This page shows recent posts from all categories. It will probably be fancier later.
Standing room only... (2012/10/24)
I’ve seen one too many news stories about how it’s bad for us to sit all the time. I now have a standing desk. It’s a little wobbly, so I’ll have to add some supports to it, which means a hardware store trip. Planning to add four corner supports to it. Initial feedback, yes my feet hurt, but I feel otherwise quite a lot better. I’ve always liked to pace when thinking, and this gets me some of the benefits of pacing without the difficulty reaching the keyboard. [read more...]
Logic puzzle time! (2012/10/22)
Okay, so. There are three doors, two hiding goats, one hiding a car. You pick a door. The host now picks another door, revealing a goat. Should you switch? The answer is, of course, that if you switch, there is a one in three chance that you find the unexpected tiger.
Gricean Maxims, and why I have trouble with them... (2012/10/16)
A while back, I commented on Romney’s “Keep America American”. At least one person told me that I had given the impression that I thought that the people who liked this slogan were racists; this confused the heck out of me, because I thought what I said was that racists liked the slogan, and that I believe it was constructed the way it was in order to appeal to them. [read more...]
I guess you're in big trouble, then. (2012/10/16)
Elizabeth Price Foley writes: [read more...]
Burying cats: Humans are not sane. (2012/10/15)
Jesse’s cat Maya died today. She was 15ish. Our friend Aud had a cat named Penny, who also died today, so we dug them a grave. It turns out this is a lot of work. Our back yard has fairly dense dirt, full of rocks and tree roots, and it is really hard to get dirt out of a deep hole with a shovel. (We now own a shop vac.) [read more...]
Skin in the game (2012/09/29)
The phrase “skin in the game” comes in and out of fashion. I always rather liked it; it’s evocative. [read more...]
Forced password resets: you're doing it wrong (2012/09/23)
For the most part, I really like Dropbox, but it seems to me that their recent decision to roll out forced password changes is… poorly implemented. [read more...]
Romney's 47%: The distinction between factual and truthful (2012/09/23)
You’ve probably seen it by now: [read more...]
Partisan language has gotten silly. (2012/09/12)
I’ve noticed a thing, which is that angry internet commenters who use “libs” are using it as some kind of code word. It doesn’t mean liberals. It means bogeymen. “Libs” are a large, well-organized, utterly monolithic, group of people who are at all times completely dishonest, completely irrational, totally stupid, totally uninformed, and persisting in being this way out of malice. [read more...]
This is sorta freaky, and I am not at all sure what I think of it (2012/09/04)
The FDA has approved clinical trials of a proposed cure for autism. [read more...]