I'm pretty sure a long time ago we all professed that we visit the board at least once a day but sometimes (or oftentimes) don't post on that day. I'm creating this topic so that I remind myself to post some random (or not random) thought that I've had during the day, and I invite you to join me in posting in this topic at least once a day so that at the very least, we can verify that we all still exist.
Today's thought:
I will be 10000 days old on June 19, 2015. I should probably start planning that party now.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
How did I manage to get a solid understanding of analysis but a shaky understanding of calculus? I've looked at four proofs of the central-limit theorem and the use of Taylor's theorem seems kind of mysterious every time.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
Someone I was just talking to on Omegle claimed to be an anorexic fourteen-year-old girl who hadn't eaten in a week and was about to kill herself with some sharp object. Verily, trolls hold nothing sacred.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
Today's thought, inspired by my nephew: angry/chaotic households produce extremely whiny and annoying toddlers.
Or vice-versa. I'd probably be a lot grumpier if I lived with a whiny, annoying toddler.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
Well, I know for a fact that the household was like that before children.
Today, I decided to manually seal (lick) all of the envelopes I had to send out at work today. This seemed like a good idea at envelope 1.
Not so much by envelope 13.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I'd like classes to get started again. I like the regularity they provide, even if break means I can relax more.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I'd like classes to get started again so that the campus feels alive again. This campus feels like a desert during breaks. It's like an alternate universe.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Well, that, and my friends will have all come back, and it'll be nice to see them.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Last night, I dreamed that I sleepwalked onto the top of a tower. I blame Alex for talking to me about sleepwalking last week.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
From: Kylo Force | Posted: 12/29/2011 5:05:37 PM | #009
This campus feels like a desert during breaks. It's like an alternate universe.
Stony Brook, being something of a commuter school, is like that all weekend every weekend.
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
Really? I know a decent amount of people that dorm there... But they do live within driving distance (<2 hours)...
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
It does seem common for college students to rent a dorm room but go back to their parents' house on weekends. I once had a roommate who did that, if only to escape from me.
My last meeting with my PhD adviser in December was interrupted by the visit of an old undergraduate student of his. She had just finished her first semester at the University of Indiana's law school and regaled us for an hour or so with stories of the law-student experience. Apparently students are expected to practically memorize each assigned case before class, class consisting of random students being interrogated at length about the details of the cases. And at least some classes are graded on a curve, which, combined with the low variance in ability among students admitted to law school, means that tiny differences in performance can spell the difference between A and F, and a way to improve your own grade is to bring down everybody else's by borrowing from the library the books that everybody else needs. Sounds pretty hellish!
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
I was my niece's 1st birthday party today and this kid who can't be more than like 6 or 7 years old said I had cool hair. I considered this carefully and decided that if a kid at that age said I have cool hair, and if kids that age really don't have a well developed social filter yet, this must mean that I actually do have cool hair.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
My grandmother keeps going off on crazy tangents and worrying about them... She kept herself up late last night worrying about whether or not there was a tombstone on her mother's grave (who's been dead well over 20 years). My dad was fairly sure there was, but couldn't give 100% confirmation. This reminds me of the time she was worried that the heat from the sun would make the metal roof of her mobile home get hot enough to cause the rest of the house to combust.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Tumblr is in some ways even worse than Twitter. Any meaningful comments on a given post are invariably lost in a sea of "suchandsuch liked this. chumpstakingdumps liked this. fifteenthtrumpeter liked this. sunupscyther reblogged this. princessbuttercup liked this."
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"As for me, I can neither drum nor trumpet, nor tell jokes, nor fart amusingly at parties, nor play the harp."
Bidets are weird. I don't know how anybody gets used to them.
I haven't seen or heard from one of my best friends in just over a year now. I've had two dreams in the past week where he came back. In the dream I had last night, I remember crying, giving him a hug, and telling him how much I've missed him. These dreams always end the same way... I wake up feeling extremely disappointed.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Why not send him a text Kylo? Can't hurt right?
