I love you!

If you are the kind of person who likes to hear that somebody loves you, there are a number of things that you can say to elicit that comment from another person. Here's what's worked for me.

- You don't have to type up your problem sets. Hand-written solutions are just fine.
- There is no problem set due next week.
- Everyone is going to get a 10/10 on this assignment, but you still have to hand it in.
- You can work in groups of various sizes, as long as the size doesn't exceed n, where 2n = the size of the class.
- The answer is 233.3.
- I have it on good authority that this exact problem will be on your midterm.

I should take this more seriously.

Somebody contacted me about publishing a book. He seemed totally legit. We are even going to meet for lunch (free food, yay). Anyway, he said that my stuff is fabulous (just fabulous) and that I should write some more along the lines of the Russian Party and the Cancel Cable articles. Now, this seemed like a completely asinine idea. And I told him so. He thought that was charming, and told me to write a first chapter or an intro sort of thing. So I did. Because, you know, I have papers to grade and problem sets to solve, and, well, I have all this coffee here. So this is what I sent him:

I am writing this book, primarily, to impress a man. The magnificence of this feat can be truly appreciated if you understand that the man I have in mind happens to be the smartest man in the Universe, and is not easily impressed. I don't expect him to be particularly astonished with the content of this volume, but merely with the incredible achievement of getting something so obviously mediocre published and sold.

I am also writing this book to make enough money to buy a three-bedroom, 1600 square foot, single family town-house in the Bay Ridge area of Brooklyn. Bay Ridge is a lovely neighborhood, which has enough Starbucks cafes to be ridiculously overpriced, but not enough independent anti-Starbucks coffee establishments to be considered trendy. At this time, such a house, in a relatively inhabitable condition, goes for anywhere between 700,000 to 1.5 million dollars. American dollars, that is. Writing, while tedious and unpleasant, seems to be a more expedient course of action than waiting for the New York real estate bubble to burst. By the way, you may be interested to know that this is precisely what Michel de Montaigne did in the sixteenth century, when real estate prices in the Bordeaux region of France were also exorbitantly high, due to an influx of Renaissance hipsters who were priced out of the nearby Bergerac locality.

Your enjoyment, dear reader, is only tertiary on my list of motives. I could've lied, you see, and started off by telling you that this little book of irreverence and irrelevance, and other such words, was written with the explicit purpose of making you happy. It was not, and I'd like for this to serve as the point where I set a precedence for total honesty. If this book makes you giggle, or smile, or go to sleep easily, all the better. But if it doesn't, I won't complain either, as long as the above two points are satisfied.

I can't say with absolute certainty what this book is, but I can venture to relay what it's not. It's not an epic, it's not a novel, it's not important. It is comprised of a set of self-indulgent stream of consciousness essays (more accurately, posts, but essays sounds at least a bit more literary) that I have written over the course of approximately one year, and published on a blog, which is an online journal, for those of you who are of my grandparents' generation. These were written mostly as an elaborate inside joke between myself and the eight people who find me funny, or cute, or both. It also contains some bits which have never been published anywhere before. Because, after all, trying to make 700,000 to 1.5 million American dollars by selling something that is already easily available for free seemed like an inherently bad business plan.

It would also be prudent to make it clear that I am not going to try to convince you of anything. People are always accusing me of trying to convince them of things, which I am not. My ambitions are puny and self-centered. If I ever make enough money to get by without having to go to work, I will spend a great deal of time thinking of something important enough to convince you of. And when I finally come up with something, I will publish a nice, long, highly acclaimed book, at the end of which, you will most certainly be convinced. Excruciatingly convinced.

Don't get me wrong. It would be absolutely fantastic to live in a world of just politicians, outstanding free healthcare, and impeccable educational equity. A world where everyone is attractive, intelligent, funny, and a Mets fan. And I would love to do my part to bring us all closer to that ideal. But, I'm just a graduate student with a day job and long commute. So, please cut me some slack.

