jake

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News In Photos

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CLEVELAND—After strapping on inline skates for the first time ever Monday, Cavaliers center Shaquille O'Neal and his new teammates bonded while Rollerblading through the streets of Cleveland.

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http://www.theonion.com/content/news/college_freshman_makes_triumphant?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

COCONUT CREEK, FL—"I'm back, Bayshore High," 18-year-old Henry Doyle announced as he pulled his mother's Toyota Camry slowly into the parking lot normally reserved for faculty, emerging with a knowing grin. "Bet you never thought you'd see the likes of me again!"

According to the P-I, Christopher Monfort, the person shot by police earlier today and suspected of the killing of Seattle Police Officer Tim Brenton on Halloween, had two traffic infractions on his state record, and that’s it. I did a quick lookup at the Washington Courts site, and found that those two infractions were from 9/14/2007 and 3/11/2009. What that site doesn’t show is that on 10/16/2009, Monfort was cited in Seattle for driving without insurance. I got that from the Municipal Court of Seattle’s site.

“Monfort may have been recently laid off from a job as a security guard or private investigator, a Seattle police source familiar with the investigation said.”

Aside from being a $550 fine, that charge on the 16th would have been his third inside just over two years. I don’t know where he worked or what the terms of his employment were, but I’ve seen job listings for which you couldn’t have three or more traffic violations within the past three years. If his job had such a requirement, that Seattle ticket would have been the reason he was laid off.

The court mailed him his hearing notice on the 28th. It probably would have reached him on the 30th or 31st. If he’d been stewing for a while, that could have set him off. If he’s not the guy, then that all doesn’t mean anything. But if he is, it sounds like as good an explanation as any for what happened.

Incidentally, the suspect profile the SPD released on the 5th said, “We do believe that although he shot a police officer, he may in fact admire them and even act like them.” The car he was driving when he got the insurance ticket may have been a Crown Victoria with a spotlight, like a cop car. Records show it was a 4-door Ford, anyway, and his neighbors report that he drove a car that looked like a Crown Vic.

Mox Pragam proficiscemur. Celeriter linguae boiohaemicae memini conor...

And I have been Twittering as BuChanda ...

• 13:48 Shooter injures at least 7 people in downtown Orlando office building. #
• 17:00 DisorderedCosmos.com says: ADC Advisory to Brown People bit.ly/489uNA #

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from wordsmith.org/words/spurtle.html 

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

 

spurtle

 

PRONUNCIATION:

(SPUR-tl)

 

MEANING:

noun: A wooden stick for stirring porridge. 

 

ETYMOLOGY:

Of uncertain origin, perhaps from Latin spatula, or from sprit (a pole to extend a sail on a ship). 

 

NOTES:

There's a word for everything. And there's a contest for everything. There is one for making porridge, grandly named, The Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship, held annually in Scotland. 

 

USAGE:

"I know hardly anyone who eats anything much in the morning. ... No one yet has owned up to stirring porridge with a spurtle, pouring milk over blocks of desiccated wheat, or even blasting a banana to a pulp in the blender.

Nigel Slater; Oat Cuisine; The Observer (London, UK); May 19, 2002. 

 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. -Agatha Christie, author (1890-1976) 

http://www.theonion.com/content/radio_news/scientists_dissect_coworker_0?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

Onion Radio News - with Doyle Redland

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So, I had been thinking lately that there were a lot of countries in the world that I'd never even heard of, and many more that I'd heard of but had only a vague idea of where they are, who their neighbors(*) are, or what they are shaped like. Like most Americans, if I were asked to label countries on a blank map of Eastern Europe, I would have only known Poland, Greece, and Russia for sure, and been able to guess a few more.

So two days ago, I decided to fix that. I thought it was a project that would take months, but as it turns out, I now basically know all the countries in the world, and where they are, aside from various tiny Islands, like those in Oceana and the Carribean. On Wednesday, I started with South America because I figured I already knew at least half of those. I was surprised to realize that within about 10-15 minutes, I could point to a blank map and name all of them. So then I added Central America, which was even easier because there are only 7 countries, and all of them I had at least heard of. (Not so with South America, I had never heard of Suriname.). Wow, that's basically all of the Western Hemisphere, aside from the islands... not a bad start!

Encouraged by this, I moved on to Europe. To my surprise, I had them all down within an hour or so. After that, I moved to Asia. Asia was the hardest for me that day, since I've never been there and it's so far from anything in my life, but after another hour or two I had all of the countries in Asia memorized. I went back to try the Europe map again just to make sure I hadn't forgotten it.

So in one day, I went from hardly knowing where half of these countries are, to knowing pretty much the whole world except Africa. I suppose at some point I did memorize most of them in grade school, although geography was always my worst subject and the only class I ever got a D in growing up. I think at that time, it seemed so pointless, memorizing random manmade borders in places I had never been or even heard about. Whatever of them I had memorized for the test, surely faded quickly afterwards. And many boundaries have changed now, especially due to the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Now it seems far more interesting, because I hear about lots of these places in the news and have various cultural associations with most of the names, and have met people from some of the places.

