Month: September 2006

  • My oh My. Tolkien is Spinning at 400 RPM…

    Without a doubt, the Lord of the Rings will not stop being reinterpreted until some post-modern deconstructionist proves that it never existed in the first place.

    Next it will be in Mime.

  • Arrrr!

    Don’t forget that todaytomorrow is International Talk like a Pirate Day!

  • Asia -> Spain: Holy Crap that's a long way!

    I’ve been hearing a lot of press recently about the Canary Isands being the port of harbor for African illegal immigration to Europe. The geography makes good sense. The Canaries are only 150 miles (give or take) off of Morocco. Not entirely dissimilar to the Cuban and Haitian boat refugees trying for Florida.

    However, this load of people came a lot farther. All the way from (they suspect) Pakistan and Sri Lanka!

    Wow. I quail under the thought of what those people went through during their trip.

  • Flag Displays in the Classroom

    Over at About.com, the geography man Matt Rosenberg has caused a bit of a rucus in the comments of this post.

    Do you think the Mexican flag should be displayed with “equal promininence” to the US flag in an American Classroom?

    Go! comment on Matt’s entry.

  • Is that a lens in your pocket or are you REALLY happy to see me?

    Carl Zeiss has gone where no one has gone before.

    Wow, I need one for my Digital Rebel XT.

  • Lonelygirl15 has been Unmasked

    Turns out that Lonelygirl15 wasn’t as lonely as she appeared in the internet video shorts.

    Here’s the first YouTube video, I leave the rest as a exercise for the reader.

  • The NSA-T&T likes Me! And You?

    I was all ready to get worked up about this but then I checked around and realized it was a fake. God I hope it’s a fake…

    National Surveillance Agency? There’s No Such Agency

  • AOL and its Customer Service Practices

    I know nothing about AOL.

    I know nothing about AOL’s services, customer treatment, or business practices.

    I’ve never had an AOL account and been one of “them.”

    However, this link, forwarded to me by Meandering Starre shows a depth of disprespect that is unconscionable.

    I honestly don’t know what I would have done in Vincent’s shoes, but I doubt I would have been nearly so composed. Makes me want to record all of my customer service calls from now on.

  • So, You Want to be an Astrophysicist?

    ScienceBlogs contains a large number of useful, cogent, and entertaining blogs. One of them I was popping around on has a series of posts titled, So you want to be an Astrophysicist?

    Ahhh, where was the internet when I was in High School? Oh, yes. It was called DARPA and Prodigy and Bulletin Boards…

    These links are nice summations by someone who’s been-there-done-that, and the fact that he’s on ScienceBlogs automatically gives him street cred, in my opinion.

    But.

    There’s a big “but” here.

    All of these link boil down to:

  • Take all the math and physics courses (starting in HS)
  • Do well on them
  • Don’t get into this for the money
  • Prepare to never sleep
  • Money money money money
  • From personal experience I have a mid-sized problem with his assertion that you should go to the best school you can afford. Sitting here at my desk at home, working a professional job that pays quite well, suitably certified (or certifiable) as a professional engineer, 10 years out of college, and I’m still paying off student loans. Sure, they’re not high-interest, but the total drain on my monthly finances is significant. The end result is that I have a continous financial committment that I can not drop and go (to quote She’s All That) study squid fishing in Borneo. I’ve nailed myself to some sort of career that delivers a middle class paycheck. At times, I find that confining.

    On the other hand, if you’re passionate about what you want to do, I suppose as long as you can feed yourself, you’re good to go. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, so grad school was never a useful option for me.

    All of the comments he has regarding how to work the system of faculty and admissions are excellent. I’m sure my wife, with her doctorate would agree with most of the suggestions.

    I found no overarching linky page, so I’ll list them here:

    Part 0
    Part 1
    Part 1.5
    Part 1.75
    Part 1.99
    Part 2.0
    Part 2.5

  • "This Film is Not Yet Rated"

    The NY Times (once again, I’m the NYT’s bitch) had an article this morning about a new movie coming out titled This Film Is Not Yet Rated.

    It is a documentary about the American film rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17) and how it is not at all as transparent or rule-bound as some of us (me!) thought. Apparently, the evaluators who assign the film rating are anonymous, over-represented by mainstream christians, and there is very little appeals process built in, or accessible.

    I’m going to poke around and see if this movie is playing anywhere around here. It seems to be presenting information which will be new to me unlike Super Size Me, or An Inconvenient Truth, both of which are preaching to the choir.