Today's thought- I've been playing waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy too much Dark Souls....
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
That's the thing, though. I've texted, called, message'd on Facebook... no response. And because his plans were in flux at the last time that I saw him, there's no reliable way for me to just 'go visit' him, either. Based on any of the number of things he had planned, he could either be in his hometown, down in California, overseas in Europe, the Philippines, or God knows where else. He left without really telling anyone what his real intentions were.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
My parents and I went to the Cape May County Zoo today. These big, open enclosures, however much they please the animal-welfare folks, are counterproductive to the purpose of a zoo. The animals tend to get as far from the viewer as possible. When the viewer is albino and forgot to bring binoculars, this is pretty annoying
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2011/12/29/xmen-human-real-life-radiolab
I don't think I understand law. Aren't judges expected to take the intentions of lawmakers into account when interpreting the laws? Whatever the original purpose of taxing dolls specially, it surely didn't have to do with how dolls represent humans.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
That is a really amusing article!
Today, I pitched this idea to my friends as their birthday present to me, because I would have to host it at their apartment (having no place of my own to host events.) They obliged.
I call it "One Night of Honest Conversation." I'm inviting nine of my closest friends to have fancy dessert while we sit in their apartment living room, taking turns answering questions like "Why is your favorite color your favorite color," "What advice would you give 14 year old you? What advice would 14 year old you give present you?" and more personal things like what we feel we've accomplished (or failed at) in the past couple of years. It's a chance for us to get to know each other better and really just sit and enjoy each other's company. I really hope they like this as much as I think I will.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Nine of your closest friends? I don't think I have nine friends of any degree of intimacy. (Whether that says more about you or about me isn't clear.) Although that sounds like a lot more fun to me than a typical birthday party.
Right now, it seems that the chief drama of my life is that I have to decide whether to (a) learn JavaScript and sell my soul so I can run online psychology experiments more quickly and maybe with a bit more control or (b) stick with server-side scripting.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
And now, in a strange twist of fate, I'm using Perl as usual while my dad is learning JavaScript because of this article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2012/01/learn_to_program_make_a_free_weekly_coding_lesson_your_new_year_s_resolution_.html
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I jacked up my leg at dance practice last night (again.) I should stop doing that.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Relevant to Kylo's interests: Is it me, or does the iPhone's "Marimba" sound effect strongly resemble that bit in the beginning of Chill Penguin's theme?
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I don't actually have an iPhone, but I looked up the Marimba tone and I guess if you were listening to it sped up a little bit, it could resemble the beginning of Chill Penguin's theme. But I had to think about it really hard to make that connection.
I've always thought that Hootie and the Blowfish's "Only Wanna Be With You" sounded a lot like Super Mario RPG's "Midas River" theme, but upon listening to it right now to make sure I wasn't crazy, it really doesn't sound like it at all. Oh well.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I've been running an experiment on CE this weekend. I knew GameFAQs was good for something!
(I don't want you guys to participate because this task is too similar to one I posted here before.)
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
If I am ever required in the course of my career to teach people how to use SPSS, I think I'll do it as if I were hosting a cable show called That's Spissy!.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
It's amazing how memorable cartoon imagery is. I last played NeoPets when I was thirteen, but I still notice an occassional Aisha flitting across my consciousness.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Today I had ramen (at a restaurant) for lunch and sushi for dinner. I wasn't even trying to be this Asian today.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I graduated to a smartphone yesterday (iPhone 4S) but I had to manually input all of my contacts from my old phone. Doing so made me appreciate phone numbers.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Yeah, I graduated too recently, but to an iPhone 3GS because it was free. My neck hurt by the time I was done inputting my contacts.
I kinda hate the lack of tactile feedback. I could "type" on my old phone without looking... definitely can't on iPhone.
