Category: Of Random Interest

Aoc­c­drnig to rscheearch at an Eling­sh uin­ervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht ore­dr the ltteers in a wrod are, olny taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pcleas. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a por­belm. Tihs is bcuse­ae we do not raed ervey lteter by ilstef, but the wrod as a wlo­he.

This is all over the net, and I don’t know who orig­i­nat­ed it (but I do know the author was clever).

Before you get tak­en in by it, notice that there are heavy con­tex­tu­al clues built into each sen­tence and that all words of three let­ters or less are left in cor­rect order. It’s inter­est­ing (and worth post­ing on the dorm bul­letin board), but I would­n’t cite it in any papers if I was you.

Any­way, wel­come to Stan­ford (or wel­come back, depend­ing on who you are).

If you’re a new stu­dent, you might want to check out our advice on liv­ing with a room­mate.

I just ran across a great arti­cle: Off To Col­lege: 10 Temp­ta­tions and Strate­gies For Beat­ing Them.

The temp­ta­tions cov­ered:
1) Let­ting your rela­tion­ship with God slide
2) Doubt­ing your faith
3) Buy­ing into the “no moral absolutes” lie
4) Giv­ing in to promis­cu­ity
5) Par-tay!
6) Fit in!
7) Body and food obses­sions
8) Mon­ey mad­ness
9) Mak­ing col­lege idols
10) Cheat­ing and giv­ing up

Read the arti­cle for the reme­dies!

If you’re a new stu­dent, wel­come! We peri­od­i­cal­ly take time to com­ment on fun­ny things hap­pen­ing in the world and on the web. God likes laugh­ter, and so we try to oblige Him.

1) Have you seen the pho­tos of whale flat­u­lence? I’m not kidding–you’ve got to check this out: Whale Flat­u­lence Stuns Sci­en­tists

2) Regard­ing the black­out in the NE: I expect to find a giant dead squir­rel when it’s all over (squir­rels are, I am told, the num­ber once cause of pow­er out­ages in Amer­i­ca).

3) If you’re not already a fan, you real­ly should check out the Strong Bad emails.

4) Final­ly, in case you were won­der­ing, Com­paq explains where to find the “Any” key.

We return you to your reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled web brows­ing.

It’s pret­ty rare that I notice a Fri­day the 13th while it’s still the 13th. I usu­al­ly notice that it’s a Sat­ur­day the 14th and real­ize yes­ter­day was the 13th and a Fri­day to boot.

In any event, I noticed today.

This BBC report caught me off guard: A decline in Chris­tian­i­ty is tak­ing its toll on the num­ber of peo­ple will­ing to donate their organs for trans­plan­ta­tion, accord­ing to a doc­tor.

Evi­dent­ly the Chris­t­ian belief that this body is tem­po­rary com­bined with the Chris­t­ian eth­ic of doing good cre­at­ed many organ donors. Take either of those away and the pool shrinks rapid­ly.

Read the whole arti­cle…

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

Please let me know if you have any prob­lems, because I’ve been doing some exper­i­men­ta­tion in Flash and I’m def­i­nite­ly at the begin­ning of the learn­ing curve.

UPDATE: I’m get­ting some weird results from the indi­vid­ual entries–I’m hop­ing it’s just a cache prob­lem. I’ll take a look at it again in the morn­ing. Even if it’s doing what it seems to be doing it does­n’t make the site unuse­able (just ugly).

I found this quote on Andrew Carea­ga’s blog, and I had to repeat it:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rap­per is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the Amer­i­ca’s Cup, France is accus­ing the US of arro­gance, and Ger­many does­n’t want to go to war.

We live in inter­est­ing times…

There’s a neat mul­ti­me­dia pre­sen­ta­tion called “The Inter­view With God” out there. Check it out.

Dis­claimer: yes, I think it cross­es the line into cheese a few times. I like it nonethe­less.

A friend of mine (Jim­my Tate) just emailed me an arti­cle that offers a very unique per­spec­tive on the hous­ing prices in Palo Alto. It’s by Thomas Sow­ell and it’s called “Diver­si­ty” for Thee, Not Me. Here’s an excerpt:

Because hous­ing prices are so high in Palo Alto — and up and down the whole San Fran­cis­co penin­su­la.

This is not due to sup­ply and demand in a free mar­ket. It is large­ly due to rich busy­bod­ies who have pro­mot­ed severe restric­tions on the build­ing of hous­ing under a vari­ety of high-sound­ing names like “open space” or “envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.” I don’t begrudge such peo­ple the inher­i­tances that have allowed them to live their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing to lift a fin­ger to sup­port them­selves. But it is galling that they are impos­ing huge costs on hun­dreds of thou­sands of oth­er peo­ple who have to work for a liv­ing.

Any­way, I found it inter­est­ing. I do think he over­states the case some­what (there is a huge demand), but he’s cor­rect that the sup­ply has been arti­fi­cial­ly supressed. Food for thought.

This is pret­ty cool: the Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (where I got my M. Div.) was just named one of the ‘Best Chris­t­ian Places to Work In Amer­i­ca.’

Paula worked there while I was in sem­i­nary and short­ly after, and I assure you that the claim is well-found­ed. AGTS ain’t per­fect, but it sure beats most of the alter­na­tives out there.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, alma mater!