Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category.
I returned from dinner this eve to find a stocking hung on my door handle. In it were a bunch of snacks and candies, a bottle of sparkling cider, and a note from Hayden, Ace, and Aaron wishing my a happy break. After all the crap I’m trying to do before Friday, this just made my week. Thanks, guys!
Up until now, I’ve been thinking the US has been making a big stink about Iran’s nuclear programme over nothing: just another superpower hoping that their enemies will not be given their inalienable right to improve their lot. However, I’ve been reading more on the subject, and it looks like there may very well be a sinister undercurrent to Iran’s drive for nuclear research. It’s a bit conspicuous when you step up your nuclear research while at the same time calling for another country (within missile range, no less) to be wiped from the face of the Earth. I kind of like the Russian deal, which is that Russia will supply Iran with reactor-grade nuclear fuel to be used in Russian-designed power plants, and Iran will return the spent fuel to assure that it is not diverted to make weapons. The US doesn’t seem to be going for that either, however, and I’m still confused as to why not. Whatever happens, it should finish up in a few more months.
Here’s the weird thing, though: suppose that Iran is actually doing this to be able to nuke Israel. If they hit Jerusalem, this will make Muslims, Christians, and Jews all angry, and since Iran wants to stay on the good side of at least the Muslims, I doubt that will happen. So suppose that Iran nukes the rest of Israel, and leaves Jerusalem alone. This would have absolutely catastrophic effects for Iran as well as Israel, because the rest of the world would be so surprised, appalled, and outraged that nearly every major country in the world would declare war on Iran and conquer it. Surely Iran doesn’t want to be conquered. Wiping out Israel in such a manner would also wipe out Iran itself. Consequently, I doubt Iran is planning to nuke Israel. Therefore, I believe that it is in Iran’s best interests to not nuke Israel. However, if this is the case, why try to develop nuclear weapons at all? To be used in some sort of blackmail/coercion? To counter any country that tries to invade (I don’t think Iran needs defenses to repel any invading countries any more; that ended about a decade ago with Iraq)? Making nukes to repel any aggressors who wouldn’t invade unless Iran builds nukes seems unnecessarily circular, and would only hurt Iran. Why would they do this? Perhaps they really are just trying to build power plants? But if that’s the case, why aren’t they being more cooperative with other countries? Something isn’t adding up in all of this.
O’Reilly and his fellow right-wing conservative religious bigots are now claiming that Christmas is under attack by people who want to be more inclusive and use phrases like “happy holidays” and “winter break.” Apparently these are anti-Christmas sentiments, and FOX and O’Reilly are advocating boycotting any store that uses them instead of explicitly saying “Christmas.” How is it that these people are so highly regarded that they have radio shows, “news” shows, and widespread public support!?
See what happens when the US advocates a policy of pre-emptive strikes? Now, Binyamin Netanyahu is advocating a pre-emptive strike against Iran if they haven’t been dissuaded to stop their nuclear reserach in a couple months. Although he is no longer prime minister of the country, he was back in 1996, and I think it likely that he could get elected again if he really wants to. His opinion carries a lot of weight in the Israeli government.
Right. I have to get back to Algorithms grading, so I can then get back to PerCog, so I can then get back to grad school apps, so I can get back to clinic, so I can get back to ACM, so… fuck. No sleep for Alan again.
…man. It’s usually poor form to start off a Monday with an all-nighter. Last night at 3AM, when I was trying to hunker down and do some grad school apps, Dana IM’ed me and said that Tiffany was sick and wouldn’t be able to make the corrections to our mid-year clinic report. Since it was due on Wednesday, and we got an extension until Friday, and we were actually planning on turning it in on Monday afternoon, we decided that we really needed those changes made. So Dana, Cris, and I spent last night from 3:30 until 8:30 AM in the LAC doing clinic. I am not as happy a camper as he expected to be this morning.
So, recently, I have been frustrated that Xorg keeps randomly crashing. And I mean, randomly. It has only crashed twice while I’ve been using my computer, but about 5 times while I’ve been out of the room or asleep, with nothing but the screensaver running. I had attributed it to an unstable build of Xorg (I’ve been running version 6.8.2-r0), and waited until a new version was out (6.8.2-r6). However, I couldn’t get it to compile. I looked through the Gentoo forums for help, but no one else seemed to have the same problem as me. Today, I finally decided to start my own thread on the forums about this, when I noticed that the ebuild had failed in a different place than it had failed previously. That was really weird! On a whim, I tried building it again, …and it worked. As I write this, everything on my computer has been updated except OpenOffice, which is in the middle of updating itself. No problems with any ebuilds, least of all Xorg. wtf? I suspect it is a problem with faulty memory, and Mac just backed up my suspicions. We shall see… It’skind of neat being able to spot a hardware problem; I don’t think I’ve ever successfully done that before (though it would be great if I haven’t successfully done that here, either. I’ll find out more later).
BTW, I’ve (sorta) been off polyphasic sleep since Wednesday. I did it for a week, and I believe it can be successfully done for much longer. However, I was only getting a couple extra hours per day to do stuff, so the benefits weren’t as great as I had hoped. On top of that, it’s harder than I expected to schedule naps every 4 hours (they seemed to come in the middle of parties and movies and things), so it was a social inconvenience. Add that to the social inconvenience of swearing off caffeine and alcohol while on the cycle, and the drawbacks outweighed the benefits of it. However, I still seem to get sleepy during the day at certain points, and I took a 20-minute nap in the middle of the Putnam exam (this actually helped – I was getting tired and frustrated, and couldn’t get any of the problems, so I went to sleep. 20 minutes later, I woke up alert and energized, and solved another problem), so I’m not completely back to monophasic sleep yet.
At the moment, I am on Bridge Base Online, watching the final match of the Cambrose Trials in Ireland. I don’t completely understand the bidding (for instance, I play that opening 2S shows 5-11 HCP and 6 spades, while at least one of the four partnerships plays that this shows a weak hand and 5-5 in spades and a minor). However, the hands are fascinating and the play is incredible. Also, I’ve got BBO logging all of these hands. I think I’ll rig them up and have people play them this coming Thursday. What fun!
I want a DVD with the waffle feature.
The election was today. It appears as though Prop. 73 (no abortions for minors without parental notification) did not pass, along with our illustrious governator’s agendas concerning the budget and the voting districts. I’m really happy that the people of California have struck these down.