I don't know anything about decision theory yet, but given that it uses "regret" as a technical term, I'm betting I'll like it.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I taught choreography for the group I dance with for the first time last night. It was a fun experience.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Half an hour ago, as I was walking into a campus cafeteria, an employee walking past me (who didn't appear to be talking to anybody else) said "I'm going to the baño". By the time I managed to blurt a nonplussed "Okay?", he was gone.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I once spoke to a librarian on a plane who thought that the singular of "codices" was "codice".
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Suppose that advancements in theory and computation suddenly made Bayesian statistical methods unambiguously more useful for most practical purposes than their frequentist counterparts. I fear that the statistics cirriculum foisted upon psychology students wouldn't adapt so quickly. It's all too easy to imagine a long period of time during which students were expected to learn t-tests and so on with no expectation of using them at all, the justification being that these are "basic skills" necessary for learning more advanced techniques—just as today, we make children memorize their multiplication tables even though they're all carrying around telephones that can do such computations more quickly and accurately than a human could ever hope to, on the principle that you need to know what six times seven is to prove that Cauchy sequences converge.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
The two things I learned in Organic Chemistry that I think are generally interesting.
1. Root beer is flavored with wintergreen flavoring. I can't untaste this ever since learning it.
2. Generally, the difference between synthetic vanilla and real vanilla is that synthetic vanilla is just the compound which produces the flavor of interest; real vanilla contains impurities from the extraction process.
I've found the second note particularly fascinating, that making real vanilla isn't making "perfect" vanilla, but impure vanilla, that the incidental flavors that get carries along somehow make it "real." I like the idea that perhaps the idea carries over to us, that there is a value to our imperfections, that they may be problematic at times, but ultimately make us more interesting and textured individuals.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Another way to interpret that is that people like what's traditional, even if it's demonstrably inferior to a substitute. The tooltip for xkcd #732 says:
We're also stuck with blurry, juddery, slow-panning 24fps movies forever because (thanks to 60fps home video) people associate high framerates with camcorders and cheap sitcoms, and thus think good framerates look "fake".
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Well, I'm sure it's also more expensive, so they have no real incentive to pull a Steve Jobs and give the customers what's good for them whether they like it or not.
This thing brings new meaning to the phrase "rainbow table".
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/visual-hashing/
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Lotus Notes (an IBM product) has been doing this a long time. I kinda hate it, but maybe just by its association to Lotus software, which all sucks.
The group I dance with recorded one of our most recent practices. It's one of the first times I've actually seen a recording of myself dance since last May. The video has made me extremely self conscious of my poor posture.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Today I learned that Annie Oakley once shot the ashes off a cigarette held by Kaiser Wilhelm II, at his request. If only she'd missed, she could've prevented World War I.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Hmm... I sometimes wonder about quirks of history like that myself, but then wonder if the overall trend of things would have lead to a similar outcome anyway.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
The last time I had a topic that hit 50 posts was probably more than five years ago.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I don't know that I've ever had one.
Also: I'm confused about my wife. For 6.5 months she did not get decent sleep *any* night, because Lily hadn't learned to sleep through the night. About a week ago we taught Lily to sleep through the night and she's done it ever since, bringing Jess a week's worth of nights of full sleep. But Jess has been grumpy all this week and I don't know what gives.
From: The Wikipedia article "The Hardy Boys"
Later, the Hardys no longer have particular friends; they do everything as a group: rescue each other from being tied up, finish each other's sentences, attend the same classes at school despite their age difference, and never argue or disagree with each other. According to Dennis, they "behave precisely as if their bond is romantic"…
Because gay couples never fight, amirite?
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
There are a number of these things in Stony Brook's engineering building. Those jokers.
