I was willing to give David Chase a pass on the end of The Sopranos - it wasn't terribly satisfying from an audience perspective, but it's his show, and if he felt it was important to do it that way, then that's his call to make.

However, in the aftermath of the show, I saw an interview with Chase where he actively belittled people who did want to ( Read more... )

I don't know if I've ever actually mentioned it, but what I study in grad school is team formation between autonomous software agents - in layman's terms, "applied AI". Especially since some of our stuff would work really well when applied to UAVs or other robotic drones, my labmates and I occasionally joke about building the Matrix, or being the ( Read more... )

Coming soon to a supercontinent near YOU! All the excitement a balding 32 year-old engineering PhD candidate can PROVIDE! Check out one of THESE exciting appearance dates ( Read more... )

It's the financial apocalypse! End of days! Stock market back in four figure territory! Stock up on gold, gas, and soybeans while you can! MBAs are being hunted down in the street and hung from lamp posts! Repent!

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Sorry, just got caught up in all the doom and gloom on my bloglist this morning...

As the wife can verify, I get into weird, weeks-long jags where I troll the web for hours, obsessing over one particular type of information. When we started considering buying Annalisa a car six years ago, it was automobile reviews, two and a half years ago it was political weblogs to argue about the Iraq war, and now ( Read more... )

From this article on demographic trends and the major political parties:

"But just before the Wisconsin primary in mid-February, ABC News polling director Gary Langer calculated that a cumulative majority of white Democratic primary voters in all of this year's contests had college or postgraduate degrees -- a remarkable tipping point for a party ( Read more... )

So Nader's back in the race. At this point I don't have the energy to get pissed off about it - in the extremely unlikely event Nader steers voters away from the Democrats, this country deserves whatever it gets. But I think the country - and the progressive left - has learned better by now ( Read more... )

Over 10% of homeowners in this country are underwater - they owe more on their home than it's worth.

That just can't be good for the bigger economic picture...

We've been using Craigslist to try and find a place this summer, with mixed results - one pretty good place we thought we had lined up fell through on us, but we've gotten some more nibbles since then, and it seems as if people are just now starting to put summer property rentals up on the market ( Read more... )

I forgot to mention that I saw this last weekend - long story short, go see it. The ads make it look like some kind of wacky, madcap Pulp Fiction-esque crime caper, and while it does have elements of that, it's also surprisingly deep and moving and unexpected ( Read more... )