They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. — Andy Warhol
Author Archive: Paul Epps
The World’s Greatest University
It’s move-in weekend at UC Berkeley, the world’s greatest university . . . Saul Perlmutter, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics, is teaching an undergraduate seminar on physics and music this year. How many schools even have Nobel Laureates on the faculty? Of those that do, how many of them teach small classes for freshmen and sophomores? Ivy League schools, with the exception of Harvard, are coasting on their reputations. When’s the last time you heard of an enterpreneur from Dartmouth or Brown or Yale? Stanford is great in engineering and business but limited in other areas. Also, top professors at private schools would rather piss on a spark plug than traffic with undergrads. That said, the University of Southern California football season starts Sept. 1 against Hawaii. The Men of Troy! FIGHT ON FOR OLD ‘SC! OUR MEN FIGHT ON TO VICTORY! Read more →
Welcome to Bakersfield
There’s a bunch of Cub Scouts here at the Taco Bell in Bakersfield. I don’t know . . . aren’t you supposed to take Cub Scouts to the woods so they can cook things over a campfire? I think I could score some hot chicks in Bakersfield. I’m sizing up my competition here — nothing but fat guys with enormous heads. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any hot chicks in Bakersfield — just fat guys, fat women and fat, dopey Cub Scouts. Read more →
As a Man Sows
Our body in Kali Yuga is a field of action: As a man sows, so is his reward. Nothing by empty talk is determined: Anyone swallowing poison must die. Brother! Behold the Creator’s justice: As are a man’s actions, so is his recompense. — Adi Granth Read more →
Aside
Aside
Emma Coats: The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar
Gore Vidal, Lifelong Bachelor
The Economic Times here in Bangalore has a great obituary of Gore Vidal. It includes an anecdote in which Vidal skewers Saul Bellow and his multiple wives, followed by the sentence Never married himself, Gore . . . Probably, like Liberace, just never found the right girl. Read more →
Sandeep Hornblower
Even in an entire city full of motorists honking at one another, our driver this afternoon distinguished himself as the greatest horn blower since Horatio. We were stopped in traffic at red lights, and he’d still sound the horn a couple of times just to stay limbered up . . . Read more →
Aside
When the world says “Give up,” hope whispers “Try it one more time.”
Milton Friedman Would Be 100 Years Old Today
What the market does is to reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby to minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game. The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color-the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit. It is this feature of the market that we refer to when we say that the market provides economic freedom. But this characteristic also has implications that go far beyond the narrowly economic. Political freedom means… Read more →
Riding in Cabs in Bangalore
The cab drivers here are either highly motivated to get you to your destination or completely insane. Or possibly both. “Roads” and “lanes” aren’t well-defined. A lane is any relatively flat piece of ground, paved or unpaved, that you can take possession of and defend with headlight flashing, horn honking and aggressive refusal to yield. Thoughts I’ve had more than once: Is this part of the road? Isn’t that a sidewalk? Read more →
Crossing Streets in Bangalore aka Human Frogger
A photo by Rasidel Slika on Flickr Read more →
Increase Code Coverage by One Percent
Don’t kill yourself striving for 100% coverage of code with automated unit tests. But take a few minutes to increase your coverage by 1%. Most likely, that means going from 0% to 1%. And that’s the biggest improvement of all. — 8 ways to be a better programmer in 6 minutes Read more →
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I learn by going where I have to go. — Theodore Roethke
Aside
ideasspotter: 75 Startup Tools and Apps
MOCA Cookie Crumbles
Ed Ruscha has resigned as a MOCA trustee, as have John Baldessari, Barbara Kruger and Catherine Opie, leaving no artists on the museum’s board. — latimes.com, July 17, 2012 “Art” and “artist” are words that get tossed around pretty lightly. Ruscha‘s work — and the same goes for Baldessari and Kruger — consists of modifying photos and other images, often by writing words on them. It’s like lolcats, minus the occasional wit. Opie is a photographer whose work is less interesting than the average high school yearbook. Yesterday, the image below was posted on the MOCA Facebook page. It’s an actual museum piece called “Earthwork aka Untitled (Dirt).” Yes, it looks like a pile of dirt, but if you click the image to enlarge it, you can see that it’s actually — a pile of dirt! This is risk-taking art, the risk being that the cleaning crew may accidentally sweep… Read more →
Customer Undertone at the Furniture Store
If we spend enough money on home decorations, maybe we’ll finally have a chance to be happy . . . Read more →
The Game Blame Game
My boy is playing NBA 2K12 and points out that my Where’s Waldo shirt looks like the Washington Wizards (nee Bullets) throwback uniforms. “Where’s John Wall-do?” he says. Ha ha. I get my comeback opportunity a few minutes later when his game player passes to a teammate, who scores, but his player doesn’t get credit for an ssist. “HOW CAN THAT BE ANYTHING BUT AN ASSIST FOR ME?!” he shouts in disbelief. “That’s bad programming.” “Oh I doubt that,” I say. “The people who program video games are a lot smarter than the people who play them.” Read more →
Goin’ to Bangalore
I’m spending a couple of weeks in Bangalore at the end of the month. Travel is the most depressing thing in the world, beating out listening to other people talk about their travels. Bangalore has been called the Silicon Valley of Asia. It’s like the Silicon Valley here in California, but with monkeys and malaria. My boss has cautioned me to drink only the bottled water from the hotel, never the bottled water at the office. “They refill the bottles at the office with their own water,” he said. “The hotel will give you two bottles a day, but I tipped the staff a dollar a day and they left extra bottles in my room. That’s a lot of money over there.” I’m seriously thinking about tipping two dollars a day just to see what the heck happens . . . Read more →
Look Out, You Rock ‘n’ Rollers!
My bizness is taking me to Bangalore, India, at the end of the month. I got vaccinated for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, polio, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis. I’m now immune to everything, including your consultations. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbnJo88kuP8] Read more →