The book on the left is the 4th edition of Learning Python
The book on the right is this year’s Austin phone book.
Yes, Learning Python is thicker.
No, I’m not sure what that means; I just find it amusing.
Snakes on a book.
December 8th, 2009How can we dance when our Earth is turning?
December 8th, 2009We don’t have to worry about that now. CBS has cancelled “As the World Turns”.
(I like the song, but I’ve always thought that particular lyric was rather stupid. If the Earth wasn’t turning, dancing would be the least of our concerns.)
Random notes: December 8, 2009.
December 8th, 2009I’m not a pro wrestling fan. I did see the FARK thread about Umaga’s death over the weekend, but didn’t really think it was blog-worthy (especially since it had already been on FARK). However, Ken Hoffman has a touching obit for the late Mr. Fatu in the HouChron.
“He speaks English!” the kids said. Even more surprising, he didn’t take their money for his autograph. “He said it was Christmas and told us to use the money for presents for our parents.”
On the obit front, the LAT has a story about the sectioning of Henry Molaison’s brain. This was also noted in the NYT last week, but for some reason I didn’t blog it. I’ll take this chance to link again to the obit the NYT published after Mr. Molaison’s passing last year. (I blogged this at the time, for values of “blogged” that include “noting it on the private mailing list I was using at the time”.) If you can read the last line of that obit without tears, you have no heart.
While we’re on the subject of the NYT, the government of India has released their report on the destruction of the Ayodhya mosque. The report came out last week; the mosque was destroyed by riots in 1992.
I probably should have blogged something about Pearl Harbor yesterday, perhaps the discovery of the Japanese mini-sub. But hey, I stink, and everyone else was doing it anyway. There’s also a good story in the Statesman about the new wing of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. I’ve got some time off coming, and I haven’t been to the musuem in a few years…
Random notes: December 4, 2009.
December 4th, 2009Today’s memo from Captain Obvious: scalpers find it hard to sell tickets when the team is awful. And sympathy for the Nets.
So your scam involves taking money for hot tubs from people on eBay, then not shipping the hot tubs? I can’t decide who is dumber; the scammer, for not thinking that he’d be caught, or the people who actually thought purchasing hot tubs off eBay was a good idea.
In other news, we’re all going to die (well, mostly you folks in Houston). Film at 11.
Edited to add: The Observer has a nifty interview with Maj Sjöwall. I’m kind of ashamed to admit, even though I’ve read some of the Martin Beck books, I had no idea Per Wahlöö was dead. (Hattip: Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind.)
Dropping like JaMarcus Russell passes.
December 3rd, 2009Hofstra University has dropped their (1-AA) football program. (I know the NCAA doesn’t call it 1-AA any longer, but if you think I’m going to type out “NCAA’s Football Championship Subdivision” every time, you’ve got another think coming.)
As noted in the linked article, Northeastern (also 1-AA, and in the same conference) dropped their program last week.
When is TMQ going to blog about the impending cupcake shortage?
Human ingenuity.
December 3rd, 2009Joe D’s comment below about Obama blotter acid reminded me of another favorite government publication of mine: the DEA’s Microgram Bulletin.
If you ever want a catalog of all the ingenious ways people try to get high, spend some time going through back issues. The June issue even has some snazzy illustrations of “Ecstasy” tablets (Homer and Bart Simpson, Obama, Autobots, and others.)
It isn’t that I drop acid, smoke the chronic, or take X and go to a lot of raves; I’m fascinated by Microgram because of the discussions of analytic chemistry, plus this will make good background material if I ever wind up writing that series of crime novels I’ve sketched out.
When you’re a Net, you’re a Net all the way…
December 3rd, 2009…from your opening loss at Charlotte to losing at home against the Mavericks and setting a new NBA record for futility.
Two other franchises had gone 0-17 to start a season. The Miami Heat set the record 21 years ago as an expansion team. The Los Angeles Clippers, who often look like an expansion team, matched the mark 10 years ago.
The Nets now stand alone, wallowing in despair and self-loathing.
Lawrence gave me some flack yesterday for not mentioning Bobby Bowden. My feeling was that Bowden wasn’t fired, he resigned; Lawrence’s argument is that Bowden resigned in the same way Nixon and Spitzer resigned. I don’t have much to say on the subject, but if you do, here’s your thread.
Obama Ecstasy tablets? Those will go well with my Chia head.
Dear Congressman Lamar Smith: Please be so kind as to consume excrement and thus hasten your demise.
Edited to add: I forgot this one. By way of the Scalz, homeowner’s association tries to tell a 90-year-old Medal of Honor recipient he can’t have a flagpole in his yard. Get the popcorn, folks, this should be almost as much fun as the ongoing situation in what Balko calls Marakafka County.
Random notes: December 2nd, 2009.
December 2nd, 2009(I had originally considered calling this post “Rum, S—-y, and the Lash” but I couldn’t find any good articles about whipping. Plus, I don’t want to get filtered.)
Did you know the NYT had a “Winter Drinks Issue” in the Dining section? Neither did I. Articles include one about the rise of rum, and an excellent article by Harold McGee
By way of Jimbo, here’s a good article on Richard Loeb (of Leopold and Loeb
Just in case you were wondering what Roseanne Barr is doing, you now have your answer.
Edited to add: I knew I forgot something. I won’t be watching this tonight. (I don’t, and won’t, have cable; I’ve asked someone if they’d be willing to record it for me.) That won’t stop me from linking to Alan Sepinwall’s review:
…with his new reality show “Steven Seagal: Lawman,” Seagal has cemented his position as an accidental comedy savant. It’s easily the funniest thing he’s done since the climactic speech from “On Deadly Ground” (his infamous directorial debut about evil oil companies polluting the Alaskan wilderness), and one of the more entertaining additions to the Has-Beens On Parade reality sub-genre.
