| Oops! |
[Dec. 3rd, 2009|09:23 pm] |
Happy belated birthday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) saxikath ! |
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| New Snail-Mail Address |
[Dec. 2nd, 2009|09:05 pm] |
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I just realized that this would probably be a good place to let people know that I have a new snail-mail address. Same email, same cell phone, same job, Lana and I are just moving with a friend into a larger house closer to work. I'm not going to post the new address here, but email or PM me if you want/need it! |
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| Repost |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|09:59 pm] |
Saw this on Facebook and had to pass it on:
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| Secret Double Monday |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|09:17 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | argh, monday | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Pandora | ] |
Monday, as far as I'm concerned, is defined as the day when one has to get before one is ready. Double Monday is when you have to get up even earlier than regular Monday. Secret Double Monday is when you wake up an hour earlier than you meant to on a Monday because your ^&%%%$(%$#@!@ ALARM CLOCK IS ALL ^&%#$@$%&)^(_!!!
Sorry, I'm done with the yelling and swearing.
See, my clock radio has automatic DST adjustment. Which is set for the old DST dates. And CAN'T BE TURNED OFF. (Oops, guess I was wrong.)
So on Sunday I found that it had set itself back, and I set it forward again. No problem.
Except that sometime in the middle of the night it set itself forward *again*. At the moment I have two theories on this:
1) It's getting a totally undocumented time signal from some radio station somewhere, which is interacting with the time zone setting (which I was using as a handy way of changing the time by exactly one hour) in some unfortunate way.
2) It's possessed.
Occam's Razor seems to favor #2.
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Now playing: Chris Standring - What Is Is
via FoxyTunes
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| Health Care Meme |
[Sep. 4th, 2009|12:48 pm] |
No one should die because they can't afford health care or go broke because they are sick. If you agree, please post this and contact your legislators. |
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| DBAD |
[Aug. 22nd, 2009|07:05 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | memes | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | determined | ] |
Originally from fragbert via filkertom via sidebernie :
... [M]ost everything that Jesus [among others!] taught can be distilled down to one simple, if not a bit vulgar, statement: "Life is hard, we're all in this together, don't be a dick."
I think the world might be a better place if people stopped wearing clothing and jewelry with "WWJD" plastered on it, and replaced it with "DBAD".
[...]
Here's today's project: if you're in agreement, and are so inclined, post "DBAD" in your LJ today, with a link back to this entry. |
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| Death Again |
[Jul. 3rd, 2009|04:12 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | bad news | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  confused | ] |
Once again, someone has died and I don't know how to deal with it. It's someone I knew from high school --- someone I considered a good friend once upon a time, but lost touch with. A month ago, I hardly knew he was alive, then I found him on Facebook. I've been reading his posts fairly frequently for the last month, and now he's gone. Weird. |
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| An Open Letter to the Governor of Indiana |
[Jun. 2nd, 2009|08:01 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | politics | ] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | home | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  pissed off | ] |
An Open Letter to The Honorable Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr., Governor of the State of Indiana
Dear Governor Daniels,
As a mathematics professor, I very much appreciate your support of mathematics, science, and engineering education, which you expressed once again in your commencement speech1 at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology on May 30. I also definitely support your call for science and engineering students to become active, open-minded citizens, and I appreciate your willingness to publicly declare your support for Darwin's theories of evolution. (Sadly, this position is a controversial one in this part of Indiana!) However, a willingness to be open-minded should not be confused with a blatant disregard for facts and logic. In particular, I must take strong exception to a few of the points raised in your speech.
- When you speak before a technical audience, it is especially important to avoid logical fallacies! Unfortunately, you fell into a serious one when you expressed your skepticism on global climate change, namely the Prosecutor's Fallacy. (An ironic mistake for a lawyer to make!) In this case, while it is true that many great scientists have challenged the conventional scientific consensus, that does not make it true that most people (or even most scientists) who challenge the scientific consensus are doing great science. In fact, most people who challenge the scientific consensus are spouting nonsense, and this is most likely true of the global climate change skeptics as well.
- When you choose someone to quote on the practice of doing science, it would be better if you chose an actual scientist. Michael Crichton is not a scientist (your fact-checkers failed you on that!); he has neither a Ph.D. nor an established track record in research. He is a medical doctor and an author, but no more a scientist than you are.
- Finally, your comparison of Al Gore to an "Ayatollah" issuing "fatwas" is a serious insult to all of the people who are living or have lived under actual religious persecution. (I assume that your use of the term "fatwa" refers to death sentences such as that issued against Salman Rushdie, since the more accurate definition of "a legal opinion issued by a scholar" doesn't seem to make much sense here!)
I believe that my colleagues in the humanities and social sciences might have noted a few more points of disagreement and factual errors, but I will limit my criticisms to those above.
Sincerely yours,
Joshua Holden
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
1In fairness to the Governor, he did not in fact say that "Carbon dioxide emissions ... are what America needs", as reported in the article linked to above.
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happy