Pedals

I picked up some new pedals with toe baskets for my bike and holy jebus, it’s so much easier to bike uphill now. I should’ve done that a long time ago. I’m biking to work on my easy running days – it’s a hard 20min ride to the lab, then a glide back down to the farm. I’m going to substitute this for 10 miles of running per week, and hopefully the injury gorilla will get off my back.

So Haile’s 2:03:59 was set more than FOURTEEN YEARS after he set his first world record, 12:56.96 in the 5000m. That’s range man, and also, staying power where so often the best east africans burn hot for a couple years before flaming out. His case for GOAT is a strong one, but if he won the Oly ‘thon this year it would be indisputable. I still want to see Haile vs. Sammy mano-a-mano but The Great One seems mostly into time-trialing these days.

space walk!

The video is totally amazing.

prime

2^43,112,609 – 1 is prime, crazy.

Data

I’m having issues with some people about the use of the word “data”.

It’s a singular aggregate noun. Get over it. Scientists only use at as plural to effect an air of superiority and thusly they can go straight to hell.

Jet Man!

So cool!

In the new cottage there’s a cat that meows at me from the door, so I let him in and he walks around me and meows some more. I’m like, ‘what do you want?’ but I really don’t understand cats. I tried giving him some milk, but all I had was soy milk and he was not into that. The only other thing I can think of is to sing “Stray Cat Strut” so I do that, and eventually he leaves.

We have lots of delicious ripe apples – mmmmmm!

trouble

This Time article describes the financial mess very well, I thought. I read it yesterday and today it looks like it’s outdated.

fast

Bolt ran ten meters in 0.82 seconds, about 27.3 mph.

here’s a newsflash for you walter cronkite

These girls are not skinny – they have what-should-be-considered-normal body types.

I heard a good reader’s digest version of the AIG debacle on NPR this morning. From what I gathered, AIG insured bonds just like they would houses or cars. The problem is, automobile/house claims are uncorrelated – if one car gets totalled they can cover the claim from the premiums from the other cars that don’t get totalled, so the system is stable. Bonds, on the other hand, are highly correlated, so if one defaults/fails/whatever, many more are likely to fail, and the system is unstable. But it’s something like a $30 trillion industry, so of course they wanted some of that money and apparently nobody bothered to compute a correlation matrix. With this gross, probably inaccurate, oversimplification it sounds just like the mortgage crisis, a bunch of greedy stupid people that don’t bother to think about the issues for five minutes before taking people’s money. Unfortunately the non-greedy smart people do not work in finance, investment banking, and similar boring pointless enterprises.

Alyx

Alyx, the blood-sucking blood-centrifuging robot took 400ml of my precious and well-utilized red blood cells, which, in a bag, are nearly black like squid ink. In fact, Alyx took too much of my blood so he just pumped it back into my vein – so considerate. In other news I watched “North by Northwest” over the weekend – big thumbs up for that one.

Whoopi

I have very strong opinions about the women on the view: they’re either fantastic or terrible. Whoopi is really great. Sister Act, Golden Dreams at DCA, now this.