanics with relavatistic gravity may be our notion of time. In classical physics, there's no way to identify what 'now' means. All times have equal status. This doesn't match our perception, so either the physics is wrong or our perception is wrong. The

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1158545764646162862006-09-17T21:12:00.000-05:002006-09-17T21:16:04.656-05:00

Instead of doing something useful, I walked over to technorati to see what blogs are popular and found another bizarre corner of the Internet. Like many good creative ideas, this one is beautifully simple: write a secret on a postcard and send it off to be posted on the web. It's more interesting than that sounds. Check it out: PostSecret.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1157159911780053652006-09-01T19:45:00.000-05:002006-09-01T20:18:31.886-05:00

One of the problems with going on vacation is that the magazines pile up. The Economist is a weekly, so I had four of them waiting for me when I got back. It normally takes me a week to read one, so I've just today worked my way down to the July 1 issue. There's an incredible Internet story in the business section. You probably have to have a subscription to access it, so I'll summarize. In

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1157077262883354752006-08-31T21:18:00.000-05:002006-09-01T20:19:15.860-05:00

Okay, everybody knows about myspace.com, but did you know about mydeathspace.com? It's a site devoted to people who have myspace accounts who have died. I spend a few minutes browsing it. It seems like an index to an electronic mausoleum.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1156558564165829102006-08-25T21:11:00.000-05:002006-08-25T21:16:04.176-05:00

In case you don't know what Web 2.0 is, it's kind of like 'deconstruction' in the sense that other people don't exactly agree either. But it involves elements of social content like facebook and flickr and/or a new way of updating page content called AJAX, which allows for live updates rather than the old click and refresh cycle. Google's gmail is a good example.Here's a page that summarizes

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1155926011017698012006-08-18T13:32:00.000-05:002006-08-18T13:33:31.030-05:00

Okay, that's not the name of it, but Amy Hughes built a seven foot long church out of 75,000+ legos. You've got to see it.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1155818483690996642006-08-17T07:39:00.000-05:002006-08-18T08:50:11.030-05:00

I didn't know they were so clod-damned BIG! The thing that stood in front of me--—if being chained at all four legs with a boom holding your neck in place counts as standing--—was huge. I wondered how many hamburgers, exactly, it took to make a cow. Well, I guess it was more likely the other way around: how many hamburgers could a cow BECOME, but we don't normally think in those terms, do we?I

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1152256051318572132006-07-07T01:58:00.000-05:002006-07-07T02:07:31.320-05:00

Two nights ago I had dinner here at a friend's house, where I made new acquaintence. This guy works for the legal team of Microsoft here in Europe. He told me of an interesting 'feature' of Microsoft mapping software. He and some other folks were in Las Vegas and wanted to go see the Grand Canyon. So he fired up Microsoft's mapping software and found a route. The nice four-lane rode

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1152255289620740432006-07-07T01:48:00.000-05:002006-07-07T01:56:14.106-05:00

I stumbled upon a simple explanation of why kids here in Europe behave better than they do in the US. The parents here just wash them each day with this fine product, and all the 'bad' is removed. Wish I'd know about this years ago!

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1149998460794435782006-06-10T22:54:00.000-05:002006-06-10T23:01:00.806-05:00

This post on buildyourmemory.com describes an interesting method for memorizing long numbers. Basically you associate sounds to each digit 0-9 and then create short words from these. For example, 1 is represented by the 'd' or 't' sounds, so 11 could be 'dad'. Two is represented by 'n', so 12 = 'dan'. The four digit 1112 could be 'dad dan', from which you could create a mental image easily

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1148931901976844802006-05-29T14:38:00.000-05:002006-05-29T14:45:01.993-05:00

There's a neat article in Scientific American's May issue about the history of slipsticks. You can download a template and make your own. I realized that you could make one without knowing about logs. If you take a two rulers, label the left edge '1', and then each regular tick mark with ascending powers of a number, e.g. 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, you can multply the numbers just by adding lengths-

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1148608065049341282006-05-25T20:44:00.000-05:002006-05-29T14:46:19.386-05:00

The best moment of the whole school year was graduation. What, you say? Sitting in a black robe for three hours in the Carolina sun? That doesn’t sound like the twitchy Dave I know. Yes, let me explain.I finally got booted off the faculty island this year, ostensibly because I only teach one class per semester, but it’s really because I’m a member of the Opus Duh society. Another story that.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147732256197745942006-05-15T17:21:00.000-05:002006-05-15T17:31:30.860-05:00

