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{Arrest This Man, He Talks In Maths } spacer

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With your feet in the air, and your head on the ground . . .

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{Saturday, January 31, 2004}

 
What a cool little app! Here's a map of everywhere I've travelled:



create your own visited country map

Thanks, Zack!

posted by Miles 11:31 PM

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{Thursday, January 29, 2004}

 
In further developments . . . scientistsfordean.org exists, but doesn't have much content; attacks on Bush, but nothing of substance about Dean's positions. Clark has a similar supporter blog page, which is also somewhat sparse on content, but does include one gem - this quote from Clark: (thanks, Patrick!)

"I always had good spatial orientation," he said. "I always saw big patterns in life and how things would move." He offered two examples. The first was from high school. The math class was trying to figure out how to integrate x sin(x). The textbook was silent on it. "All of a sudden I realized how to integrate x sin(x)," he said. "And I was so incredibly happy."

Might have my man . . .

posted by Miles 3:03 PM
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Expanding on last night's blog . . . I was having fun imagining a presidential primary version of "Jeopardy". How cool would that be?!? Who the hell wouldn't watch?
Trebek: "Today our categories are "World Leaders", "American History", "Consitutional Law", "Math and Science", and "Pop Culture". Howard, where shall we start?"

Dean:"Math and Science for 100 seconds of ad time please, Alex"

Trebek:"This everyday letter is the natural logarithm of e^x"

Kerry:"I'll get to that question in just a moment, Alex, but first I'd like to speak for a moment about what I will do as president to fight the special interests that have too much influence in Washington and have for too long . . ."

Buzzer: "EEENNNHHHHHHHHH"

Then I thought, "okay, it ain't gonna' happen, but what's something a little more sedate and sensible?" How about some kind of basic aptitude testing? We have this whole "No Child Left Behind" paradigm of "standards based education", where everything is focused on standardized tests. Now, true, this is a terrible idea . . . but what's good enough for our nation's children ought to be good enough for our presidential candidates, right?!?

Okay, so again, it's never going to happen. But what does this highlight? Despite some talk about qualifications and experience, we don't, as a nation, really seem to care about how intelligent or knowledgable candidates are. (Please supress your cheap-shot-at-Bush urge, and consider the big picture with me for a second.) Debates and candidate platforms are all about opinion, not aptitude, not even structured argument; political commentary is the same. I think this is reflected, deeply, in the fact that except for the limited domain of medicine, no candidate has any platform statement that says "this is a problem that we need to figure out how to solve, and the way to solve problems is through research, so as a leader and decision maker what I'm going to do is fund research."

posted by Miles 11:13 AM
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So, Jess & I were reading over Kerry's "issue" statements tonight, and I was skewering him for being non-specific, and for his entire plan being to throw money at everything.

I decided that nothing he was talking about was really all that important to me, and resolved to vote for the first candidate I could find with a science platform. Any kind of science platform.

Not one single candidate has one.

I'm appalled.

Is federal funding for basic research really such a complete non-issue? I guess so. They have environmental plans, and health care plans, but you'd think, from reading the platforms, that there is no science beyond ecology and medicine. Not only is no-one interested in funding scientific research aimed at improving education (rather than pouring money into the current nonfunctional system), no one is particularly interested in promoting research as a way of solving any problem.

My new conviction is to vote for the first candidate I can find who can tell me, off the top of his head, what the derivative of e^x is. In my dreams, Peter Jennings busts this question out at the next debate.


Oh, and Jess beat me at Scrabble, tonight.

Whoa.

The damage: "Patterned" and "Fishiest".



And yes, I want that f*@%ing period outside the quotation marks. It's my form of civil disobedience / social protest / FYM / . . . goddamnit, she didn't put a "." down on the board, so why should it be inside the ""?

"So there!" I say, with great force.

posted by Miles 12:04 AM

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{Wednesday, January 28, 2004}

 
Now here's a presidential campaign!

posted by Miles 10:52 PM

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{Tuesday, January 27, 2004}

 
Wow, is this fucked. From the N.Y. Times Magazine . . . 10,000 minors are trafficked into the U.S. every year and held captive as sex slaves. Really, one of the most disturbing articles I've read in a long, long time.

posted by Miles 6:45 PM
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57 of 100.

