Over the course of an election season, presidential candidates must get their hair cut at least, what, a handful of times. Working backward: American popular opinion is driven by the media. The media is dominated by image. A candidate’s appearance is their primary image. A candidate’s appearance is, briefly, under the complete control of the [...]
Category Archives: Musing
Lies! All lies!
May 26, 2007 – 8:05 am
You must have recognized a moment in your life when you were positioned within easy reach of a compulsive lie. Not a lie for gain. Not a lie for defense. A lie for the sake of lying. A lie for the thrill. A thrill proportional to the size of the lie. I’ve never actually done [...]
Modest Joys: IKEA Shopping Carts
January 16, 2007 – 12:37 am
I usually use (pardon, “borrow”) the yellow bag. I didn’t know about the carts. More specifically, I didn’t know about the finely engineered, high-performance wheels on the carts. These carts are to grocery store carts what Ferraris are to Ugos. These carts are capable, even under the load of curtain, ottoman, dresser organizer, and wooden [...]
Bird Calls…Of Science!
December 6, 2006 – 11:57 pm
Back at UNC, I took a class on information visualization. The subject covers all kinds of interesting questions: How do you categorize data before you choose a way to visualize it? (Is it in two dimensions? Three? Is the data nominal? Ordinal? A ratio?) What are you trying to see in the data? Extremes? Clusters? [...]
Wrong, one thousand!
October 4, 2006 – 10:34 pm
Today on NPR they carried a story about cops using a new kind of laser gun. This technology allows the po-po to use more laser guns. Also, it allows them to give tickets for tailgating. That’s cool, because tailgating sucks. The device measures your transgressions in seconds. The recommended distance in time between cars is [...]