Brooklyn - feels like 25 degrees...

The only situation when it is acceptable to use the phrase "Is it cold enough for ya" is when you are serving me a drink, and would like to assess whether you need to add another ice cube to it. Really, that's the only time when it's ok. Any other scenario, and you are being a huge jerk.

Change is good

I think that it's time for this blog to move. I haven't decided to where, yet. Or how. It just occurred to me that change might be a nice thing. I hate this template, for example. I am also somewhat interested in trying out wordpress. Just a thought, you know.

Now I've made it.

I would like to note that being linked on stripperweb.com is truly the greatest accomplishment of my blogging career. I say this with utmost sincerity.

A few book reviews.

The Historian
This book was not so bad. Nate suggested that I read it during winter break, and he's had a pretty good record with his recommendations. He is the one who turned me on to Frank McCourt and James Ellroy, and that was all excellent stuff. So, I followed his advice and picked up The Historian. I won't give anything away by saying that this book is mostly about Dracula. Sure, it might have a bit here and there about love, or child-parent relationships, or coming of age, and all that junk. But it's really about Dracula, because if it didn't have Dracula in it as the central premise, it would be an awful, stupid, pointless book. This is something that Dan Brown could've written if he were getting paid by the word. This was a fun winter break read, but there is no reason why this book has to be 700 pages. I felt like the author was trying to meet the page requirements for her MFA dissertation. The first few descriptions - of a town in Eastern Europe, that rock, and that other rock, and the way the sun reflects off that third rock over there - they were ok. The following 500 descriptions of the same were just unnecessary. The ending was predictable, but the ride was Ok.

Snow Crash
This one was recommended by local cyberpunk authority, Intern Zach. Let me tell you, it could've been a lot worse. In particular, it could've been Cryptonomicon. What a heaping pile of literary junk that was. Snow Crash was somewhat better. It had about 2 funny paragraphs. The rest was a bit trite. I mean, you can't expect much from an author who names the main character Hiro Protagonist. That's only clever if you are in the fourth grade. But this is the sort of thing that one must read in order to be accepted in certain social circles. I mean, you'll just feel like a total outcast at the next LAN Party if you can't throw in a few cents when someone brings up Snow Crash. But I'll take William Gibson for my money any day.

The Sandman, (Vol. 1-10)
This is the story of Dream of the Endless. Every volume is beautiful, the story is sweet, the fantasy is lovely. Everyone should read this. Look for it in the "blessed escapism" section of your public library.

Marvels
I didn't get it. The illustrations by Alex Ross were gorgeous, but the story was just one huge inside joke. If you are intimately familiar with the Marvel Universe, you will like this book very much. I just didn't get most of it. I had to keep looking things up. From my perspective, it felt like this was one huge circle jerk for Kurt Busiek and Marvel fanboys.

Kingdom Come
More beautiful artwork by Alex Ross, and a nice story by Mark Waid. Here is the nutshell: Superman is a dick; Batman saves the day. Flip through it for the pictures, but really, that's all there is. I just saved you forty five minutes of your life.

American Prometheus
This was an excellent biography of Robert Oppenheimer, and I enjoyed it very much. It is an engrossing read that left me very satisfied. The story is quite sad, but is written in a clear and flowing style, replete with personal narrative and valuable historical data. The book takes you from Oppenheimer's early days, through the Manhattan Project, and continues with his life in the aftermath. It is a moving story about one man's amazing life, but is also a valuable historical and social lesson about the dangerous results of government interjection into science.

Disgrace
Coetzee has become one of my favorite authors. His writing is perfect. There is never an extraneous word. There is an ideal simplicity of the narrative, and profound heart-piercing drama. Coetzee understand the enromous complexity of human nature, but beyond that, he is able to describe it in lyrical terms that are personal to the reader. This is the story of David Lurie, a 52 year old professor in Cape Town. His affair with a student leads to his social and professional disgrace, which, in turn, results in his journey to the Eastern Cape where his daughter makes a living as a farmer. However, this story is so much more than an exploration into emotions, motivations, and consequences (although, if it were just that, it would still be a stupendous work). The novel also examines themes on history, brutality, loyalty, and grief. Everyone should read this book.

