Sunday, March 22, 2009

Math is hard

2 + 2 = 4

Trivia Question: What is the longest path for the theorem 2 + 2 = 4?

Trivia Answer: A longest path back to an axiom from 2 + 2 = 4 is 150 layers deep! By following it you will encounter a broad range of interesting and important set theory results along the way. You can follow them by drilling down this path. Or you can start at the bottom and work your way up, watching mathematics unfold from its axioms.


have fun!

Saturday, March 21, 2009

virginity taken

I was thinking the other day, riding my bike down St. Charles, that I could go through life without getting hit by a car. But I didn't knock on wood.

I was scolding a friend last night, that driving drunk was dangerous to others. He was stubborn, so I took him for a walk and then left him at the bar.

I guess karma caught up with me.

Luckily I'm a ninja; I walked away mostly unscathed.

Or wait, I'm not a ninja.

So I'm just really fucking lucky.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Self Assessments

To predict what will make you happy, ask a stranger rather than guessing yourself

I don't find this surprising. I think Hume is right on this: we gain far more data from experiencing others than we do from experiencing ourselves. We quickly learn from experiencing our own minds, that it moves between tenuous ideas quickly and haphazardly. Our minds also tend to have too much distracting noise. Thus, it is no surprise that others can predict our emotional responses better than we ourselves can. They can more readily observe the phenomenal cues.

Time and again, psychological studies have found that we overestimate how happy we will be after winning a prize, starting a new relationship or taking revenge against those who have wronged us. We also overrate our disappointment at bad test results, disability or failure to progress at work. Try as we might, we consistently fail to forecast our own emotional reactions, and we even fail to accurately remember our past experiences to be used as guides.


On the other hand, I'm curious how the researchers were able to avoid the phenomena of being primed for a particular response. Hearing that a particular response is appropriate to a situation ought to prepare us to experience that situation in that way.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Fired for not shooting!?

NOPD officer fired for cowardice after failing to shoot at gunman

This is the most outrageous thing I've read in a while. What the fuck is wrong with our police state? Officers already have enough pressure to shoot first, ask questions later. Now we're telling them that if they don't, they'll be fired. These brave men and women are put into dangerous situations every day. So when they do fire their weapons, we - for the most part - look away and honor their decisions. But we expect that these are not simple decisions. We expect that officers have the interest of the community in mind. We expect that they too believe that people are innocent until tried before their peers.

Citizens need to take up an investigation of those overzealous officers who are a part of this investigation.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Cultural crash

Saddening, really.
The cultural crash should have been a tip-off to the economic crash to come. Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh, money managers whose alleged $667 million fraud looted the endowments at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon, were fond of collecting Steiff stuffed animals, including an $80,000 teddy bear. Sir Robert Allen Stanford — a Texan who purchased that “Sir” by greasing palms in Antigua — poured some of his alleged $8 billion in ill-gotten gains into a castle, complete with moat, man-made cliff and pub. He later demolished it, no doubt out of boredom.


But how do we recognize cultural crashes?

Saturday, March 07, 2009

Profoundly saddened

by Idols, Friends, and Characters.

Which just goes to show that Philosophers don't live the good life, and the base make life good.