May 2012

It’s Not Nice to Make Fun of People’s Clothes

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I picked up a red striped T-shirt on sale at Old Navy. My son saw it and it seemed to me that he chuckled a little bit. “What’s funny?” I asked. “Where’s Waldo?” he said. Read more →

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

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“Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?” Jules had drifted over from across the room. “I’ve never heard that,” he said. “‘Time is a goon’?” “Would you disagree?” Bosco said, a little challengingly. There was a pause. “No,” Jules said. — Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad It’s not easy in a book to communicate the passage of time . . . you can write a book that takes place over a long period of time, but what I mean is to communicate the passage of time so the reader feels it rushing by, which Jennifer Egan has done. Highly recommended! Read more →

Memorial Day

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Hi everybody! It’s me, Lightning! It’s Memorial Day and I just wanted to say don’t forget dogs on Memorial Day because dogs also serve in the armed forces and sometimes they get killed but they also stop a lot of people from getting killed.   — Lightning Read more →

Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion

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In 1978, [Leonard] Koppett revealed a system that he claimed could determine, by the end of January every year, whether the stock market would go up or down in that calendar year. [Koppett’s system] worked for eleven straight years, from 1979 through 1989, got it wrong in 1990, and was correct again every year until 1998. But although Koppett’s predictions were correct for a streak of eighteen out of nineteen years, I feel confident in asserting that his streak involved no skill whatsoever. Why? Because Leonard Koppett was a columnist for Sporting News, and his system was based on the results of the Super Bowl, the championship game of professional football. Whenever the team from the (original) National Football League won, the stock market, he predicted, would rise. Whenever the team from the (original) American Football League won, he predicted the market would go down. Given that information, few people would argue that Koppett was anything but… Read more →

Nicholas Sparks

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I got a job description via email from a recruiter named Nicholas Sparks. Like most jobs I get from recruiters, 1) it was unrelated to my actual experience; and 2) it was nowhere near where I live. I wrote back anyway to say, “I’ve never enjoyed you as a novelist and I’m glad to see you’ve gone into another line of work.” Read more →

From Science Fiction to Everyday Life in Just a Few Years

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This is the world we live in now. It’s one where computers improve so quickly that their capabilities pass from the realm of science fiction into the everyday world not over the course of a human lifetime, or even within the span of a professional’s career, but instead in just a few years. — Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, Race Against The Machine Read more →

Case Study: One Programmer is Better Than 80

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When I was working at the Boeing Company in the mid-1980s, one project with about 80 programmers was at risk of missing a critical deadline. The project was critical to Boeing, and so they moved most of the 80 people off that project and brought in one guy who finished all the coding and delivered the software on time. I didn’t work on that project, and I didn’t know the guy, but I heard the story from someone I trusted, and it struck me as credible. — Steve McConnell, Making Software: What Really Works, and Why We Believe It Read more →

Jim Parsons

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‘Big Bang Theory’s’ Jim Parsons comes out as gay — latimes.com Never heard of him, never seen the show, but do you really expect me to believe that the guy in this photo is gay? Read more →

Derrick Williams

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My boy saw Derrick Williams out and about the other night . . . Williams is from La Mirada (like me!), so it wouldn’t be unusual to spot him in the SoCal area. “You’re Derrick Williams, right?” the boy said. “No, that’s not me,” Williams replied. Williams was cleverly disguised in an Arizona basketball hoodie and Minnesota Timberwolves sweatpants. Oh, and he’s 6-foot-8. Read more →

Another Reason Notre Dame Has a Terrible Football Team

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Officers reported that several people began jumping over a fence when they arrived and, specifically, they observed a group of five men attempting to jump over a fence and ordered them to stop, said Capt. Phil Trent, South Bend police spokesman. — Notre Dame quarterback, linebacker arrested Thursday morning – wsbt.com Police arrive to break up a party, five guys jump over a fence and the only two who get caught are Notre Dame football players. Read more →

Backup Quarterbacks

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Oakland Raiders sign Matt Leinart to back up Carson Palmer — ESPN Deja vu! Here’s a picture of Matt Leinart backing up Carson Palmer 10 years ago. Backing up both of these guys was Matt Cassel (#10), who has so far had a better NFL career than Leinart, despite a college career in which he threw zero touchdown passes and never started a game. I don’t know who the other two kids are. The coaches are current Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian and current Hawaii head coach Norm Chow. Read more →

Junior Seau, 1969-2012

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Junior Seau Dead in Apparent Suicide — ABC News Seau was a legend in San Diego, where he lived and played most of his career. He was also a legendary member of the USC Trojan Family. The number 55 is now synonymous at USC with great Trojan linebackers, but Seau was the player who made the number famous. It has since been worn by Willie McGinest, Chris Claiborne and Keith Rivers and is only assigned at the head coach’s discretion. This picture was taken just a couple of weeks ago at the USC Spring Football game. He doesn’t look like someone ready to end his own life, but you never really know what someone’s life looks like from the inside. R.I.P. Junior Seau #55 Read more →