So a guy at work posted to the internal poetry discussion list saying he'd give away his Nexus S (our holiday gift phone) to whomever posted the best Android-related poem. I was amused by the contest entries but didn't think much of it until Coworker A posted a pretty clever Ozymandias pastiche and Coworker B responded with "[Coworker A] Keats has ( Read more... )

made these last night, they all came out wonderfully ( Read more... )

It's the last day of the year and thus the last day to make charitable donations and get the 2010 tax deduction. As I make my last-minute gifts I'm taking stock of what organizations I give to and why, trying to allocate the funds available in a way that matches my objectives and values. Below the cut, a list thereof, in case you're interested and/ ( Read more... )

I improvised this for family holiday dinner yesterday and it came out really well, though in need of a few tweaks which I've included here. It captures the essence of cassoulet-- a bean stew with several sorts of tender meats and veggies-- and turns the flavor profile distinctly Italian. Also, while it still takes a lot of wall time to make, this ( Read more... )

my 15 minutes of, well, something:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letters/2010/12/06/101206mama_mail4turns out all you have to do to get a letter in the New Yorker is be really, really terse, accept that they will cut you down to be even terser, write in the muted-declamatory style of the New Yorker, and get a lucky break on a slow news/letters ( Read more... )

Look at your books-to-read pile. You know you have one.

In that pile are books that have, in all probability, been there for varying amounts of time. Pick the five that have been there the longest (if you don't know for sure which five those are, guess). Post them.

My longest-sitting five, in no particular order:
Cory Doctorow, MakersHaruki ( Read more... )

This post: http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=463Read more... )

Man, what a party. How nice to mark another year of one's own aging by drinking old wines that have aged exceptionally well!

( The standouts from a long list: )

Addendum to the previous entry: I found a blogpost riffing on "Gatesgate" by a sociologist named Peter Moskos who spent a year as a cop in Baltimore and wrote a book about it. He asks, rhetorically,
Should being an asshole to police get you locked up?. And answers yes with the justification that a police officer "needs" catchall reasons to arrest ( Read more... )

I have been thinking and reading a fair bit lately about what happened to Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard prof who was arrested for "disorderly conduct" when he (long story summarized, somewhat inadequately) got angry at a cop who thought he was breaking into his own house ( Read more... )