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8079/futility.jpg
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Having my first dance performance since June tonight. Hopefully I can post some vids.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I've been exploring various crowdsourcing websites today using the following lists:
http://www.ranker.com/list/list-of-the-best-crowdsourcing-websites-and-pay-per-task-sites/cdu827
http://freebiejunkie.blogspot.com/2011/02/are-there-alternatives-to-amazon.html
The chief difference between Mechanical Turk and the rest of the pack is that MTurk prohibits using workers to game online reputational systems (as by Facebook-liking things, writing bogus Amazon reviews, voting for certain choices in polls, etc.), but generally pays workers much less. On Microworkers, by contrast, nearly every posted task is ethically questionable, but minimum wages are enforced such that to run my five-minute experiment, I would've been obliged to offer $1.75 a head. So I went to MTurk and offered 50¢ instead. The results poured in immediately and have been of decent quality so far.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
Originally posted on my blog:
Here’s an interesting social experiment/question. I’ve discussed this with at least a few people in the past. The first person I remember discussing it with was my coworker Rick sometime during my senior year.
The scenario is this. There are about 40,000 students on the UW campus, inclusive of grad/professional students. There are another several thousand staff and faculty.
Most people would be cool with giving someone they knew a dollar and probably not expect anything back (though we probably try to pay our debts back in a timely manner anyway). I wouldn’t hesitate to say that most people would probably be cool giving a stranger a dollar and probably not expect anything back, if it were the right circumstance.
Let’s assume that these things are true. If we were then to ask each and every student for a dollar, how much money would you actually get?
It’s safe to say that you wouldn’t actually get $40,000. I’d say that it’s reasonably doubtful that you’d get even a quarter of that. But what is a reasonable guess as to how much money you would get? Let’s say all of the people you know personally (and reasonably well) chipped in a dollar. That’s not bad. And maybe throw in most of those ‘better acquaintances’ that you have. That’s probably at least a hundred dollars right there, right? Maybe a bit more if your social network reaches a bit farther than the average person’s.
There are some other interesting questions here, too. What if you asked all of the staff and faculty at UW, too? There are a few thousand of those on campus. What if you made it explicitly clear that you were gathering the money for charitable purposes? That might make people more/less willing to give a dollar, too.
Don’t mind me. This is just some of the stuff that I think about. But I think it does raise some interesting possibilities. It sort of reminds me of that guy who started with a paperclip or a pen or something and kept trading things until he got a house. No joke. There have been other stories about people doing similar things until they got a car.
So… let’s start asking strangers for dollars. Maybe something will come out of it!
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Don't forget that lots of seemingly irrelevant details of how you frame your request could also affect how much you get. For example, these guys found that "a door-to-door solicitor for charity was able to increase significantly the frequency of donations while leaving unaffected the size of the donations by adding the sentence 'Even a penny will help' to a standard request for funds".
Cialdini, R. B., & Schroeder, D. A. (1976). Increasing compliance by legitimizing paltry contributions: When even a penny helps. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34, 599–604. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.34.4.599
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
My mom now knows how to operate my Xbox 360 enough to watch her favorite Lord of the Rings and Downtown Abbey (and presumably all of her other) DVDs. I'm proud of her.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
:P http://xkcd.com/1009
Imagine for a moment if there were no privacy whatsoever: we were all omniscient, or we all had infinite-range telepathy that we couldn't turn off. I believe in privacy enough to, for example, delete cookies by default each time I quit Firefox, but I don't think that a world without privacy would be all that bad. What I find scary about assaults on privacy in the real world is partly the asymmetry: the government can read your email but you can't read its email. More importantly, it's the incompleteness of invasions of privacy, the fact that no matter how hard we're scrutinized, it will always be possible for us to hide some things. The possibility of hiding things creates the possibility of social obligations to hide things, and so strangers have a right to be offended if you spontaneously tell them your sexual fantasies about them. These social obligations, though often useful in some respects, may also serve the purpose of maintaining very general illusions, like the idea that every employee of a company likes the company. With no privacy, these illusions would vanish instantly.
