I can’t imagine anyone ever left a Janis Joplin concert thinking, “I didn’t get my money’s worth. She didn’t put anything into it.” That looks like Cass Elliot mouthing “oh my god” at the end . . .
10 Seconds is Too Long
“Starts working within 10 seconds.” Ten seconds seems like a long time in 2015. It should start working in 10 nanoseconds.
Cyanide works within 10 seconds . . . coincidence?
Learn How to Get a Man From a Woman With 14 Husbands
My first thought was that this woman should write a book. There are a lot of books out there about how to get a man, how to get a husband . . . how does one assess the credibility of the advice?
Normally a woman who’s markedly overweight and doesn’t have a single attractive feature can’t even get a date, let alone alone a husband, and yet this woman’s had 14 of them! How does she do it?! Who wouldn’t like to know her secret? I would!
Paste her grinning mug on the cover — the woman with 14 husbands! — and the book sells itself. Her upcoming jail term should give her plenty of time to write it.
Global Warming is Starting to Affect Me Personally
We have two refrigerators at the office and neither one of them is dispensing any ice this afternoon. The ice dispensers make a noise but no ice is to be had.
Is this due to global warming? I’ve been skeptical about the effects of global warming until today, when it started to affect me personally . . .
The Last Straw
It’s never just one thing. Incidents accumulate over time.
We’d all murder our spouses if we lived long enough . . .
Don’t Go Upstairs
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — When Bridget Winch went to parties at Kappa Delta Rho, she observed one rule: Never go upstairs.
That merits a feature article in the Washington Post? She’s the only woman who’s figured that out? If I had a daughter, I’d like to think she’d have at least that much sense, maybe a little more.
Here’s another idea: go upstairs and blame whatever happens on the fraternity, the fraternity system and our entire American society.
Or if nothing happens, make something up.
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Teaching Computer Science: Combating Procrastination
Students had a project due last week and I got a lot of messages and emails asking for help. Of course, when we handed out the assignment two months ago, we advised students not to wait till the last minute to work on it. Teachers and parents saying “Don’t wait till the last minute” is just an understood part of the process. It’s something that gets said but it’s background noise.
A couple of alternatives occur to me:
- Reverse psychology. Say “My advice is to start as late as possible. Try to do two months of work in the last week, or better yet, the last night.” This seems too easy to see through and therefore unlikely to work.
- Hand out the 20-page spec and tell the students that it’s due tomorrow. WHAT!? YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS! NOBODY COULD DO THIS IN ONE DAY! “You’re right. It’s actually due in two months. But now that we’ve agreed that it can’t be done in one day, I don’t want to see anyone working on it at the last minute.”
Doing What I Wanted To
I’m just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit and it worked. How can they be mad at that?
Teaching Computer Science: The Last Minute
“Reminder that your projects are due tomorrow so don’t wait till the last minute. Oh wait, this is the last minute.”
Deadlines can be fun when they apply to other people . . .
Happy Birthday, Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh was born on this date in 1853. He was poor and virtually unknown throughout his life and after years of anxiety and frequent bouts of mental illness, he died at the age of 37 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
According to his brother, his last words were “The sadness will last forever.” Although he would have said it in Dutch.
You can’t say enough great things about this guy. He’s one of the most renowned painters in the history of the world, one of the most recognizable painters, his work is in all the best art museums. If you want to own a van Gogh, get ready to pay $100 million. That’s for one painting.
His life at the time he was living it must have looked quite pointless to everyone including himself, nothing but suffering and failure. And yet, as it turns out, his life has meant a million times more to the world than anyone could have possibly imagined. So you never know.
The van Gogh self-portrait above is at the Art Institute of Chicago. As it happens, I’ve visited the Art Institute of Chicago . . . one of the things I remember about it is seeing a museum guide with a tour group and the painting they were standing in front of was this:
I couldn’t hear what the guide was saying but usually with works like this it’s some nonsense about challenging contemporary perceptions about art and the process of creation.
There’s some crazy stuff in art museums. Here’s another painting by the same person:
In case you’re thinking “Very funny, that’s the same picture,” it’s not. If you look at them very closely, you can see that they’re not the same. I don’t attribute that to any artistic merit or even intention on the part of the painter, just that if you take two canvases and paint them gray, they’re bound to be less than identical in some way.
The man who painted those gray squares will never go insane or cut off his own ear or shoot himself. Why? Because he couldn’t care less. He takes identical canvases and paints them gray. That’s what he does.
If van Gogh saw some of the stuff that’s hanging in art museums today, he wouldn’t be able to stop throwing up.
Happy Birthday, Vincent!
Why Do I Need Clean Pennies?
Three is Enough
One of the neighbor ladies is over talking to my wife while Lightning and I entertain two of her three daughters, ages 3 and 7.
“I want a dog like Lightning,” the 7-year-old says. “We just have boring fish.”
“What does your mom say about that?” I ask.
“She says having a dog is a lot of work.”
“It is a lot of work.”
“She says the three of us are enough work already.”
Teaching Computer Science: Incentives (or Lack Thereof)
According to this article on TechCrunch, “Every California high school must establish computer science courses as part of its core curriculum.” From the same article: “Most California teachers have little or no training to teach computer science.”
Do you see the problem there?
I’ve been a programmer for many years . . . I’d be glad to teach computer science to students, teachers or anyone who wants to learn it if there were even a modest incentive to do so. Which there isn’t.
One way to measure how much people want something is how much they’re willing to pay for it. There’s no shortage of people talking about teaching programming and computer science, which is free (the talking, that is), but without the incentives ($$$) very little is going to actually happen.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Trains 2, Fitness Experts 0
Two months after fitness expert and reality TV star Greg Plitt was killed by a Metrolink train in California, another personal trainer was struck and killed Tuesday in Georgia by a freight train.
Achilles Williams, 30, a popular Atlanta-area personal trainer, was skipping rope near the train tracks filming a YouTube workout video when he was sideswiped by a speeding freight train, a spokesperson at the Fulton County coroner’s office confirms to PEOPLE.
Carjacking Diversity
Carjacking is like STEM in that it’s a profession in which women are seriously underrepresented so I celebrate this woman as a champion of diversity and inclusiveness.
This Photo of A Guy Tap Dancing in a Pink Floyd Shirt Explains a Lot
A Wall Street Journal article on college students, the weak job market and high debt loads is illustrated by this photo of a guy in a Pink Floyd t-shirt taking a tap dancing class.
The crazy thing is that not only are these kids running up debt and killing their job prospects, they don’t even appear to be having a good time doing it . . .
EppsNet Book Reviews: Hotel World by Ali Smith
Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it’s too late.
Hotel World takes place in and around a hotel in London, hence the title, but Hotel World is also a metaphor for life: people check in and people check out.
It’s about remembering to live, remembering that you won’t live forever . . . it’s about love, not romantic love, but a mother’s love for her daughter, sisters’ love for each other . . . and it’s about how close people come to really understanding one another, which is not very close at all.
Rating: 
With a Little Bit of Luck
A colleague shows me a Venn diagram like this one and asks would it be possible to succeed with only two of the three elements.
I say, “I suppose you could have fun dreaming big and get other people to do all the hard work.”
There are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both. — Kierkegaard