2023.10.15
2022.10.15
Nice way to think about Sapir-Whorf hypothesis topics.
Reminds me of the mistakes we may be making in psychology/cognitive science assuming everyone is wired like undergrads at expensive American colleges who are still willing to sit through stuff for $50...
I'm not sure I dig the implicit denigration of English. I mean I know that's part of the point; that it is a predominant language, so it gets its own column with everything else lumped under "global diversity". I'm sure if another language was playing the role of "lingua franca" it would have its own strengths and weaknesses.
My take, from trying to resolve conflicting reports of "english is easy to learn" "english is hard to learn" is that English is easier than most languages for the basics, harder than mosts to master. Like the grammar isn't too bad. The big thing is the vocabulary drawn from lots of languages (which makes the spelling rough) - we have a lot of individual words with a great deal of nuance especially compared to languages that have had more curation, like French, and use simpler terms (that often carry more gravitas accordingly)
Also I've been told English isn't as bad for poetry as we've heard, but the emphasis is better put on rhythm than of rhyme...
(I especially welcome feedback from people who added English later, and/or folks who have thoughts on the English vocabulary issue)
At a university there was a dean who cared about others and showed exemplary behavior. One day an angel appeared at a faculty conference.
The angel said as a reward for his good deeds that God would give him his choice of eternal riches, eternal wisdom, or eternal beauty.
The dean chose eternal wisdom without hesitation.
"Good," said the angel, disappearing into a cloud of smoke.
Everyone present turned their gazes to the dean, who was illuminated by a faint halo.
A colleague whispered, "Tell me something."
The dean, who had gained eternal wisdom, sighed and said, "I should have chosen eternal riches."
Click for a raunchy joke
2021.10.15
Good morning. This is Randy Peone on KREZ Radio. That's K-R-E-Z Radio, the voice of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation. And Coeur d'Alene people, our reservation is *beautiful* this morning. It's a good day to be indigenous.(finally getting around to rewatching)
"And what were you two?"
"...we kept each other's secrets."
How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?
2020.10.15
*Overheard conversation between 2nd grade boys*
"Do you think you'll ever fall in love?"
"I don't know. I think if she likes pancakes, then probably."
The human understanding is no dry light, but receives infusion from the will and affections; whence proceeds sciences which may be called "sciences as one would." For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from arrogance and pride; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and sometimes imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.via Carl Sagan's "Baloney Detection Kit"
Blast from the past:
"Truly [the small-town residents] were the salt of the earth."Great comic - it ended but is on a long reprint stretch that should last a few years.
"And why does one salt the earth? To keep anything new from growing."
Worst photoshop I've seen in the wild:
2019.10.15
Pumpkin Carving at Millers!
Melissa's is the top left, mine is a custom design in the top middle... I tried to use the stem as an elephant's trunk, but I think the result was more "monstrous owl"....
Miller was totally on brand tho...
2018.10.15
Open Photo Gallery
marnie adjusts corsage before prom with stu and wendy
marnie shows some leg
marcos emily mike lynn me marnie stu wendy in salupo's backyard
bill aube and lisa moster prom 1992
reggie and ernalisa
wandy and jenn prom 1992
marnie before prom
marnie before prom
marnie before prom
with marnie before prom
mike and lynn before prom
wendy and stu
preprom group
preprom group
preprom group
preprom group
preprom limo
my butt going into limo
thumb marcos emily
wendy marnie lynn
keith sheurman and date
jeff kaleal and date
jeff saheeb kropf and date
grads in front of ehs me wendy lynn jenn debbi galosis another
guys graduatiing
with mom and marcos before graduation
award ceremony stage
awards billboard with marcos
von banken
mz bambic
von daughter and thumb
mrs mclaughlin with wandy and jenn
with marnie ready to graduate with honors
with colleen i think graduating
with honr jenn graduating
room in euclid
room in euclid
with tiny marnie
marnie with flower
with marnie at prom bridge
Wins at Fenway and Foxboro - nothing to be overconfident about at either but still, it's good to win when you gotta win. Interestingly the 43-40 score was a Scorigami, a score never previously achieved at the end of an NFL game. (I guess there's more opportunities with high scores.)
On my devblog: the stupid-idea-buddies buddy.
2017.10.15
Also I found out there's a book called "Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality"
[Nazi Germany] gave us a nightmare from which, in my opinion, there can never be an awakening.
High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
I am enchanted by the Sermon on the Mount. Being merciful, it seems to me, is the only good idea we have received so far. Perhaps we will get another good idea by and by--and then we will have two good ideas.
