I just discovered this singer/songwriter named Jonathan Coulton. He writes a song every week and publishes it under the Creative Commons license.
Anyway, his song Code Monkey is very excellent, and I can’t get it out of my head, so I decided to record a little cover of the first verse with new harmonies. Hope you enjoy it. 
code_monkey.mp3 1.01Mb
I found a sentance I wrote myself a while back:
“That that is is” is an annotation notably able to err towards two words for four.
Here’s another valid sentance from the internet. See if you can make sense of it:
Dogs dogs dog dog dogs.
Actor needed
We are looking for a Caltech student to hire who will come to a birthday party on Sept. 10 in Arcadia and “act” as an alien from another planet. We would like the person to spend 1-2 hours at the party. We would like the person to wear some clothing that looks a little alien, and maybe an antenna from the head, or a third eye or something like that.
The character is Zoltan, from the planet Ringdong.
I am a Caltech alumnus, Class of 1958, and this will be at my 70th birthday party. My grandchildren have heard stories of Zoltan, and I am hoping he/she can be at the party.
If interested, please contact
Richard Van Kirk
626 XXX XXXX
xxxxxxx@xxx.com
Well, should I get out my antennae? 
Helpful: http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
What I want: tags (multiple categories per post), easy image uploading, easy formatting (wiki is best, like trac would be awesome), one page as a digest for two blogs (maybe can do this with RSS/ATOM), easy upload features (like email posting? maybe a web interface? maybe not).
Looks like WordPress for now. Any comments?
Excellent. Most excellent.
I’ve recently signed up for another two years with T-Mobile. What did I get for my continued patronage? Quite a lot, actually.
The Phone
| You can’t ask for much more perfection than the Motolola V195. Its silken grey casing houses everything I need in a phone, and nothing I don’t. Bluetooth, Quad Band GSM / GPRS, long battery life, usb port … it’s all there. Except the camera. Who needs a camera on thier cell phone anyway? It’s a pain to have your cell phone confiscated at a concert because of the stupid camera that you didn’t want in the first place… but I digress. |
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The Service
Enter T-MobileWeb, a replacement for ye olde T-Zones that costs me a mere $5.99 a month. T-MobileWeb allows my phone unlimited access to the internet and the ability to recieve POP/IMAP e-mail on my phone. But here’s the catch: If you know what you’re doing, you can coax OS X into using your phone’s GPRS modem to connect to the web anywhere you have reception. (I’m actually writing this post over my phone
I had read about this before, but the software is constantly changing. The results of many hours googling are now presented for your enlightenment.
The Sites
Here’s the one that finally got it working for me:
Along with some others that helped along the way:
I hope this helps someone as much as it helped me. Maybe if someone bugs me I’ll do some speed tests and analysis.
…where the sun is out, but rain is coming down.
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Silly California.
Kris Kowal: ah, dear.
Kris Kowal: meshaal and i were just making fun of you.
Kris Kowal: Meshaal: “so why aren’t you dating emacs?”
Kris Kowal: Ryan: “well, she always talks to herself and she has a lisp.”
Kris Kowal: sorry, man.
Kris Kowal: sooo sorry
Kris Kowal: to be fair, he was just ranting about quantum and i burned him…
Kris Kowal: burned him good…
Kris Kowal: Meshaal: “You know, every quantum events spawns a new possible universe? You know what that could mean? There’s a universe where I’m not talking to you!”
Kris Kowal: Kris: “Tell me more about this universe.”
Ryan Witt: lol
The public often forgets that scientists are normal people. We’re forced into one stereotype or another; sometimes cast as the mad genius, sometimes the antisocial research slave, and sometimes, most dangerously, we’re viewed as the objective bringer-of-truth, the ultimate authority on how the universe works. This last stereotype is the most dangerous because we get caught up in the excitement of discovery and in the ascendancy of our fields, and we’re tempted to believe it ourselves. When scientists’ egos are most inflated, that’s when progress is most threatened.
Twice on the first day of classes, I was reminded of how wrong scientific stereotypes can be. Chuck Steidel, who’s teaching Ay 1 this year, makes the point that despite its ancient roots, human astronomy is still in its infancy. We are only beginning to understand the structure and nature of the universe, and the finish line is not even in sight. If our astronomy–the annals of man’s gaze beyond earth–is so young, then by extension, all other sciences must be young too, since they’ve only had occasion to operate terrestrially and not in the unknown places hidden in the heavens.
Science limited by its youth. But it’s also limited because it’s a human endeavor like art or business and thus subject to human particularities and weaknesses. Despite its objectivity in journalistic tableau, what actually goes on in the research community is at times frighteningly imprecise and counter-productive. Marionne Epalle, who teaches E 11 (science writing), gives an example of how more than one group often publishes the same research, but no one realizes because the findings are neither expressed with clarity nor in the same way.
Scientific writing, Marionne further explains, is fundamentally persuasive, not objective. You write a paper to convince your colleagues that your findings are correct, or even more sinisterly, to gain notoriety, job security or grant money. The process of peer-review is similarly tainted, points out Katie Stoy. You wouldn’t want to recommend a paper that would marginalize your own research, or decrease your chances for fame. At least, that’s what your human nature would tell you to do.
You can’t separate science from humanity. Talking heads, Discovery Channel specials and Journal articles may sound imposing and objective, but in the end, it comes down to one human trying to convince another that his explanation of the world is correct. And that’s something everyone can understand.
On the way back to school today, I listened to a KPCC radio program by American Public Media called Speaking of Faith. Today’s guest was a Duke divinity professor named Joel Marcus, an ethnic Jew turned religious seeker by the spiritually inquisitive environs Berkeley in the 1960s. Joel recounted, much to my surprise (this is public radio, after all), how he ended his search for spirituality by turning to Christianity after reading through the Bible for the first time.
Now a professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Duke, Joel Marcus is on a journey to reconcile his native Judaism with a Christianity infamous for spawning groups that vilify the Jewish people for their role in the Crucifixion. Joel’s weigh-ins on the debate sparked by Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ are very insightful, as is his understanding and critique of the American church. I’m encouraged that APM chose to have him as a guest.
The entire broadcast is available on the Speaking of Faith website.