Whoa. Francis, my man, you better be ready the next time we play horse. :-)

posted by Miles 2:18 PM

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{Saturday, January 24, 2004}

 
Chris Bartok, a friend of mine from Caltech, died last month. The first thing most of us heard was that it was being investigated as a possible homicide; Chris' body was found in the Potomac River in Washington D.C., not far from where he'd been out with friends the night before. Evidence has since come to light suggesting his death was accidental; the autopsy indicated he most likely died by drowning, and his wallet, pants, and shoes were all found near a campus boathouse.

I hadn't seen him in over a year; the last I knew was that he was applying to Law Schools, but I didn't know he'd been accepted and started at G.W. I had been planning on taking a trip to California this winter to see friends and escape the cold, and Chris was one of the people I was looking forward to visiting. When I flew out to L.A. for his memorial service last weekend, everywhere I went I expected to see Chris. All the shock, sadness, and cacophony of other emotion I'd felt, and all the time I'd spent thinking about his death, and at some level it still hadn't sunk in; I was in L.A. for Chris, and every time I was with a group of old friends, I caught myself thinking, almost subconsciously, "so, where's Chris?"

His memorial service was held under a bright blue sky, on a warm, breezy, absolutely beautiful day. I thought, a few times, that it seemed like a very nice place to spend a long, long time doing nothing at all. I thought, and thought, and thought, "Chris, I wish I could just give you a hug. God I wish I could give you a hug. I wish. A hug. I wish I could just give you a hug." After the religious ceremony was over, Chris' dad came out to where all us from Caltech were and said a few words, thanking us for being Chris' friends and thanking us for coming. "Thank you for Chris!" Juna yelled out in response. Thank you, Juna; that was perfect.

We went out for drinks in Pasadena directly afterwards, thinking that what Chris would most want, definitively, would be for us all to get sloshed and have a good time in his honor. We started at about five in the afternoon, and I think most of us kept going, in the Dabney courtyard, until around four in the morning. There were stories swapped, memories of good times shared, but there was also just a lot of fun, and a lot of enjoying the reassembled community of friends.

I stayed for three days, and had a wonderful, wonderful time. I miss you all, so much, and it was great to be with you - Juancarlos, Sam, Rebecca, Jim, Juna, Dave, Lori, Walker, Vanessa, Agi, Joy, Jordan, Francis, Sara, Florian, Dana, Noel, Matt, Sam, Robin, Dev, Alastair, Zack . . . and Chris.

Coming back home to Boston, this week, has been hard. It took a visit for me to realize just how much I miss that community of friends. Chris is gone, and that's a permanent loss, but the community is gone too, and will only rarely if ever be reassembled again in full. Weddings, funerals, reunions. I've got a big hole in my chest, this week, resonant with missing.

I love you, Chris. Rest peacefully.

posted by Miles 1:34 AM

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{Thursday, January 22, 2004}

 
If you look slightly up and to the left, you will see what I'm listening to right now in iTunes*. I'm really happy about this (for some reason), but . . . iTunes, with it's "playcount" feature, was bad enough by itself, telling me what "crappy" music I really listen to frequently, and mocking me with low play counts for albums that I consider evidence of my coolness and good taste. Now, if I find myself listening to a song like "One Moment In Time" by Whitney Houston, it's a potential public embarrassment instead of just a guilty private pleasure.

But hey, that's what blogging is all about.

Today: 47 of 100 on threes. Nice.

Time to play some cards . . .

* or, for now, the last thing I listened to; I'm going to try to fix the code up to reflect status, but I already wasted about half a day getting the scripting and the "iframe" tags to work. :-) It's an applescript that runs in the background on my machine, queries iTunes periodically, and uses scp to send a little html file to a server at MIT; this is embedded in the template to my blog with "iframe" tags.

posted by Miles 7:15 PM

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{Tuesday, January 20, 2004}

 
The SOTU Drinking Game

Tonight at my house we will once again be playing The State of the Union Drinking Game. The rules (adapted from here) will be as follows:

1. Whenever George W mentions the liberation of the freedom loving Iraqi people, the last person to grab his throat in a choking motion has to drink four shots of beer.

2. Whenever George W mentions the European Union or the United Nations, everyone must swear in a foreign language, preferably French or German. Anyone who does not know how to swear in another language may instead drink a shot of Bud Light.

