October 2009
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Singular “they” and the many reasons why it’s... →
Awesomely comprehensive.
More Proof That The “Bubble Bobble” Theme Is One... →
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“There’s two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then...”
– Enrico Fermi (via quote-book) (via infoneernet)
“The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own...”
– Oscar Wilde. Banned Books Week 2009: CELEBRATE THE FREEDOM TO READ! (via linguist)
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September 2009
WatchOprah’s 24th Season Kickoff - Dancing Flash Mob
A few thousand people do a dance routine—what’s not to love?
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Talking Heads - A Clean Break (Let’s Work)...
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Up All Night, Doin' Proofs
Techniques thus far:
Mathematical induction ✔
Reductio ad absurdum ✔
Direct proof by contraposition ✔
Proof by cases ✔
Constructive proof ✔
Vigorous handwaving ✔
Direct proof by definition
Bidirectional proof
Proof by counterexample
This Theory of Computation homework is sheer horror.
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-27) →
Vampire Weekend (119)
Wipers (45)
Kate Bush (33)
Van Halen (27)
The Tough Alliance (7)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Funkadelic - Hit It and Quit It
mills:
As is my...
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WatchSo You Think You Can Dance: Paul Magliato
An incredible routine to Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida”.
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"At the end of the day, you've got to get up in... →
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“infinite regress, 59, 66, 103, 144-145; bypassed, 144-145, 299; of index entry,...”
– Douglas Hofstadter, I Am A Strange Loop (index, p. 397).
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Unexpected hanging paradox - Wikipedia →
A judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week but that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. He will not know the day of the hanging until the executioner knocks on his cell door at noon that day. Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging. His reasoning is in several...
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Vampire Weekend - The Kids Don’t Stand A...
“Berg explains that in its original context, PC was a pejorative term used by...”
– “Political Correctness” is a reactionary term against the loss of privilege. - Racialicious
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Tuesday Teaser #4
chrishol:
Imagine that you’re playing Russian Roulette with your arch-nemesis Bob. The gun that you’re using has a standard circular barrel, containing six chambers. Bob places two bullets in consecutive chambers and spins the barrel. He puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. He gets lucky.
Now it’s your turn. Before you pull the trigger, you can spin the barrel or you can leave the...
Can we do a Madison tumblr meet-up already?
I’ve far gone too long without a Tumblr sticker.
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The Tough Alliance - Silly Crimes
Here’s a...
Ugh.
jaggedfragments in response to this post of mine:
Time for another opinion… and a correction.
If you want to get a sense of how confusing the evolution of language gets, ask a non-native speaker what he/she has discovered by trying to communicate in that language. It takes awhile to get the nuances of conjugation as well as what’s really being intended. Example: The one always cited in the...
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“Newt Gingrich, who in 2007 called bilingual education “the language of...”
– Irony, Thy Name Is Newt | The New Republic
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Epigenetics - Wikipedia →
Nova was about epigenetics this week, and it was fascinating. How can only one identical twin be autistic if they share the same genes? Do stresses in our environment effect the health of our grandchildren? We mapped the human genome, but nurture is more important than ever.
but to be fair...
I’m not above a little pedantry with respect to semantic language change. I dislike the use of “random” as in “that’s so random”—i.e. unexpected. Is this a battle worth fighting though? No. Everyone knows what random means when you talk about rolling dice. [*insert joke about the human mind being inherently bad at statistics*]
Edit: Nice conversation...
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Ugh.
indefensible:
Please don’t use the feeble defence of sloppy usage - “Oh it’s a living language”.
Yes, it is a living language. So kindly refrain from killing it.
Words are the way we define our interactions with one another and with the past. If we allow words that have specific meanings to acquire other meanings then we introduce confusion and decrease the utility of the language.
For...
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The Wipers - When It’s Over
Loving this...
dailymeh:
In Quechua, a language of South America, the future is behind us and the past in front of us. And it makes perfect sense: we can see (remember) the past, but not the future. Having a long life behind you means you’re young, while in English it would mean you’re old.
How we break up semantic space — the (imaginary) space of all things that could or do exist, everything that could be...
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2009-9-20) →
of Montreal (46)
Mike Jones (3)
Prince & The Revolution (3)
Talking Heads (3)
Dirty Projectors (2)
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
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Figures Of Speech: Understanding Idioms Requires... →
Is it better to treat someone with kid gloves or to treat them carefully? Researchers in Italy have investigated how the brain recognises that the first phrase means the same as the second. Publishing in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience, the researchers suggest that we use both hemispheres to understand idioms.
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Young Marble Giants - This Way
I didn’t...
the many hoodies of michael cera →
folkinz:
Arrested Development (George-Michael) A sweet, downtrodden, awkward romantic who falls for a confident spaz (Alia Shawkat).
Superbad (Evan) A sweet, downtrodden, awkward wingman who falls for a confident spaz (Martha MacIsaac).
Juno (Paulie) A sweet, downtrodden, awkward romantic who falls for a confident spaz (Ellen Page).
Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Nick) A sweet,...