It’s a wonder anyone’s talking about the iPad at all…
Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard
*heh*
Snow
Well, America’s Third World County is just about exactly as white as snow… wherever the sand trucks haven’t been (which is everywhere except the one main highway).
Went out and about to see the crazies drive. They were out. And crazy. Went about 10 miles to get groceries (well, and beer; there is NO decent beer for sale in town–seriously–and I’m behind on brewing up more *sigh* Need to start some more, and some cider, this weekend). Saw 4 trucks from the highway department–3 plowing and one sanding–headed north as we were headed south. 30 minutes later, as we were headed back north, there was no real evidence they’d been by… and here they came on their southward trek on the same span of highway.
Cleaned cars off once today–about 4″. The 30 mins we were in buying groceries, another inch piled on. Back for a few hours. Another 4-5 inches on the car we drove out for groceries.
Add this to the earlier snow this month, and this is more snow than we’ve had in one January since we moved here 15 years ago. Must be global warming.
Oh. Well. At least my wonder Woman had the day off, as the back roads were impassable or unsafe for the buses. Meant she had more time to sleep in a bit and still have extra time to work on papers for a grad class. Good on her. I spent some time under the house beefing up some insulation around pipes. Never had a problem, but I had the wraps (and bought some more insulating foam-in-a-can while we were out), so I figured why not? Found a couple of cracks/seams I could foam and pack w/fiberglass. Little snugger is nice.
Harvard “Educated”–Doesn’t Get the Irony
Jonah Goldberg nails the central SOU issue:
He decried the politicians who are in “permanent campaign” mode — the same week he brought into the White House his campaign manager.
Other politicians are vain, cowardly and insubstantial. They need the courage to change. Meanwhile, Obama is great the way he is.
It’s not hypocrisy, folks. It’s the sort of obdurate, terminal stupidity that only “intelligent” people can manage: a delusional blindness to the irony that is The 0! Either that, or he really doesn’t understand the words he parrots off the ToTUS…
Schrödinger’s Cat And Public Policy
Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment summed up this way,
A cat is placed in a box, together with a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, and the geiger-counter detects an alpha particle, the hammer hits a flask of prussic acid (HCN), killing the cat. The paradox lies in the clever coupling of quantum and classical domains. Before the observer opens the box, the cat’s fate is tied to the wave function of the atom, which is itself in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states. Thus, said Schroedinger, the cat must itself be in a superposition of dead and alive states before the observer opens the box, “observes” the cat, and “collapses” it’s wave function.
Of course, the problem with thought experiments like this when used to analogize scientific issues is obvious. Let me pop the bubble around this one: how long is the cat in a “superposition of dead and alive states” while closed in this sealed box?
Just long enough for its air to run out so that it suffocates.
Geniuses just don’t seem to think these things out. Einstein discussed Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat with the guy for at least 15 years without ever noting this simple problem with the thought experiment, as far as I can tell. That’s just one of many reasons why I don’t trust the smart people in government to decide what’s best for me. They just don’t seem to look at (or care about) any of the options outside their own paradigm.
Besides, they might just be the kind of person who doesn’t like cats and will put ’em in boxes to suffocate to death.
Der Führer Disses the iPad
As much as I hate to find myself in agreement with “Hitler” I simply cannot find room to disagree with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded
And the thing is, this video only scratches the surface of the stupid feature set. iPad: just the thing for thoughtless and dim-witted Apple junkies (there does exist a class of thoughful and intelligent Apple junkies *heh*) who like to waste money.
h.t. Planck’s Constant
Micro-mini-update, in an article at eWeek I found this lil gem,
Digital device expert Walt Mossberg called this “amazingly low-priced for an Apple product.”
*heh* And I’d bet dollars to donuts Apple addicts would think that’s praise, while the rest of the world would recognize the qualifier (“for an Apple product”) as acknowledgement that Apple products are generally over-priced.
As Ought to Be?
