Maximum congratulations to Julie, who late late last week finished the final level of her PhD.

The weekend was spent lifting boxes with the help of her folks. Now all is ready for the next adventure.

Anime: Japanator's top 50 for the decade. An interesting selection. I've watched all of 22 of those and touched on 6 more.

Clothes: Ties! Also, the other kind of ties! umbrellas! Blue shoes! Double monks!

It occurs to me that I've gone from two pairs of shoes (running shoes, black oxford dress shoes; three if you include beach sandals) to ( Read more... )

Education: An essay on why going to any non-top-tier law school is a one-way ticket to penury. Ditto (most of the time) for getting a PhD. An article on the overuse of homework in elementary school.

Music: A love note sent indirectly, a twist on the multitrack music video, an OverthinkingIt essay on the song Like a G6.

The Internets Attack: An ( Read more... )

I've switched from Mnemosyne to Anki for my kanji flashcards. The former is a simpler program, but Anki is better. It backs up the flashcards automatically, syncs over multiple systems, and builds cards from tables of facts instead of storing them individually (that way, if you make an edit to correct a mistake, all relevant cards are updated ( Read more... )

I was watching this video by Peter Schiff in which he argues that the reason for the modern rise in college tuition is government-backed loans. If only college students could only get private sector loans on somewhat worse terms, then students would be significantly more price conscious and that would force schools to lower tuitions ( Read more... )

(A few months ago, I had been doing a series of chapter by chapter posts on John Naisbitt's Megatrends. Then I got busy / distracted. But since I'm not one to leave things half-finished, I'm going to get back to that ( Read more... )

Olin College, by consent of the remaining former directors of the Franklin W. Olin Foundation and a majority vote of the College Trustees, has amended the Founding Precepts of Olin College, item six, to reduce the Olin Scholarship by 50% starting for the class of 2014 (entering in Fall 2010 ( Read more... )

CS GREs tomorrow. Did the practice test, got 780, which is not a bad score (71st percentile, max is 900, I have no idea why they score the subject tests on a different scale). I think I can do better, though, I've gotten rusty on a lot of things (judging by the practice test, I could gain a fair handful of points by brushing up on grammars and ( Read more... )

Please grant some of my fellow Olin students a moment of your time ( Read more... )

Verbal 710 (lower than on the practice test, the questions were harder; bit disappointing, could have done more with vocab ( Read more... )