(these are all from the intro of "Letters", collected by Dan Wakefield)
2016.10.15
2015.10.15
I'm there - or at least, my tuba bell - bobbing around in the back row on the right side:
2014.10.15
Not quite! Back in the mid-90s there was a game for PCs called "Death Rally"... it was a fun overhead car-racing-with-guns game, kind of like that old board game Car Wars / Autoduel come to life. In action it looked like this:
The game had a lot of character - and specifically it had 20 characters, enemies you'd race against. Here's a leader board; I think "D3ATH" is probably the name selected by the person playing th game:
Those names were BOGUS BILL, FARMER TED, LIZ ARDEN, DIESEL JOE, MIC DAIR, MORI SATO, SUZY STOCK, IRON JOHN, CHER STONE, LEE VICE, DARK RYDER, GREG PECK, MAD MAC, MOTOR MARY, MATT MILER, CLINT WEST, NASTY NICK, JANE HONDA, SAM SPEED & DUKE NUKEM. (Yes, that Duke Nukem.... kind of a crossover. I further acknowledge this naming scheme would also work for Garbage Pail Kids.)
So, when it came time to pick my own username for the intraoffice online game play (4 players at once) I tried to match the scheme, and ended up with KIRKJERK (I also think it was constrained to 8 letters, so I was pleased to just fit it in under the wire).
I tend to prefer usernames based on "Kirk", rather than being cut from whole cloth; Kirkjerk, Kirkamundo, TheGreatKirkini. And "Kirkles" is probably one of my oldest lasting nicknames, bestowed in high school (when my teasing friends envisioned the romantic exchange "Oh Kirkles" "Oh, Lynnie-Poo") and still used by my best college buddy and his family.
Anyway, like I said, "Death Rally" had a ton of character. Some of it was in the form of "flavor text", these little evocative prose passages, narrated by "TRUE TOM":
THIS IS HOW IT GOES. YOU ARE DRIVING. YOU ARE SAYING 'HANG ON BABY, THIS IS WHAT I DO." IT'S DOABLE, ALL RIGHT? WINNABLE. AND THE BULLETS TAKE THE SKY, LIKE CLOUDS OF LOCUSTS. THE END IS NIGH. RACE OVER. GET IT? BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
and another example:
BODY AND SOUL; YIN AND TANG. YOU, MY ROADWARD APPRENTICE, ARE THE SOUL IN THIS EXPONENTIALLY ACCELERATING EQUATION. YOUR VEHICLE IS THE BODY. CAN YOU FEEL THE PRECIOUS EQUILIBRIUM SLIPPING AND TAIL-SLIDING FROM YOUR CONTROL? DON'T LOSE IT NOW. STAY TUNED: RACE TIME!
I'm not able to dig up the evidence, but I have vague memories of corresponding with the guy who gave voice to "TRUE TOM"; he said it was kind of an independent effort they threw in, rather than being part of the design from the outset, and there were all kinds of character constraints they were dealing with.
Once upon a time I dug up this Lore of Geek's usernames. Back before FB and Google's emphasis on "real names", online handles were even more important (I guess they still have a big role in tumblr and twitter.) Of course, we've also seen how pseudo-anonymity can be abused, and jerk-enabling.
2013.10.15
"ANI/CLI -- I know CLI is Calling Line Identification, what's ANI again?"
"Absolutely no idea."
"Hey, that works!"
I know I've grumbled about this before, but I wish systems were smarter about time zones for future events. If I have a 3PM doctor appointment waiting for me when I get back, it shouldn't be shown as 8PM just because I'm in Wales right now. If I wanted to have a 10AM meeting when I was in Wales, I shouldn't have had to have set it for 5AM if I had wanted to plan it when i was still in Boston. There needs to be a flag that says "this time local to wherever the hell I am"
http://www.upworthy.com/congress-did-something-so-spectacularly-creepy-that-its-too-unbelievable-to-make-up?g=2&c=bl3 Sometimes I think about my old coworker Tim's opinion that democrats are about as bad as republicans, and i laugh ruefully. this is some grade a machivillian bullshit right here.
2012.10.15
"That day I understood that this heart scares easily. You have to trick it, however big the problem is. Tell your heart, 'Pal, all is well. All is well.'"
"Does that solve the problem?"
"No, but you gain courage to face it."
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
Whoa Shots of the Space Shuttle rolling through LA.
I try to get through life without judging people much, but when the casual game you're playing on the subway is "Bejewled" it's tough not to.
2011.10.15
--via mightygodking (2019: think this was the muller wonderful stuff ad wBujoJpDxo0 was talking about...)
