So I've been in Austin for about three weeks now. I'm only really now feeling settled in ( Read more... )

You know, considering all the words that get tossed around in the National Spelling Bee, doesn't ursprache seem rather easy to spell?
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As proof, I present this threadBackground information: Earlier today there were rumors floating around that John Calipari was coming to Raleigh to tour NC State's facilities, possibly as a prelude to his agreeing to coach the Wolfpack. Later in the day, a Memphis paper reported that Calipari was, in fact, still in Tennessee, but another outlet (don ( Read more... )

So some of you have heard this news already, but I figured I might as well disseminate it to all of you at once rather than wondering who I've told and who I haven't. The short form of it is this:

I'm leaving Cornell.

Of course, the long form isn't quite as drastic as that sounds. The general story is this: My advisor has decided to leave Cornell ( Read more... )

John Spencer, who played Leo McGarry on the West Wing, died yesterday. The first 3 or so seasons of the West Wing, in my opinion, were the best television I have ever seen, and John Spencer's character was a big part of that ( Read more... )

From here:

Rumored to have also been in the running were British actors Clive Owen, Ioan Gruffudd, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant, Gerard Butler and Ewan McGregor.

One of these things is not like the other. Hugh Grant? Hugh "charmingly befuddled Englishman" Grant? How was that going to work?

Bond: Hi... m-my name is... oh dear, I've gone and forgotten ( Read more... )

So I stumbled across Pandora, which purports to answer the question "Can you help me discover more music I like?" It's quite straightforward. You enter a single artist, or even a single song by that artist, and it begins to stream music to you that's similar to your artist. So feel free to punch in your favorite artist! I typed in "Guster," at ( Read more... )

Pseudoephedrine, the main active ingredient in common cold medicines such as Sudafed, is chemically quite similar to ephedrine (hence the name). As such, it can be used to make methamphetamine. Since crank is quite illegal, and with the growth of small-scale meth labs which use pseudoephedrine in their production, many states have placed ( Read more... )

It's amazing how many interesting, or even disturbing, things you just hear as opposed to see, and how these fleeting bits of sound get put together into a coherent story ( Read more... )

Today, I had my first flat tire. As I was pulling out of the bike rack area at work, I heard a fairly steady thump, thump sound. I looked down and thought to myself, "You know, I'm pretty sure that my rear tire isn't supposed to stick that far out to the sides at the bottom." So I stopped, and took a better look. Yup, definitely flat. I hadn't ( Read more... )