As I write, the sky has decided to bury us in snow. I want to take this opportunity to remind you all that I think highly of you all, and to go tobogganing if possible.

In "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," Toru's brother-in-law, Noboru, is a very interesting character, like a media pundit who goes on TV to talk about politics and economics, but he doesn't believe in anything. He just says whatever is strategic. What inspired him?TV [laughs]. I don't watch it generally, but if you watch it from morning to night, just ( Read more... )

Just under nine more months before we can get out of here.

Tick; tick; tick.

Yesterday, I thought this Linksys WUSB54GC wireless network interface was a piece of junk, that would never work using the native rt73 driver in Ubuntu. We'd been locked in combat for over a week. It seemed hopeless. It would never work. Never, never, never ( Read more... )

leaves shimmy in the breeze ( Read more... )

Great post by Tom Benjamin on why obscenely rich people buy sports franchises. It can be summarized in two words: tax shelter.

The professor I'm working with thinks that I have good enough results to be published. As is. In three to four weeks, they'll be even better. I had to suppress grinning like an idiot for the last half hour of our meeting ( Read more... )

I am well on my way to becoming a Bayesian. Radford Neal (professor of most things at U of T) never managed to convince me entirely. Neither did Sam Roweis, though it was not ever his intention. However, after reading Tom Minka's report on perils in orthodox statistics, and the beginning of E.T. Jaynes book about probability, how can I not be at ( Read more... )

Canoeing, picnic baskets, a bed and breakfast by the lake, all of this and more awaits us in scenic Chambly. Hope the restaurant is as good as it looks. Vacation, Huzzah!

Does tyranny of the minority actually exist? I think that no, it does not, and that the phrase is actually a linguistic or rhetorical device created by the majority to sanitize and justify the otherization of minority actions or ideas. I came to this thought when thinking about how opponents of same sex marriage claim that same sex marriage (SSM ( Read more... )