Is there a bodywash that smells like sunblock? 'Cause I'd totally buy that.
2010.10.15
Apparently, the official rules of chess once had a loophole that rendered the game 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nc6 3.Qxf7 mate a victory for White. Although the White Queen cannot move this way legally, checkmate ended the game. The other side could only claim an illegal move while the game was in play. After a checkmate, legal move or not, it was too late. This is just the most famous example of how this major flaw in the rules could be exploited.So I like the deviousness of it, but didn't know Chess notation enough to understand the moves. Joseph Larson (of Cymon's Games, a site I haven't paid nearly enough attention to, check out his well-thought-out and history-aware video homage to the original Star Control) was kind enough to get some diagrams worked up for me...
So thanks Joe! The engineer in me kind of doesn't dig chess notation. It has so many assumptions about which piece made the move built into it... I guess it's optimized for people who really know the game. (It reminds me how grandmaster chess players aren't nearly so grand if you put them on a board with pieces arranged randomly, in a way that would never show up during a real game.)
I just love how the "game is over, so you can protest the blatant cheating" offends my sensibilities (but without really mattering, especially now that they've changed the rules.)
http://blogof.francescomugnai.com/2010/10/35-of-the-most-incredible-and-creative-bookshelves-ever/ - need something for my desk at work...
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is clearly Ocean.
2009.10.15
I prefer interesting singles to full albums.
I've started making smart playlists in iTunes of recently added music, starting a new one every season. And I thought I'd jot down what was in the music here, in case anyone wants me to send them an mp3 or two, and as notes to my future self if I ever wonder "how did I get into THAT"?...
- Closer (NIN song covered by Spiralmouth) - this song reminded of sQ's version that we never actually performed (the lead singer chickening out on singing the f-word)
- Who Let The Dogs Out (Baha Men) --Ugh. Not sure why I dug this one up. The lyric "Get back you flea infested mongrel" seems weirdly mean.
- Right Round (Flo Rida) --moderately suggestive hiphop cover of new wave 80s, what could be better?
- Say Hey (I Love You) Michael Franti) --I think Amber sent me the Flash Mob dance scene from weeds...
- Smooth (Santana Feat. Rob Thomas) --I remember being surprised finding out Santana was just the instrumentalist, not the singer.
- Separate Ways (Journey) --I think the literal version reminded me of this. The real lyrics kind of annoy me though... "If he ever hurts you / True love won't desert you"? Whatevs.
- Mercy (Duffy) --Dig the combination of modern and motown sounds... think it was playing at a party at JZ's.
- Complicated (Avril Lavigne) --Ah, teen pop. But nice.
- Mother of All Funk Chords (Kutiman) --rather awesome Youtube mashup I posted here...
- Burning Down The House (The Used) --A cover they played in that Transformers movie
- Mama Said Knock You Out (LL Cool J) --DON'T CALL IT A COME BACK. I think some Slate article mentioned this.
- Holy Rave Party (Daniel Rhodes) --Another brilliant compilation from Youtube. This one made it to my "psyched" playlist for helping me focus on work.
- Auto-Tune the News #6 (The Gregory Brothers) --Another Youtube bit. This was good but to be honest now I'm getting sick of jokey use of Autotune.
- I Don't Feel It Anymore (Song Of The Sparrow) / Please Forgive Me (Song Of The Crow) (William Fitzsimmons) --Too very sad songs... heard this guy on NPR. Somehow even over the radio I knew he had a beard.
- Okey Dokey (Incredible Bongo Band) --The link is actually from the parody trailer for "2012" - nice 70s feel
- Ring-A-Ling (Black Eyed Peas) --Amber requested that her ring tone be made from this
- The Imperial March (John Williams) --This is the ringtone I use for my boss.
- Children Of Sanchez (Chuck Mangione) --I was trying to remember this song that my marching band played, then I heard it at a Drum and Bugle corps closed circuit thing...
- Bitter Sweet Symphony (The Verve) --More overplayed but still good 90s stuff... I was kind of surprised I didn't have this.
- Natalie's Rap / Jizz In My Pants (The Lonely Island) --The two SNL songs. Both are pretty listenable relative to the other ones.
- Weapon Of Choice (Fatboy Slim) --I like that my mom likes that video so much.
- So I wanted "Meet The Flintstones" for EB's ringtone, but could only find it on "Tv Guide: 50 All-Time Favorite Tv Themes", these are the 17 I thought I might like to hear. A few are recreations, unfortunately.
