I find empty comment threads to be intimidating, and I never comment in them.
The perfect thread is the one that contains exclusively comments from me.
You should start an unpopular blog!
Wait, you haven't been reading my blog?
13 is at least 8.3% better than 12.
If I don't manage to post the first comment I pretty quickly lose inte
Okay, 15. But that's my final offer.
The circumference is more important than the length
Ot: the lobby of my building is playing "The Monster Mash" on a continuous loop. I am worried that the security guy at the reception desk is going to wig out and start shooting people.
I like the 200+ comment threads. Since I'm mostly lurking these days, I like being able to dig in for a long narrative.
I like the 200+ 500+ comment threads. Since I'm mostly lurking these days, I like being able to dig in for a long narrative.
So is this a matter of concern? I mean, a lot of comment threads around here go to the 200s, which I find generally manageable, but only because I know who's who and what's what. Those threads are probably a deterrent to lurkers/newcomers.
It is true that threads beginning at 7 a.m. on a weekday are likely to put off the faint of heart and/or casual passerby and/or those who don't read or comment from work. I sometimes wish more threads were put up at the end of the workday.
Telling a five-year old trick or treater to "take what you want" while holding a bowl of candy means dad has to use physical restraint in order for there to be anything left in your bowl.
I get really annoyed when I decide against joining a 200 comment thread, and then it goes to 800 comments and obviously that's where the action is and everyone in other threads is talking about it, but fuck if I'm going to try to catch up on an 800 comment thread. Then someone starts a new thread to talk about how cool the previous thread was, and I join that, but it sucks because I'm not up on all the jokes.
I like the 1000+ comment threads. Since I hate people and want to see them angry and yelling at each other.
I routinely read 150 comment threads from the beginning. I guess I'm just a better friend to the people who comment here than you are, heebie.
26: Sure. I usually read books & magazines that way too. Fiction in The New Yorker I read from the middle out in both directions alternately.
When I'm reading fiction in the New Yorker I usually just search for my pseud, and if I don't find it add something random about robots to the end of the story.
My commute (subway) demands a minimum of 100 comments. So if it's lurking you seek, step it up.
This thread is going to be worth reading in just ten little comments, guys! Come on, let's do it!
I've never meta thread I didn't like.
I like threads with 60-70 comments the best. They make me feel like I'll have something to read, and then something to say about at least one of the comments (if not the OP), and if they've gotten that far they'll probably keep going for at least another 100 or so, so it's probably worth getting invested. Less than 60, they might die any minute. More than 70 and I am susceptible to latecomer's guilt.
I have no idea if I actually comment more often on 60-70 comment threads, or if this is just some weird imaginary ideal I have.
Since we're trying to push this to 40, I'll pimp the series of three pictures I just added to the pool.
It's not going to get to 40 unless you accuse somebody of racism, discuss pooping, or ask for a recipe.
I eagerly await Sifu's attempt to incorporate all 3 in one comment.
36:I am trying to combine all three in one comment. Don't wait up.
I'm sure your method of roasting hot dogs over a burning cross gives a lot of people diarrhea.
39:I love the cops. They are so commanding.
There was this site "who's pooping on twitter", that was pretty much what you'd expect. I sorta got it stuck in my head, like it was a song, like "who's pooping on twiiiitter, he's pooping on twitter, you're pooping on twiiitter, we're pooping on twitter" but then it changed to "who's pooping on everest" for some reason, so now whenever anybody talks about poop I get the "who's pooping on everest?" song stuck in my head. But you really do have to wonder, do they actually manage to pack all the shit out in bags, or are there little piles of turds all over upper everest? You could, like, study the diets of mountaineers through the ages.
Also, with iOS 5, you can message people an emoticon of a turd.
I am spending my evening generate images that look almost, but not exactly, like they're made up of indeterminate parts of faces. They're incredibly creepy, but it's less for halloween than a particularly cronenbergian task for work.
