ktheory.com

Let�0�9s put our thinking caps on.
I was recently flipping through a book of mind-bending word problems, and happened upon the following:
�0�6A postal worker bought a new pan balance to weigh mail. He needs to be able to weigh packages in 1 pound increments from 1 to 35 pounds. He wants to buy the least number […]

North Gate, UC Berkeley’s journalism school, is offering a course on weblogs. Certainly weblogs can be a useful medium for journalists, but the course description construes weblogs too narrowly: “Some are run by journalists, while others operate in competition with journalists.” Some, I think, have nothing to do with journalism — they’re people’s rants and […]

Another update: I’ve disabled the metalinks because I didn’t find them very useful.
Notice all those little [b]’s following links in my weblog? Those are metalinks, created using Meta Linker. Meta Linker is a piece of javascript that creates a small link to the blogdex database after each link you blog. I think it’s a very […]

Fox News, the paragon of journalism, is focusing on the ever-growing “stupid” demographic. The above graphic came from their weekend reporting on an explosion in Encino, CA. Encino is a small suburban neighborhood 15 miles from Los Angeles, recognizable from the 1992 flick Encino Man starring Brendan Fraser. In case the Fox News audience had […]

At MIT, they can put words in our mouths
The Boston Globe reports that MIT has developed a technology for morphing video images to make subjects appear to say anything. This means a person could be recorded saying one thing, then MIT’s new software can create a video of the person saying something else. (Read the […]

I want the book The Sound of the One Hand: 281 Zen Koans With Answers by Hau Hoo. Cecil from The Straight Dope says the book, “is my idea of an admirably no-bullshit approach to cosmic enlightenment”. That’s exactly what I need.
I’m sure that in this book lay the solutions to all my problems. Unfortunately, […]

As aspiring mathematicians, our �0�8General Philosophy of Integrability�0�9, according to Professor Kiselev, should be as follows:
�0�6With the bad points [points of discontinuity], you put them in a really tiny prison so that they don�0�9t screw up your proof. An with the good guys [continuous intervals], you negotiate with them until your proof works.�0�7

Who�0�9s Responsible for Elizabeth Shin�0�9s Death? A seemingly outstanding M.I.T. undergraduate committed suicide by fire two years ago. Now the parents are saying that M.I.T. didn�0�9t do enough to treat her stress and keep them informed. (MeFi discussion)
Personally, I�0�9m glad that my college is stressful. The pressure forces me to work harder and learn more. […]

According to the Belief-O-Matic, my spiritual beliefs are as follows:

Unitarian Universalism (100%)
Theravada Buddhism (80%)
Liberal Quakers (77%)
Mahayana Buddhism (76%)
Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (73%)
Neo-Pagan (72%)
Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (70%)
New Thought (68%)
New Age (65%)
Scientology (64%)
Taoism (64%)
Secular Humanism (60%)
Hinduism (48%)
Nontheist (47%)
Sikhism (43%)
Reform Judaism (38%)
Jainism (30%)
Bah�6�0′�� Faith (28%)
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (24%)
Mainline […]

Warm weather has enraptured Chicago once again, seducing students to believe that they might actually get work done while basking in the Quads.
Good things about the warm weather include:
(1) Iced coffee. Iced coffee is inconceivably good, especially black iced coffee with a shot of espresso, a personal concoction I call “Mr. Bitterness”. Mm, good.
(2) Flip-flops […]

In the wonderful book The Golem: What You Should Know About Science, Collins and Pinch record this amusing finding: Sociologists interviewed professional research physicists about reasons for believing or disbelieving their colleagues�0�9 experiments. In this particular case, the experiments were the detection and non-detection of gravity waves (conducted between 1969 and 1972).

Their reasons included,

Faith in […]

At the conclusion of an impassioned speech, add the phrase �0�6Q.E.D. bi-atch!�0�7
Yesterday at lunch, Margaret demonstrated this highly effective argument style that adds finality to an argument and asserts the domination of the victor.
Q.E.D. is a Latin abbreviation for Quod Erat Demonstrandum [which was to be demonstrated]. It is most often found at the conclusion […]

10. Lying around.
9. �0�6Zoning out�0�7 at work.
8. Spending copious amounts of time on the Internet (related to 10 and 9).
7. Pool at Guys and Dolls.
6. The Spot Diner.
5. The Lost Dog Café.
    a. Live jazz.
    b. Flirting with the bartenders.
4. Booty calls.
3. Hangin�0�9 out with Mike, Big Steve, Lil�0�9 Steve, Trevor, Jay, Dut, Ellie, Melissa, Drew, Kyle, […]

My high school guidance counselor had a bumper sticker on his door that read �0�8Conformity eliminates complications�0�9. When Adele first pointed it out to me, I thought it was sarcastic. High school, from my perspective, was the very epitome of conformity — not the entire school, but each clique. People expressed their individuality by preferring […]

Being that today is Friday, I think you deserve some answers.
1. What is your favorite time of year? Summer, because I have relatively little work (so more free time), and because it’s warm.
2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? I already answered this. I should read all […]

I won�0�9t pretend to be a jazz aficionado, and I will try to avoid the self-righteous tone of so many music critics. I know very little about jazz music, especially the music theory behind the genre. But I do like Charles Mingus.

I started listening to jazz my senior year of high school. Whenever I was […]

The following books are lying beside my bed:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Emergence by Steven Johnson
Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter

New Year Resolutions
I have three New Year resolutions. They are to stop eating red meat, to stop biting my cuticles, and to drink coffee instead of lattes. I’ve decided not to eat red meat because it’s unhealthy compared to white meat or vegetarian diets. Already, I eat very little red meat, so it’s not a […]

The state of ktheoryEarlier this AM, I finished re-tooling and re-designing link.everything. It is powered by the new new thing, Movable Type. The design follows the Nielsen model of placing permanent content on the left, and transient content on the right. The new site also features a fairly comprehensive list of Chicago-based weblogs.
More re-designing is […]

Jason is organizing a Chicagoland Metafilter user bowling party. It’s scheduled for Saturday, January 12, 8pm at Diversey-River Bowl (more info). There’s a very good chance I’ll be there.