A Much-Needed Laugh

I love Boing Boing. And I love the fact that this product exists. And I love the fact that the need for said product is lovingly chronicled here (with greatest hits here).

Lazy blog post you say? Yup. It's been a pretty nasty weekend, but I thought I'd share one of the few things that made me laugh.

Hieroglyphics!

My daughter brought me a code today made up of food items that she had used to write a message. I was seized by a sudden moment of uber-geekiness, and explained to her that this was similar to the hieroglyphics that the Egyptians used to write back in the day. (You know, the day, thousands of years ago?). One of the things about being a parent is you can try to sound smart about something you know nothing at all about. She was mildly interested so I googled hieroglyphics and showed her some examples. She wandered off, officially bored by her fathers pedagogy. But I kept reading. Turns out, the system of writing makes some kind of sense! I mean, at least based on this one website, you can readily grasp what they were doing when they were writing it - what meant what (at least in terms of the alphabet, there were a few thousand characters that were not the alphabet that would be harder to figure). Anyway, it was a fascinating 10 minutes, even if my daughter wasn't there to hear it, so if you've ever wondered what they're reading on "The Mummy" check it out.

Really well written response to a book I won't be reading

You guys know I've read Freakanomics, and liked it generally. You also probably know that they've got a sequel out - Superfreakanomics. And based on the buzz, I'm not planning on reading that one. From what I've been reading about the book, they've kind of gone off the edge of reason with the same kind of thinking I have complained about in the past - Post-hoc thinking. Essentially what they're doing is picking a set of data, looking at it selectively, and using it to make some point instead of systematically examining all of the facts or, better yet, conducting an experiment to see if their guesses are right. I feel weird critiquing the authors because, having read the first book, I've concluded that they're brilliant. But brilliant people can make intellectual asses out of themselves and one of the things about pop (i.e., non peer reviewed) writing is that you can get away with being a really big intellectual ass and still sell lots of books (sound familiar Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Beck??). So, brilliant or not, I'm not planning on plopping down $30 more for the book.

One of the things that people are really fired up about it their stance on climate change. Of course a very hot button topic, and they're brave to take it on. But that doesn't make them right. I've read some excerpts from their chapter, and a load of replies, and by far my favorite post on the subject is this one. I like it because it's well written, it's very clear, and it does a great job of illustrating just where post-hockery can get you. So if you've got a second check it out - it's enjoyable and educational all at the same time. A veritable Oreo of a critique. Enjoy.

And so it begins...

At 9:00 this morning I was supposed to have a deliverable (code that converts a file from one thing to another thing).  At 9:00 I found that the person who was going to write the code was patiently waiting for another human to do something.  I lit a fire under the human who hadn't done his thing, and ever since it has been a process of shepherding things across one little tiny bridge after another.  It's like herding cats across bridges built out of matchsticks.

 

And it's now 4:00 and we are only theoretically further along than we were at 9:00.

 

Wheeeee!

Don't Tell Him How Awesome He Is!

My colleague just got a promotion...except that nobody told him.  Sssssssh!  Don't tell anyone, but Rich is awesome!