DESTROY ALL MONSTERS
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Spendocrat" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
|
06:44 pm
[Link] | I was at my folks' yesterday flipping through channels and ended up watching some ST:TNG.
Which reminded me of this, which I still find absolutely hilarious:
Sorry in advance for putting an animation on your friends page.
|
|
05:36 pm
[Link] |
Plato's Cave
Some acquaintances of mine recently bought bookstore on Taché and renamed it "Plato's Cave". Previously the bookstore was mystery/romance/self-help heavy, but they seem to be doing a good job at getting their hands on a lot of classics, history, and philosophy-type books. (http://caveofplato.com/)
Running a used bookstore seems mildly insane to me, but I hope they do well.
On a completely unrelated note I picked up yesterday two of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, Ring World, Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus, and good copies of Othello and King Lear.
I also visited McNally and got Shake Hands with the Devil (finally), Spook Country, the remaining Foundation novel, and Best Science Writing 2007.
I've been participating in reading groups with some friends and people from school. I've not really done this in the past, but it's quite interesting. I'm finding that reading with other people provides a good motivation to think carefully about everything in a work, not just the parts that jump out at you.
|
|
04:38 pm
[Link] | Looks like I'm going to U of M next year.
|
|
01:58 am
[Link] |
Hi, we're the Mixed Nuts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiI0ydrw_QU#
One of the best videos of all time.
I'd embed, but figuring out how took more than 10 minutes of fooling around.
|
|
06:20 pm
[Link] | 
|
|
09:47 pm
[Link] | Atheism is a pretty common thing among the people I talk to at school. For an intelligent bunch, I find they make a lot of the same mistakes:
There is no way to prove that God exists.
This one often stems from the assumption that the only way to prove things is with science.
I read this proof that God exists, and it was stupid, therefore there must not be any proof that God exists
I will now prove that Pythagoras's theorem is true by pointing out that it works for right triangles with sides 3 and 4, and hypotenuse 5. This proof sucks. Due to this, I can conclude that there is no way to prove Pythagoras's theorem.
If there was a proof that God existed, wouldn't I hear about it all over the place?
There are 2 parts to this: Education about religion has been purposefully omitted from public schools. Your teachers and parents went to these public schools. Who around you would even know about it? -- especially if you didn't go to church, but even if you did. The job of ministers and priests isn't to prove that God exists, just as the job of a high-school calculus teacher is not to derive or demonstrate the foundations of mathematics (Whitehead and Russell). Second, to prove the existence of God might be fairly difficult -- people don't tend to spend a lot of time teaching other people things they themselves don't understand.
The Bible is full of contradictions and/or is stupid.
Proving that some kind of creator God exists is a far cry from concluding that one religion or another is correct in everything it says. Proving that God exists would be a necessary first step in showing one of those religions is right, but doesn't depend in any way on the further claims any particular religion may make. Proving that God doesn't exist would also effectively discredit all religions, so even without any of the trappings of a particular religion, the question of a "bare-bones" God is still important.
Proving that God exists is just the same as proving that some kind of magical fairy is in this room right now, but we can't see it, touch it, or anything
There is a false analogy here between something that has no effect on the Universe in any way, and something that at the very minimum had an effect on the Universe in creating it.
I talked to this religious guy/priest/minister/etc. about this, and he didn't know anything about any proof's of God's existence!
Do you believe in genetics/evolution? Do you know the detailed arguments and experiments that support it? How about gravity, can you show the arguments for it? How about special relativity? How about the existence of human rights? That some person, or even some millions of people, don't know something has nothing to do with its correctness (or lack of).
OK. Cue people asking me which church I'm part of....
|
09:36 pm
[Link] | Despite spraining my ankle, Campstravaganza 4 was good. I arrived late Thursday, set up my tent, and sat up with the fire for a few hours. I had a bit of a cold night but nothing like last year.
Friday morning we got in a good round of frisbee golf, then it was "do stupid things near the lake" time. In the afternoon we split a lot of wood, played with a boomerang and walked around the camp. Friday evening we started up frisbee golf again but I sprained my ankle on the second hole, running around without looking at my footing (there is no actual running in frisbee golf, I was just fooling around). I received first aid, was relegated to the campfire for the rest of the evening, had an OK night, then packed up in the morning and came back to town. I was sad to miss the nature walk and playing grounders.
