2-28-06

The whole "Freedom Fries" thing was even more idiotic than I previously believed. The vast majority of complex words in English were borrowed from French or Latin -- which essentially is what French was a few thousand years ago -- so "The man has a sword and likes water" is about the most complicated thing you can say using only Old English roots. Anything beyond that and you're in French territory; erasing French fries from our language would have accomplished nothing. Even the word language itself was stolen from French.

2-27-06

One of my chemistry students, who I always assumed was Russian, is in fact not very Russian at all. She was born in the U.S., as were both her parents, and her nearest foreign ancestry is Italian. Apparently "Kalina" is not a giveaway Russian name.

2-26-06

Computer architecture diagrams suck. Especially when you have to modify them.

2-25-06

"This is a nice theoretical notion which unfortunately has dubious value because nobody knows if any of the things we're talking about actually exist." -- Professor Singer on one-way trapdoor functions.

2-24-06

My postcolonial lit professor can see through BS on papers. I got a B/B+ on the first one.

2-23-06

The word muculent.

2-22-06

Write a program that takes an arbitrary number of integers from the user and stores them in an array.

Lines of code required in C++: 9
Lines of code required in Perl: 1

2-21-06

There are three uneaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in my room and two bananas.

A small piece of my bedsheet is stained with chocolate.

Skipping operating systems and computer architecture really frees up my day.

"So of course, if we take a cube, the bottom of a cube is a sphere." -- Professor Blackwell

2-20-06

Kunstlerroman is a German term for a novel chiefly concerned with one character's development of himself as an artist.

2-19-06

It's not pass interference if it happens within five yards of the scrimmage line.

2-18-06

Anthony's, located in Little Italy, is a terrible restaurant. Don't go there.

2-17-06

It genuinely upsets Jim when I tell people that he's good at DDR and practices alone in his room every night.

2-16-06

If you pull an all-nighter and neglect to change your socks, by the end of the second day they start to smell really bad.

2-15-06

Today Phil taught me a new puzzle:

There is a circular pond of radius 1. At the center of the pond sits a duck; at the edge, a fox. The duck wants to reach the edge of the pond and fly away. The fox, who is perfectly logical, wants to catch the duck, and is capable of moving at a speed of 1 around the circle (though of course, if moving won't bring it any closer to the duck, the fox will just sit still). Question: what is the slowest speed the duck can take and still make it to the edge of the pond without being caught? How should the duck get there (i.e., move in a straight line, go in spirals, etc)?

2-14-06

It is possible to fall asleep lying on your back even if both your knees are propped up.

2-13-06

AA meetings are not the only cure for alcoholism. There is a medicinal treatment: a drug kills off the main enzyme that your body uses to process alcohol, the result being that consuming alcohol makes you nauseous and disinclined to drink any more. This enzyme is naturally absent among many Asian and other peoples; consequently the incidence of alcoholism among them is much lower.

2-12-06

That beloved game of our childhood, Chip's Challenge, can be downloaded for free here.

Jim went out to do tutoring and his alarm rang all afternoon. In the evening we discovered that our suite DOES have a circuit box.

2-11-06

Although I am usually good at board games where diplomacy and manipulation are involved, I absolutely suck at Mafia. If I'm the Mafia, I get lynched. If I'm not the Mafia, I get lynched. Or murdered by the Mafia.

I do exponentially better in poker games where the blinds stay fixed.

2-10-06

Roald Dahl and AA Milne (the creators of Willy Wonka and Winnie the Pooh, respectively) were godawful horrible people in real life.

2-9-06

Pictures of old manuscripts taken in ultraviolet light allow you to read things that had previously been erased.

2-8-06

All this time, I've had some random person's sock inside my blanket.

2-7-06

"Inflammable," derived from "inflame," actually came before "flammable."

2-6-06

Milk, when sealed in a ziplock bag and left in Kevin's room for a week, turns light brown.

2-5-06

In a game of football, the quarterback is not allowed to throw a pass if he has run past the line of scrimmage.

2-4-06

DDR is actually a very entertaining game once you can stop being self-conscious about the fact that you're a complete loser.

2-3-06

The white feather is the British national symbol of cowardice.

2-2-06

Rather than trying to describe it, I'll direct you here. First play the video with your eyes closed. Then play it again and watch the guy's lips. Crazy, isn't it?

2-1-06

During World War 2, Canada set up concentration camps for Japanese Canadians just like the United States did.

Winston Churchill was, for all his wit and noble qualities, a hardcore racist. To quote my classmate Scott, "If I had a dollar for every time Winston Churchill said something nice about a black man, I'd have an empty wallet."