If you’re the police, where are your badges?
December 1st, 2009(Speaking of recurring themes.)
The answer to that question is apparently at home.
Mr. Sash, who was arrested several times for making and selling replica badges, quit the business after his last arrest in 2002, for which he served nearly four years in prison.
The linked article is a pretty good slice of NYPD life, but I’d really like to know more about Mr. Sash and his story. If all these folks in the NYPD knew he was the unofficial go-to guy for replica badges, what were the circumstances that actually led up to his arrest?
The Gary Kubiak firing pool.
December 1st, 2009Place your dates in the comments.
Lawrence has already claimed January 4th.
As your moderator, I won’t be picking a date.
Weis whacked.
November 30th, 2009St. Edward’s and Notre Dame are both under the Congregation of Holy Cross, so I have some sympathy for Notre Dame. This firing doesn’t give me any pleasure.
I think Notre Dame’s biggest problem is a need to adjust to the realities of the new world. As TMQ points out, Notre Dame graduates 94 percent of their football players; they’re basically playing an amateur game among professionals. The school needs to decide what’s important; building character and graduating players, or steamrolling cupcakes and getting a share of that sweet sweet bowl money.
Some thoughts on failure.
November 30th, 2009The list of the 50 most interesting Wikipedia articles (and 50 more) has been blogged elsewhere. But while I was reading the second list, I stumbled across one of the coolest things I’ve seen on the Web in a while.
You may have noticed that a recurring theme of this blog is failure, mostly sports failures. That’s because failure is a sort of academic interest of mine. I gloat over the Detroit Lions going 0-16, but there’s more to it than that.
I want to know what allowed the network security breech. I want to know why the plane crashed. I want to understand what led up to the refinery explosion. I want to understand these things, because I want to know where the mistakes were made, and how to avoid repeating them. When I see the same patterns that led to the reactor meltdown repeating in my work environment, I want to be the person who steps up and says “Stop.” I want to learn from other people’s failures, so I don’t have to learn from my own.
I’m not the only person who feels that way. Books like Petroski’s To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
So I was very pleasantly surprised to discover, while reading the Wikipedia entry about the SL-1 incident, that NASA has something called the Process Based Mission Assurance Knowledge Management System. As best as I can put it, this is where NASA manages their knowledge of failure, and tries to learn from it.
One of the things you can find there is System Failure Case Studies. These are short PDF documents (about 4 pages) discussing various failures, and what lessons can be learned from them. (These documents include discussion questions, such as “Do you feel that the chronic pressure of aggressive schedules is adequately balanced with attention to safety and quality in your organization?”) Some examples:
- the loss of the USS Thresher, and the SUBSAFE program developed in response to that accident.
- the Nedelin rocket disaster.
- the loss of the R-101.
- the Mann Gulch fire. (Speaking of the Mann Gulch fire, if you haven’t read Young Men and Fire
, you really need to.)
- the USS Forrestal.
- Apollo 1.
- The “Big Dig” tunnel failure.
- United 232.
- The Kansas City Hyatt Regency walkways.
- The Minneapolis bridge collapse.
- and, yes, the SL-1.
There’s also another series of documents, VITS, which appear to be PDF files of PowerPoint presentations. Some of the SFCS documents have VITS presentations that go along with them; other VITS presentations, such as this one on Hurricane Katrina, stand alone.
TJIC might argue with me (he’d probably suggest that private insurance companies have a strong motivation to do the same thing, and he’d have a pretty good point), but at some level, this is one of the things I want my government to do.
(Edited to add: And the Nets are now 0-17.)
Notes towards a loser update.
November 29th, 2009The New Jersey Nets (who, by the way, are 0-16, and two games away from setting an NBA record for most consecutive losses to start a season; and they play the Lakers tonight) fired coach Lawrence Frank. Who says Bruce Ratner cares more about his real estate ventures than the Nets?
(By the way, that is not the firing I was expecting today. I was also not expecting Al Groh to be fired at Virginia quite yet, but when you go 3-9, and can’t beat your arch rival, your days are numbered. Groh apparently has pro experience with the Jets; could he go to the Bills? Or could he possibly be considered for the Notre Dame job?)
I see that the Texans once again managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
This doesn’t really qualify as a “loser” update per se, but last night I was able to have a very nice dinner at my sister’s place and watch the Baylor – Texas Tech game. I’m glad Tech pulled the game out, but it sure seems to me that there were a lot of missed and dropped passes. This victory strikes me as being one for the defense; and, as we all know, you can’t rely on defense to win games.
And the more Avatar commercials I see, the more I root for the movie to be an enormous flop.
Holiday season administrative reminder.
November 28th, 2009Because:
- I want to avoid possible trouble with the FTC.
- For the benefit of my family members.
- Because Insty did it, so why not follow in his footsteps?
This is a general administrative reminder that purchases made through Amazon links on Whipped Cream Difficulties, such as this one
Random notes: November 25, 2009.
November 25th, 2009Shocked, shocked I am to learn that The Biggest Loser may indulge in questionable practices. I am equally shocked to learn that a charity collecting money for the homeless may be a scam.
I am delighted to find out that the CIA Family Advisory Board has published a second cookbook, More Spies, Black Ties, and Mango Pies. I own a copy of the original 1997 cookbook
I did not know Julie “Julie and Julia
Edited to add: On the “Art, damn it, art!” front: “Train” in vain.
(Since I got the song stuck in your head, here’s a live Clash video. And here’s a live Annie Lennox version. And here’s a not bad Manic Street Preachers cover.)