I also like to imagine that universal telepathy would quickly turn the human race into a hive-mind bent on achieving mastery over nature with inexorable efficiency. But I guess it could just as easily descend into a perpetual psychic shouting contest.
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"A wise spellweaver always writes in pencil."
I spent today bumping up the Python installations on my lab's computers by two minor versions and puzzling out how to get a menagerie of add-on packages (like PsychoPy) to play nicely with it. If these boxes had been running Linux, I could've done it all in one long command. From the comfort of my home, even. I hate Windows. (Or at least, I hate the fact that it doesn't ship with a good package manager.)
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
Bonus anecdote: I was walking across campus the other day when a squirrel rammed into my shin. By the time I realized what had happened, it had scaled a story up the side of a nearby building.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
Raising money for kids with cancer is tiring work...and muddy...
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
I can hear my landlord shouting over the Super Bowl. I had a dormmate in college who clapped and catcalled at his television while watching some kind of sport, but I didn't know it was a thing people did.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
From my blog today:
The weather has been exceptionally nice for the past few days and I’m taking advantage of it while I can. Today, as I have for most of the rest of this week, I set aside my usual waterproof boots and have worn my Nikes while I’ve been out and about.
Shoes and I have an unusual relationship. I don’t buy them very often. A pair really has to catch my eye if I’m going to buy them, and it has to be just the right time. And yet, at the same time, I am fascinated by shoe shopping and am not afraid to admit that I bob and weave down the aisles at Nordstrom Rack, DSW, and other shoe places I find myself at. It’s like I have the ultimate paradox of both being averse and addicted to shoe shopping all at the same time.
But anyway, these shoes. I got these shoes a bit over a year ago when I was out with my friends Michael and Rina and I definitely needed some new shoes back then. They took me to Nordstrom and they saw these shoes on sale. “You have to have these,” they said. I tried them on, they fit, they looked good, and I snagged them. The rest is history. I wore them to the club once and this dude I didn’t even know complimented me on them. I got compliments on my whole look that night. I wore them a different night to another club for a birthday and people kept stepping on my feet. Which I guess I should have expected. And truthfully, I like wearing these shoes because not only are they comfortable but they also give me nearly an extra half inch in height. Not that I need it in most situations, but it is nice to have.
The thing is, shoes tell stories. They take you places. They take you where you need to go. I did a post several weeks back about the shoes that I use for KASAMA and how they’ve taken me to so many places.
These shoes were special, though. I only wore them for special occasions. Club nights, events when I needed to be taller, times when I thought an extra touch of grey and black suited the rest of my ensemble (and really, when does it not?) But truthfully, I held them up too high. I wasn’t getting as much mileage out of them as I am supposed to be.
I saw a post from my homie Harold about how this guy he saw on the bus freaked out when he got his shoes messed up while he was riding for one reason or another, and he was throwing a hissy fit because of it. A grown man! And granted, I wouldn’t want my shoes to get messed up either, but at the end of the day, there’s an important lesson there.
Shoes take you places. Shoes are meant to be worn. Shoes get dirty, but that’s all right, because you can always clean them up. Shoes will take you on all sorts of adventures, if you let them. Shoes are meant to be worn.
I think I made the conscious decision to start wearing my other pairs of shoes more regularly after reading about Harold’s experience. I have a couple more pairs of shoes than I’d like to admit that I don’t wear often enough. Granted, it’s been rainy and wearing my boots is the optimal choice in those situations, but when the sun comes out, there isn’t any reason that I can’t bust any of my other pairs out. If I want my shoes to tell stories, they have to get out and experience things with me. And that’s what I’m letting them do.
I’m sure I’m making some sneakerheads cry by reading this post, but shoes were made by someone to be worn to go on amazing adventures. Like how toys are meant to be played with, shoes are meant to be walked in. Ran in. Danced in. And in however many months or years when this pair is worn out, I can hopefully look at it and say, ‘Damn, these ones have served me well.’ And honestly, I don’t think there’s anything else I could hope for.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I feel like I'm a bit of a Luddite sometimes...
