Originally uploaded by RM Porangaba
Originally uploaded by pugphotos
Originally uploaded by RM Porangaba
Twitter: 2009-11-27
- Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats: http://bit.ly/7SpXBU #
Dogs Are Smarter Than Cats
My dad is of the opinion that cats are “smarter” than dogs. Not coincidentally, he and my mom own a couple of cats, one of which was sitting next to his chair at Thanksgiving dinner.
Dad decided to share some turkey with the cat. He stood up with a piece of turkey, showed it to the cat, than walked out to the kitchen and dropped it in the cat’s food dish. When he returned to his chair, the cat was still sitting there. Never moved.
“That is one stupid cat,” I said.
“Well, he’s three-quarters blind,” my dad said, although he didn’t say how he could possibly know that.
“If my dog was here, he would have jumped up and eaten your whole dinner the second you left the room.”
Thanksgiving Memories
My dad’s holding a bottle of wine as he says, “Who wants straws?”
“Are you asking me,” I say, “if I want to drink wine through a straw?”
As it turns out, what he actually said was “Who wants Shiraz?”
Vanity Fair
Reading a few pages of Vanity Fair — the book, not the magazine — before retiring for the evening . . . I say to my wife, “Man, this Thackeray guy is really funny.”
“Funnier than you?” she asks.
“He must be.”
“Why?”
“Well, this book is almost 200 years old and people are still reading it.”
“Imagine at the time he wrote it,” she says. “People probably laughed till they choked.”
“Exactly.”
Are Nash Equilibriums Killing Agile Initiatives?
If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing his or her strategy while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitute a Nash equilibrium.
A system may have many possible Nash equilibriums. There is no guarantee that a Nash equilibrium is optimal for the system as a whole. Most are not. However, it is often very difficult to move from one Nash equilibrium to another. To do it successfully, all players must be made aware that a better state is attainable and they must trust each other to change.
Nash equilibriums are named after John F. Nash Jr., whose life was depicted in the movie A Beautiful Mind.
Climate Comedy
Q: How many climate scientists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. There’s a consensus that it’s going to change, so they’ve decided to keep us in the dark.
Résumé Tips: Attention to Detail
I read this today on an actual résumé:
- Superior written and communication skills and detail to attention
Don’t do that.
Want a Date? Consider Becoming an Atheist
OkCupid.com analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on their online dating site to see how certain keywords and phrases affected reply rates. The results could be considered a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online.
Thinking of mentioning religion? The graph below shows reply rates of messages containing the listed keywords, plotted against the average reply rate of 32%.
Obama in China
Obama’s strongest comments during the town hall were directed at China’s Internet controls.
“I’m a big supporter of non-censorship,” Obama said. . . .
Chinese bloggers who saw it were grateful that he addressed censorship, but many zeroed in on what they considered Obama’s waffling language.
“Learn English from Obama: Instead of saying ‘I want to eat,’ say ‘I am a big supporter of non-hunger,'” Wang Pei, a writer based in eastern China’s Hangzhou, twittered on Tuesday.
Suck it Up, Liver Cancer Patients!
When the government runs healthcare . . .
Liver cancer sufferers are being condemned to an early death by being denied a new drug on the Health Service, campaigners warn. They criticised draft guidance that will effectively ban the drug sorafenib — which is routinely used in every other country where it is licensed. Trials show the drug, which costs £36,000 [$60,000] a year, can increase survival by around six months for patients who have run out of options.
The Government’s rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) said the overall cost was “simply too high” to justify the “benefit to patients.”
Your Face is Your Fortune
OkCupid’s analysis of how your looks affect your online dating results is chock full of interesting insights. The one that really jumped out at me is that while men’s rating of women’s looks follows a normal distribution — some low, some high, most in the middle — women rate 80% of men as worse-looking than average, but then go ahead and date them anyway.
Diversity in Practice
This is how “diversity” works in practice: Intellectual contention is drowned out in a sea of emotion, much of it phony. Members of designated victim groups respond to a serious argument with “pain” and “shock” and accusations of “hate,” and university administrators make a show of pretending to care.
Twitter: 2009-11-19
- Your Looks and Your Inbox « OkCupid http://okcupid.com/z/bf2 #
- RT @TelegraphNews Women 'should bare 40 per cent of their bodies to attract men' http://bit.ly/RGtkn #
How to Deal With a Bully
A friend’s Facebook post about bullies in school reminded me of when I was 10 or 11 and the neighborhood bully was menacing a junior high band nerd. All of a sudden, the band nerd hauled off and socked him right in the face and the bully ran home crying.
What an impression that made on me! Of course I’m not advocating socking bullies in the face . . . no wait, I guess I am . . .
Homework Follies
Worked some physics problems with my boy last night . . . the subject at hand was torque, which his textbook expresses in units of mN.
“Back in my day, we used to measure torque in foot-pounds,” I said. “What’s mN? Millinewtons?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess so.”
“OK, we’re off to a great start!”
Bad Timing
A co-worker walks into the break room just as I clumsily drop something on the floor. That’s embarrassing.
“Next time, try to walk in right when I do something good,” I say. “Okay,” she says.
Snakes on a Plane
According to The Book of Odds:
- The odds an adult is afraid of flying are 1 in 5.56.
- The odds an adult is afraid of snakes are 1 in 1.96.
Twitter: 2009-11-13
- Notes on Strategy from the Harvard Business School: http://bit.ly/1jTVWO #
- The fastest way to improve your interface is to improve your copy-writing. With examples: http://bit.ly/daUqF #
Twitter: 2009-11-12
- RT @mashable Bill Gates’ Plan for Fixing the World http://bit.ly/4ABw03 #
- RT @SarahKSilverman: Sometimes when I'm by myself I say out loud, "BarTHelona" & giggle at that lispy accent they have. ah shit, I have fun. #
- RT @capricecrane: They say a lie gets around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Why the truth is pantsless, no one ever says. #
- User Story Mapping: modeling user stories for effective understanding of your system and planning incremental releases: http://bit.ly/1LQ17h #
- If my office gets one degree colder I'm going home… #