My first wind instrument, not counting of course the recorder I played as an even younger child, was a trombone. In fact, it remained my primary musical instrument–apart from voice–for many years. Hence my chuckle when I read the following in a contemporary Holmesian short story, The Adventure of the Lost World by Dominic Green
“…I consider it normal to see a man’s life taken from him by another for the pursuit of criminal gain, Watson; but it is rare indeed for him to be eaten afterwards.”
Even I, who have been in Afghanistan, was appalled. “Surely not.”
“Just so, Watson. In the past seven days, on Hampstead Heath, there have been seven attacks upon street musicians, each the player of a trombone of some description, and each attacked, if those who heard the attacks are to be believed, whilst executing the closing bars of Gustav Holst’s Thaxted [see below the fold–ed.]. In each case, the victim appears to have been attacked from above, the flesh crushed and cut, the bones splintered, the capital extremity entirely missing in many cases. Each victim’s body was also notable for the stench of corruption which hung about it, like gas gangrene.”
“Accidental death has been ruled out, then? A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order—”
“—has already been checked for… [emphasis added-ed.]
*heh* “A recurrent trombone malfunction of some order… ” There were times… (Ah, the memories!)
“No, no, Watson! Blowing one’s head off from excessive back pressure developed while playing ones instrument is much more common among oboe players!”
*ROFLKASTMAFO*
Later, when I’d given up trombone for other instruments, other musical pursuits, when I taught budding musicians, I noted that the flute players were always the most cooperative, compliant and studious of instrumentalists, while the trombone players (and drummers–not to be confused with percussionists*) were generally the clowns and “martini lifters” (and the trumpet players the “weight lifters”–the “jocks” of the band). Again, there were times… *heh*
Justice Alito’s Mini-“Joe Wilson” Moment
Watch as Alito mouths, “Not true” to The 0!’s lies about last week’s (surprising and atypical) affirmation of the First Amendment by the SCOTUS.
Christian Worship Music: An Aside
While I was reading, Thoughts on Worship Music, from the resources at Christ Church, Moscow Idaho, I thought about the time a pastor objected to a particular song on the basis that it was “melancholy”. Now, this was either an idiosyncratic reaction to the song itself, which was an upbeat, joyous expression of personal religious experience or a highly unusual use of the word, “melancholy”. Since he went on to elaborate that it was a “downer” I believe it was the former, since the common usage of “melancholy” indicates
“–a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.”
or when used as an adjective, as he used it,
“-causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.”
NO ONE (and I mean a BIG zero with the rim kicked off) else I have asked about this song has EVER agreed that it, is “saddening”, gloomy or depressing.
That leaves a much, much less common usage of the word to mean,
“-soberly thoughtful; pensive.”
Ah, perhaps he did mean it in this manner and objected because it led people to be thoughtful, contemplative. Knowing both his sermonizing and his temperament, it’d not surprise me that he’d not want people actually THINKING about what was going on…
*heh*
Back to more of the thoughtful (and thought-povoking) articles at Christ Church.
FWIW–not suchabigdeal
Folks over at the Win7 Forums are making a big deal out of the Windows Experience Index. My Win7 Pro box that’s cobbled together from a base of a 3-year-old HP Media Center PC is a kinda low-middle-of-the-road PC. Not so much a powerhouse (although by changing out the memory and primary hard drive, it could be a lot hotter), but Good Enough for most purposes, including running several VMs on top of the host Win7 OS.
FWIW,
I don’t know what the deal is with the Aero score. 1GB of discrete video RAM on the nVidia vidcard; Aero never bobbles or hesitates; smooth as silk. Something arcane I don’t care about. Son&Heir’s monster Asus gaming notebook scores higher on gaming, memory and hard drive marks but about the same on Aero scoring, so I’m not at all sure that the Aero score matters at all to my own experience.
Especially since I do much of my computing in Linux Mint in a VM. *heh*