Obviously, I'm online, on a website built around the appreciation of video games. I use and enjoy technology. But still, part of me resists. I have a feeling that, while it lets us get in contact better with like-minded individuals, it causes closed mindedness. It would seem that people surround themselves with like-minded individuals, creating a reinforcement system for existing beliefs. Plus, it drives me crazy to walk into a lecture hall, and see everyone with their smartphones or laptops, totally absorbed. This IS occasionally me, but I feel pain at the loss of social exchange between the people actually sharing the same physical space.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I worry seeing people using laptops in classrooms, too, but I'm not worried about their social lives; I'm worried that with all that multitasking they'll never be good at anything.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
It's kind of a shame that anthropology got all antipositivist sometime over the course of the twentieth century. Yesterday, I was searching for historical accounts of homosexuality in the pre-Columbian Americas and most of what I found was sociological rubbish about "gendered rhetoric". In my mind, the first time you use the word "gendered" seriously, you jump the shark as an academic.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
I watched The Vow yesterday. I found myself saying to myself, "This is so implausible" through most of the movie.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
I heard the ending to that was horrific, but a good movie otherwise.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
@Kylo That's how I feel about Frasier. It is just so silly and unbelievable, but I love it nonetheless.
If you're interested in what I thought about The Vow, you can read it on my blog. I'd post it directly here but it does have some spoilers so if you're going to watch the movie first, go do that and then read what I have to say.
http://bombsolomon.tumblr.com/
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
They changed the taste of 3 Musketeers. It may well have been an improvement, but still! Heresy!
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
Whaaaaaaaaat!?
I must try one!
This fellow's videos amuse me to no end, though they're relatively unwatched: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP7hA3Qs8cE&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4oTG6pGo2M&feature=plcp&context=C3759657UPOEgsToPDskKYjORXAUxKB-Pd4lO548dt
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
Continuing the theme of post #29, it recently occurred to me that the jingle that plays in Wind Waker after you change the wind direction sounds a little like "Food, Glorious Food".
My parents are now closing on the sale of my childhood home. Just one of its charms is that swinging the door of the medicine cabinet produces a sound so like the first two notes of the Andy Griffith theme that I once mistook it for somebody actually whistling.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
In one class I'm taking this semester, we're all required to submit a thought or question about the reading before each class. I often find myself grasping for something to write. The funny thing is, I remember struggling with the very same problem in first grade, when the sheet on which I recorded my nightly reading had a "Comments" column in which I was required to write… something.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
I downloaded the demo for the new SSX game on Tuesday night but have yet to play more than a couple minutes of it. You should also know that those brief minutes I played it were absolutely glorious.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
New SSX. So undeniably pumped. Played every single one since Tricky.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
Have you played the demo? The first time I played it was like SSX nirvana for me. Descending from 8000 feet doing all sorts of crazy maneuvers while learning the controls while this song was playing in the background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdO85Qf4Poc (Young Blood by The Naked and Famous).
It was literally perfect. It was the perfect SSX experience I've been waiting for ever since playing SSX 3 and being disappointed by On Tour. (I skipped Blur, unfortunately.)
SSX is one of my favorite game series of all time. The demo really sold it for me.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
Oh right...forgot about Blur.
I just want Eddie back. NEEDS MORE EDDIE!!!!
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
You know, a certain weakness of this topic is that whenever we post something new here, we're not making a new topic. Case in point: James has yet to post here.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
On the other hand, we wouldn't necessarily make topics for all of these posts. Still, I feel you have a point.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I actually did think of that downside to this topic, but if you think about it, this is really just an alternative to the Random Post Topic V.xxx that we usually have.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
SSX comes out tomorrow. Too hyped.
