Monthly Archives: September 2006

My brother, Nick, is taking his first proof-based math class, and he wanted to type up his homework so I put him on to TeX. That was a couple weeks ago. Fastforward to this evening: I’m yammering on about how … Continue reading →

“I don’t get it Suicide Man. If all the cool kids are doing it, how come Tyrone’s just doing drugs and hot-rodding instead? . . . Oh.” “See, I told yeh, kid.”

Either that or it’s a liberal treehugger Times-y conspiracy.

My Facebook groups are totally awesome. I’m completely mystified as to why they haven’t grown to hundred-member juggernauts, or bigger, like those global groups about threesomes. I’m speaking, of course, of the following groups: Pre-meds do it pre-meditatedly Republicans like … Continue reading →

I read webcomics backward all the time. I suspect it’s a common practice: one discovers a webcomic by looking at the front page, sees something neat, and wants to see what the previous episode was like, and goes back (today … Continue reading →

The Times today has a piece discussing Frank Herbert’s Dune and reviewing the new sequel written by Brian Herbert and Kevin Anderson. It contains the following wisdom: My personal favorite Herbertism, from the original “Dune,” is this one: “Arrakis teaches … Continue reading →

Come, now, Mark Frauenfelder, why would a counterfeiter choose to print fake one dollar bills?

There’s a new collection of Murakami stories in translation (review). The Harvard libraries seem to have it, but someone snagged it before me (or maybe it’s been ordered but hasn’t arrived? I haven’t mastered the catalog yet).

Faster than expected, even by the pessimists, I gather, according to new studies from the JPL and the Goddard center.

NYT has a story about the 50 US colleges with graduation rates below 20%. Here’s a quote regarding a couple such schools in Chicago: “If you’re accepting a child into your institution, don’t you have the responsibility to make sure … Continue reading →