Infinite Perplexity

02:21 pm: on clogged logs
"But while the logit transformation yields the logarithm of the odds of event occurrence, the clog-log transformation yields the logarithm of the negated logarithm of the probability of event nonoccurrence."

10:26 pm: Shorter Sopranos: Happy Families are all alike; every unhappy Family is unhappy in its own way.

07:56 am: If you went by what I regularly call my cats, you'd think they were named "Little One" and "Mister Prettycat".

10:52 am: quoth this book on the SAS Macro Language:
"...Since the quotation marks are invisible, they are sometimes hard to see..."

11:14 am: important input for my decision


The problematic answer in real life tends to be, "Not yet, maybe, we don't know when."

Will I be able to get a Verizon plan for the iPhone? See above.
Will the apps available for Android phones ever rival those for the iPhone? See above.

(What I truly dread is getting an iPhone with a two-year AT&T contract in December, then having hearing them announce that they're adding Verizon in January.)

Something I don't recall: have any of y'all attempted to use an iPhone from within my apartment? That particular area of coverage is rather more important to me than many others.

09:12 am: everyone hates *something* about Malcolm Gladwell
A partial inventory of people who don't like Malcolm Gladwell. The criticisms seem to fall into at least one of these three categories:

1) Everything Malcolm Gladwell writes is obvious.
2) Everything Malcolm Gladwell writes is wrong.
3) Everything Malcolm Gladwell writes follows an exceedingly predictable formula that's just so fucking readable...that crafty motherfucker.

The third point is definitely true, but I think the first two are only sometimes true. Says a blogger for the Village Voice:

"Whenever we see a piece by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker, we know exactly what's going to happen. We'll be entertained and titillated as the frizzy-haloed essayist takes us once again into the trippy world of statistics and ideas, only to confront us with evidence that some axiom or law we thought was on solid ground is in fact misleading and counterproductive."

Exactly (and man oh man is his halo frizzy.) But that experience you just described is kind of neat, and he's only full of shit maybe 30% of the time, which is pretty good compared to most people. And that ketchup essay was the bomb.

06:25 pm: Cats on a Plane
Anyone ever done it? I understand there's tranquilizers involved.

Someone at work recommended a good boarding place to me. I'm not sure whether, overall, they'd find it more stressful to do lengthy, drugged travel and a new place, but with lots of space and people paying lots of attention to them; or a short trip but confined to a small space with lots of other cats around for the duration.

My family would enjoy having them around, I have no doubt (plus, I asked.) I'll call the airport and vet tomorrow and figure out what the ups and down of it are.

Edit: US Airways policies basically make this a nonstarter. For starters, one passenger can't bring two pets.

11:20 pm: Yay, my jellyfish are in and the dude has finished experimenting with some improvements to the tank set-up. So as soon as I can either get them shipped (if I can get a low rate for local shipping) or pick them up in person (otherwise), this strange investment will pay off in coolness.

04:45 pm: How come the Bad Academic Writing Contest went on for only three years? Did academic writing suddenly become good in 1999?

"On the other hand, as a cynic once remarked, John Stuart Mill never attained Hegel’s prestige because people found out what he meant."

Google finds this quote dozens of times but sheds no light on the identity of the cynic.

04:16 pm: I took the kits to the vet for their shots on Sunday. Flores now weighs two pounds thirteen ounces, exactly three times as much as she weighed the day I adopted her.

06:59 pm: how much of a technophobe i am
If I want to see what Twitter is all about, what's a good way to experiment? Sign up for someone's...uh, twitter feed or whatever you call it?

06:36 pm: i'm sure there are many ways to do this but...
...has there been any social convergence on how to blast out "I found out about this cool event and I'm going; you want to come?" messages to groups? Do people do it through Facebook nowadays?

Incidentally, stuff that looks interesting:

Sunday, Nov 8th: WonderFest Festival of Science, free, in Berkeley.

Tuesday, Nov 10th: Some guy on tour across the country talking to people about how they balance geekiness with adulthood; at Green Apple Books in SF.

Friday, Nov 13th: Magic Jester Improv Show in Oakland.

10:33 pm: thank you, Michael Pollan:
Results 1 - 10 of about 855,000 for "everything is made of corn". (0.19 seconds)

10:08 pm: Ahem.
Someone has puppy pictures they're not sharing.

We would also appreciate combined kitty and puppy pictures showing how much Prince William likes his new housemate.

06:06 pm: Speaking of dancing, the Finns have a huge tango festival every year, called the Tangomarkkinat. Here's a video of some Finns rocking out in the rain:

05:42 pm: Quickstep is indeed hilarious. A former coworker said it's the best part of watching ballroom dance competitions because it's like NASCAR, with the entertaining collisions and wipeouts.

09:53 am: the bridge, the bridge...the bridge is back, back...

06:59 pm: ( latest kittens, part 1 )

06:36 pm: ( latest kittens, part 2 )

12:40 pm: smartphone questions
1) Any have experiences or hearsay about smartphones that use Android?
2) Do smartphone plans work the same way ordinary cell plans do; i.e. is unlimited evening and weekend minutes a common thing?
3) Is there any way a desktop or laptop can piggyback off a smartphone's internet connection; in other words, if you never used your home connection for anything fast, could you rely on the phone connection instead of broadband?
4) Do any companies offer plans that bundle broadband with a smartphone?