Also, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror yesterday and realized that all of the dancing I've been doing this past year has kept me on the correct side of the line between 'merely chubby' and 'actually fat.' Which is a big improvement over how I was a year ago.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
So I just saw a research paper which is supposed to examine the risk-taking behavior of adolescents, except the "adolescents" are all 18 to 20 years old. Have you noticed how childhood keeps getting longer as time goes on?
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
From: Kylo Force | Posted: 2/28/2012 12:28:37 AM | #084
SSX comes out tomorrow. Too hyped.
So many games coming out this year...I need a job...
From: Kodiologist | Posted: 2/28/2012 7:23:26 PM | #085
So I just saw a research paper which is supposed to examine the risk-taking behavior of adolescents, except the "adolescents" are all 18 to 20 years old. Have you noticed how childhood keeps getting longer as time goes on?
A lot of what I've heard is that millennials (essentially our generation/generation Y/whatevs) are considered adolescents until the age of 25 or so.
This is due to research that shows that the brain is still developing until that age...and that we're all spoiled as hell.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
Twenty-five? At that rate they're raising the bar faster than I can age.
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
Praise Jesus, one of my new studies is actually working! It appears that if I show you a color picture of some tasty-looking cupcakes versus a grayscale picture, your subjective ratings of these cupcakes won't change much, and if I let you gamble for the cupcakes, your judgments of the gambles' outcome probabilities won't change much, either—but you are more likely to accept such gambles. Pretty wild!
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Born disabled / [Courage Wolf] / Just playing life on hard mode
Blowing bubbles is a great way to de-stress. Seriously, try it!
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
Today, I was on a New Jersey Transit bus when I overheard someone say "If they offer you lemon Jell-O, politely decline."
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
Today I learned that I have hyperthyroidism, although I don't have many symptoms. I don't know what to make of this.
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
I bought this box of Cheerios that comes with a pen in the shape of one of seven Phantom Menace characters. When I opened the box today, I found I'd gotten the Jar Jar pen. This seems inauspicious.
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
Each time I sign into Facebook once every few months, I get an email saying "Welcome back to Facebook", as if Zuckerberg and company had despaired of ever seeing me again. Facebook is too needy.
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
I got to work at 7:00 AM today. I usually leave my house for work at 7:00AM. I'm hungry.
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http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v129/ukealii50/kylo.jpg - Thanks uke!
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/829/07kyloforce.png - Thanks Diyosa!
"Fun" "game": try using an optical mouse without letting it touch a surface.
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
I'm not quite sure if I exist, so I'm posting here to make sure.
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
Another is trying to move the pointer by running your finger over the sensor.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I've always liked the "Don't use your mouse to do anything" game. I always pick up new keyboard shortcuts that way.
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
From: ShadowSpy | Posted: 3/29/2012 7:33:39 PM | #098
I've always liked the "Don't use your mouse to do anything" game.
I like to play that one, too, but I usually just call it "Emacs".
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On my good days, my Spirit Pokémon is a Meowth. On my bad days, it's a Psyduck.
I wonder if, once I've become an academic for real, I'll ever feel like I have enough time to get everything done that I want to. I sure hope so.
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
An anagram bump? That just seems like cheating.
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"To truly live, one must first be born." ~ Evan [aX]
Paper Mario Social: The Safe Haven of GameFAQs. (Board 2000083)
It wasn't supposed to be one, but I can't spell.
http://designspiration.net/image/113028/
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
Lost my phone last night. Really annoying.
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
I occasionally think about how one could make a mathematical video game. There's no shortage of video games about arithmetic or whatnot, but little about advanced mathematics, particularly about proving theorems as opposed to computing things. I don't know how a real-analysis video game would work, but I know the perfect title for it: Prove It!.
Wikipedia tells me that this name has been used for a TV show about empirical science. I guess Demonstrate It! wasn't catchy enough. But I don't see what's wrong with Falsify It!.
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
I don't think I'm cut out for a 9-5 job. Maybe I should try freelancing, but I don't think I have the discipline to do that either.
