“My son shot 64% last night?! THAT IS A GRADE OF D! I AM ASHAMED!” — Jeremy Lin‘s mom
Aside
It seems my Emotional IQ is a big number with a minus sign in front of it . . .
Financial Aid Follies
The FAFSA asks if, since July 1, 2011, the student has been homeless or “at risk of becoming homeless.”
Isn’t everyone at some non-zero risk of becoming homeless?
I’m going to say “yes” and see what happens . . .
Culture Hacking, Parts 1 and 2
Aside
I accidentally jabbed the dog’s allergy injection into my kneecap. Miracle elixir or fatal mistake?
Stay tuned . . .
Love is Fleeting
I recently bought a collection of short novels by Marguerite Duras from my favorite used book store. Inside the front cover is this inscription:
To M—,
Because her work influences me so much, and you inspire me so much. Please read and think about me!!
Love Always,
G—
P.S. Merry Xmas XOXO
I bought the book for $3.95, so M—- couldn’t have gotten more than a buck, maybe two, for unloading it.
Crosstown Cup: USC 8, UCLA 3
The Crosstown Cup was on the line Saturday night. The USC and UCLA hockey teams faced off at Anaheim Ice and the Trojans dominated pretty much as I expected.
It was also Senior Night — the last game of the season.
One of the Trojans players is graduating with a doctorate in education, one kid is getting an MBA and two kids are graduating with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.
As scholar-athletes, they’re pretty darn good scholars.
As athletes . . . let’s say that they were somewhat less good than my kid’s 18-and-under roller team from last season. Speed, puck control, rink awareness — all limited at best.
They were a lot better than UCLA though.
The Victory Bell was in attendance. Something I didn’t know is that the Victory Bell is really loud if you’re right next to it. And by “right next to it,” I mean we were 25 feet away and it was deafening.
The fake ID market seems to be booming in Southern California. A lot of underage-looking kids were enjoying a beer at the game.
My wife asked one underage-looking couple, “How do you get beer? You don’t look old enough.”
“Um . . . there is a way to do it,” the girl replied, without providing any further details.
Dilbert: Ignorance is Underrated
The Secret of Getting Ahead
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? — Captain Ahab
Reading Emily Dickinson
I’ll read one [Emily Dickinson] poem every few months — and if it’s one of those baffling ones, that’s all it takes to humble me into putting reason back in the tool box, and sitting still until a more appropriate tool presents itself.
Aside
My margarita saw its shadow. You know what that means? Six more margaritas . . .
Overheard
Which is More Valuable: Collaboration or Competence?
The title of this post makes a good interview question. Usually, the candidate will say something to the effect of “they’re both valuable” to avoid the possibility of slipping up and choosing the one that the interviewer believes is less valuable.
Let’s say we need to get a picture painted. We could say, “Picasso — you’re our best guy in this area. We’d like you to paint the picture for us.”
Or we could say, “Picasso — work with the steering committee to get that picture painted.”
You could make a case for either approach, but you can’t do both. So which is more valuable?
Personally, I think collaboration is overrated. It leads to the knowledge of experts and novices being given equal weight.
There’s a reason why pilots don’t invite passengers into the cockpit to get their opinions on how to fly the plane . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Aside
I’m always glad to find that something everyone says is good is really not that good . . .
Famous Last Words
The idea of last words is funny to me, because the whole notion of “last words” suggests they matter. Which they don’t, of course, but this hope we carry that there will be some wisdom or some insight at the last moment, other than “Oh, fuck it, fuck this fucking shit” is so sadly human, I just love it.
Our lives improve only when we take chances and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves. — Walter Anderson
Cat and Dog
Underrepresented Minorities in the UC
The University of California is prohibited by law from considering race in the admissions process, but they are allowed to identify certain ethnic groups as “underrepresented minorities.”
Here are some freshman enrollment numbers at UC Berkeley for Fall 2011. The first four groups on the list are considered underrepresented; the others aren’t.
| Ethnicity | 2011 Fall |
|---|---|
| African American/Black | 130 |
| Mexican American/Chicano | 325 |
| Other Hispanic/Latino | 150 |
| Native American/Alaskan Native | 33 |
| Pacific Islander | 11 |
| Chinese | 936 |
| Filipino | 108 |
| Japanese | 68 |
| Korean | 250 |
| Other Asian | 45 |
| South Asian | 324 |
| Vietnamese | 142 |
“Keep it Simple,” Nobel Prize Winner Advises
I soon was taught that [Linus] Pauling’s accomplishment was a product of common sense, not the result of complicated mathematical reasoning. Equations occasionally crept into his argument, but in most cases words would have sufficed. The key to Linus’ success was his reliance on the simple laws of structural chemistry. The \(\alpha\)-helix had not been found by only staring at X-ray pictures; the essential trick, instead, was to ask which atoms like to sit next to each other. In place of pencil and paper, the main working tools were a set of molecular models superficially resembling the toys of preschool children.
We could thus see no reason why we should not solve DNA in the same way. All we had to do was to construct a set of molecular models and begin to play — with luck, the structure would be a helix. Any other type of configuration would be much more complicated. Worrying about complications before ruling out the possibility that the answer was simple would have been damned foolishness. Pauling never got anywhere by seeking out messes.