When tv was less frenzied

Of C-Span:

“The pace is slower. You don’t have a new visual image to process every 3.5 seconds, and people watch and apparently listen and then go back and watch again. So I’m very encouraged by that. It may be that there are limits to how much the human psyche can take of this fast-moving imagery that has been a characteristic of American television for many years. The Nielsen people tell us that television is on about close to eight hours a day in the average American household, so maybe there are limits to how much imagery people can process.” — Neil Postman, 30 August, 1992

There’s a limit to how much fast-moving imagery I can watch – the onset of nausea; and not in some airy existential sense. Is there a limit to how much humans can take? Maybe. But Postman said that in 1992. Today there is more blinking, flashing screen-trash than ever, and now TV includes pop-ups, pop-unders, pictures within pictures bracketed by scrolling text, all in gigantic high-definition. A noisy bar with a disco ball seems charmingly old-fashioned.

Analogy

Dinner is to lutefisk as candy is to ____________?

Linus Torvalds is the brilliant programmer responsible for Linux. It’s a good thing he didn’t go into the candy business instead.

Math class

We thought those top-flight investigative journalists were busy writing promotional material, but not so. Recent investigative reporting reveals the shocking truth about math class. (h/t)

Fluid mechanics is where it all began to go wrong for me. The last thing I remember is the Professor saying something about Pasha Pasha Tea.

Better living through science

Another triumph of hope over experience

“A superweed spreading throughout the UK could be brought under control by introducing plant-eating predators from Japan, scientists believe.”

Hmm, maybe the scientists can import a predator to deal with the Asian lady beetles they imported to deal with the soybean aphids.

Coincidence?

1. ‘Big Bang’ experiment starts well – So they fired up the Large Hardon Collider,
2. North Korea denies Kim is unwell – which is North Korean for “The Dear Leader has lapsed into a coma,”
3. And Southern Iran was hit by earthquake,

All on the same day. Coincidence?

Yes.

Ignorance, outrage, and irony

• Feynmann on Algebra: “A series of steps, by which you could get the answer if you didn’t understand what you were trying to do.”
• “If you sleep around on your spouse you are a bad person, and to hell with your future in politics” — Vito’s Problems and Ours, h/t
• “Sen. Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic presidential nominee if John Edwards had been caught in his lie about an extramarital affair and forced out of the race last year…” — Wolfson: Edwards’ Cover-up Cost Clinton the Nomination
• Sorry, I can’t muster a lot of outrage about Russia invading the sovereign nation of Georgia. Like the Cajun says about France and Germany, Georgia is part of Russia whenever Russia wants it. Likewise South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Berzerkistan, and Elbonia. You only get a nation if you can take it and keep it. UPDATE: Or I may be completely wrong: There is Fly in Ointment; A moral equivalence test and a modern day Guernica
• Apoplexy and spasms at Walmart

Simulation and experience

Isabel Lugo at God Plays Dice has a quick summary of who’s doing election prediction by simulation. Of course it’s really too early to predict anything, but as of now the presidency is Senator Obama’s to lose. But since he is a Democrat, maybe it’s not too early to predict that.

Seven dismal actuaries

Seven dismal actuaries came to Nancy’s party.
Six predicted shortages;
One refilled the punchbowl.

Six topologists from Poland sat smoking in the break room.
Five went out for pastry;
One made more coffee.

Five statisticians ran computer simulations.
Four collated surveys;
One sharpened pencils.

Four number theorists sat in Starbucks on the weekend.
Three argued politics;
One stared out the window.

Three Greek geometers drew pictures at the seashore.
Two ate figs and olives;
One drank all the wine.

Two Pythagoreans met secretly at midnight.
One thought he knew how the world was put together;
One was a spy for competing numerologists.

A Babylonian shepherd counted sheep in the morning.
Ten were grazing sensibly;
One ran away.

File management?

George at Decrpit Old Fool asks, “How do YOU explain file management?” It’s a good question, and maybe deeper than it sounds like. Having read his post and thought about it, I don’t know a good answer. If anyone has a useful explanatory metaphor, please go share it with him.

Dead bear found in cave

Some guys found a bear skeleton in a cave, and gave it to a professor at the university:

Dr Andrew Kitchener said: “The bones are now at our conservation centre at National Museums collection centre, Edinburgh, where our first priority is to preserve and stabilise them, as they are relatively fragile.

“After that we plan to take this exciting discovery a step further by radiocarbon dating them to discover when the bear died.

“We also need to decide if they belonged to a polar bear or a brown bear, which wasn’t possible from the lower mandible we already have.” — Cavers recover ancient bear bones

Sorry, the significance of this escapes me. If the guys who found it were twelve years old, it would be legendary. Their biology teacher would display the bones in the lab. If the bear was alive, they fought, and the man killed the bear, that would be newsworthy, especially in today’s UK. But grown men found a dead bear in a cave.