3. Whenever George W uses the phrase "Tax cuts", everyone eats a little slice of pie, and everyone "borrows" a shot and takes their medicine later (at the end of the game). For every full glass of "debt", an additional glass will be added as interest.

4. Whenever George W mentions the phrase "sanctity of marriage", the following rules apply: men who are part of a couple should say "honey, can you get me a beer?", and beer should be supplied. Single men must go to the kitchen and fetch beers of their own. Single women may take beer from or force beer on anyone they like.

5. Whenever George W smirks during a standing ovation, take turns drinking shots of beer until the audience sits down. Do it double time if his shoulders shake with silent laughter.

6. If George W Bush attempts to make a joke, anybody who laughs drinks three shots of beer.

7. Whenever George W Bush quotes the Bible or uses the word "evildoers" in a sentence, the last person to fall to their knees drinks two shots of beer. If he pulls a quote from the Bible about "evildoers," the last person to get prostrate drinks an entire beer.

8. Should George W Bush actually have the cojones to utter the phrase "Weapons of Mass Destruction", the last person to raise two fingers while saying "three!" must take a prepared shot of tequila, along with one of vodka, shout "I knew they were here!" with gusto, and down both.


I encourage all of you, out there, to do your Civic Duty, watch the speech, and play along.

posted by Miles 3:16 PM

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{Wednesday, January 14, 2004}

 
According to Yahoo weather, it is currently -2 degrees fahrenheit outside. I just arrived at my office, having walked the ~1.7 mile distance from my house.

I survived!

Here's what I dressed in:

regular socks
wool ski socks
merrell boots
boxers
thermals
corduroys
t-shirt
fleece
parka
1 golf glove
1 batting glove
pair of ski gloves (over)
"turtle fur" fleece scarf
bandana
iPod & headphones (under parka hood)
ski goggles


A man's gotta' do what a man's gotta' do.


Toots and the Maytals came on in my iPod playlist while I was standing at a corner waiting for a light to change, near Porter Sq. I burst in to a grin and started bouncin' a little, one hand raised, palm up to the sky. Such a perfect moment . . . reggae in bright morning sunlight and -2 degrees. And under all I was wearing, no one could possibly identify me; to them, I was the abstraction of an anonymous frozen/bundled pedestrian . . . dancing.

posted by Miles 8:39 AM

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{Friday, January 09, 2004}

 
I've got a new phone - a Samsung E105 - and a new T-Mobile service plan. It's been a mostly painless transition; I got to keep my number, I pay $10 per month less, and I have more minutes and better signal strength in Cambridge & Somerville than I did with Sprint PCS. The one glitch was that the first new phone I got, a Samsung X105 had an incredibly annoying (to me) high frequency buzz of white noise, and I had some trouble getting the T-Mobile folks to let me exchange it for the E105. The "t-zones" web-browser is actually a little slower than Sprint's WAP service, but it is prettier, since I now have a higher resolution color screen.

posted by Miles 11:07 AM
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You know it's fucking cold when your nose hair freezes in place within 20 seconds of being outside.

I guess you also know it's fucking cold when the thermometer reads "2 degrees" and the forecast is for a low of -2 and a high of 11.

posted by Miles 10:23 AM

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{Thursday, January 08, 2004}

 
I get annoyed with MoveOn.org sometimes, when I feel like they're cluttering my mailbox. But some of what they do is pretty good.

They recently orchestrated a contest called "Bush In Thirty Seconds", soliciting 30 second spots with only these guidelines:
We're NOT looking for the same old slick political ads from Washington media consultants. Instead, we're looking for really creative ads that will engage and enlighten viewers and help them understand the truth about George Bush.

The contest was open to anyone, and over 1000 ads were submitted.

15 finalists have been selected via internet voting, and some of them, I think, are really, really good. You should check 'em out. They're hard hitting in a way that you don't see from the DNC or the Democratic candidates, in a way that's probably only possible, politically, for an independent organization. Maybe, too, only possible creatively for people totally on the outside of the business - I haven't really been that thrilled with other ads MoveOn has run.

There are an additional 12 ads that didn't make the finals, but have been nominated for special awards in the categories "Funniest Ad", "Best Youth Ad", and "Best Animation" - I like some of these quite a lot, too.

posted by Miles 4:05 PM

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