![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
All classes have been peeked at, now.
Jan. 9th, 2007 12:04 amWent and bought the rest of my books today - two books, > $100 U.S. For perspective, my books from Amazon arrived in the mail today - 6 books, > $100 U.S. The 6 book set cost about $5 U.S. more than the two books. Even better, the cost I got at the bookstore was the price I would have paid for them on Amazon. I thought, just for a moment, that I might have another good semester when it came to book costs. Luckily, barring unforeseen circumstances, this will be the last time I complain about textbook costs. Additionally, I saw the last of my classes, this one in the School of Social Work. It looks like it’ll be a good class, even if I’m not going to be totally up on acronyms and terminology. This semester looks manageable. Let’s hope it turns out to be.
Neo-Luddite jewelry. Re-purposing old computer keys, combining them with some artistic materials and creating jewelry. Almost all of them are puns in some manner, and some of them might be a little lewd when interpreted correctly.
Monolithic Sketchbook would like to have some progress made on user agents, please. Personalized agents that are intelligent enough to know when you’re sick of Daleks and llamas but still want to read the latest Dr. Who summary, and can filter out opinions about browser preferences or various Internet culture war materials. If such an agent were available for the Web, I think we’d all have it set to tune out all the advertisements at the very least. Incarnations of agents under development may be using Wikipedia to help make sense of messages and articles. At the very least, they should be able to defend themselves or disinfect a computer, so that it doesn’t join the growing legions of botnet zombies (NYTimes).
Israel has plans to nuke Iran's nuclear capabilities? I’m looking a bit askance at this particular article - someone give me some perspective on the authenticity of source and likelihood of happening, please?
Something also potentially dastardly - Public Interest Watch sicced the IRS on Greenpeace. This would not normally appear weird, other than I doubt Greenpeace engages in illegal activities tax-wise. The weird is that PIW apparently receives good money from ExxonMobil, which, if you recall from yesterday, is apparently actively engaged in trying to discredit global warming as a potential threat. That makes things look much more suspicious. There’s a link to the Wall Street Journal from that page, and there’s probably a BugMeNot you can use for that, as well, to check the source documents.
Yesterday, there was some skewering of big corporations and governments. That’s not to say that individuals are safe from mockery. Especially when they make it really easy to make fun of them. The Concourse of Hypocrisy puts forward big, gas-guzzling cars with bumper stickers that don’t exactly mesh. Since they’re touring Berkeley, though, I suppose they are singling out a populace’s stereotypical attitude to make fun of. Still, have a look.
Taking a poke at the media as well, perhaps, Mousemusings says, Democrats get sworn in; What Happens Next? Suddenly, there’s articles in the news about car manufacturers rolling out electric vehicles (Wired has a blurb on GM’s offering, the Volt), Medicare isn’t costing as much as expected, there were more jobs and higher wages in December, and crude oil prices are going down, so gas prices should go down, too. As if the media was telling the new Congressional Democrats, “No, really! You don’t have to crack down on the automakers, the pharmaceuticals, big business, or the oil industry! They’re doing what you want themselves!” Put this way, I think I can say in homage to Liberal Eagle, “Liberal media, my tailscales.”
Happiness 101 - the course in positive psychology. (NYTimes) Might be pretty touchy-feely, but it’s trying to show off that people thinking positive about themselves and working to make their lives better does have positive effects. (Someone pointing out with a big flashing neon sign that I should take this advice to heart would not be out of line.)
Using art to make... interesting things, I think, suits the next sequence. Crochet stitches can create models of hyperbolic space. From there, extraordinary, extreme origami designs. Making bugs in great detail, just by folding. And even more than that. If folding and tessellations are your thing, you’ll probably appreciate Origami Tessellations, a blog about both the repeating pattern and the art of using those repeating patterns to create complex designs.
If paper is not your thing, however, perhaps you’d like to try your hand at creating art using spandex costuming? I don’t think a lot of people believe they have the figure to be able to pull something like that off. And some of those colors and designs are brighter than the neon paper I have to blink twice at when I see.
