Okay, sorry for the profusion of posts, but it’s Friday and I’m going through all of the clippings I did this week reading my RSS feeds.

• Ever wake up and you’re unable to move? It’s not an evil spirit attacking you, just have sleep paralysis.
• Trouble getting a job? How about guilt tripping your prospective employers? (courtesy MetaFilter)
• Why is there so much science bashing in sociology classes?
• If you happen to like science, here are 100 scientifically oriented things to do before you die.
• It turns out that there may be a financial success gene, because household income of biological children correlates with that of their parents, while the income of randomly-assigned adoptees has no correlation with the adoptive parents. See also commentary on Marginal Revolution
• Entrepreneurs have the ability to make something from nothing.
• Yes, Virginia, Windows XP can be turned into a zombie (taken over) in less than 4 minutes, though the study did use an unpatched SP1 system.
• I don’t care how delicious your lava lamp looks, dont heat it on the stove. On pain of death.
• I don’t know how you feel about malls, but this little pamphlet pretty accurately describes mine. Warning: cartoon adam and eve at the end. Yeah, don’t ask.
• Genetically engineered plants that change color when they grow over a land mine.
• Target’s selling blowjobs for $10, but you have to wait 4-8 weeks.
• Abandoned DOS games!
• I think I found a new hobby: rock balancing.
• The answer to how is yes. Can’t say I entirely get this, but I’m working on it.
• Yeah, I built a linux-based PVR for the apartment, though it’s having some problems. This one has 1.2 TB of storage, comes preconfigured, and the company apparently encourages ‘hacking’ and upgrading the device. Hmm, only $2000.

That’s all for now.

New webcomic done mostly with Alien and Predator action figures, about an alien and a predator sharing an apartment in New York City. Alien Loves Predator

So, it’s neat that William Gibson has a blog, but it’s not of much use to me, because he doesn’t allow comments. What’s the value of that? It’s a one-way deal, probably just for publicity, rather than for the purpose of engaging in dialog.

The post that set me off on this is this one, about sex education in the US.

Regarding that story, here’s an idea: people are dumb. Really dumb. Even if you told them the best and most accurate of the scientific knowledge available they would (a) not care, (b) get it wrong, (c) get it, but ignore it in favor of what their friend said last week, or (d) forget it altogether.

The thing that really gets me about the liberal population is that while they, admirably, seem to think the best of everyone, that sort of thinking just doesn’t work in the real world. When you leave things to people to be done and assume they will be done because it’s in their own best interest, or that people are generally good, it often doesn’t work out. You need economical motivation. The blogs I read have been full of stories about schools paying students for good grades, but regrettably I can’t find anything about it to link to right now. Short version of the story: pay kids a little for good grades, their grades jump dramatically. Extend this to behavior, with pay for good behavior and fines for bad, and kids don’t fight too much anymore. To paraphrase (since I can’t find the article), one kid said “I have to make sure I don’t hit anyone, or I could lose 4 or 5 dollars!” Apparently $4 or $5 was considered to be a lot in the classroom economy. This particular case used an invented currency exclusive to the school that could be cashed in for stuff.

So not that Bill Gibson is ever going to read my blog, but just in case, stop assuming the best about everyone, Bill. It’s naieve and it’s folly.

Had my last class of the semester today, but I’ve three projects to do (I think, counts fingers, yes) in the next week, one if which is not due till the next, and a trip to Vanderbilt stuck in the middle.

Also, I have a metric assload (10 points if you know the Imperial equivalent) of grading to do, because due to the abstracts mentioned in my last post, nothing has really been done in the grading department.

The itinerary for tomorrow includes these wonderful things:

• Getting stuff from my mother, that she’s bringing from home
• Reutrning my copy of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography to the Tulane library
• Going to work where:
• I’ll be helping Slava to buy a computer, including putting the purchase on my Visa since he doesn’t have one (yet, I hope)
• a lab trip to ASB (Asian Super Buffet, which deserves a post in its own right at some point)
• vegetation? (something 1-4, probably Weekly Review of my agendas)
• Happy Hour at the boot followed by
• Movie night (maybe?)
• Sleep

and then

work work work work work on Saturday, until the evening. At this time it will be Unknown Evening Activity With Val Probably Involving Dancing Somewhere on Frenchman.

then work work work

exercise!

work work work

and we’ll see after that. Eventually comes the Vandy trip, and then a group presentation when I return. Oh and I have some kind of upper respiratory unpleasantness going on. Blech.

I submitted two abstracts today. Thank god they’re out of my life at this point.

If you see me around, despite having a lot to do, I now have much less severe deadlines and demands to deal with. Therefore I’ll probably be a lot more amicable.