April 2010
2 posts
currency and particles
This story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/29/technology/29cashless.html?hpw
had me thinking about the idea that one model of reality could just be particles as free agents exchanging money (energy) through exchanges (collisions).
binary search
Via: http://rc3.org/2010/04/25/becoming-a-better-programmer/
I had two bugs in my first implementation: one was a reversed order of operands in “int size = end - start;”, as “int size = start - end;”, and the second was returning “middleValue” instead of “middle”. Otherwise I think it is correct, avoiding the int overflow problem (unintentionally)...
March 2010
1 post
I'm not really cut out for this
As it turns out.
I like commenting, but blogging without feedback… not really.
February 2010
1 post
1 tag
Jaws
I watched (most of) Jaws again last night. It really is a spectacularly good movie, with two standout scenes even by that high bar. The first is when Roy Scheider is sitting at the dinner table with his son and notices that the son is imitating him. So there’s this little scene where they are interacting that has no immediate narrative purpose; it’s pure observation. The second is the...
December 2009
2 posts
Comments for December 11th, 2009
I’m going to experiment with posting links to the more interesting (ha ha) comments I have posted elsewhere.
This is one on the subject of Taliban involvement in Afghan political reconciliation over at ObWi:
http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2009/12/get-yer-jaw-jaws-out.html?cid=6a00d834515c2369e20120a7465545970b#comment-6a00d834515c2369e20120a7465545970b
Except of course...
Kids on Medicaid at least 4x more likely to be...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/health/12medicaid.html
“The data indicated that more than 4 percent of patients ages 6 to 17 in Medicaid fee-for-service programs received antipsychotic drugs, compared with less than 1 percent of privately insured children and adolescents.”
We pretty much just say, “Sorry you had the misfortune to be born to poor parents; here’s a...
November 2009
4 posts
1 tag
Another episode of "The NY Times fails...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/garden/26cousins.html?pagewanted=all
“For the most part, scientists studying the phenomenon worldwide are finding evidence that the risk of birth defects and mortality is less significant than previously thought. A widely disseminated study published in The Journal of Genetic Counseling in 2002 said that the risk of serious genetic defects like spina bifida...
4 tags
Yet another NYT story whose contents contradict...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/your-money/credit-and-debit-cards/25card.html
Headline: “In Australia, Curbs on Credit Card Fees Backfired”
Actual message of story: curbs on credit card fees led to retailers transparently passing along to customers the actual additional costs of credit-card transactions.
Currently the costs of using a credit card rather than a debit card or cash...
Anti-empiricism leads to the discrediting of...
The interesting thing about modern conservative thought is that it transformed during the 15-25 years that it predominantly held power in the US, roughly 1980-mid 2000s.
It began this period with a set of ideas that it claimed had not been tested in policy before. The claim was not that these ideas were articles of faith or allegiance, or that failure to adhere to them made you a socialist -...
President infected by zombie conservative ideas.
I know everyone reads Krugman anyway. But I think this is an important observation in this column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23krugman.html
The Obama administration is already restricting what it says and does based on the received-wisdom politics of cable news, instead of relying on the empirical effectiveness of policy as measure in the actual economy. So Obama says, deficits...
September 2009
1 post