Something more useful, as well as novel, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blacktigr. The American Dialect Society's Word Of The Year is "plutoed", which is slang of “to be demoted” (PDF document). There are some other good slang terms in the document. The Most Useful is “climate canary” - an organism that when it has poor health is a signifier of bigger problems to come, which beat out “data Valdez” - an accidental release of a large quantity of data, and “Boomeritis” - injuries of Baby Boomers caused by their age (or lack of recognition of that age.) There’s even more stuff available in the PDF. I guess there are people looking out for the neologisms and new purposes that words are being put to.
Something that’s just neat - an R2D2 projector. Has a DVD player, iPod dock, and a remote that hides inside a replica of the Millenium Falcon. Said remote can also be used to drive the droid into the perfect projection place. As far as we know, though, there’s no “Help me Obi-Wan” holographic projections embedded in the droid. Not to say that someone enterprising won’t make one...
Finally, completing a pretty big implosion in the Big Ten, the University of Florida won the BCS championship game tonight. What will likely follow is a round of “See! See! We told you we belonged in this game!” from Florida fans, which will be endured with grace and class. With the way that both Michigan and Ohio State performed, well, I’m pretty sure Jim wishes he were playing Lloyd for the championship now. We still believe that the B(c)S system is far too susceptible to influences that it should resist, and that it is a basically flawed system because it can’t really create an objective comparison to make accurate rankings, but that’s what we’ll have to deal with. I don’t really have to care about it, anyway - I’ve been out of the band for two years now. But, like most of the fans of my university, I pay attention to some really useless and tiny things.
Anyway, going to bed and trying to get rid of the last vestiges of this cold. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a haircut (ya bum.)
Addendum: As a thought, random. XX v. XY-wise, through my graduate school experience, I’m freaking outnumbered in my classes. In classes that had cross-specialization appeal, the sexes balanced or came close, as far as I recall. In the library-specific courses, and in my school of social work course, I can count the number of guys in the class on one hand. At least, as far as I recall. So, as crass as this sounds, if you’re looking to pick up chicks at college, guys, consider social work or library science. Not that you’ll necessarily get anywhere with any of the women there, but there will be plenty for you to choose from. (Assuming they aren’t already married, engaged, or steadily seeing someone when they get into the school, which a significant number of them are.) This has been a rather random announcement.
Neo-Luddite jewelry. Re-purposing old computer keys, combining them with some artistic materials and creating jewelry. Almost all of them are puns in some manner, and some of them might be a little lewd when interpreted correctly.
Monolithic Sketchbook would like to have some progress made on user agents, please. Personalized agents that are intelligent enough to know when you’re sick of Daleks and llamas but still want to read the latest Dr. Who summary, and can filter out opinions about browser preferences or various Internet culture war materials. If such an agent were available for the Web, I think we’d all have it set to tune out all the advertisements at the very least. Incarnations of agents under development may be using Wikipedia to help make sense of messages and articles. At the very least, they should be able to defend themselves or disinfect a computer, so that it doesn’t join the growing legions of botnet zombies (NYTimes).
Israel has plans to nuke Iran's nuclear capabilities? I’m looking a bit askance at this particular article - someone give me some perspective on the authenticity of source and likelihood of happening, please?
Something also potentially dastardly - Public Interest Watch sicced the IRS on Greenpeace. This would not normally appear weird, other than I doubt Greenpeace engages in illegal activities tax-wise. The weird is that PIW apparently receives good money from ExxonMobil, which, if you recall from yesterday, is apparently actively engaged in trying to discredit global warming as a potential threat. That makes things look much more suspicious. There’s a link to the Wall Street Journal from that page, and there’s probably a BugMeNot you can use for that, as well, to check the source documents.
Yesterday, there was some skewering of big corporations and governments. That’s not to say that individuals are safe from mockery. Especially when they make it really easy to make fun of them. The Concourse of Hypocrisy puts forward big, gas-guzzling cars with bumper stickers that don’t exactly mesh. Since they’re touring Berkeley, though, I suppose they are singling out a populace’s stereotypical attitude to make fun of. Still, have a look.