I'm on a roll with these theories. See how you like this one. In Freakomics, the authors show how real estate agents' own homes tend to sell at a higher price than their clients'. They theorize that the difference may be due to the fact that the extra effort in getting a better price for one's own home nets the agent 100% of the increase, while the same deal for a client only nets 3% or so of

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147658719623886302006-05-14T21:02:00.000-05:002006-05-14T21:05:19.640-05:00

In my previous post I described the theory of theory. Now show its usefulness with an application—another theory. The central question I want to address is why do we do things that we will regret? Have you ever ate too many potato chips, drank one beer too many, or bought something that you later wished you hadn’t? First of all, let’s rule out circumstances we couldn’t possibly control. Like

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147657060512375732006-05-14T20:36:00.000-05:002006-05-14T20:37:40.523-05:00

I’m teaching a half-day class in June to a group of teachers as part of a character academy. I’ve set up their tech for a few years (DVD, LCD, etc.), but this is the first year I’ve proposed to teach a class. I picked game theory as the topic. In case you don’t know, that’s a mathematical theory of conflict and cooperation. It has applications in economics or any other subject involving

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147556426870992372006-05-13T16:16:00.000-05:002006-05-13T17:39:18.460-05:00

It was an odd phone call. I was told by our VP for advancement (i.e. the guy who raises money) to call a certain Dr. Moyd regarding a math problem. A few hours later I was at the good surgeon's country estate looking at a swath of ugly mud and stumps that ran through his woods. He explained that the power company had asked for permission to put a natural gas line through his property, which he

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147299663240166692006-05-10T16:44:00.002-05:002006-05-10T17:21:03.283-05:00

If you're tired of waiting for Adobe Acrobat to load up when you click on a .pdf link (I used to actually cringe), head over to www.foxitsoftware.com and get their reader. It's free and a whole lot faster.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1147297374175009712006-05-10T16:34:00.000-05:002006-05-13T17:39:52.116-05:00

There's a great article in the May 6 Science news called To Leap or Not to Leap, which is about the problems in keeping clocks lined up with the Earth's rotation. Because of friction, the big blue ball is slowing down, but because of the melting icecaps it's also speeding up. It's therefore hard to predict how long a day will be in a few months. The really interesting part to me, though, is

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1145822570008228242006-04-23T15:00:00.000-05:002006-04-23T15:03:36.726-05:00

This guy plays from on top of the guitar instead of under it. Quite amazing. Courtesy of video.google.com.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1145228299689018442006-04-16T17:54:00.000-05:002006-04-16T17:58:19.700-05:00

Fibonacci poems, or 'fibs' hit the NTY most-emailed list for a while yesterday. Here's the blog where you can find all you want.A fib has lines with the number of syllables corresponding to the sequence 1,1,2,3,5. I suppose you could go as far as you want (An = An-1 + An-2). hereisa quickexampleof such a poem

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1145110712452157832006-04-15T09:14:00.000-05:002006-04-15T09:18:32.470-05:00

Here's a very simple but addictive sketching game from students at Georgia Tech. I couldn't make it past the cactus (level 5) after about 10 tries.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1144886813011001162006-04-12T18:59:00.000-05:002006-04-12T19:06:53.040-05:00

You remember Archimedes, right? Every schoolchild learns that he's the guy who leapt out of the public bath and ran through the streets shouting Eureka! Supposedly that's because he had figured out a way to tell if the king's crown was pure gold, or had been doped with less-valuable silver by an unscrupulous goldsmith. I probably heard this story in junior high, and since I considered myself a

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1142223701739668822006-03-12T23:19:00.000-05:002006-03-12T23:21:41.740-05:00

Now you can chat with other people who are surfing the same page, using gabbly.com. For instance, you can check out this page with a chat window by using the URL http://www.gabbly.com/zzascape.blogspot.com. I can see some cool applications for it.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1142223545439702902006-03-12T23:18:00.000-05:002006-03-12T23:19:05.453-05:00

This is a very interesting game concept. It's called Flow. Try it out.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1139676559187717982006-02-11T11:23:00.000-05:002006-02-11T11:49:19.290-05:00

In recent interview in New Scientist with artist Mari Velonaki, we get a glimpse of an interactive exhibit where robots and people can interact.Velonaki has collaborated with robotics scientists at the centre to create Fish-Bird, a live exhibition comprising a pair of moody, love-struck robots disguised as wheelchairs that can communicate through movement and written text.What is strikingly

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1139178756069773902006-02-05T17:21:00.000-05:002006-02-10T02:24:39.330-05:00