- Peter Gunn-Theme
- Meet The Flintstones
- Andy Griffith Show Theme
- Addams Family Theme
- Batman
- Monkees Theme
- Mission Impossible Theme
- Hawaii Five-O
- Sesame Street Theme
- All In The Family Theme
- Jeffersons, The Theme
- Muppet Show
- Miami Vice Theme
- Cosby Theme
- Alley Mcbeal Theme
- Sex And The City
- Malcolm In The Middle
- Powerhouse (Carl Stalling/Raymond Scott) --So glad youtube got me back to the full version of the Loony Tunes cover - I had tried buying it before, but it was only a partial version.
- Sanford & Son Theme/The Streetbeater (Quincy Jones) --One last TV theme, but I think it was this scrubs clip that inspired me.
- Polka Dot Undies (Bowser + Blue) --Jeez, I remember hearing this risque goofy song on, like WMJI's Lannigan and Webster in Cleveland in the late 80s/early 90s.
- I Gotta Feeling (Black Eyed Peas) --I think Amber introduced me to this one, but I dig the anticipatory feeling of the video so much
- Sweet Child O' Mine / Paradise City (Guns N' Roses) --Decided I wanted to relive my high school days, kind of. These songs show up in mashups a lot, secretly I think I like the mashups a lot better.
- Word Up (Boss Hoss) --Like I mighta mentioned, only the second example of Germans singing like American Cowboys I have in my collection.
For the record, I make an honest effort to pay for a (DRM-free) MP3 version of every song, but after that I have little compunction about ripping the music straight out.
It's kind of reassuring that I'm still discovering new music at a fair clip. For a while after college, I felt kind of disconnected, since college is such a good way of hearing new stuff. Now thanks to the Internet (often, background music for unrelated Youtube clips) I hear new stuff, plus have a way to get to buy singles for songs I liked in the 90s but not enough to buy a whole album.
Any new music discoveries for you?
Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/14/farewell-captain-lou.html - RIP Captain Lou Albano
http://www.wififreespot.com/mass.html - the free wifi spots around Boston
In Elizabethan slang, "something" and "nothing" were sometimes used to refer, respectively, to male and female genitalia. The title of Much Ado About Nothing is thus not simply a reference to the illusory conflict at the heart of the plot, but also a nifty dirty pun.
2008.10.15
Video of the Moment
--Not for those squeamish about our beloved, legless reptile friends
Politics of the Moment
FACT! Barack Obama and sixties radical Bill Ayers were both associated with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a radical education foundation whose radical goal is to radically educate black children by educating them... while they are still black.LOTS OF FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW.
Wakefield preparing a wake for the Red Sox.
<<I almost ran over an angel / he had a nice big fat cigar>>
My impression of a Wall Street trader... "I WAS SO EXCITED ABOUT THE BANKS I PLUM FORGOT THERE WAS A RECESSION GOING ON!!! MY BAD!"
2007.10.15
Article of the Moment
Tolerated lawbreaking is almost always a response to a political failure [...] This political failure can happen for many reasons. Sometimes a law was passed by another generation with different ideas of right and wrong, but the political will necessary to repeal the law does not exist. Sometimes, as we'll see with polygamy or obscenity, the issue is too sensitive to discuss in rational terms. And sometimes the law as written is a symbol of some behavior to which we may aspire, which nevertheless remains wholly out of touch with reality. Whatever the reason, when politics fails, institutional tolerance of lawbreaking takes over.Speeding is always the one that comes first to my mind.
The aspirational aspect of ignored laws is troublesome. All in all, it's a compelling argument for a more libertarian stance, or at least a minimalist approach to the making of laws.
2006.10.15
Advice of the Moment
"How, for example, could I make a fat lady, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh. It's been done a million times. What's the best way to get the laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, than the fat lady approaching: then she slips? Or do I show the fat lady first, then the banana peel, and then she slips?"
"Neither. You show the fat lady approaching; then you show the fat lady approaching; then you show the banana peel; then you show the fat lady and the banana peel together; then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole."
Video of the Moment
--"Model to Billboard" is a longer road than you might have thought. It's odd that this kind of manipulation doesn't set off our "fake" detectors; sometimes I think we're not much different than that one kind of fish I read about, where researchers were easily able to make a fake fish that was "sexier" to the guy fishes than any real femal fish, even though it was just kind of a parody of color and fins.
