Usually any Harry Potter news from around here concentrates on bible-lady in Gwinnett county who wants to ban the books because they teach witchcraft.
Today, we’ve go a different happening. A toddler was stuck for 30 minutes with a traffic cone on his head after he put it on to emulate the boy wizard. A “toddler interest” story?
AP has (apparently) confirmed that Comcast is blocking Bittorrent regularly. A back-of-my-envelope thought on this matter is that they are saving bandwidth to sell to other people, so it’s part of their business model to manage the network traffic through their backbones. Seems that this will have continuing impacts on their customers and the ongoing debate over network neutrality.
Which brings me to a thought I’ve had in times past. I’ll preface this thought with the statement that I’m a network moron. I have some vague notion of how packets bounce around the world via copper and fiber and other transmission streams, but no firm knowledge. That being stated, I think that there is a market for newly built residential subdivisions to have super-high-speed internet built in to the homes. If a large subdivision were to have its own fiber drop, and optical connections into every house, that would be a selling point for a lot of people, especially here in Atlanta. I would certainly be willing to entertain a large up-front cost that was rolled into my mortgage. Maintenance could be part of a homeowners agreement. Then we wouldn’t be dealing with the crappy customer service that Comcast or AT&T deals out to their little customers. We’d be a major commerical customer who would require better upkeep.
It’s a thought. I wonder if this is happening anywhere?
Exceptionally personal post. Do not pass go. Especially if you don’t want to hear me crowing about myself. Yay me!
Jenn and I are running in the Tulsa Marathon before Turkey Day. We’re only running the half marathon, but the last time I was training up to long distances, I hit the 10 mile mark and had an injury. “Kapoof” and I didn’t run any farther than a 10k for 2.3 years.
Then came last Sunday. I ran an 11.1 mile route, in training for the good ‘ol 13.1 to come on November 18, and I realized that this is the farthest I’ve ever run, in my entire life. I was a track person in high school, but I distinctly remember the longest run I did back then, and it was only 10 miles.
So, go me! Of course, I’ve walked and/or hiked farther distances than that. I believe that the longest hike I’ve ever done was 16 miles, so I’ve got a bit to go to top that with my running. I also don’t plan to extend my distance running past the half-marathon point, as I’ll have other races to train for that will be shorter, but it’s nice to look at a milestone like this and know that I’ve reached it through hard work and dedication.
And no injury!
Jenn alerted me to the news fracas caused by J.K. Rowling saying that Dumbledore was gay (is gay? Do the portrait people have love-lives?).
Apparently, there’s always been suspicion amongst fans that he was gay, due to his lack of a love interest and other items. Personally, I never pulled up a hint of gayness from Dumbledore until the seventh book, so this “always has been a suspicion” thing is a crock. It’s along the lines of crackpot fans everywhere coming up with unlikely scenarios for the most mundane nuances, then springing forth with an “Aha! I told you so!” when their particular nuttiness is revealed as truth. I won’t say that there weren’t any “hints” about Dumbledore being gay in books 1-6, but frankly, who cares? It’s immaterial to the story. Dumbledore didn’t have any subtextual motivations that weren’t clearly explained in book 7. This is not the type of book with imagery and metaphor coming out the wazoo. It’s an entertaining (but epically paced and written) story.
I think that J.K. Rowling should start making stuff up about her characters, just to see how much more whacked out the movies will get.
Ah, the perils of floating poing calculation.
Apparently there is a bug in Excel 2007 which causes 12 floating point values around 65535 and 65536 to be displayed incorrectly. Calculations aren’t effected, but the displayed number comes out as 100,000 or 100,001.
I’m guessing this wasn’t an easter egg, or it would be funnier.
Yesterday, I alluded to racist statements made by James Watson, regarding the inability of africans to measure up to other persons in the intelligence arena.
Today, I see that he has been suspended from “the administrative responsibilities” of his posting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, due to the board’s “disagreeing with the comments…”
This is a travesty. James Watson is a renowned scientist, and a dope. But being a dope isn’t illegal, and if we expect non-dopes to be able to present opinions without them being trashed perfuctorily, the dopes have to be allowed the same privilege.