Probabilistic Methods for Algorithmic Discrete Mathematics
This book was not great. I didn't understand a lot of the stuff in it, and it's a very slow read. Not much flow, or narrative. It took me about an hour to get through the first 5 pages. And frankly, the character development was a bit lacking. I wouldn't recommend this one, unless you need it for your thesis work. Really. If you are looking for nice train reading, skip this and go with the Batman comics.

Day job.

My life at work has been a sort of emotional roller coaster. I get a huge kick out of going out in the field, fixing stuff, helping people, solving problems. I really like that. It's about as intellectually challenging as, oh, I don't know, poking a badger with a stick, but I get a nice sense of accomplishment, and people are always sweet and appreciative. When I am at the office, however, I just have this one Dead Kennedy's song running through my head. You know which one.

Depressing thoughts on education

During his State of the Union speech, the President asked Congress to extend the NCLB act. And I came to the conclusion that the government does not want to improve education in this country. We can win small battles, but I don't see a way out of the big problem.

And what's most annoying is that we know how to make things better. I read Dewey, and Piaget, and Vygotsky, and Papert. I read all the contemporary stuff too. There are many people who know how to make things better, and furthermore, they put it in writing. But we are just not doing it. We are not ALLOWED to do it, you see. It's as if engineers came out with an internal combustion engine, but the government said, "eh, no thanks, we are good with the horse and buggy." That's what it's like with education. And here is my cynical explanation for the reasons behind it - educated people make educated decisions. They overthrow corrupt governments, they vote for politicians who truly promote their interests and enhance their utility. Those in power cannot allow for that, and are working hard to keep the socioeconomic divide as extensive as possible.

What annoys me most is when people tell me, or imply to me, that American children are stupid. That is not true. American children are not stupid. They just get a very inadequate education. They are not taught to be creative thinkers, to analyze information and to form their own conclusions. In fact, our current pedagogical structure encourages just the opposite - it is based solely on retention and regurgitation. No time to ask "why," just remember this in time for the standardized exam. And then, we are surprised and upset when those children grow up to become adults who believe news reports and advertisements.

Something needs to happen. But I'm at a loss.

Ooooh

New blogger has labels! Neat! Google, you make everything so sweet and just a little tangy. {heart}. But it looks like I'll have to modify the template to make it less ugly.

I know, I know

I actually do have a lot to blog about. I just don't have the energy to do it now. It's been crazy, and I promise that I'll blog some more tomorrow.

Sniffle, sneeze

So I was really sick all weekend long. It started on Thursday. I got a really high fever as soon as I came in to work. In my delirious state, I blamed the lack of fresh air for my condition. Upstairs people were sympathetic enough to trust my feverish rants, and invited the environmental branch of facilities to check out our office. They didn't find any mold, or anything too dangerous, but they did say that the air quality probably isn't so great, since we have only one vent, and never open our "windows." Also, since Jeff left, nobody has been turning on those air filter thingies that we use as step stools these days.

Anyway, I don't think it's anything office related, since I spent the whole weekend with a really high fever. Some Russian doctor near my house gave me a prescription for Cipro, which I filled, but was too scared to actually take. Cipro is a really strong antibiotic, and for some reason, I just go too scared. He offered to give me an IV injection of Cipro, while I was waiting for the prescription to fill, but I declined that too. So I've been all hippy-like with my homeopathy this weekend. Boiling herbs and eating garlic, gargling with ginger and such. I still feel sick, but I'm significantly better. And I'm pretty happy that I didn't go for the heavy drugs.

Ugh

I wish I had known about this class earlier. It's too late now. Maybe next semester.