The locals are starting to recognize us. Even with the gate closed we got some drive-bys and one guy talked to us for a while.
This is the second year the lake has been frozen solid (except for 3-4 feet around the edge, and a big patch at the point). Two years ago we had open water but with big icebergs, and three years ago we had completely open water. I think the first year was an anomaly, and spoiled us a bit.
Tags: camping
|
|
04:59 pm
[Link] | The power supply for my computer went (dramatically) last week. Since then I've been using my older machine, an Windows 2000 machines from January of 2003. I've decided to get a quiet power supply for the broken computer, but I've had to order the one I want from out of town. Most likely I won't even bother installing it until exams are over.
Anyhow, the upshot of this is that Firefox 3 runs noticeably faster on this computer than the Firefox 1.5 it was running before today. I was dubious about their claims but the difference is dramatic, both for page loads and editing in text boxes.
|
|
09:19 pm
[Link] |
Lysenko
I read The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science over the weekend. The Soviets assumed that science should be informed by Marxism (because Marxism is truth) and ended up screwing over their agricultural and biological sciences from about the 1920's to the 1960's. Very interesting. Also sadly showed my ignorance about the Soviets, I kept having to look up stuff about Stalin and the revolution(s). Animal Farm is not enough, it turns out.
I have had a few people tell me that science is an inherently political enterprise over the past couple years. I still don't buy this. The results you get from exeriments aren't political, they're just facts. That the interpretation of those results and the decision on what experiments to do *can* be political is reasonable, but I still don't see how they are inherently political. I don't count most of psychology and sociology as sciences , so that affects things. I think maybe these people meant that the direction and interpretation of science was political and weren't clear about it, but it's also possible they're the kind of people who believe that there's no such thing as objective truth, which is very odd.
|
04:27 am
[Link] |
No more shopping at Chapters
Somehow, eight years ago, I missed that Chapter's and Indigo decided to longer sell Hitler's Mein Kampf (and some googling informs me they also stopped selling shooting-related magazines at some point as well).
If I'd known then I wouldn't have shopped there all this time. I guess now's as good a time to stop as any.
Don't let me down, McNally!
|
|
07:26 pm
[Link] |
An update about some things
I don't visit LJ very much these days. I generally only go on the Internet at school, which has its good and bad points. Remote access to a couple of OpenBSD machines makes this a lot less inconvenient than it could be.
School is humming along as per usual. Three labs and four lectures border on overwhelming with work mixed in, but I am managing. High marks from last term indicate that I'm doing something right.
History of Educational ideas is the third philosophy course I've taken, and is great. A discussion of the logical framework of education, the historical figures who've shaped how education is conducted and thought of, and lots of discussion about why both teachers and the general populace are ignorant of this information. A side-effect of theses kinds of courses is that I find religion a lot more interesting now than I did when I was an atheist. A bad side-effect is that talking to almost anyone about "issues" now can get pretty frustrating (*especially* religious people and atheists).
I have collected a number of 2-liter pop bottles and gallon milk jugs for the first rifle shoot after the snow melts a bit. My interest in making things go "boom!" remains high. This year we're going to try freezing some of the targets.
I've been playing in a co-ed sponge hockey league. This is a great workout and a ton of fun, even when we don't have enough people to sub off.
|
|
07:55 pm
[Link] | Of interest to nerds?
https://www.grc.com/ppp.htm
One-time passwords with libraries in various languages. Equivalent to s/key, though I only glanced at the site in a cursory fashion.
|
|
04:18 pm
[Link] | I finished my exams. It feels pretty good. Now to a work a bunch and enjoy the holidays!
|
|
06:19 pm
[Link] | I read "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs, which was great. I'm now a ways in to "On War" by Carl Von Clauswitz, which is also great.
I'm a little sad that I don't use this journal much anymore. It seems different to me now, somehow. Perhaps the problem is that most of the people I know don't use LJ any more, and many of those I consider mainstays here have stopped or greatly reduced their posting (including some of you 'Tron types).