Yesterday, I went and tackled most of Africa. Africa was way harder than anything else, even Asia. And it had the highest concentration of countries I'd never heard of. So I memorized most of it yesterday, but left the Western part till today, since it is filled with tiny countries that were completely unfamiliar to me. Countries like The Gambia, Cote d'lvoire, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. (I think The Gambia may be the only country other than The Bahamas that starts with "The"... actually maybe The Virgin Islands, if you're supposed to put a The in front of it. [Update: ah, The Netherlands, how could I forget them? maybe the Gambia is the only non-plural one though.]) I had also never heard of Lesotho or Berundi. Some like Gabon and Senegal rang some sort of very vague bell, although not enough that I would have been sure they were countries. At any rate, after a bit more time today, I've pretty much got Africa down. I don't know how long all of this is going to last in my memory though, so I should probably do a refresh in a couple weeks.

At any rate, I'd highly recommend trying this exercise, if you haven't already--it should only take a few hours to get most of the world down. I will feel much more confident listening to the news about what's going on in places like Rwanda now that I actually know where they are :)

Among European countries, I think the only two I had never heard of were San Moreno and Andorra. Although after reading up on Andorra it actually does sound familiar now.

While going through, I noticed all sorts of surprising things that made me stop and think. For example, Kazakhstan is completely unbelievably gigantic... for some reason I pictured it as a tiny obscure country, but no... not at all. It's the 9th largest country in the world in terms of land area. For comparison, Greenland is 13th and Mexico is 15th. If someone had asked me "which is bigger, Mexico or Kazakhstan" I would have said "obviously Mexico". Nope! Iran and Sudan are also bigger than I thought, and Saudi Arabia is a bit smaller. Would you believe Sudan is also bigger than Greenland and Mexico?! Also surprising is the size of Madagascar--I had pictured it as this little insignificant island, but actually it's bigger than Spain! (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_area for the whole list.)

The most interesting and confusing border region I found is the boundary of India near where it, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh come together. There's a thin strip of land only about 20-miles wide near a town called Karkarbhitta that looks kind of like a winding river, that goes through near where these other countries almost intersect with each other. This strip of land is part of India, and connects two much bulkier regions of India that would otherwise be completely separated.

(*) I just noticed that Firefox's spellchecker doesn't know the word "neighbor" or "neighbors", how bizarre. This is not an uncommon word at all! I have noticed other fairly common words that it thinks are not words, but this one is ridiculous!

Lab meeting presentation went well. I wasn't perfect and need to revamp my experimental plans, but I found that out TODAY and not at my exam, so that's good. What I did right was to cleverly leave my new exciting SHINY time-lapse movie from the new exciting SHINY microscope for the very end, and play it repeatedly, fostering an excited conversation about future time-lapse experiments. PI said it made her day, so I done good. (Doubtless I will get comments for the next day or two about what I could change, but when she's in a happy mood those are a lot easier to take!)

I still feel lower-level worried about my exam, but I get to take some deep breaths now.

I'm re-taking the Math GRE tomorrow morning (ugh), and I want to take a couple peppermints. Does anyone know if small things such as this are permitted? I can't seem to find an answer to this specific question...


Edit: Well, I definitely did better this time, that much is for sure. I still don't really understand why graduate schools care if I can do 3 hours worth of hero-level integration, though....

Two gold medalists, one best software tool for the comp team, hours of lost sleep -> ∞.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27667?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

PESHTIGO, WI--After a lifetime of assiduously avoiding the use of foul language, Helen Chernak, 59, is finally learning to swear, her delighted offspring reported Monday.

http://www.theonion.com/content/magazine/inside_the_mind_of_a_perfectly?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

It's already confusing enough trying to remember how old I am.

Oh, and Thanksgiving is coming up. And Or and I are hosting. It will be our first official Thanksgiving. How exciting!

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In a large apartment building, it’s impossible to avoid the neighbors. You can hear the Bruce Springsteen that the tenant in 7B cranks while vacuuming, the kids in 8A directly above tromping around, and if someone decides to paint, the fumes reach everyone on the floor. So when a building supervisor notified owners in a sixty-unit co-op building in Brooklyn that one of the apartments had a bedbug infestation, Eddie Rosenthal feared that it was only a matter of time until the bugs spread to his home. [More]

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With U.S. commuters spending an estimated 500 million hours per week in their vehicles , carmakers, software companies and content providers are trying to figure out how to take advantage of new high-speed wireless network technologies to help drivers have better Internet access during this often idle time. [More]

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/95_year_old_yankees_fan?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

NEW YORK—Michael Grippo, a 95-year-old Bronx native, told reporters Wednesday that he is "worried sick" that he won't live to see the Yankees win another 27 World Series titles.