The Times this morning offers the “Well, duh!” headline of the day, and possibly the week: Energy Use Can Be Cut by Efficiency, Survey Says In other news, the Sun rose in the east this morning. Snark aside, there is an important point in the article: the efficiency savings they’re talking about can be realized… Continue reading Dog Bites Man
We Value Your Business, But Not That Highly
We’ve been having intermittent troubles with our DSL service for the last couple of months, and recently placed a service call to try to get Verizon to do something about it. Just a few minutes ago, I got a “courtesy call” from them, to inform me that they’re still working on the problem, and they… Continue reading We Value Your Business, But Not That Highly
Integrate My iPod
Barring some sort of bizarre catastrophe, in a few short hours, I will take possession of a brand new Ford Freestyle. It’s got lots of nifty features that the Taurus doesn’t have, but there’s one thing it lacks: a tape deck. This is important because I have become accustomed to listening to my iPod in… Continue reading Integrate My iPod
“Meme” Dynamics
Professor Office Sex is trying to study the real-time dynamcis of the blogosphere, by manufacturing a “meme” that he’ll then track: While you do that, a script I’ve written will track this meme (via Technorati) across the internet in 10 minute intervals. It will record the number of links to this post, register their authority… Continue reading “Meme” Dynamics
String Phenomenology
There’s a nice article in the New York Times today about applications of the theory of vibrating strings. It turns out to be a lot more practical and useful than you might think, and there are people doing some amazing things with it. What?
The Making of a Graph
One of my current thesis students has been plugging away for a while at the project described in the A Week in the Lab series last year, and he’s recently been getting some pretty good data. I’ve spent a little time analyzing the preliminary results (to determine the best method for him to use on… Continue reading The Making of a Graph
Jay Bilas Survival Pool
I’m worried about Jay Bilas’s job. For those who aren’t college basketball junkies, Jay Bilas is a former Duke player who is currently the best college basketball analyst in the business. He’s smart, well-spoken, funny (listen to him banter with Bill Raftery and Sean McDonough when the three of them work games together), and extremely… Continue reading Jay Bilas Survival Pool
Baghdad Update: Too Much TV
Another update from my friend Paul, working as a journalist in Baghdad, this time on an unfortunate collision between the Sci-Fi Channel and reality: —————– Today two suicide bombers walked into a police commando recruitment center and blew themselves up, killing 35 recruiting hopefuls. The night before I watched a TV show where a young… Continue reading Baghdad Update: Too Much TV
The New Hyperides
The Times this morning has a nice article on the Archimedes Palimpsest, which turns out to contain more than just important works on early mathematics: An ambitious international project to decipher 1,000-year-old moldy pages is yielding new clues about ancient Greece as seen through the eyes of Hyperides, an important Athenian orator and politician from… Continue reading The New Hyperides
Jack McDevitt, Odyssey [Library of Babel]
Speaking of weirdly compelling reads (as I was at the end of the previous entry), Jack McDevitt has a new book out in what I think of as the “Archeologists in Spaaaace!!!” series (which starts with The Engines of God, and includes Chindi, Deepsix and Omega). Odyssey doesn’t include any archeologists, but it has a… Continue reading Jack McDevitt, Odyssey [Library of Babel]