Over on Engadget they have a nice article about tech at the superbowl, with nice little tidbits like the fact that they have 120 footballs on hand for the game. That's a lot of footballs for one game. Even more interesting, from a geek POV is the fact that each of them is being labled with a particlular strand of DNA so that the balls can be identified later. This is because they can sell for

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1138890506421325632006-02-02T09:20:00.000-05:002006-02-10T02:24:55.636-05:00

No, I don't mean a political slogan from the 90's. Somebody had the clever idea to track dollar bills on the internet. Go to www.wheresgeorge.com where you can enter the serial numbers of a bill in the US or Canada and then follow it later if someone else also enters the number. There are about 76 million bills being tracked this way, and according to a Science Daily article scientists are

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1138890026376365592006-02-02T09:13:00.000-05:002006-02-02T09:20:26.416-05:00

At Shug's Smokehouse down the road I had a dinner last Wednesday with some colleagues. At the door there was a folding blackboard with the day's specials on it. At the top it read:ADD boiled shrimp $2.95Now I knew that Attention Deficit Disorder was becoming ubiquitous, but this is really too much! I wonder how they caught the jumpy little fellows anyway? With Ritalin, pehaps.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1138023930831626812006-01-23T08:43:00.000-05:002006-01-23T08:45:30.853-05:00

Today Krista wanted me to help her make lemonade to sell out in the front yard by the road. I told her this is the 21st century and people don't do that anymore. What do they do, she asked. Well, sez I, you have to have a website that people flock to, and then you sell advertisement for retailers who bring over boatloads of stuff from China, where uncle Tom is. Really, she says, eyes like

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1137935750286442712006-01-22T07:56:00.000-05:002006-01-22T08:15:54.743-05:00

You can't make stuff like this up. Carl Zimmer writes on his blog about a parasite that infects rats and causes them to lose their fear of cats. Cui bono? The parasite, named Toxoplasma gondii, uses cats to complete its life cycle. So it evolved a way to bring cats and rats together--who needs match.com?Here's the punch line: it infects humans too. There is some evidence that this parasite

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1137285658755142952006-01-14T19:18:00.000-05:002006-01-22T08:17:42.090-05:00

The most intriguing question about how we got here, to me is the appearance of the violation of the second law of thermodynamics. That just means that things tend to get messier over time, not more orderly. That's why you never see a bunch of ants putting a beetle back together. So how in the heck does something as mindbogglingly complex as ourselves come about? Note that as soon as we are

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1137276991891520172006-01-14T17:14:00.000-05:002006-01-14T18:19:35.016-05:00

Okay, I admit I was impressed with the cannons in the 1812 overture. But that's nothing compared to this.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1137152809263231582006-01-13T06:31:00.000-05:002006-01-13T06:46:51.853-05:00

The Spring faculty art show went up this week, and I loved this piece by Jean Grosser (reproduced here with permission). Jean's comments:The title is Warhol's Johns a reference to Warhol's soup can paintings and Jasper Johns paintings of the American flag from the 1950s (hence the 48 "stars"). [...] All the canned food will be donated to the Harvest Hope Food Bank at the close of the show.I

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1136861145208414252006-01-09T21:16:00.000-05:002006-01-11T10:54:04.326-05:00

Everyone is entitled to a pet peeve or three. I had to leave mine in quarantine when we went to Europe this summer, but they're back now. First, a minor irritation: why do people say 'that' when they mean 'who'? As in: "I have a friend that really likes French fries." instead of "I have a friend who..." It's disrespectful.Another one that comes up on the news after a car crash: "the vehicle

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135890546099095102005-12-29T16:06:00.000-05:002006-01-22T19:25:34.606-05:00

I just discovered shadow.com, which is even cooler than del.icio.us.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135782737274633392005-12-28T10:06:00.000-05:002005-12-28T10:12:17.290-05:00

Widgets are little programs that sit on your desktop and deliver information. From Thompson-Peterson's blog: This morning I downloaded Konfabulator, and within minutes tiny little widgets appeared on my XP desktop - a clock, a window showing pictures from one of my folders, a Yahoo search input box, a battery level indicator, a WiFi signal level indicator, and the weather in Palo Alto. Soon I

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135721564938879682005-12-27T17:09:00.000-05:002005-12-27T17:14:19.836-05:00

Science News reports that standard 3 cm needles are often not long enough for shots in the rear to women and obese men, causing an injection failure rate of 92% for women and 44% for men. The solution? Longer needles, of course, especially for women. [Science News vol 168 no 25, pp 398]

