Dolphins protect New Zealand swimmers from a great white shark.

I like this snippet from Of Course I'm for Monogamy (I'm Also for Everlasting Peace and an End to Taxes), by Marilyn vos Savant ( Read more... )

Reading The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia, by Paul Hudak ( Read more... )

The Incredibles is incredible. It attempts to increase solidarity and self-worth within your social circle, and it succeeds. That it kept me thinking for several hours after I saw it is a testament to Pixar's ability to pack in so much subtlety into their fast-paced movies that I can't digest everything in real-time ( Read more... )

As I walked out of the house today, I spotted a monarch butterfly browsing the flowers in the front yard. The sky was overcast, so light was diffuse and just right for photography. I dashed inside to get my camera and reappeared a minute later, but the monarch was gone, replaced by a bumblebee. Unfortunately, it wouldn't let me get close enough ( Read more... )

According to my prof, birds don't experience senescence. Their telomeres don't shorten, and they don't age ( Read more... )

I bumped into one of my profs today, a Jew raised in the Northeast, and probably the best prof I've ever had (in love with his work, connects with students, lectures excellently, has a crazy-funny sense of humor). He just moved to Houston a couple months ago ( Read more... )

I'm loath to leave my gmail address with non-CS people over 30, for fear of being put into the same class as people who ( Read more... )

I contacted a plant manager today regarding our suburb's next Community Advisory Council meeting. He was wary at first (later, I was told that no one had EVER contacted him by phone, even though he was the contact person for CAC and his number was on their webpage), but he softened up quickly. Turned out that their next meeting was tonight, at a ( Read more... )

The air around here is a cocktail of chemical byproducts of the oil refining process. For at least 100 miles, from East Houston through Baytown and possibly even farther, all you can see (and usually smell) are oil refineries ( Read more... )