raleighnet.org

I might have to check this out on Sunday. Thanks for the heads-up LA Blogs

Granted, it’s probably not as interesting as the season premier of the Sopranos, but I’m going to be Tivoing that anyway.

Now the real question is whether I will be able to untangle myself from my knot of seething anger and bitter evil impulses. For those of you not playing along at home, this week sucked on an amazing number of levels, and while I had hoped to be done with most of the annoyances by now, it turns out some of ‘em will be stretching themselves into next week. Grrrrrr!

Oh sweet, sweet Justice.

You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your life is a monument to stupidity. I am breathless that anyone or anything in our universe can really be this stupid. You are a primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of stupidity that we know.

Why do we divide the total of the squared deviations by n-1, rather than n? Recall that the sum of the deviations is known to be zero, so given the first n-1 deviations, we can always calculate the remaining deviation. This means only n-1 of the deviations can vary freely — the last value is constrained by the values of the preceding deviations. This figure, n-1, is known as the degrees of freedom and is a value that will become more important in the chapters that follows.

I’ve read that paragraph 10 times. I think I finally understand what it’s saying, but I don’t think it really answers the question it begins by asking. I need more math training…..I need A LOT MORE math training.

Oh, dear. I’m afraid this little Shockwave Game is going to suck up all of my free time for the next few days. Fortunately, this thing ends after I solve 50 puzzles. As long as I can just keep that Crack Collapse monkey off my back, I should come through this reasonably intact.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Cribbed from here who found it here.

I have on my desk the latest copy of Communication Arts and the book, Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel. I am far more interested in the data analysis book than the pretty picture book (I should mention I do graphic design professionally). What the hell is wrong with me?

By the way - Frequency Tables Rock!

When I saw the story headline Give Away Giveaways, I thought yes. Let’s get rid of all that cheap crap. It’s not really effective is it? It can’t be. But, the story is just wrong on so many levels.

Not long ago, I was sitting in a cafe when I noticed the ring tone on another patron’s cell phone. The tone played a simple but well-known melody: “Always Coca-Cola.” […] Now that’s digital branding. Not only will the phone’s owner hear the Coke jingle several times a day, so will everyone around him. That brand’s signature tune is a highly effective piece of merchandising.

Well, sure, but how many millions of dollars did Coke have to spend to create so much brand affinity that somebody would consider (even just to be kitsch or ironic) putting Coke’s jingle on their phone? This isn’t something that Paul’s Print Palace down the street is going to be able to manage. The idea that you can drop giveaways, not because they suck, but because you can replace them with cheap digital products is insane.

The Tivo keeps grabbing this show, So Graham Norton. I hate the fact that I just can’t get enough of this thing. It is just the basest, most crass, tee hee hee he’s talking about sex kind of program. But, there are times when I find it unbelievably funny.

Take for instance tonight when his guests were Dolph Lungren, Loretta Swit and Matthew Modine. This was the funniest hour of television I’ve seen in about a year. There were like 10 I can’t believe how funny that is moments. Granted, some of them were just because I so enjoy watching a train wreck, and this show has train wrecks like you would not believe. The interview with Modine was so stilted, and he was trying so hard to figure out what the deal was you can actually see time stop as the horror of it washes over his face. Brilliant! Just, Brilliant. Totally rivals the night when they had some belly dancer or something on shooting darts out of her … well, I said it was crass right?

Plus the girl who brought him the wax statue was just smokin’ hot. Who would have thought all the hot young ladies would be over whooping it up in England?

Wow! This Girl (QT Video) can really stack cups. [via MetaFilter]

Or do they?

So we’re talking about ants at work today, and how they are attracted to sodas. Somebody mentions that they don’t like diet pop because they don’t like Nutrasweet.

My first thought: how can they tell the difference? So home I head ready for a night of internet searching. I found plenty of people who were pretty convinced that Aspartame is bad for you. Generally because it is believed to decompose into methanol under heat (Cecil Isn’t Sure) and/or because ants won’t touch the stuff.

I couldn’t find anything definitive, but this school (?) science project, To Which Sweetener are Harvester Ants Most Attracted?, suggests that ants don’t dislike aspartame as much as everybody assumes.