New face of lookup

At first, I thought - what new hell is this. Next, I thought - if central IT has so much free time on their hands, why don't they automate software deployments. (This is a personal gripe resulting from my own dependency on intern labor whenever anything needs to be deployed across the "enterprise.")

While this new lookup does seem to provide the ability to view unlimited search results, to me, it is actually a downgrade, because it doesn't link to the person's webpage, as it used to. Observe:

This seems like a low priority enhancement, as far as I am concerned. I still prefer my old school mode of lookup:

Yum

I am sure that there is somebody in the sociology department who can defend an entire dissertation based solely on the phrase, " both man and locust are losers, but I think they are worse off because we are eating them." Still, this was both amusing and informative, in a very unpleasant sort of way.

Fall 06 Grades

I got an A for Programming, and an A+ for the Technology and Human Development class! How great is that? I really wasn't expecting an A+, because it was an online class, and they had no way of knowing just how adorable I am. Everyone knows that the + stands for extra cute.

Anyway, I'm thrilled. Because now I have a 4.0 GPA. I could've never dreamed of grades like this when I was an undergrad in engineering school (and when a 4.0 GPA actually meant something). I repeat - grad school is so easy!

So, I think that I'm really good at being a grad student. Some people are really good at programming in PHP (God bless them), and some people are really good at memorizing pop culture trivia. Well, I'm really good at going to class, listening attentively to intelligent older people, solving problem sets, and writing insightful, or at least, informative papers. Too bad that a grad student isn't as lucrative a profession as, say, a professional hobo, or a caribou herder. Alas.

Math knitting

So, some people say that you don't need computers for advanced visualization of mathematical concepts. All you need is some yarn, and some knitting needles. I wonder what's harder to grasp - the programming language behind Mathematica, or the purl stitch. (Via Rob, thanks).

Crazy gas smell

This probably sounds like something out of a Superman comic.

I first noticed it when my 2 train was pulling into the 14th street station. It was so powerful, that I decided to get off the train. By the time that I realized that the station was even worse, the train had pulled away. The next train wasn't any better, but they announced something positive along the lines of "we know it smells like gas, so stop calling the fire department." The air around campus was not so bad, but the gas smell was still there, although definitely not as strong as on the subway. The first floor offices of Hamilton had it pretty bad, but we hardly noticed anything down in the basement.

Everything was back to normal by around noon. Just a simple panic. Perhaps a simple test of the emergency system. Do not adjust your gas masks, this is just a test, sort of deal. Maybe to see how quickly something really unpleasant can spread through the city. Who knows, but it's pragmatic to assume that the government was involved.

P.S. I would double check that 19 hospitalized factoid from Reuters, though. As per intern-Zach, the reports aren't always accurate.

Henry Rollins and William Shatner

Good riddance

A bit of good news in the world of New York sports - the Yankees figured out a way to send Randy... err... Sir Randolph Johnston... back to Arizona. So long, and thanks for nothing.

In other good news, spring training is just a few weeks (sounds better than months) away. And that fuzzy thought is enough to sustain me through this unusually warm and pleasant winter.

(Comic)book request

Can somebody loan me Bill Willingham's Fables, issues 48 through 59. That would be really really cool. Numbers 48-51 are collected in a tpb caleld "Fables: Wolves." Standard offer - lunch on me, etc.

TV Quitters

James Braly offered a nice bit on quitting television, this morning on NPR. Save money, free yourself from commercialism, raise healthy and active children... and so on.

Favorite Present

Converse All Star Core OX sneakers, in black. Definitely the coolest present I got. I only feel a little bit guilty that these shoes are currently very trendy, but I'm resolving this with the fact that they have been around for a long time, and soon the hipsters will forget all about them. Besides being super comfortable, they are super helpful in facilitating my favorite fantasy of being a punk rocker.

Happy New Year

Ooops! So I forgot to blog for a few days. I was on vacation. I hope that everyone had a great deal of fun, and a nice time away from work. May your resolutions be practical and attainable.