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| Sunday, October 9th, 2011 | | 11:34 am |
An intro rhythm that can't be denied
...? 1963 (The Ronettes, "Be My Baby") 1985 (The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Just Like Honey") 1986 (Depeche Mode, "A Question of Lust") 2007 (Bat for Lashes, "What's a Girl to Do?") Other examples? Post 'em if you got 'em | | Thursday, October 6th, 2011 | | 7:19 pm |
| | Monday, August 8th, 2011 | | 6:55 pm |
Words of wisdom from RFC 3164, "The BSD syslog Protocol"
Page 2: 1. Introduction
Since the beginning, life has relied upon the transmission of
messages. For the self-aware organic unit, these messages can relay
many different things. The messages may signal danger, the presence
of food or the other necessities of life, and many other things. In
many cases, these messages are informative to other units and require
no acknowledgement. As people interacted and created processes, this
same principle was applied to societal communications. Page 16: Example 3
<165>Aug 24 05:34:00 CST 1987 mymachine myproc[10]: %% It's
time to make the do-nuts. %% Ingredients: Mix=OK, Jelly=OK #
Devices: Mixer=OK, Jelly_Injector=OK, Frier=OK # Transport:
Conveyer1=OK, Conveyer2=OK # %%
[...]
It should be noted that the information contained in the CONTENT of
this example is not telemetry data, nor is it supervisory control or
data acquisition information. Due to the security concerns listed in
Section 6 of this document, information of that nature should
probably not be conveyed across this protocol.
Page 17: 6. Security Considerations
An odor may be considered to be a message that does not require any
acknowledgement. People tend to avoid bad odors but are drawn to
odors that they associate with good food. The acknowledgement of the
receipt of the odor or scent is not required and indeed it may be the
height of discretion to totally ignore some odors. On the other
hand, it is usually considered good civility to acknowledge the
prowess of the cook merely from the ambiance wafting from the
kitchen. Similarly, various species have been found to utilize odors
to attract mates. One species of moth uses this scent to find each
other. However, it has been found that bolas spiders can mimic the
odor of the female moths of this species. This scent will then
attract male moths, which will follow it with the expectation of
finding a mate. Instead, when they arrive at the source of the
scent, they will be eaten [8]. This is a case of a false message
being sent out with inimical intent. | | Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 | | 1:13 am |
| | Thursday, January 20th, 2011 | | 2:51 pm |
| | Wednesday, November 10th, 2010 | | 6:10 pm |
1984 plans for downtown Bethesda preservation
The Washington Post ran this article on May 3, 1984, a couple of months before the Bethesda Metro station opened for business. They were trying to figure out how many of the mid-20th century commercial buildings in downtown Bethesda to preserve, since landowners there were already working on selling their land for the big office buildings and apartment buildings that surround the Metro station now.  So what became of the buildings in the photos? Let's take a look: ( View the fabulous present-day comparison images! ) | | Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 | | 10:23 pm |
What does this sign I kept passing in a dream last night mean?
I've tried to illustrate it with a photo of a similar looking building and awning to the one in the dream. I never went in the building but I knew it had something to do with the horror movie "Cujo", and my dream was very specific that the font was Monotype Bernhard and the phrase "occasional and" was abbreviated "occas. &" Please give me your best dream interpretations!  | | Friday, September 24th, 2010 | | 7:35 pm |
What is it that makes my brain associate "Islands in the Stream" and "Everyday People" anyway? I was at a store with the former playing in the background and my brain kept adding the horn charts from the latter. I think it's just the stepwise chord progression behind the chorus of "Islands in the Stream" reminding me of the one behind the verse of "Everyday People", but I don't have time to think analytically about it right now. (Speaking of songs by the Gibb brothers, search on YouTube sometime for Barry injecting a few lines of "Stayin' Alive" in the middle of a reggae song he was doing live; it's really, er, something.) | | Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 | | 8:05 pm |
Of all the weird coincidences: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) paracelsvs and I both had root canals in the past 24 hours. Also, neither of us is in any particular pain from it. Go figure. | | Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | | 11:27 am |
Why are railroad tracks seemingly the most photogenic of any type of transportation infrastructure (except maybe bridges)? Why is "railroad tracks stretching off into the distance" second only to "weatherbeaten brick wall" in the lineup of popular locations for rock band photos? | | Thursday, January 14th, 2010 | | 4:10 pm |
RIP Teddy Pendergrass
Teddy Bear's dead at the sadly young age of just 59. His recordings as lead singer for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes led me to consider him the most underrated soul singer of the 1970s, whose voice and catchy, memorable end-of-song ad-libbing I'll always treasure. | | Friday, December 4th, 2009 | | 8:59 am |
Where does that "So, who is this [person's name], anyway?" thing that skiffy nerds like to do come from? | | Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | | 8:21 pm |
Wikiproject Numeracy
- I noticed that your moralistic anti-sex people get a lot of mileage out of the way people will look at figures that condoms have a 90% success rate (or thereabouts) and conclude "damn, that means one in fifty times the woman will get pregnant, so if I have sex once a week for a year with condoms there's a high chance of pregnancy by the end of the year"
- Even when Wikipedia math nerds try to present for-the-layman scenarios -- see the ones for Bayes' Theorem for example -- they quickly go to the formal notation and actually work out the whole problem right there instead of saying "would you believe the likelihood is only 33% and not 99%? That's because the actual condition being true is so rare that blah blah blah" (note how briefly they mention the 0.5% actual rate) and ...
