Archive for July, 2010
A Blonde Joke
Thursday, July 29th, 2010(HT: American Digest)
The Value of Being Late to Class – If You’re Smart
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010One day in 1939, Berkeley doctoral candidate George Dantzig arrived late for a statistics class taught by Jerzy Neyman. He copied down the two problems on the blackboard and turned them in a few days later, apologizing for the delay — he’d found them unusually difficult. Distracted, Neyman told him to leave his homework on the desk.
On a Sunday morning six weeks later, Neyman banged on Dantzig’s door. The problems that Dantzig had assumed were homework were actually unproved statistical theorems that Neyman had been discussing with the class — and Dantzig had proved both of them. Both were eventually published, with Dantzig as coauthor.
“When I began to worry about a thesis topic,” he recalled later, “Neyman just shrugged and told me to wrap the two problems in a binder and he would accept them as my thesis.”
(HT: Futility Closet)
Things You Don’t Want To See in the Back Yard
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010Mom! The Horta’s trying to sneak under the fence again!
Homer vs. Homer
Sunday, July 18th, 2010
I appreciate wisdom wherever I find it. Homer is one of my favorite sages – either Homer the Greek philosopher or Homer Simpson, I don’t care which. Here are a series of quotes from the great Homers, courtesy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Best of the Best edition. (Like I said, wisdom is where you find it.) The first in each series is from the Greek, the second is from the Simpson.
- “It is the bold man who every time does his best.”
- “I don’t know, Marge. Trying is the first step toward failure”
- “The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others.”
- “You gave both dogs away? You know how I feel about giving!”
- “The fates have given mankind a patient soul.”
- “Give me some piece of mind or I’ll mop the floor with you!”
- “Nothing in the world is so incontinent as a man’s accursed appetite.”
- “Ahh, beer…I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer!”
- “I detest he who hides one thing in his heart and means another.”
- “But, Marge, it takes two people to lie: one to lie, and one to listen.”
- “The man who acts the least, disrupts the most.”
- “It is better to watch things than to do them.”
- “A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother.”
- “Television–teacher, mother, secret lover!”
- “How mortals take the gods to task! Yet their afflictions come from us.”
- “I’m not normally a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman!”
Anti-Semitism and the Ongoing Self-Immolation of Europe.
Friday, July 2nd, 2010European Jewry In Its Worst Condition Since the End of World War II (HT: Gateway Pundit)
