“How did you multiply this times 2.5 and get this?” I ask. He looks at the problem for a while. “I multiplied it a different way,” he says. ME: Shouldn’t this answer be 41 instead of 71? HIM: No, Alex. ME: Why are you calling me Alex? HIM: What is “no”? He’s reading a word problem aloud: “Maggie was traveling with her family on the Oregon Trail. The first day, they traveled 11 miles, the second day they traveled 9 miles, and the third day they traveled 14 miles.” Pause. “Now that was a good story!” Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Popstrology
See what song was #1 on your birth date and pretend it’s the theme song for your whole life! Makes as much sense as anything else! Mine is “To Know Him is to Love Him.” Here’s another idea: Go back nine months from your birth date and see what your parents might have been listening to when . . . you know . . . Read more →
Patrick Henry’s Crazy Wife in the Basement
My boy is doing a school report on Patrick Henry. Something I didn’t know about Patrick Henry is that his wife went insane in 1771 and was subsequently kept in a straitjacket in the basement of the family home. Read more →
Negative Milestones
I buy my first pair of reading glasses. My wife almost weeps when she sees them. “You’re getting old,” she says. Read more →
Ontological Tangents
I can’t figure out why it’s so hard to get my kid to take a shower every night. We ask him to take a shower, he leaves the room like he’s going to do it, but he doesn’t do it. Read more →
The Ephemeral Beauty of the World
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Read more →
Dark, Ironic Frost
My son was asked to memorize “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost for a 6th grade assignment: Read more →
Worst Day of the Year
A British psychologist has devised a mathematical formula for computing the most depressing day of the year: Read more →
My Next Career
Somehow at dinner the subject of moving to Texas comes up . . . not a discussion so much as a stream of consciousness monologue by my wife, who has relatives in Texas, and it’s much cheaper to live there than it is here, and so on. “But what would you do for a job?” she asks me. Read more →
Word of the Day
Dopeler effect n : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. Read more →
Parental Guidance
I talked my 11-year-old son and his friend into seeing House of Flying Daggers instead of Meet the Fockers. The title alone — Meet the Fockers — is a tipoff to the level of wit that you’re going to be dealing with. Fockers! Get it? It sounds like a naughty word! HA HA HA HA! Geez, make an effort, will ya? How about House of the Flying Fockers? You meet the Fockers and throw daggers at them. That sounds like a good movie! Read more →
Structured Procrastination
I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. — John Perry Read more →
Do It Yourself
A fellow parent at hockey practice asks me, “Does your son lace up his own skates?” Read more →
A USC Man Looks at UCLA Football
A crazy thing happened after this year’s USC-UCLA football game . . . because the Bruins were able to keep the score close for the first time in years, UCLA coach Karl Dorrell was rewarded with a two-year contract extension. Read more →
A Pretty Good One-Sentence Analysis of Blogs
True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue. — Randell Beck Read more →
Use the Database
It seems like a shame to have to even talk about this, but I really have found myself having way too many discussions over the years about how to avoid the use of relational databases. Today we were talking about replacing database reads and writes in a system design with file system access, XML, just floating the data around in memory, or some combination of the above. “What time of day will this system be running?” the DBA asked. “During business hours.” That’s right! We’re actually planning to do a database write in the middle of the workday! Why the thought of doing this freaks people out to the degree that it does is something I’ve never been able to figure out, but there’s an idea that persists among the less educated that read-only production access during the business day will max out an RDBMS. Look . . . a… Read more →
Christmas at the Office
I’m in receipt of the following “Secret Santa” email: Please come by my desk to pick a name. Then go buy (and wrap) a new toy that represents that person. Humor is the key here! Get creative and have fun! We’ll open the toys, have a laugh with each recipient, and then donate the toys to charity. Translation: Buy something that confirms the recipient’s worst suspicions about what people really think of him (or her), and then we’ll all go home and hang ourselves. Read more →
I Don’t Feel Good
James Brown has prostate cancer — CNN.com Read more →
Something I Learned Today
There’s a good Chinese restaurant in Orange called Yen Ching. The last four digits of the phone number are 3300. If you make a mistake and dial 3000, you’ll get Children’s Hospital, also in Orange, but they won’t take a dinner reservation. Read more →
Today’s Text
‘There are forces, Lucius, infinitely more powerful than reason and science.’ ‘Which?’ ‘Ignorance and madness.’ — Anatole France, Thaïs Read more →