| Weird History |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|12:04 pm] |
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According to Wikipedia, during WWII, Andorra was neutral, serving as a smuggling route between France and Spain. However, it had declared war on Germany during WWI and was not included in the Treaty of Versailles, and was technically still legally at war with Germany from that war until 1957. |
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| It's all in the timing. |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|03:17 pm] |
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I guess the problem was that as the old saw goes, people don't start paying attention to the campaign until the World Series is over... |
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| An Electorate Flailing About |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|10:42 pm] |
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It looks like today New Jersey cut off its nose to spite its face. I hope that Guadagno ends up doing a better job than Patterson under similar circumstances after Christie's personality and deeds lead to the nearly inevitable. |
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| A Short Story Implied |
[Nov. 3rd, 2009|10:38 am] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) stakebait just wrote a wonderful poem. Though when I was young and reading such in science fiction magazines, I guess I would have considered it verse, but not a poem, because its cadence is entirely natural. As I alluded to in the title of this post, it would have fit in well in such magazines, because it's so suggestive of a more detailed story. As the market for such things must be bigger now than it was then, and as this would have been among the best then, I hope she finds a suitable place to publish it. |
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| Not News |
[Oct. 30th, 2009|03:17 pm] |
But funny, nonetheless. The best stuff is from 3:30 on.
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| Missing (so far) from the Web |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|10:10 am] |
A search for names of languages in other langages turns up nothing useful.
Anyone want to create a hobby page with a table, the columns being tha named languages and the rows being the languages they're named in (or vice cersa)? |
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| Quiz Time |
[Oct. 18th, 2009|07:04 pm] |
I just created an account for a game I'll never play, having now seen the interface. Besides, instead of supporting the game by subscription or ads, too many sims, including this one, are ostensibly free but the more you spend, the faster you can develop. If I wanted to be taken advantage of that way, I'd play CCGs, which don't pretend to be free or fair to those who spend less.
Anyway, I had to create a character who was "lord," a landed noble who might become a king or an emperor. Well, I had to come up with a name, at least, which was the only interesting part of the experience. I chose Bonjidio of Selanik.
I'm wondering who among you can figure out the meanings and thought behind the name. I bet Johnny Johnson of Google knows all parts of it, and several of you know all or parts. |
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| Best line of the morning |
[Oct. 9th, 2009|06:00 am] |
I heard Sarah Palin was in consideration, but the committee just sort of stopped deliberating and gave up.
Personally, I think it was largely an award to Not-George-Bush. If they could have awarded the prize to the US electorate, they might well have. |
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| Dan Burros, redux |
[Oct. 5th, 2009|10:31 am] |
Edit: It seems not. See comments below.
Except, Burros, aside from being even crazier, was never President of a country with 80,000,000 people.
Ahmadinejad was born Jewish
I wonder: Suppose Burros, Ahmadinehad, and Bobby Fischer met in some afterlife. Would they get along or despise each other.
h/t kent_allard_jr |
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| Finishing in Character |
[Oct. 4th, 2009|10:53 pm] |
In early Spetember, I noted that the Nets needed to go 21-10 just to finish .500 and the Yankees, if they finished 10-21, would still likely win the wildcard.
Well, the Mets finished 10-21 and the Yankees finished 22-9. And yes, had the Yankees gone 10-21, they'd still be in the playoffs. |
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| What is the name of this kind of graph? |
[Oct. 3rd, 2009|12:53 pm] |
I'm talking about graphical representations, not graph-theory graphs.
The time axis (or whatever you need as a continuous independent variable axis) can be either vertical or horizontal. The data is broken up into several cate4gories, each represented by a different color, and stacked on top of each other if time is running horizontally (turn 90 degrees if time is vertical).
For instance, I'd like to see a representation of breeds of dogs kept as pets in The United States over time. German Shepherds and collies might be widest in the 1960s and then taper off as we head toward the present. Lhasa Apsos might be indiscernible until the 1970s and grow to a noticeable thread in the 1980s. The whole graph could either fit into a rectangle, if it was representing proportions of all dogs kept as pets, or the hieght of the total could vary, if the graph represented the actual number of dogs. |
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| An ideal entry to federal court for marriage equality? |
[Oct. 2nd, 2009|02:25 pm] |
- A male-male couple who lived in Massachusetts got married there in 2006.
- They later moved to Texas, which has a state constitutional amendment prohibiting recognition of same-sex marriages.
- In 2009, the filed for divorce in a Texas court.
- The Texas Attorney General stepped in, saying they had no recourse to the Texas judicial system, as their marriage did not legally exist in Texas.
- A Dallas judge has just ruled the Texas amendment is unconstitutional because it violates the equal protection clause. AFAIK, he said nothing about the full faith and credit clause.
Are there plausible grounds for reversal? |
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