stadium seating on the cheap!

There is a War on my Mind

There is an allusion here to the case of a city besieged, at last taken by storm, and the inhabitants carried away into captivity. . . So I was there as a crusader for the organization and I managed to make a biggie ... But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and ...

GOOD & EVIL: too simple a model?

In a recent article in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, two mathematicians and a physicist use a mathematical model show how the "destructive agents" (which they aptly call "Jokers") can help people avoid the tragedy of the commons. What's the tragedy of the the commons? It's when people try to make the world a better place, but doing so is costly. Free-riders can enjoy the benefits of a better world without paying the costs of helping to create it. So free-riders out-compete everyone else, and all are the worse for it.

The Nash equilibrium concept is part of game theory. Essentially, game theory thinks about social interactions as a game where people can choose from a bunch of different strategies. A Nash equilibrium happens when each player in the game of life chooses a strategy that is the best response to everyone else's strategy. An example is the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, where the best strategy is to randomly choose to play rock, paper, or scissors. If you deviate from the best strategy, you don't do as well in the game. And people always want to win the game, right?

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prison ho

"Gay men who do not attempt to hide their sexuality are forced into passive and submissive roles. To live with some standard of equality, we have to trade in our manhood. We are completely emasculated. It's a form of technical castration. The role of woman is forced upon us and any rebuttal is considered a sign of disrespect. My way of thinking about myself and my sexuality has been permanently altered."


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"Paper Tigers"

Not just people “who are good at math” and play the violin, but a mass of stifled, repressed, abused, conformist quasi-robots who simply do not matter, socially or culturally.

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Namazu

A giant catfish who causes earthquakes.

daydream 3/10

Took a nap this afternoon. Dreamed we were all on broomsticks flying around after lewdly-shaped golden trinkets. Thrilling sensation of plummeting downwards from ever dizzying heights, only a broomstick between myself and certain death. Loop-de-loop.

caturday

Do you have trouble understanding your professor because of his/her thick accent?

"Over the last couple of years I've seen several threads complaining about the difficulty learning from professors who have thick accents. I work at a Fortune 100 technology company and I thought I'd share something I've learned: If you want to be a competitive job candidate when you're done with school, you have to be able to communicate effectively with non-native English speakers. To be more blunt, stop complaining and treat it as a learning opportunity.

I throw this out there because most the posts in those threads were about how universities shouldn't hire teachers who have a language barrier. I completely disagree. At my company, and lots of the other top companies, the focus is on hiring the best minds in the world. And although this might surprise some people, the majority of those minds aren't born and raised in America.

I could go on and on about this subject because I think it's a very important skill for the modern worker but suffice to say, it's to your benefit to figure this out while you're still in school rather than when you're sitting in a big job interview."

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I feel elderly

12 hours in

Feels like someone massaged my body with a brick.

eight hours later

Longest time I've spent around a clinic/hospital in a long while. University Health Services lost the Filgrastim DKMS had sent them, so long story short, I spent the day waiting on them to get it, and it never happened. One down, four to go though, so thats a relief. My arms are a bit sore from the injections, but I don't feel too bad at all.

My prize is pizza! (BufChikCalzone from the Sub and Pizza, washed down with ginger ale). Maybe not the healthiest, but it feels well deserved.

I like

that we intentionally take breaks from each other, so we don't fall TOO much in love.