I got lucky, and I don't know why.

I'm lucky because I'm gluten-intolerant. I'm lucky because the headaches are lessened, the depression is lessened, the GI problems are cured through a dietary change. In the chronic illness roulette, I got the disease that can be completely mitigated through excluding certain grains from my diet. Eating gluten- ( Read more... )

Dear Friend,

If you're receiving this letter, then you either are or have been a gifted student, a parent of a gifted student, or know or have known a gifted student at some point. No matter which of these categories you fall into, you probably know very well some of the trials and tribulations gifted students face, even in the best of schools. Many ( Read more... )

Follow link. Read down.  Help?  Which you can do by buying books, so, you know, it's not like we weren't going to do that anyway...

Watch, think, pass it on.  Maybe to our representatives and senators?  http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07102009/watch2.html

Yes, this is shameless promotion.  My friend Lyndsay Faye has written a book.  Not only has she written it but it has been published and is available in bookstores as of today.  The book is called Dust and Shadow, a story about Holmes and Jack the Ripper, and it is highly enjoyable.  She has done a fantabulous job and Simon & Schuster is already ( Read more... )

Some of you already know about SPARC.  Actually probably all of you, since it's a small group that reads this lj.   :)  SPARC's first big fundraising event is coming at the end of this month.  The Totally Normal Event is being put together by Jeff Mach of Wicked Events and promises to be an exciting time for all.  We have

-great performers -- ( Read more... )

Eight hour day number two.  Got lots of stuff done -- some things actually finished (at least till my advisor sends them back for rewrites) and some bril results on my model.  In an environment with 25% labeled data, addition of the Hebbian term to the learning algorithm results in approximately 100% improvement in generalization performance.  ( Read more... )

I am unnecessary.  Harvey Fierstein rocks (but we all knew that, didn't we?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/13/opinion/13fierstein.html

The Phantom Menace.  George Lucas got a few things right, there.  "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred leads to suffering."  Right on Master Yoda.  I'm not even going to talk about suffering, it's too obvious.  I'm going to stick with the first part of the lesson: fear, and hatred.  Specifically hatred.

See, Don Imus has been ( Read more... )

Oooh, a second post. This is one better than I've ever done on a blog before. I've been taping my dissertation notes to the wall and will probably have to start moving furniture to accomodate it. My trip to England was fantastic, by the by, and here's a pic to prove it:

( Read more... )