Enjoyed the profile of Harvard President Larry Summers. The one time I heard him speak several years ago when he was at the Treasury, dealing with Asian financial crisis, he appeared to be a somewhat blunt and quirky speaker. But someone who genuinely wanted to be convinced by facts.

And I certainly agree with this quote of his, which could also be extended to his own academic field of economics,

“…while it is socially unacceptable at an elite university to admit that you haven’t read a Shakespeare play, no stigma at all attaches to not knowing the difference between a gene and a chromosome or the meaning of exponential growth.”

My machine crashed and went into low-resolution safe mode and it felt like playing that one world in Super Mario Bros. where all the toadstools and lifts are much bigger than normal size. And of course all the graphics are 8-bit awesome. (This screenshot doesn’t quite capture it because it’ll be shown at too high a resolution.)

Following last week’s blackout, this applet that let’s you watch power flow around the Eastern region is pretty interesting. Shows which areas the power comes from and where it goes. I’d wondered where the transmission lines that run above my gym went - mostly when it was snowing and raining and you hear the hissing from it hitting the lines.

And I know they are saying it started a problem in the MidWest, but I still have a gut instinct to blame Canada.

Been enjoying reading about the lawsuit Fox News filed against humorist Al Franken about the use of the words “Fair and Balanced” in the title of his book “Lies, and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” (which has a great cover shot).

In part, the court papers filed by Fox called Franken “shrill and unstable” and “unfunny”. Franken has responded saying,

“And by the way, a few months ago, I trademarked the word ‘funny.’ So when Fox calls me ‘unfunny,’ they’re violating my trademark. I am seriously considering a countersuit”

If Ann Coulter can accuse liberals of the past 50 years of treason and treachery and receive a warm welcome on the 24 hour news circuit, Franken should be able to call Bill O’Reilly a liar and not face a lawsuit. And I still want to see his book review on spinsanity.org next to Coulter’s (and Moore’s), although Franken’s will unarguably be funnier.

School’s out for summer! Which in this case is only 3 weeks, but a break is still welcome. (Of course there was a West Wing marathon of early episodes this weekend when I was working on a final project. Thanks ReplayTV.) Just finished a good Design Patterns course and an okay Database course. This Fall I’m taking two classes in areas I know nothing about, Computer Graphics and Fuzzy, Expert, Genetic and Neural Systems. Sounds like that one will be an overview considering how much material there must be.

Looking through some of the Harvard Extension catalog for classes that I would enjoy taking that are unrelated to work. There are a bunch, and for the $300 it’s a steal. I think they fixed the tuition to the going price on a wheat buschel from Nineteen-Aught-Nine to let us locals get some book-learning.