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So, I'm in Montana sulking and waiting for my committee to read my dissertation. I've been staying with my mom, but I'm currently dogsitting for my dad. Except it's not at my dad's actual house because that's under construction so instead it's in this crazy house he's renting on the top of a mountain up a dark zig-zag trail from the nearest road. I think this is the first time ever that I've been at a non-trick-or-treat-able place on Halloween. It feels weird! Also, I didn't buy any candy so I have nothing to snack on except olives and mixed nuts and I kind of wish for chocolate. It's very sad. I love leftover Halloween candy.
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I can't begin to fathom would I would consider off-topic enough to surround it with pause/play bars in this thread. This thread is about something?!
Also, Messily, you could hunt up some baker's chocolate and prepare some homemade baker's chocolate and olive candies! Then if any wolves come trick-or-treating you can prankishly antagonize them. Unless you eat them all yourself, first.
43.2: You omit that it has eyes, which seemed noteworthy.
45: How are you feeling? Better, maybe, I hope!
It's about what the best length of thread is. All those other fools are just being rude.
I wish I could sulk in Montana when I want to sulk.
51: I'm sure Carp would be welcoming. He probably has a special sulking lodge out back, for guests.
Mostly better, thank you! I don't think there's any baker's chocolate here. But there is a fair amount of wine and beer, so I'll probably be okay.
Anyhow, yeah, the turd has eyes and a big smile, which is more than you can say for these horrible cloning-experiment-gone-wrong images my computer keeps presenting to me.
51: I would be happy to provide you with some sulking ground as well. The occasional lunch with Carp is included.
But with a simple change:
I am spending my evening generate images that look almost, but not exactly, like they're made up of indeterminate parts of faeces
Oh, I have Flexeril, now. And a ruptured disc.
58: Hope your back knits itself together again.
And a ruptured disc.
Wow. I guess you weren't faking.
I have to write TWO tests tonight.
63: We'd need to see the birth certificate X-ray to know that.
And I can only copy 1 1/2 of them from previous tests I've given.
Like, 5 different people told me I had the best costume at the party I went to on Saturday. So I don't even care if my committee reads my dissertation or not because I totally win at wearing Halloween costumes to parties.
I don't have any! I am looking on facebook but if I don't see any there it will have to wait until I go back to my mom's.
Weird flashback to middle school and split custody.
This is a pretty decent length for a thread, I think.
Black thread, white thread, as long as it catches mice.
My team won my office's pumpkin carving contest on Friday. So I definitely win at Halloween, except for the part that happens on actual Halloween, and also the parts that happened over the weekend.
This cal II class is almost all male, and they are really not coming for help or participating in all the little gimmicks to get you studying early. They are really failing. And they are really nice kids who are well-intentioned and not blowing the class off. I'm not sure if I should be modifying my teaching style or what to connect with the guys. (Lecture is fine. It's the extra structures which they don't connect with. They end up just turning in half-complete homeworks because they stopped understanding halfway through, and failing them and not understanding the material and not coming for help and failing the test.)
Have you tried giving them pedialite?
Fall Cal II classes are always a bit strained because the first year students think they are math superstars, and the second year students needed precalculus before they were even ready to take Cal 1. It would be a bimodal class except the superstars don't actually understand the material either.
they are really not coming for help or participating in all the little gimmicks to get you studying early.
Well, right. Nobody ever does that.
But yeah, those classes that required coming in for help or participating in little gimmicks or finding a group to work with or whatever were definitely the ones I always failed.
Well behaved women rarely fail Calculus.
I have a test Wednesday. I haven't started prep yet because it is open notes.
So has there ever been a meta-thread about how the underlying structure of these threads works? Like, right now, a bunch of people are turning in for the night, and then the British come in at 3 am or whatever. All the way to comments being archived to make people stop flaming each other.
82: None of it is mandatory. A student who easily grasps the material doesn't have to do the study groups and outlining the material and all these little bells and whistles. It's all extra-credit structure to make good study habits convenient and easy.
I got my stats midterm back today. I did well enough (I hit my personal target for score-per-hours-worked almost exactly on the nose) but don't really feel like celebrating doing well enough, especially since I still have no fucking idea what this instructor wants from us. I did go to office hours, though, just to see if I could get some clarity on that pressing question. Didn't really work, but at least she knows I'm one of those motivated students who avails myself of office hours.
