Random Rambling
A few things, in no particular order:
- The show at anime club on Friday was Mahou Shoujo Tai Alice, and it was better than I expected. The world is pretty creative, and the animation is really well done. (As a side note, they actually pronounce the main character's name as "Alice" so as to really hit the viewers over the head with the literary reference, which, as the main character literally falls into a magic world, is quite apt.)
- Barnes and Noble University is having a class on Dungeons and Dragons. Amusing.
- The Red Cross is considering a new emblem.
- Check out this site on the Stanford prison experiment. It's one of the more interesting studies that's been done in the field of social psychology.
- "Back in my day, our quantum computers were measured in qubits. A qubyte was some kind of newfangled experiment."
- Finally, this infuriating blog entry on homelessness. Actually, the entry isn't that bad (it discusses a news special where panhandlers seem reluctant to work for money), although its analysis of the situation is weak (it neglects that a lot of homeless people are mentally ill and it neglects the sketchiness of the whole situation (as one Anon puts it: "... imagine you have no social support, no one who'd notice if you're missing, and no cell phone. A stranger pulls up and asks you to get in his car for $20. Do you really think this is a wise decision?")). It's the comments that are infuriating. Apparently, quite a few people think the homeless should be enslaved or slaughtered, and many more seem to think that people have a right to never interact with those they find unpleasant.
- Finally, check out this excellent parody piece on intelligent design and language. (Of course, as is often the case with good parody, reality beats it to the punch.)