Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in John Thacker's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008
10:34 pm	Fareed Zakaria is bad at math This article by Fareed Zakaria has a nice mathematical fallacy that falls into the "not understanding the power of compounding" category. From the article: For the past two decades, for example, China has grown at approximately 9 percent a year and the United States at 3 percent. For the next few years, American growth will likely be 1 percent and China's, by the most conservative estimates, 5 percent. So, China was growing three times as fast as the United States but will now grow five times as fast, which only brings closer the date when the Chinese economy will equal in size that of the United States. Very bad math here. We want to find the number N such that US0 ⋅ rUSN = CHINA0 ⋅ rCHINAN. The relevant variable in the two proposed problems is the ratio rCHINA / rUS. Note that 1.05 / 1.01 ≈ 1.0396 but 1.09 / 1.03 ≈ 1.0583. Therefore, we see that Fareed is exactly wrong; China catches up faster in the high growth scenario. Compounding is hard. (It's an entirely separate question of how much the entire question matters.) It also annoys me that the old HTML 3.0 proposal for a LaTeX like math structure was never adopted. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2007
9:07 pm	Photos of North Yorkshire Here. I didn't bring my camera with me everywhere, but there are more photos to be obtained from Jacob. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 24th, 2007
2:01 am	Context matters, part 2 The lines from chapter 31 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows that work "best"1 out of context: ( spoilers ) 1-- According to certain fanfic fans, perhaps. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 23rd, 2007
8:51 pm	The Ballad of East and West The recent imbroglio about NBA referee Tim Donaghy led to me reading another classic example of a frustrating yet common tendency of journalists (and others): using literary phrases to mean exactly the opposite of what they mean in the original. Here we have from J.A. Adande: If any fan base is predisposed to believing games could be fixed, that an official with dubious motives could manipulate the outcome, it's the NBA's. There have been too many questionable calls over the years, too many swallowed whistles at critical times, mixed with too few repercussions from the league offices. So instead of, "I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!" we had, "I knew it." The fuller quote from Casablanca is of course more telling: Rick: How can you close me up? On what grounds? Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here! [a croupier hands Renault a pile of money] Croupier: Your winnings, sir. Captain Renault: [sotto voce] Oh, thank you very much. Captain Renault: [aloud] Everybody out at once! The worse thing is that there are perfectly appropriate ways to use the quote, just not the way that Mr. Adande did. If the story were written about the NFL, which publishes lines more enthusiastically and tailors its frequent injury reports to gamblers' needs so well, then the analogy would fit quite perfectly, considering how much of the NFL's popularity (and revenues) are related to gambling. The sportswriting trade does seem full of those who wish to show that they are professionals with real writing skills; a similar sort of envy comes around with the occasional puerile attempt at inserting political analysis or commentary of popular events in sports stories or columns. Not everyone can pull off Bill Simmons's style, and even he grows wearisome. However, the problem is certainly not confined to sportswriters endeavoring to demonstrate their literary chops. One of the most commonly abuses is quoting "Good fences make good neighbors," and attributing the quote and the sentiment therein to Robert Frost. The proverb probably predates his Mending Wall from 1914, but in the poem it is used ironically. (Or perhaps not; the narrator clearly has little sympathy with the saying, used by his neighbor, but Frost himself admitted that perhaps both men were him. One can deepen the irony by arguing that the narrator sets up his own walls, just as his neighbor, or argue that despite (or because?) both do that such walls are necessary. It is a nice poem.) However, I believe the most common to be the first line from Ruyard Kipling's poem The Ballad of East and West. "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," they say, commenting while linking, e.g., to articles brought to us by the Mainnichi Shinbun's WaiWai. Yet the full introductory stanza, repeated at the end of the poem, is: Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat, But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth! Of course, this is a problem with irony, or with selective quotation. Context is important. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, June 5th, 2007
12:58 am	Beat that stupid 50 million HP boss in FFXII.  Nearly completed the game now. Really just wanted to show off this picture that I cropped from a CPU cooler box image on the Internet. (Comment on this)
Saturday, January 13th, 2007
9:51 pm	Just testing several things... (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006
6:12 pm	Done DONE My defense is done. No changes to my dissertation needed. I've copied it to the special paper and gotten everything signed. All that's left is to submit it to Cornell tomorrow morning. It's so nice to be done. Gone from cold Ithaca forever. Current Mood: jubilant (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005
