January 2009
35 posts
pagecrusher: I missed my appointment to get “SHRUG LIFE” tattooed across my shoulder blades, but whatever.
Curt on God’s Special Purpose Entity: http://tr.im/dk9x
dwineman: Reason #87 to own a Volvo: you can use the seat heaters to keep your Ethiopian takeout warm until All Things Considered is over.
Watch
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Another day, another alternative “proof” of the Poincaré Conjecture goes up on the arXiv.
colbycosh: Do we really need Matt Taibbi to call out Tom Friedman? His writing’s like fetal-alcohol syndrome—the problems are right there in the open.
Title of the workshop I’m preparing: “Faking It”. Needless to say, the risqué tone is completely ruined by the subtitle.
tdavenport: Difference between nude and naked: Nude - you’re wearing no clothes. Naked - you’re wearing no clothes and you’re up to something.
nevenmrgan: “And now, a piece performed by Itzhak Pearlman and Yo Yo Ma. Composed and arranged by John Williams. Produced by Timbaland. Feat. RZA.”
gruber: Down by 7. Three minutes to play. Don’t worry, Eagles, fans. This is when McNabb knows how to shine.
badbanana: The Ravens are playing like a bunch of lost Lenores.
Also, the guys at Football Outsiders are cursing at their spreadsheets right now.
Resumption of calls for McNabb’s head begins in Philly in 5…4…3…2…1…
AinsleyofAttack: There’s a Mustang in this parking lot whose decal art and rim package must have come with a free tribal band tattoo and bottle of Rohypnol.
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Recently read: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, by FreeDarko
Embracing (and frequently embellishing) their mythologies, this is a unique survey of the most compelling figures in the NBA. FreeDarko’s erudition and self-awareness could be grating if it weren’t leavened by humor and based upon a completely unironic enthusiasm and love for the Association. Even if the...
raylehmann: Who insured that U.S. Airways plane? National Union of Pittsburgh. In other words, AIG. Or in still other words — YOU, my fellow taxpayer
badbanana: No more Circuit City? But where will I go to browse for items I eventually buy online?
tj: #USAir You know at least one guy intentionally left his cell phone on and momentarily wondered if it had brought down the plane.
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Recently read: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin, by Nicholas Ostler
Nice survey of the history of Latin, from before the Roman Republic to the present day. Essentially an expansion of the section on Latin in Ostler’s Empires of the Word, which is more ambitious and less restrained.
I like the features of the Weather Channel’s iPhone app, but dear God could it use a Tufte makeover.
Feltron Eight →
Nicholas Felton’s annual report.
(ht: Daring Fireball)
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Triple linking numbers, ambiguous Hopf invariants... →
by Dennis DeTurck, Herman Gluck, Rafal Komendarczyk, Paul Melvin, David Shea Vela-Vick and myself.
See this post for some semblance of an attempt to give some background.
luckyshirt: The following series came to me in the shower this morning… I have posted it in reverse for continuity. You know, like Memento.
luckyshirt: God released Life (beta). Users hacked the Knowledge_of_Good_and_Evil.lf file, so he disabled a bunch of features & made 1.0 harder to use.
luckyshirt: Every Life 1.0 user but one had problems with corrupted files, so God saved...
gordonshumway: We’ve secretly replaced Jake Delhomme with Folgers Crystals.
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Recently read: Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative, by Edward R. Tufte
How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a... →
And that, my friends, is called a short squeeze.
(ht: Give Me Something To Read)
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Had dinner at a restaurant called π. It’s probably no surprise that we were not the only mathematicians there.
joeschmitt: I thought in 2009 we didn’t have to go to work. Isn’t that the whole point of electing a Democrat?
Delete “to the middle of nowhere” and last year’s New Year’s Eve tweet applies again: http://twitter.com/shonk/status/551329492