Matt's Waste of Your Time

Donate for disaster relief

Matt — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:33:48 +0000

If you feel like doing something good, you can make a quick donation to UNICEF or Direct Relief International for cyclone victims here. The page is really easy to use, and you don’t have to worry about getting spammed or anything.

“You most likely know it as Myanmar, but it’ll always be Burma to me.”

“A substitute teacher in Pasco County [FL] has lost his job after being accused of wizardry.”

Matt — Thu, 08 May 2008 05:55:37 +0000

Ugh…
Fla. Teacher Accused Of Wizardry.

That’s Florida in the US… in 2008.

The good news is that Land O’ Lakes, FL exists.

Reader Shared Items

Matt — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:29:02 +0000

As of today, Google Reader has annotations on shared items. This means that when I mark something as shared, I can put a note about my thoughts about it, why I’m sharing it, etc. It’s a long-requested feature that makes sharing a lot more interesting, I think.

Anyway, this post isn’t an advertisement for Reader, but a notification that I’ll be shifting some of my shorter link-focused posts from this blog to my link blog. If you’re not my friend in Reader, you might want to subscribe to that. It’s around a post a day, but bursty. It’s generally less technical than the average post on this blog, too. The headlines are available on the left side of http://www.magicspatula.com/blog, too.

4 weeks

Matt — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:10:05 +0000

I’m pretty sure I have more going on in May than the first four months of the year combined. I’m exhausted already, but there are lots of things to look forward to. Details once I catch up a bit.

What a weird phrase

Matt — Fri, 02 May 2008 06:09:40 +0000

From an email with meeting notes:
“Three walkaways from the meeting:”

No, this doesn’t mean that three people walked away during the meeting, I think they meant “takeaways”. Is this a real term?

I have caught myself saying “let’s discuss that offline” (to mean outside of the meeting), but there’s no sign of “synergy” or anything, thankfully.

Gas tax

Matt — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:02:47 +0000

The online coverage of the McCain/Clinton proposal to eliminate gas tax for the Summer months reminds me of the enjoyment I get out of reading really negative movie reviews. It’s just a landslide of coverage about how much of a pandering gimmick the idea is and how terrible it is environmentally and economically. I especially liked Sam Stein’s article in which he tried to find an economist who liked the idea (including libertarians, free market economists, transportation workers unions, etc). Spoiler: He doesn’t find any.

I should’ve taken a picture…

Matt — Thu, 01 May 2008 06:19:11 +0000

… when I saw a guy with a combination hard hat/sombrero at a construction site today.

I guess Cinco de Mayo is coming up…

Javascript Reminder

Matt — Thu, 01 May 2008 03:57:05 +0000

Here’s a lesson I’ve forgotten and re-learned a couple of times, maybe it’ll save someone some time someday.

Javascript’s NaN (not a number) token is a bit tricky sometimes. For example:

a = 0 / 0; // a is now NaN
a == NaN;  // return false
typeof a;  // returns "number", despite the perhaps
           // misleading name "not a number"

There are good reasons for this if you think about it, but I’ll leave that as an excercise for the reader.

race (part 2)

Matt — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:39:39 +0000

I’ve heard the term “reverse racism” several times in the past few months. It’s an absurd term. I looked up racism on google (search for define:racism) and got a couple of good responses from Princeton’s wordnet:
# the prejudice that members of one race are intrinsically superior to members of other races
# discriminatory or abusive behavior towards members of another race

What would the reverse of this be? The reverse of racism is racism. Reverse racism sounds as valid as saying “I got a reverse punch in the face”.

race

Matt — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 07:33:39 +0000

A sad excerpt:

In February I was a 55 year old white woman trying to choose a candidate, feeling drawn to Hillary. Then I listened to Obama speak and I was inspired. I felt as I had not felt since March 16, 1968 (my 16th birthday) when Bobby Kennedy announced he was running for president. So I chose Obama and volunteered to help his campaign.

I canvassed in my local area, Dresher. As I spoke to my neighbors, my heart sank. Several people told me the country wasn’t ready for a black president. One person right out said he would never vote for a black person for president. (Stunned, I stammered that he was only half black.) One person said “the blacks get everything already.” Three of my Jewish neighbors (and friends) said that they believed Obama either was a Muslim or had Muslim ties.

(link, via andrew sullivan)

I wish I could say I was surprised.. racism is doubtlessly alive and well in the US, it just doesn’t wear white robes anymore. I don’t speak up about it as much as I should.