September 2010
45 posts
Is the new generation inferior to the old one?...
This is a response to this.
Young people today use words that are hard for old people to understand, or do not follow the rules of grammar that have been laid out for them. Many of them use technology to do unnessesary things instead of learning basic skills that I learned when I was a young person. Young people are hard for older people to understand.
It’s all enough to beg the question:...
The Earth doesn't go around the sun. The Earth... →
Just realized that the remix I made and put up yesterday is terrible. Sorry tumblr.
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Blah Blah Blah - a Ke$ha tune reimagined by Colin...
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Part one of a series: What I did on my Summer...
This is part one of a series. The rest of the series can be found here.
Every elementary school September I remember being forced to write about what I did on my summer vacation. Being that it is September now, I am thinking what I would write if I were in elementary school now. I wonder how many kids begin this essay with “I’m not proud of what I did on my summer vacation”. I...
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I’ve been to a lot of job interviews in my life, and every once in awhile at a job interview, the interviewer will point out the employment longevity of his or her company.
“Most of our people have been around for a long time: five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. Obviously that tells you something good about what it’s like to work here.”
Does it? An equally plausible...
I now officially use all of these words, all the...
wordjournal:
here, for (basically) the first time ever are the 19 words of the ragbag word summer series. it is rumored that brad pitt and angelina jolie are going to name their next child after one of these words—but their attorney won’t let me reveal which. frowny face.
acyrological · incorrect in use of words
lobcock · a blundering fool
crwth · an ancient celtic violin
pfuiteufel · an...
Conspiracy Theories
Ned Resnikoff on conspiracy theories:
[Conspiracy theories employ a type of reasoning] in which every piece of evidence points to one grand, horrible, blessedly unambiguous Truth. Those who know this Truth are the noble, virtuous ones who, by way of their secret knowledge, have found an anointed cause: to get the truth out and eliminate the source of a large share of the world’s evil.
(Note: this...
This is going to go straight to Jay-Z's head. →
Gym-locker heists, bank robberies, daylight holdups — these New York City crimes have only one thing in common, and it is not the culprits. It is the Yankees caps they wore.
This optical illusion appears on a street in West Vancouver. It is an experiment to see whether the image of a girl crossing the street will get drivers to slow down.
The pushback has been from groups who worry that drivers might react by braking or swerving and cause an accident. But that’s the short-run problem. Isn’t the bigger worry what happens in the long run when drivers no longer...
"I got a lot of emails asking for the cards from... →
This is very, very exciting.
Google Scribe Poetry
Instructions: Go to Google Scribe. Type a word. Make it write poems for you.
Without further ado, statistically probable poetry:
The selected works of art are public domain and may be used to determine the effect of the drug in the treatment of the subject areas
For example the following is a list of the most important thing is to be Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts and Humanities...
ryanedwardmiller:
“Most of what she has said about herself has not been independently corroborated … but her fans swallow her line whole …. She constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the ‘little monsters,’ who she inspires to ‘love themselves’ as if they are damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair. ‘You’re a superstar, no matter who you are!’ She earnestly tells them from the...
Do piggies naturally eat roast beef?
I think that they do not.
kanyewest: Man... whatever happened to my antique... →
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The Monty Hall Problem
Let’s do a more lighthearted post.
A lot of people in the world are absolutely baffled by a problem known as The Monty Hall Problem. This is how it works.
You are on a very simple game show. There are three doors. Behind one of them is a one million dollar bill. Behind the other two, buckets of old cheese. Your task is simple: pick a door.
You choose door number two. “Door number...
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Hi
You might be arriving to my blog today because you read my letter to the editor in The Runner, which was published in part in today’s edition. Or you might not. If you are though, you should know that the article was not published in full. If you would like to read the rest, here is the original article. I’ll also put the non-published portion of the article at the bottom of this post....
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Treatise on profit
I’ve been debating on the internet today. Some people from my university seem to believe that there is something inherently gross or evil about having a private foodservice company “profit off of students”, as though they are somehow hurting the students by profiting from mutually beneficial transactions. To make my point, I would like to tell a story.
What profit is
...
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Couldn't sleep, so I...
Built a Grouse Grind calorie calculator with Wolfram Alpha. Unfortunately Dumblr won’t let me embed it, so here’s the link.
Homer Simpson explains why newspapers are screwed
Hostage takers: If your family wants to see you again alive, they'll be wise to pay!
Homer (uncertain): I don't know... they've been seeing me alive for free for a long time...
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Survival of the fittest
fit·ness
Pronunciation: /ˈfit-nəs/ Function: n : the capacity of an organism to survive and transmit its genotype to reproductively fertile offspring as compared to competing organisms [emphasis mine]
Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary, © 2007 Merriam-Webster, Inc.
So, survival of those organisms who possess the highest capacity of an organism to survive?
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Parental Game Theory
Our kids are all at that age and so its a regular family joke in the car ride home that the first to fall asleep gets a prize. It sometimes even works. But I learned something on our vacation last month we went on a couple of longer then usual car trips. Someone will fall asleep first, and once that happens the contest is over. The other two have no incentives. Also, in the first-to-fall...
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Question regarding the bed intruder song
If you are instructed to hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband cause they’re raping errbody out here, who are you?
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theeconomist:
“If you are a parent in the Los Angeles area, you can now find out if your child’s teacher is “least effective”, “less effective”, “average”, “more effective”, or “most effective”, based on the standardised test scores of their students.”
—
The Los Angeles Times has rated 6000 elementary school teachers, and published the results in a databse. Predictably, teachers’ unions...
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Beavers and Deer (or, Economic theory is so...
Question:
We are transported to a bizarre world where the only people are hunters, and the only animals are deer and beavers. Some hunters choose to hunt deer, while others choose to hunt beavers. All hunters have the same skill set: in one hour, a hunter can catch either one deer or two beavers.
In this world, it is certain that a deer will sell for two beavers, and likewise, a beaver will...
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Polysemy of "must"
I never really thought about the interesting double meaning of the word “must” until I received the following weird text from Chris:
Just saw a [sky]train ad for burn notice.
Now, I am only vaguely aware that Burn Notice is a show on one of those American networks that I don’t get, but sometimes see ads for during basketball games. I texted him back:
I don’t...
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Sometimes phonetic spelling is a bad strategy
also, “fuckin’ eh” is a lame thing to say in almost any situation anyway.
Via The Daily What
Oh Yeah Facts:... →
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, 18th edition, this 1,909-letter-long word is regarded as the world’s longest word in the English language. This word has also included in the American Chemical Society’s Chemical Abstracts. It is the longest real word of a Tryptophan…
