At CMU, we had a "roboceptionist," that is, an animated face on a monitor sitting near the entrance to the robotics building. She'd say "good morning," if you walked too close (leading me to usually hug the wall and scowl at her) and would talk to you if you typed in a keyboard. The important thing is she was named Valerie ( Read more... )

http://wildamerica.com/videos/transcripts/s58.htmlRead more... )

I am going up to the Cornell synchrotron tomorrow for a week. It'll just be like summer camp, only instead of getting merit badges I'll be working 14 hour days at a cramped station in a particle accelerator. I'm not complaining, this is going to be awesome.

Anyway, this is what we do. It has nothing to do with accelerating particles. We just ( Read more... )

I was driving home today and there was a Sufjan song on the radio (bad idea, it is hard to drive and weep softly at the same time) and I suddenly realized that Sufjan Stevens is obviously Cat Stevens's son. I was wrong, as I found out when I got home, but it made so much sense.

• Islamy names (Cat is now Yusuf Islam)
  
• Stevens
  
• Huge weenies
  

QED

Now that I'm driving down to CMU every day, my new hobby is listening to the radio. I'm sorry to say it's kind of the highlight of my day.

I heard a song called Ah Mary on the This American Life station. Now I know two songs that are about a woman who is actually the United States. (The other one is, of course, by Styx) But there's got to be ( Read more... )

My dad is kind of a hoarder. If you can't tell by the house, it's because we've got all these sheds on the property that are also full. (I've got two college friends who, out of complete coincidence, are also children of hoarders, but that's neither here nor there ( Read more... )

So, there's these indigenous people in Papua New Guinea called the Gebusi that I read about in my anthropology class this past semester. These are two practices (that have been phased out for whatever reason since the early eighties) that kind of stuck out for me ( Read more... )

Scene: third grade or so. There has been an act of vandalism on a trophy case.

HDDV: Wow, this is like something out of Ghostwriter.
Alex: You watch that show ( Read more... )

Today you'll have to come up with an excuse for why you're declining an offer to join the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. The reason you're declining is there is a release form you have to sign that says you don't have a criminal record and that they may access records to verify this. Unfortunately, you have a record of aggravated assault, motor ( Read more... )

The q45c2 br6wn f6x 140-ed 6ver the 3azy d6g.

5t's even w6rse when -ress the sh5ft 2ey. WHAT THE CFNG CF/