This is the first time I've seen someone back up my etimological argument that "nerds" were just the smart sub-set of "geeks" once upon a time. Then sometime, things flipped, and geek became the cool term. In a technologically savvy sense, of course... ;-)
The Alpha Geeks
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Edward Lorenz - R.I.P.
Edward Lorenz Obituary
Lorenz was one of my scientific heroes. A meteorologist who discovered that small differences in initial conditions in non-linear systems may cause huge variations later. (a.k.a. the butterfly effect) In other words, how it is impossible to predict the weather far in advance without knowing everything that's happening everywhere to an infinite precision...
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Drinking
In the end, I'm not sure exactly if the article had no point, or if I already had heard everything it said:
NYTimes: When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why
By BENEDICT CAREY
I generally feel that drinking amplifies whatever mood that I'm in.
NYTimes: When People Drink Themselves Silly, and Why
By BENEDICT CAREY
I generally feel that drinking amplifies whatever mood that I'm in.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
NYTimes
I would say no. The vast majority of people have always been ignorant of a great many things that the 'educated' classes take as common knowledge. It's just that nowadays, the 'masses' have a lot more access to platforms upon which to display their ignorance.
Ah....technology.
NYTimes
I would say no. The vast majority of people have always been ignorant of a great many things that the 'educated' classes take as common knowledge. It's just that nowadays, the 'masses' have a lot more access to platforms upon which to display their ignorance.
Ah....technology.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Tribalism
I'm writing this on a cold morning in Tennessee, where I'm attending a conference. It being a fall weekend, there's a lot of buzz about today's football game. The flags are out, the signs are up. Supporters of the visiting team have invaded the town - I know because of their sweatshirts and other clothing.
What is it about college sports, football in particular, that engenders such passion, especially among 'highly educated' graduates and faculty of colleges?
I'm sure that this isn't a new observation (I should peruse the sociology literature to see what's been done on this), but we identify with our colleges like people identify with tribes. The human instinct for competition makes us want to compete with a dominate other tribes. How do we do this? Since these particular tribes are more intelectual and social than warlike, we do it through our sports teams. What other way is there for my tribe (college) to compete with yours? It engenders pride at belonging to the victorious group. I think that's why sports such as football are so important to a college's psyche, and are so important for getting alumni to contribute money to the school. For those two reasons, we put up with the various other crap that comes along with fielding a football team.
Of course, there is the US News & World Report rankings, but we won't go there now.
What is it about college sports, football in particular, that engenders such passion, especially among 'highly educated' graduates and faculty of colleges?
I'm sure that this isn't a new observation (I should peruse the sociology literature to see what's been done on this), but we identify with our colleges like people identify with tribes. The human instinct for competition makes us want to compete with a dominate other tribes. How do we do this? Since these particular tribes are more intelectual and social than warlike, we do it through our sports teams. What other way is there for my tribe (college) to compete with yours? It engenders pride at belonging to the victorious group. I think that's why sports such as football are so important to a college's psyche, and are so important for getting alumni to contribute money to the school. For those two reasons, we put up with the various other crap that comes along with fielding a football team.
Of course, there is the US News & World Report rankings, but we won't go there now.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Vista
Some initial thoughts on my 'upgrade' to Vista:
I now have 3gigs of RAM, but my damned video card is the slow link now. Never thought that would happen.
If you can, don't 'upgrade,' do a clean install. Mine failed both times I selected the upgrade option. After 2.5 hours of installation each time.
When it was finally done:
I guess that most of the improvements are under the hood, because there aren't really a lot of obvious changes. The look and feel is improved - I think this is where the need for the new graphics card comes in. Of course, they are once again copying the Mac OS here.
The sidebar is interesting, and long overdue. Again, a cue from Macs.
They've gone to putting all your personal files in a reasonably placed directory! C:\Users\Name
Wow! It's been since what, Windows 95 that I've been cursing the idiot who decided to hide the path to your personal files. In this regard, they're copying Unix.
I know that security is supposed to be better, but do I really have to go through two pop up confirmations each time I want to delete a file or access a control panel? I need to see if I can turn that off.
So in conclusion, yeah, it looks better, and probably works better, but most of the tangible improvements are just Microsoft catching up to Mac and Linux. But since I'm stuck with Windows, I'll take it.
I now have 3gigs of RAM, but my damned video card is the slow link now. Never thought that would happen.
If you can, don't 'upgrade,' do a clean install. Mine failed both times I selected the upgrade option. After 2.5 hours of installation each time.
When it was finally done:
I guess that most of the improvements are under the hood, because there aren't really a lot of obvious changes. The look and feel is improved - I think this is where the need for the new graphics card comes in. Of course, they are once again copying the Mac OS here.
The sidebar is interesting, and long overdue. Again, a cue from Macs.
They've gone to putting all your personal files in a reasonably placed directory! C:\Users\Name
Wow! It's been since what, Windows 95 that I've been cursing the idiot who decided to hide the path to your personal files. In this regard, they're copying Unix.
I know that security is supposed to be better, but do I really have to go through two pop up confirmations each time I want to delete a file or access a control panel? I need to see if I can turn that off.
So in conclusion, yeah, it looks better, and probably works better, but most of the tangible improvements are just Microsoft catching up to Mac and Linux. But since I'm stuck with Windows, I'll take it.
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