http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592

The number of legal chess positions is 10^40, the number of different possible games, 10^120. Authors have attempted various ways to convey this immensity, usually based on one of the few fields to regularly employ such exponents, astronomy. ( Read more... )

Something a co-worker said ( Read more... )

I started re-reading one of my textbooks last week, and I'm now twenty pages in! At this rate, I'll finish all my philosophy textbooks sometime before I die. Actually, I'm fine with that. I'm reading about the pre-Socratics now, that wacky bunch that thought everything was made of water, or aer, or something boundless. And then later, Pythagoras, ( Read more... )

I'm starting a new job in February!

It's with my current company, in a different but related department to the one I'm in now. So I get to stay with my awesome co-workers and start a new job. As part of the interview process, I had to give a presentation on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I say "interview process" because I had ( Read more... )

Books:
Doomed Queens by Kris Waldherr
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Glance by Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks
In Search of Klingsor by Jorge Volpi
Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

Movies:
Top Hat - 1935
UHF - 1989 ( Read more... )

A friend once told me his mother, a pharmacist, takes Benadryl when she needs to sleep, because she knows it won't hurt her. "And ibuprofen? You can take as much of that as you want, as long as you eat and drink with it." I worry about ibuprofen, but Benadryl I believe. It knocks me right out. Except tonight. Tonight I just can't sleep. There may ( Read more... )

He may live without books, -- what is knowledge but grieving ( Read more... )

My brother just got a late gift in the mail: an armband/anklet of llama toenails from an historian whose focus is Latin America. They have holes punched in them and they're attached to a cloth band. They make a nice rattle when he shakes them. I heard them from the other room and thought, "bones? rainstick?" No. Llama toenails.

I'm having a little trouble with the Christmas spirit this year, in spite of a video my mother forwarded to me in all caps, because it made her laugh so hard:

Click to view

I HOPE YOU ENJOY IT, WHATE'ER YOUR HOLIDAYS MAY BE.

I happened to be looking up birthstones today when I found a birthstone poem on Wikipedia. Well, fine, that's pretty benign, until you look at my birth month, October:

October's child is born for woe,
And life's vicissitudes must know,
But lay an opal on her breast,
And hope will lull those woes to rest.It clearly advocates buying possibly ( Read more... )