2005.10.15
 | --I took a sickday Thursday after hurting my neck in yoga. My coworkers made up a "Virtual Kirk" which I then enhanced on my return Friday VK with a printout of a headshot for his face rather than the hand-drawn cartoon. (In defense of my coworkers, it didn't take quite as long as it looked in all, and there's a bit of a mid-release lull in the workload at the moment.) |
2004.10.15
Not much in terms of new material, but I finally got to relabeling the first section of my photoalbum scan based on some notes I asked my mom to send me. So people interested in what I looked like up to about third or fourth grade, you're all set. You could even see the rest of my photo album if you like, going to a little after the end of college.Like I mentioned before, I'm still a little amused that I didn't realize that this part of my photo album is made up of rescued rejects from my mom's collection.
Quote of the Moment
I want to live the way I type; fast, with a lot of mistakes.I've been quoting it for a long time though. Briefly, after some failed googling on newsgroups I thought I might've coined it, but no, I must've heard it somewhere.
Article of the Moment
Good little read on people who play sweepstakes as a hobby, or sometimes a compulsion...
I guess I can see the appeal...ties in with the lottery. In search of the ever-elusive "one big win"...
2003.10.15
Heh...20 years ago I would've wanted this job so bad...though I guess it's not the role that builds the sets, just the big stuff, which I find less interesting.
News of the Moment
I know there's the Kobe case to get all excited about and the Red Sox in the postseason and all, but does anyone else agree that China putting a guy in space isn't getting enough attention?
Joke of the Moment from Two Weeks Ago
A midget, a bodybuilder and a porn star walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and says, "What is this, an election?"
Animation of the Moment
 | --This has been bouncing around my C: drive for a while, it's some proof-of-concept animations for the wonderfully brilliant old game Lemmings. |
2002.10.15
'Know thyself,' the Greek sage advised. But of course this is nonsense. Truly happy people live by the maxim 'Overrate thyself.' [...] Each of these people is a god of self-esteem, dwelling on a private Olympus.The article is about how we're all masters of these little things. The "classes" society ideal in the USA allows each person to be a little snob in their own small domain...
Link of the Moment
Interesting little Fast Company article on The Art of Multiasking, best uses of technology to help with personal overworking.
Link of a Future Moment
It's easy to forget that an easy military victory in Iraq is not a sure thing.
Ramble of the Moment
Thinking about the Maryland sniper..makes me wonder about the use of surveillance technology. (I've never really been a big privacy rights advocate, and that's been even truer since 9/11.) I'm almost surprised that we don't have the technology to do 24-hour realtime satellite surveillance of a limited geographical area, so that once the ballistic work has been done to get the rough location of the shooter, visually trace all vehicles from that spot and find out where the hell he went. We have geosynchronous satellites, right? I don't know how long it takes for them to take and beam one picture...(so great, now I'd produce the "cloudy day sniper" who only strikes when there's a good cloudcover.) Oy. That shooter is such a limpdick dork...it's not that he's talented, it's that the system is open. "Cracker"-style hackers have the same mentality. If they can make people miserable, they must be powerful.
Article of the Moment
Intriguing New Yorker piece on the USA as the only superpower. That's why we're called in over stuff like "the island of parsley", where Spain and Morocco almost came to blows over a stupid little island that had nothing but goats and garnishes. Too bad we have such a singleminded manchild at the helm.
Sig of the Moment
Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!
2001.10.15
We went on the subway this weekend. I've always been struck by these two signs:
|
PASSENGER EMERGENCY INTERCOM UNIT AT END OF CAR. | |
|
SISTEMA DE INTERCOMUNICACION PARA PASAJEROS EN CASO DE EMERGENCIA SITUADO AL EXTREMO DEL TREN. |
Link of the Moment
There has been 4 of 5 cartoons in the What The Drugs Taught Me series up for a while, don't know if the fifth one is ever going to show up. (UPDATE: Here's the Final Cartoon) I like the narrator's mom's rule, a two year statute of limitations, after that you can admit anything and she can't get bad. (Other favorite quote: "Maybe everything I've been told is bad... is good!" Such a goofy sophomoric way of looking at the world.)
kisrael.com is on the air, let the introspection begin!
99-10-15
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Walking the tufts campus at night, for an sQ parents/alums mini-concert. Nostalgia. Concern for the slipping of Tufts' reputation.
sQ injokes: the meta injoke "mueller hall", reeling it in.
99-10-15
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"It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness."
--Tolstoy
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Geek Code v3.1
GCS/L d(--) s:+ a-- C++ US+ P+++ L+ E W+++ N++ o+ K+ w++ !O !M+ V PS+ PE+ Y PGP t 5 X R- tv- b++ DI++ D++ G- e++ h- r++ y+
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Had a dream Tuesday night- flying in a car launched from this airport, that turned into a flying lounge chair. Had to nimbly fly over telephone wires. Turned left at Ocean Grove to head for Boston.
98-10-15
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