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135610375215535412005-12-26T09:58:00.000-05:002005-12-26T11:22:29.843-05:00

Here's my Christmas present to you: Meebo, a Web 2.0 IM interface; Pluck, an RSS client; Delicious, a cool way to organize and save links; Flickr, a photo sharing and archiving service; Blogger, for creating your own blogs; Technorati, for searching blogs; Skype, for making FREE phone calls; Millsberry, a cool VR world for kids; OpenRPG, for role-playing online; Instant Rails, for the web

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135608177204883582005-12-26T09:04:00.000-05:002005-12-26T10:21:07.713-05:00

In a virtual reality gameworld called EVE Online, a group of players managed to 'steal' massive amounts of virtual assets from another player:What is fascinating about this incident and others like it is not just the morality of such a through betrayal (they spent a year building their credibility and good graces) but where does the line between the artificial reality of the game and the

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135487237257804012005-12-24T23:47:00.000-05:002005-12-25T00:21:44.430-05:00

Have you ever noticed that many soda machines have a peculiar--one might say pregnant--pause between the time you make your selection and the time the drink thumps down the chute? If you're like me, you stalk your prey a while before springing and committing 55 cents. You wait for some other sucker to try the machine first so you can see if it works. But sometimes you're in a hurry and there's no

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135401465921595672005-12-24T00:14:00.000-05:002005-12-24T00:17:45.930-05:00

A quote from Adelheid, who's reading Why Literature Matters in the Twenty-First Century:We truly understand who we are when we have been that person.That is, we can only evaluate historical events retrospectively; wouldn't the same be true of our own selves?

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135266688624213622005-12-22T10:43:00.000-05:002005-12-23T08:35:00.296-05:00

The Economist (Dec.17-23) reports that a trader at Japan's largest bank, Mizuho, intended to sell one share of JCom for 610,000 yen, rather than what he actually keyed in: 610,000 shares at one yen each! Apparently you can't just yell "DO OVER" on their stock exchange, so the order went through as written. The bank frantically tried to buy back the shares (which it didn't own, and in fact

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135087126269822502005-12-20T08:56:00.000-05:002005-12-20T08:58:46.276-05:00

Okay, the cheezy h1 text at the top has to go. Here's the new logo. Also check out the flash animation on the sidebar at the bottom.

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135019701712805392005-12-19T13:53:00.000-05:002005-12-19T14:15:01.756-05:00

There are some things that you know as soon as you've done them that you'll regret it. I have a whole theory about this I won't bore you with, but last night was a good example. Krista's room was a good example of maximum entropy--puzzles spilled out on the floor along with little paper bits of Barbie 'pet food', books willy-nilly atop anything they could perch on, paper EVERYWHERE. A mess. Her

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1135003958761317912005-12-19T09:37:00.000-05:002005-12-19T09:58:55.296-05:00

Sam was an ice cube. He was born on February 11, and that was of course his birthday, but he had 19 other brothers born the same day. They were identical except for their ears. They each had one ear, where they had been attached to the center of the rotating ice cube tray. When they broke free to fall into the ice bucket, some of the ears came out longer than others, and that’s how they could

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1134965141134078332005-12-18T22:47:00.000-05:002005-12-18T23:05:41.153-05:00

At The College we are experiencing pressure from online courses, especially for evening (adult learner) programs. I discovered Second Life the other day, after reading about it in Newsweek. I tried to find the article to link it here, but their search engine is terrible. Anyway, the basic account is free, so I signed up to try it out.It looks like the future, folks. You can own land and build on

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1134962250585165522005-12-18T22:13:00.000-05:002005-12-18T22:17:30.600-05:00

For any of you out there with small kids, I discovered a wonderful way out of the parents' dilemna about pets. You know what I mean-the kid begs and begs for one, and then it's YOUR problem to clean up after and take out every day at lunch. We've been through this with Krista for a couple of years now, but two nights ago inspiration and serindipty struck. I'll share the secret with you at NO

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19987655.post-1134961524898255552005-12-18T21:54:00.001-05:002008-08-08T16:00:28.672-05:00

True story. The guy on the other end of the Bell South welcome call wasn't too experienced yet. Or so I surmise. "What name do you want it under?" he asks, meaning my new phone listing. "What if I don't want it listed?" He quotes me the price. It costs extra if you don't want it listed--how perverse is that? "Do I have to use my real name?" This is where he departs from the script they gave him

davehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08633920160358488401noreply@blogger.com2