2:42 am	These are the saddest of possible words... Not Tinkers to Evers to Chance, but from this Nicholas Kristof article: "If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we'd do it," said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. "Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job." Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that. An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: "I want the white man's government to come back. ... Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today." His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. "I miss the days of white rule," she said. Just horrible, and so much of it Mugabe's fault. An interesting biology article also, about "plants that possess a corrected version of a defective gene inherited from both their parents, as if some handy backup copy with the right version had been made in the grandparents' generation or earlier." Back from LA, and the wedding. It was very nice to go to the wedding, and see so many friends, like Mark, Sionna, Matt, Tenchi, Joo, Meg, and Beth. Got to meet the famous Rika Takahashi, who's one of Mark's friends and was at the wedding. The chapel was very pretty. Got to experience LA a bit and of course see Mamie, which was really nice after so long (as was the sushi place she took us too.) Also, it was just nice to go on a trip with Varisa as a couple; it made me happy just to look over at her. Stayed in my apartment doing work all day today and already I miss her. Current Mood: tired (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 17th, 2005
8:05 pm	Wacky Japanese spam Going to go off to LA early tomorrow morning for a wedding. (Mark Neidengard and Sionna Klassen) I'm planning to get to see Mamie, which should be fun. Got more wacky Japanese spam again today: 初めまして。黒崎響子といいます。 秘密厳守でお願いしたいことがあります。 私のセックスフレンドになっていただけないでしょうか？ 私、貿易関係の仕事をしていて金銭面では全く問題ないんですが、 そうなるまで仕事に明け暮れるだけの毎日で、気がついたら27歳になってました。 職場では生真面目と思われてるのですが、そうでもなくて。。 非常に一方的なメールで失礼かと存じますが、 そちらの都合もじゅうぶん考慮します。特に、 金銭面は私のほうで全てカバーできます。 御返事いただけたなら、私の画像を送りますね。 黒崎響子(*'(ェ)'*) Nice to meet you. My name is Kyouko Kurosaki. I have a favor to ask you in strict secrecy. Couldn't you please become my sex friend for me? I work in a job connected to import-export trade so money's not a problem at all, but as far as that goes every day I devote all my time to work, so before I realized it I was 27 years old. Where I work I'm thought to be too serious, but that really isn't the case... I'm aware that such an extremely one-sided e-mail might be rude, and I'm also going to take your convenience fully into account. Particularly, monetary issues I can cover completely. Provided that I've been able to receive your reply, I'll send you my picture, ok? Kyouko Kurosaki (face) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 16th, 2005
1:19 am	Additional Link I'm also amused by the image of these Marmite ads terrifying children. (Comment on this)
1:16 am	Link o' the Day Gotta link this New York Times article talking about people responding to life's little annoyances. Fairly amusing. The point I really like is how they mention (and link to, in the online edition) BugMeNot, which is for getting around sites that requires annoying free logins-- like the New York Times site. Also, here's some Haromatherapy. Madness. Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005
12:04 am	Am I Fark or Not? Decided to post a little bit. I'm thinking of putting an odd URL or two up every day or so. We'll see how long this lasts. Today we have two things. First off, we have the New York Times doing an article on Gothic Lolita fashion, complete with the requisite complaints about it going mainstream. Although the very last paragraph has some positive comments about it: "We should all be flattered that the style is reaching mainstream," read one recent post online. "Fashion is a free right." Also, Ms. Lam pointed out, the more mainstream the look becomes, the more available the clothes will be, and more affordable, too. In other news, Lebanese anti-Syrian protestors have a very amusing pop culture sense of humor. Rather astonishingly, the following photos are not Photoshopped. See the two links yourself. Current Mood: enthralled (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 11th, 2004
1:25 pm	Since Hsien started this.... Thanks to kusoyaro, I went and looked at this list for North Carolina: You Know You're From North Carolina When... You've gotten used to the smell of cow manure on a car trip to Raleigh. Saying "y'all" isn't just a cute expression; it actually means something. There are big labrador retrievers in the back of every truck. You give directions using KFC and Waffle House as landmarks. You still see Dale Earndheart tributes on cars. You can't imagine life without Bojangles' sweet tea Your annual church fundraiser always deals with bbq and potato salad You have a sunburn from May to October Your 'heavy winter clothing' consists of some turtleneck sweaters, a fuzzy jacket, and your daddy's boots Your family has fried chicken once a week You can tell the difference between cotton fields and tobacco fields while driving One of your neighbors has a confederate flag hanging on their front porch Those "damn yankees" are taking over your school/church/workplace/neighborhood... You've been "properly raised", and yankees love it when they hear