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
Hmm, I've thought that it might be fun to have an RPG where mathematical knowledge was more useful without digging up a mechanics guide online somewhere.
This is probably more in line with what currently exists, but I think a shooter in the vein of space invaders might be cool with the following mechanics: every enemy has a number on it. You have three shots. The one increases the number, the other decreases the number. The third breaks the enemy into multiple enemies, based on the prime factorization of that number, so hitting 8 would spawn three 2s, shooting 24 would spawn one 3 and three 2s, and so on. Shooting a 1 with the decrement hit would kill it, and shooting a prime with the factorization shot would kill it.
On another note, my biology class has made me think that a game that uses genetics/evolution as a core mechanic might be fun. I may elaborate on this later but I'm off to band.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
And hitting a 1 with a factorization shot is an instant game-over.
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
Wouldn't the optimum strategy be just to spam the factorization shot unless there's a 1?
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
Not at all. Consider 2^9,689. It would be much wiser to decrement it first, since 2^9,689 - 1 is a Mersenne prime.
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
Sometimes I think people take the notion of "intellectual property" a bit too literally.
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/3830/songdownload.jpg
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
Hilarious blog of video game patent pictures and diagrams out of context, one of the funniest:
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2s7z9pCRm1rsromyo1_1280.jpg
Blog:
http://contextfreepatentart.tumblr.com/
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
It's way way way too easy to lose track of time when there's work I'm reluctant to do, but my girlfriend's over. We just spent the whole day doing nothing, basically.
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
This guy has a different sort of style for an elected official: https://twitter.com/#!/JimFKenney
He literally tweeted, "Ever citizen has a right to tell their elected officials to go fornicate themselves!"
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
My roommate brought back a trash bag filled with bagels two days ago. Guys, I can only eat so many bagels....
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
I have found what may be the slyest way in the English language to say that you don't like something. John K. Kruschke, a Bayesian par excellence, says that "null hypothesis significance testing has less than ambient pressure". ("Hint: When a volume of space has less than ambient pressure, we say colloquially that it…")
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
And now for the discipline-I've-never-heard-of-before of the day:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_science
I came across the term when I saw an article entitled "Bayesian Analysis of Lamb Survival Using Monte Carlo Numerical Integration with Importance Sampling". The authors are from the University of Wisconsin–Madison's Department of Meat and Animal Science, which sounds like a place T-Rex would work if he were an academic.
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
According to http://siteintheworld.com/www.arfer.net , Arfer.net "has an estimated value of $ 3,097 USD". Wow, I never imagined! Any takers?
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
How do you pronounce "1/32"? One thirty-second? One thirty-secondth? One thirty-tooth?
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"Ratio tile, the wish power are together with you."
I pronounce it "One thirty-second"
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Well, there is a new accent of n00b language. It's called: Vet LUEser goes Foreign!-MegaSpy22
Those must be the pants of the gods!-Digitalpython
That.
Also, wonder how that website prices websites.
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Fame is but a slow decay.
-Theodore Tilton
I'd probably stare at that number for a while and then say "One over thirty-two"
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"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."
Apparently I'm terrible at statistics while I'm asleep. Last night I dreamed of reading a comic book in which Mewtwo said to Mew that the number of minutes somebody spent playing kickball could be modeled as a binomial with -4 as the number-of-trials parameter. The minus sign was supposedly because this waiting time (while somebody was playing kickball) was occurring before some other event. I didn't notice anything amiss until I woke up.
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Jordan, quoting Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man to be alone."
Fred: "in genesis noah also put two of every animal on a boat when he was 600."
The world needs an "under construction" GIF in the time-honored "haters gonna hate" style. You know, with the little guy in the hard hat swinging his shovel with swagger enough for a pop star.
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Jordan, quoting Genesis 2:18: "It is not good for man to be alone."
Fred: "in genesis noah also put two of every animal on a boat when he was 600."