Who says the NYT has no sense of humor?

Tags: politics, silly

From Lea's entry mentioned in my previous post, I discovered the blog of Colleen Doran (best known as creator of A Distant Soil. though that's ironically not listed in the Comic Book Database). In that blog I found a most marvelous post about her brother's pentagram police-work.

Before the trip, Bro dressed up in his best suit, put on some shades, and picked up a cheap pentagram ring from Spencer’s Gifts because it would look cool to Satan’s Appendage. While the other cops dressed in jeans and baseball caps, Bro’s duds had the desired effect, and Lefty trembled in fear, afraid he was facing one of Satan’s Own Enforcers. (From Colleen's blog)

Tags: comics, link, silly

Bill Poser points out an absurdly wrong use of Mathematica, when Perl (or egrep) would really be a much more appropriate choice.

Tags: computers, link, silly

Suppose [hypothetically] I just received an email with the subject line "This is not an interesting email".

Would I read it?

Tags: brains, computers, silly, theory, words

"Bonjour," says [French guy, we'll call him Jean], upon arriving in the office, to the South Indian [we'll call him Prakash] with whom he shares a cubicle wall.

Prakash looks back, blankly.

"Buenos dias," Jean tries again, gamely.

Another stare.

"Guten Tag, bon giorno," Jean tries, with a tiny note of desperation along with his accent. "Nii hao, hello!"

"Namaste," I add, perhaps unhelpfully.

Prakash pulls the tiny tiny earphones out of his ears and looks at us both. "What?"

Tags: diary, silly, words

I'm a "Pure Nerd" according to one of those OKCupid tests. 100% score is perfect! ( Read more... )

Tags: meme, silly

The Chinese project manager two desks over is on the phone, talking about a project I'm working on. He mis-spells my surname, scrambling the coda consonants. He notices me flinching at the mis-spelling, and corrects himself. He then compares it to "uh, a Persian king yah", hears me laugh, and looks up at me: "what -- no?"

"It's just a name," I said. I don't want to go into the extended history of the consonant sequence, which derives from an old name for one of the Hebrew tribes. It's anglo-homophonous, but not anglo-orthographically identical to the name he's thinking of, nor is it ortho-identical to a certain even-numbered science-fiction sequel. He turns back to the phone. I turn back to my terminal.

"No, I don't think so," he says after a moment. I turn back. He looks up -- "No, I don't think he's Vietnamese," he says to the phone. I sip some coffee, and go back to work.

Tags: diary, silly, words

( Cat and Girl: Outdoor activities )

I wish this activity really was outdoors.
and okay, Cat's motivation is not really my motivation. I'm already there.

Tags: link, school, silly

According to the New York Times, Gonzales is Seeking to Stem Light Sentences.

( geeky explanation behind the cut )
I owe this one to a transitive-closure labmate (he's not my labmate, but he's a former labmate of some of my labmates) who's now on the East Coast.

Tags: computers, silly, theory, words

You put the thesis in
kick the antithesis out
pull the synthesis together
and you shake it all about

it's the Hegel dialectic
and you turn it all around;
that's what it's all a-bout!

Inspired by some discussion on evan's journal.

Tags: brains, poetry, silly