Taking a poke at the media as well, perhaps, Mousemusings says, Democrats get sworn in; What Happens Next? Suddenly, there’s articles in the news about car manufacturers rolling out electric vehicles (Wired has a blurb on GM’s offering, the Volt), Medicare isn’t costing as much as expected, there were more jobs and higher wages in December, and crude oil prices are going down, so gas prices should go down, too. As if the media was telling the new Congressional Democrats, “No, really! You don’t have to crack down on the automakers, the pharmaceuticals, big business, or the oil industry! They’re doing what you want themselves!” Put this way, I think I can say in homage to Liberal Eagle, “Liberal media, my tailscales.”
Happiness 101 - the course in positive psychology. (NYTimes) Might be pretty touchy-feely, but it’s trying to show off that people thinking positive about themselves and working to make their lives better does have positive effects. (Someone pointing out with a big flashing neon sign that I should take this advice to heart would not be out of line.)
Using art to make... interesting things, I think, suits the next sequence. Crochet stitches can create models of hyperbolic space. From there, extraordinary, extreme origami designs. Making bugs in great detail, just by folding. And even more than that. If folding and tessellations are your thing, you’ll probably appreciate Origami Tessellations, a blog about both the repeating pattern and the art of using those repeating patterns to create complex designs.
If paper is not your thing, however, perhaps you’d like to try your hand at creating art using spandex costuming? I don’t think a lot of people believe they have the figure to be able to pull something like that off. And some of those colors and designs are brighter than the neon paper I have to blink twice at when I see.
Something more useful, as well as novel, thanks to
blacktigr. The American Dialect Society's Word Of The Year is "plutoed", which is slang of “to be demoted” (PDF document). There are some other good slang terms in the document. The Most Useful is “climate canary” - an organism that when it has poor health is a signifier of bigger problems to come, which beat out “data Valdez” - an accidental release of a large quantity of data, and “Boomeritis” - injuries of Baby Boomers caused by their age (or lack of recognition of that age.) There’s even more stuff available in the PDF. I guess there are people looking out for the neologisms and new purposes that words are being put to.Something that’s just neat - an R2D2 projector. Has a DVD player, iPod dock, and a remote that hides inside a replica of the Millenium Falcon. Said remote can also be used to drive the droid into the perfect projection place. As far as we know, though, there’s no “Help me Obi-Wan” holographic projections embedded in the droid. Not to say that someone enterprising won’t make one...
Finally, completing a pretty big implosion in the Big Ten, the University of Florida won the BCS championship game tonight. What will likely follow is a round of “See! See! We told you we belonged in this game!” from Florida fans, which will be endured with grace and class. With the way that both Michigan and Ohio State performed, well, I’m pretty sure Jim wishes he were playing Lloyd for the championship now. We still believe that the B(c)S system is far too susceptible to influences that it should resist, and that it is a basically flawed system because it can’t really create an objective comparison to make accurate rankings, but that’s what we’ll have to deal with. I don’t really have to care about it, anyway - I’ve been out of the band for two years now. But, like most of the fans of my university, I pay attention to some really useless and tiny things.
Anyway, going to bed and trying to get rid of the last vestiges of this cold. Maybe tomorrow I’ll get a haircut (ya bum.)
Addendum: As a thought, random. XX v. XY-wise, through my graduate school experience, I’m freaking outnumbered in my classes. In classes that had cross-specialization appeal, the sexes balanced or came close, as far as I recall. In the library-specific courses, and in my school of social work course, I can count the number of guys in the class on one hand. At least, as far as I recall. So, as crass as this sounds, if you’re looking to pick up chicks at college, guys, consider social work or library science. Not that you’ll necessarily get anywhere with any of the women there, but there will be plenty for you to choose from. (Assuming they aren’t already married, engaged, or steadily seeing someone when they get into the school, which a significant number of them are.) This has been a rather random announcement.
