bolson

I hereby link for you and share this Harry Potter fanfic I have enjoyed reading: "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". The premise is that Aunt Petunia didn't marry Mr Dursley but instead a philosophy professor and Harry was brought up to love Science and Reason and turns out to be exceptionally bright (in an Ender Wiggin sorta way). It may occasionally get a little longwinded and preachy and pedantic about Rationality, but I found it to be more amusing and acceptable than certain libertarian screeds (Ayn Rand, Terry Goodkind's finale in book 13 of his series) and it seems to have a genuine Humanist appreciation for the general goodness and worth of people rather than the colder view of those other things.

It's been serialized out a chapter or so at a time over the last several months and it's not done yet (now at the end of January in this alternate version of Harry's first year at Hogwarts), but there is 1.5MB of html there to read so far and I'll be going back for more every couple weeks.

I now have two notions for tattoos if I someday feel the need for such:
1. the circuit diagram for 1 bit of memory
2. the formula for bayes' theorem

A few months ago, in May, there was an article in the NYTimes about student loan debt. It talks about some ways in which the schools and lenders work together, or dysfunction together, and wind up with a system that can be predatory and exploitive and ultimately repressive to people on the down side of it.
But I think it also comes with a punch line:

"The balance on [her] loans is about $97,000"
"She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies."

I'd like to be respectful to my friend with an advanced degree in religious and women's studies, but in retrospect in this case this seems like an obviously bad idea. The article draws some parallels to the real estate bubble. People getting loans they can't afford because they assume what they're buying will be worth enough to make it all better in the end. It didn't work in lots of inflated housing markets, and it didn't work out for this young woman's education. That $100000 education (which will cost a total over $200000 over the life of its interest payments) didn't wind up being worth much.
Is there some kind of rule of thumb about this? Business math? I want something short like "Don't buy an education that won't buy you a job that can pay it back in less than N years." or "Don't pay more in tuition than K*expected_salary." N in 5..15? K in 2..4?

Here's a pretty graphic indicting the industry and the laws they've lobbied for

It's nice to just talk and talk and listen and have a meeting of two minds. I've had a couple good sessions of this in the last couple days.

Sometimes it seems like a good idea to eat pizza and drink beer and watch a stupid action flick. This theory kinda held for the first hour, with full "this is absurd" snarking in effect. Eventually the non-stop nonsenical dumb action and explosions became actually boring. To say it was 'formulaic' is understating how you could tell within a second of a random non-requiter scene change, "oh, this is the flash-back origin story of $character" or "oh, training montage". I still claim film-geek points for recognizing and naming the score composer mid way through the movie from a riff that sounded just like Contact.

P.S. If you thought Eccleston wasn't the best Doctor, he wasn't the best villain either.

Parties in which I get to hang out with neat people I don't wind up seeing very often otherwise, and meet new people, and do networking.

The Gym. That'd be Bally's in Porter Square. The old, not climbing, not gymnastics, mundane gym. In which I pick up heavy things and put them down again right where they came from (unlike moving). In which I run to nowhere for 30-40 minutes. I was feeling a little lethargic and don't-wanna before I went, but then I went and was immediately better and had a good workout.

I saw a 9-11-01 sticker on a truck today and got into my usual groove of think that the owner of the truck probably doesn't have much in common with me politically. Then my mind wandered to the term "Ground Zero" which has been back in the news a lot lately. I've always been irked by this term because I'm more likely to think of the three places which really defined the term: Trinity Site, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I think an act of war that destroys a city and kills a hundred thousand people pretty thoroughly overshadows a (tragically effective) terrorist bombing of a couple buildings. I think calling the world trade center collapse site 'ground zero' is diluting the memory of the first three atomic bomb explosions. (7-16-45) 8-6-45 8-9-45 Never Forget

Gratitude: Good Day
Saturday was a good day, is that enough?

Gratitude: NPR
NPR keeps me informed and amused.

Gratitude: Smart People Who Share
There are smart people in the world who think about things. That's great. It means I don't have to think of everything myself. Specifically I was recently introduced to "The Energy Project", a Tony Schwartz motivational self help venture, and it has some good things to think about, and some practical systems, and I should really put together a whole post on the things I've been thinking about since going through that class.

Bonus good day: Awesome moment of today was definitely cuddling with my favorite certain someone while watching a Q episode of ST:TNG.

Previously I made a round clock where the numbers went around in place of hands, now I've unrolled it and made a rectangular clock with moving numbers.

Sometimes I have a go-go-go schedule with events to go out to every night, but not all the time. I've been permitting myself to stop and rest more, but I think it's still something I'm working on and need to get good at. I got practiced in staying up later and going on longer, but I need to practice resting better. Sometimes no matter how tired I get I've forgotten how to stop and recuperate. I'm grateful when I get it and it works.

No event tonight. Come home, have dinner with the gf, flop on the couch and watch westwing. Go to bed early(ish). And now back to that last part.