you say "ma'am" and "sir" You get your carbs from biscuits, rolls, pancakes, and grits You know the difference between a "redneck" and a "hick". You own at least one surf shop or seafood restaurant shirts. No matter what those people in ohio say, we are still "first in flight" The Coca-Cola 600 is as big as the Super Bowl You prefer Chick-fil-a to KFC You know pastry is a chicken stew, not a dessert item. Every time you visit someone you’re offered something to eat and a glass of tea. Your granddaddy always wore overalls and your grandma always wore an apron. In summer you have home-grown tomatoes with every meal. When it rains and the creek rises, everyone gathers to see how high it rose. You know that "chunk" the ball means to throw it. You've had a burger "all the way" - chili and slaw on it. You can recognize a copperhead and your heart drops when you see one. You have at least one relative that raises collards. Your folks have taken trips to the mountains to look at leaves. Your school classes were cancelled because of a hurricane. You know Krispy Kreme makes the best doughnut. You have an opinion about UNC. You went there and loved it, or you hate everyone who did. You know the best BBQ is found in Lexington You would rather eat at Bojangles's than McDonald's You have actually uttered the phrase "It's too hot to go to the pool" You faithfully drink Pepsi or Mt. Dew everyday of your life. You have your own secret bbq sauce. You or your neighbors have more hunting dogs than you have family members. You actually get these jokes and pass them on to other friends from North Carolina. So, let's see: Yes, Yes, Sometimes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes and I had to buy a bunch of crap when I came up to Ithaca as a result, Yes, Yes-duh, Yes-My Nanny and Papa's Neighbors, though, Yes, Yes, Yes-but less so when in Ithaca, Yes, Yes, Yes, No, Yes, Yes, Yes, No, No-I don't like tomatoes, though other people in my family have them, No, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes-but Allen&Son is pretty good too, Yes, Yes, No-though I do drink them, No-though I have favorites, No, Yes (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 20th, 2004
10:27 pm	This headline rules. Report: Louisiana not No. 1 in corruption. The local reaction from prosecutors is "Well, I'm afraid this only means we're not getting enough convictions, since that's what this measures." (Comment on this)
3:00 am	Got back to Ithaca on Sunday. Break was nice and relaxing, with all sorts of GBA playing. Among other things, I beat FFTA and Sword of Mana. Didn't get that much research done, but it's nice to take a vacation. Coming back to the cold was no fun, nor is having to get a new speaker since the one I was just shipped had a magnet loose inside, and thus causes CRT discoloration. Parrots, more interesting than you might think. (Edit: Sadly, as perhaps expected, not true.) Good Idea: Having a getaway car available if you're going to do something stupid like streak. Bad Idea: Leaving the car running with no one inside it. Doh. In honor of sertrel's journey from Lake Charles, LA to Minneapolis/St. Paul, I present to you two appropriate songs. Song 1 Song 2 The first song is the only song I know that mentions Lake Charles, Louisiana in its lyrics. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 6th, 2003
2:13 am	I'm not dead To any fellow NCSSM alums who may have received an Alumni Newsletter email, I'm not dead. The John Thacker who died was a Class of 2000 alumus with the same name as me. Reading the email about me dying was really very strange. Current Mood: indescribable (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 5th, 2003
12:15 pm	Things to avoid Note to ex-President Carter-- if you're going to be quoted in the New York Times, it's best to avoid describing your plan for Mideast peace as a "final solution." Current Mood: cold (Comment on this)
Friday, November 14th, 2003
12:18 am	Fun with Japanese 泊まる - "tomaru," to stop over somewhere for the night 泊める - "tomeru," to have someone stop over for the night 留まる - "tomaru," to stop, stay, settle, remain in one place 留める - "tomeru," to fasten or hold down, to cause something to stay in one place 止まる - "tomaru," to come to a halt, to stop moving 止める - "tomeru," to stop something, to make something come to a halt 止む - "yamu," to cease, to stop, to be over (an event or action, like to stop raining) 止める - "yameru," to end, stop, ceasing doing, refrain 辞める - "yameru," to resign or retire, to stop working at a position Of course, with the way that Japanese adopted a foreign writing system after a spoken language already existed, it's not surprising that the concept of a "word" is difficult to express in Japanese. Certainly cases like these make it difficult to draw boundaries. Hmm, someone said that the following two characters (among others) are truly Cantonese-only: 曱甴 Current Mood: cold Current Music: Voltes V / Mitsuko Horie - Voltes V no Uta [Voltes V Song] (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 23rd, 2003
1:57 pm	I hate Ithaca October 23rd is far too early for snow flurries. I hate Ithaca's weather. Current Mood: cold (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, October 16th, 2003
2:01 am	Billy Corgan sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame at Wrigley Field. Didn't help; the Cubs still lost. I wonder if Hsien saw it. In honor of his singing, I present you this, found randomly on the Internet: (1 Comment |Comment on this)