I have no personal knowledge of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, but I doubt that if Dr. Watson were merely a ranking scientist (rather than the head of the lab) that he would have been suspended from his job. Thus, politics. The board cannot permit a person with undeniable scientific gravitas to say stupid things in public. I think a better approach would be to insist that Dr. Watson present the evidence for his case, and if that cannot be found, then insist he back off on his racist comments. Cold Spring Harbor could advertise to the world that they are such a powerful scientific organization, they don’t hold stupid comments against even their most visible members.
Or they could just drag him out at dawn and shoot him in the career. Whichever.
I took this in Concord, MA, while we were up New England way for a Wedding. It’s a bit overexposed, but I didn’t have time to mess with it in Photoshop.
Jenn and I saw Shakespeare’s Richard III last night, put on by Georgia Shakespeare at Oglethorpe University. I hadn’t been exposed to Richard III since grade school, thus it was like seeing a brand new play. The only thing I remembered was “A horse! A horse! My Kingdom for a horse!”
The play was remarkably bloody. Lots of people were killed. I’m not sure if the body count was higher than Hamlet, but it must be close. Go Shakespeare! If the play resembles the War of the Roses at all closely, then 15th century England must have been a mess.
Images from the show are available, although the fact that the url has “romeo” in it does not inspire me to believe they will remain active very long.
Someone who is into dream interpretation will have to help me.
Recently (last couple or so years) I’ve been having a recurring dream. It is similar to the “I forgot my pants” dream, but it revolves around high school/college. I dream that it’s late in the semester and I have been skipping so many classes (usually math class for some reason) that I don’t know if I have time to catch up and pass the course. Then I wake up and realize that, duh, I’m out of college doofus, and I don’t need to worry about passing classes during my sleep.
I usually blame this on latent procrastinatory tendencies, but the weird thing is (despite the evidence of friends who know me), I’ve mostly conquered my procrastination. I don’t do that anymore. So, it must be something else niggling my subconscious. Who knows.
Whatever. It’s weird.
Through a fluke set of circumstances, I ended up beginning to read the story, “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle.” You may recognize this as the derivation of the acronym TASER (Thomas A. Smith Electric Rifle).
Not knowing much about the story, who wrote it, or when it was published, I dove in. As I read, I gathered through context that it was written earlier in the century (airships, monoplanes) and that it was a youth adventure story (both true). Then I hit this dialogue [emphasis mine]:
“Rad! I say, Rad! Where are you?”
“Heah I is, Massa Tom! Heah I is” called a colored man as he came around the corner of a small stable where he kept his mule Boomerang. “Was yo’-all callin’ me?”
“Yes, Rad, I want you to help make a scarecrow.”
“A scarecrow, Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! What fo’ yo’ want ob a scarecrow? Yo’-all ain’t raisin’ no corn, am yo’?”
“No, but I want something to shoot at when Ned Newton comes over to-night.”
“Suffin t’ shoot at? Why Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! Yo’-all ain’t gwine t’ hab no duel, am yo’?”
“No, Rad, but I want a life-size figure on which to try my new electric gun. Here are some old clothes, and if you will stuff them with rags and straw and fix them so they’ll stand up, they’ll do first-rate. Have it ready by night, and set it up at the far end of the shooting gallery.”
“All right, Massa Tom. I’ll jest do dat, fo’ yo’,” and leaving the colored man to stuff the figure, after he had showed him how, Tom went back into the house to read the paper which he had purchased that morning.
I was born in the 70’s and raised in the 80’s and 90’s. I have no concept of being able to think like this. I think the most egregious part of this dialogue was Tom Smith showing Rad how to make the scarecrow. Who the heck, even then, would think a black man couldn’t know how to make a scarecrow? It’s obviously assumed that anything that Tom (white) doesn’t tell Rad (black), won’t get done.
This novel was published in 1911. Only 48 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. And I am intellectually aware of the climate surrounding race relations prior to World War II, which was 28 years after publication. Still, this shocks me. Is it a good thing that I’m shocked, indicating a deep acceptance of racial equality, or a bad thing, showing that I just don’t grok history?
At least I am not famed scientist James Watson, co-credited-discoverer of DNA, who thinks africans are less intelligent than caucasians.
There is no knowing the Evil Eyebrow
Twenty Twenty-Five
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