I'm writing an essay for a History of Calculus class I'm taking. I really wanted the essay to be on the brachistochrone problem so that I could entitle it "The Fastest Curve in the West", but sadly there's just not enough material to fill the pages. So instead I'm writing on the history of the cycloid in general, and Fastest Curve in the West gets relegated to a sub-heading.
|
|
08:35 pm
[Link] | Hello LJ friends,
Have I lent any of you my copy of "On Writing Well"?
I have a vague memory of lending it out, but I think that was quite awhile ago.
|
|
02:03 am
[Link] | Don't recall if I posted this beauty before.
http://drclaw.ca/fingerBW.jpg
Yes, those are my fingers. I'd inline it, but it's too big.
|
|
03:27 pm
[Link] |
Further kitchen adventures
I got a knife-sharpening apparatus for my birthday this year, and I finally got around to trying it out last week. It took a while to get anywhere with it at first because most of the family cutlery is dull, and has been variously sharpened with a normal stone or belt sander. The apparatus (a Lansky kit) puts a beautiful edge on the knives and is pretty easy to use, so I'm quite happy with it.
On the down side, I experienced the full implications of Very Sharp Knives a couple days later when I cut about 3/4 of an inch into the tip of my right thumb while slicing salami (through the nail no less!) I was rushing and got kind of sloppy near the end. I still get a little bit of the heeby-jeebies when I remember it. On the other hand it's pretty funny to remember walking around the kitchen saying "oh God, oh God" with my thumb clamped firmly inside my index & middle fingers, cursing my kitchen-related misfortune.
Went to the beach the next day (last Friday) with work people. Was slightly worried about infections with the algae-heavy water, but nothing bad seems to have happened to the thumb. Water-proof bandaids are a lie.
|
|
03:42 am
[Link] | Ranch House of Apes
“Ungoo!” I grunted, as thirty-odd years of monkey mustard gas knuckle-punched my nostrils. Stunned, I staggered back and tried to clear my head. Then I coughed, sending what poisonous vapors were not in my nose up into the safety of my eyeballs. Blind and hacking, my head encased in a simian gas chamber, I zig-zagged about the room. “I can’t die like this,” I thought, “it’s too hilarious.”
|
|
12:09 am
[Link] |
Theater
Batman was as good as people made it out to be.
Hellboy 2 was very disappointing.
I didn't get to the Fringe as much as I would have liked. The two plays I saw were only so-so. This year I had more fun running into people and chatting. I would have liked to spend more time at the festival, there were a lot of very interesting looking plays this year.
I saw...
A Brief History of Petty Crime: Funny enough while he was doing the scripted material, but the crowd interaction was mostly boring. Keep in mind that I don't like improv, generally. Good transitions during the flashbacks and scene changes.
Trojan Women: The Irish accent on Helen was super distracting. A few of the phrases (as written in some cases, as acted in others) were too modern and broke the flow of the play. Doing a long, serious play for the Fringe is brave, so they definitely get points for trying. Cassandra did some mannerisms for being mad/wracked with visions that I didn't like at first, but ended up enjoying quite a bit by the end. I wonder if there's some trick to screaming/wailing so that it's frightening instead of just annoying. This might be a play I'd rather see in its original version.
|
|
05:14 pm
[Link] | I'm using Latex to write up some stuff for work. I've never used Latex before, and I'm pretty shocked at the lack of decent in-depth documentation on the internet. Lots of un-annotated code examples, but not much reference material.
Things are fine if you just want to do what Latex lets you easily do, but not if you want to get fancy!
What Latex does:
1 First section
2 the second section
3 foo bar baz
What I wanted:
foo 1 blutz
bar 2 baz
And now, number 3, the third section!
I found what I presume is a hackish way to do it by adapting some code from the net. I don't actually know what every line does, but prodding, poking, and googling gets the job done.
Now I have \section and \fancysection
I suppose I should have just bought a book.
I'm still not sure how I feel about Latex. It's pretty rad in some ways, but doing some stuff that's dead easy in a word processor seems to require failry arcane incantations, sacrificing chickens, etc.
|
[<< Previous 20 entries] |