- ... probably the best way to deal with it is something like in this Matt Yglesias post where he says:
Suppose I invent a magical device that can be pointed at a Muslim and say with 90% accuracy whether or not he’s an al-Qaeda operative. Well, if I start waving it around and it starts beeping on one guy, what should we conclude about him? A terrifyingly large number of people are going to say “there’s a ninety percent chance he’s with al-Qaeda! Let’s panic!” In fact, that’s not the case. There are a billion Muslims in the world. A test with 90 percent accuracy is going to mistakenly classify about 100 million of them as al-Qaeda operatives. And al-Qaeda actually has fewer than 10,000 people working for it. I’m going to get something like 10,000 false positives for every actual terrorist I find.
...because the average person isn't looking for specific figures anyway.
- I sometimes wonder if math nerds even realize they are speaking in specialized technical jargon when they use phrasings such as:
- "[noun phrase] [variable name]" (e.g., "a random positive integer X")
- sentences starting with "Let" (not that every sentence starting with "Let" is math jargon)
- "for all [variable name] such that [condition]"
- or instead of "such that [condition]", there is also "given [condition]", where non-specialist usage would be "given that [condition] is true" or "if we know that [condition] is true" or some such
Because frequently it seems they think that is a normal way to write for a general audience.
- I wouldn't be any good at doing Wikiproject Numeracy anyway because I'm not even mathily inclined enough to get it right
- Even trying it would provoke endless backlash from whichever nerds have camped out on the articles to make sure they can "for all/such that" no matter the audience they are writing for
- This has probably been proposed many times before
- But I felt like posting this anyway because I'm curious what the thoughts would be from whoever still has me on their LJ friends list
| | Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | | 11:16 pm |
Shibboleth-talk
The thing is, it was bothering me when people who are UC Berkeley people insist on referring to that institution as "Cal" even though outsiders would likely call it "Berkeley" or "UC Berkeley" or "Cal Berkeley" or some such. I was on another blog where someone complained about this and someone responded that Berkeley's was the only UC campus for sixty years, although that ended seventy years ago, and it takes some time for the language to change or some such. However, it seems to me that the language has changed -- "Berkeley" or "UC Berkeley" or "Cal Berkeley" is what normal people call it, and "Cal" survives only as a shibboleth to enable insiders to recognize one another. The thing about shibboleth-talk is: It makes sense when people from within the community use it to speak to one another, but when they are communicating to the larger world, the shibboleth often takes on a certain resemblance to what the Brits have referred to as " U and non-U" speak, delineating those in-the-know from those not in-the-know. So at times people will speak in shibboleths partly for the ego boost from smugly noting those not in-the-know being confused at the true import of the language thus spoken. So I felt that people referring to "Cal" outside a community of UC Berkeley in-the-know types were by implication insulting those not in-the-know, so that they could take a certain smug satisfaction in their understanding of the shibboleth. What would you say that this says about people who use shibboleth-talk in public, and how I should evaluate their arrogance compared to people who strive for inclusive speech with people they know to be outside their dialectal group? | | 10:55 pm |
What is the best recording of the Brandenberg Concertos, in your opinion? Also do you have opinions on the best organ recitals of J.S. Bach's organ-focused pieces? | | Saturday, May 23rd, 2009 | | 12:11 am |
You know, I've been ignoring LiveJournal for so long that I suddenly realized that if I get back into it, people might be gobsmacked to remember who I am. But maybe I ought to anyway. I've been working as a Linux sysadmin for the last year or so, after a few months stabbing myself in the head as I did admin work on Win2K/2K3 boxen, which gives me good anecdotes to share with Lowercase Robert (who I still go to the Mongo with here and there), and it makes me understand why ronebofh was as fascinating as he was the first time I met him on Usenet lo those many years ago. | | Wednesday, December 26th, 2007 | | 1:23 pm |
| | Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 | | 1:51 pm |
I'm seeking your opinion on....
....people who make software that's only available as an online download, but they decorate their Web site with fake pictures of the boxes that the software would theoretically come in if it came in boxes. | | Thursday, September 27th, 2007 | | 9:11 pm |
I knew Fred MacMurray had three sons but I didn't know he was this kind of a stud. Man, that Ann Miller, huh? Yup. | | 8:48 pm |
It's always interesting when you find out some song from your past had a video you never saw. This was an alt-rock single when I was in high school 16 years ago. Jesus Christ I'm getting old. ( sing along? ) |
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