86: right, I understand. Those were the classes I always failed, because I never did any of those things.
87: Do you understand the material?
89: basically, yeah. At least, I understand it better than some people who got 120/100 on the test.
88: What types of class structures work best for you?
In truth, most of the things I got dinged for were basically sloppiness because I was annoyed at the whole class and interested in getting out of there. It would be fair to say this is a bad habit with history.
In any case, I did well enough, so I'm not really worried about it. But doing less than perfectly on a test where you know the material is frustrating.
43 Upper Everest is littered with much worse than bags of poop. (Warning: Link contains disturbing pictures.)
Obviously you're not actually representative of the type of student in my class who would say, and believe, "But doing less than perfectly on a test where you know the material is frustrating."
Because seriously, they did not understand the material. At all.
91: Oligarchy. Thanks for asking.
95: Try the hamburger helper, we'll be here all century.
91: aw, that's okay. I'll just go figure it out on my own.
No, seriously though, I'm a tough nut to crack. What generally worked for me was getting over myself and pretending I was a normal student, instead of letting pride or whatever get to me. So I don't really know how to operationalize that for you. I loved my calculus I class, so let's see... that involved a ton of classroom time, reasonably hard homework, but what I mostly remember is that the professor wrote insanely neat, detailed notes on the board as he lectured, so writing down everything that he wrote was pretty much enough reference to understand the material/do the work. Actually, that's sort of a common theme for all of my favorite classes. Really, really thorough, organized, neat board-writing.
93: right, I know about the bodies (that was linked here most recently the other day). I'm curious about the turds.
Eco Everest Expedition a coalition of environmentalists, has collected more than 13 tons of garbage, including 880 pounds of human waste and four bodies since 2008
Actually, that's my personal preference too: super organized, neat notes. I really do do that. Most kids do not ever consult their notes again.
I hate to sound like a blowhard, but studying effectively is a really higher-order thinking skill. We get a lot of them there over the course of four years, but they definitely don't come in that way.
I dunno. My irritation with my job is at an all-time high this week. Three of the biggest irritations should pass in the next 1-3 weeks, though.
Three of the biggest irritations should pass in the next 1-3 weeks, though.
Photos!
For Sifu Tweety of course, not me.
101: It's easier if one puts a colander in the bowl.
93: I haven't seen that before. Fascinating and chilling. An excellent Halloween link.
It would be fair to say this is a bad habit with history.
You're going to hurt the Dutch Cookie's feelings.
98: I figured if they were leaving behind the bodies of their fallen comrades then they had gone well beyond the "take only pictures; leave only footprints" dictum and that upper Everest is covered with bags of poop, oxygen canisters, food wrappers, etc. The comment thread of the linked post mentioned the cleanup effort. I suspect it has only scratched the surface.
It would be terribly funny if there were a regular 'guys with pointy sticks doing trash pickup expedition'. In that kind of ghastly sense of funny.
Messily, we have leftover candy! See you at the parade/drum dance tomorrow?
(And did you see that some of the steamroller prints from prior years are on display in SF?)
109: The basecamps at the foot of the mountain (and of other popular climbs) have traditionally been even worse (but easier to clean up). A friend who climbed Denali in the '70s opined that you could probably go to the base empty-handed and provision your climb entirely from scavenging.
Freeze-dried cannibalism is still cannibalism.
115: You survive the mountain with the jerky you have, not with the jerky you wish you had.
"Why did you eat the man-jerky?"
"Because it was there."
Alternately: worst jerky-of-the-month club ever.
118: Right because only skinny, stringy people climb tall mountains.
That got me thinking and I came to an obvious realization: The Paleolithic diet was started by somebody expecting a future wave of cannibalism.
First, the paleo diet doesn't seem to be concerned about endurance, only strength in short bursts. Obviously, this is because you don't need endurance if you're going to kill as soon as possible. Second, the paleo diet requires that you eat a bunch of meat. This will make the meat of the paleo people very unpalatable compared to their omnivorous and vegetarian human competition. Third, the paleo diet is supposed to make people thin. Again, those on the paleo diet will not be readily edible as you'll get rabbit starvation if you have too much paleo people in your diet.
And points 2 and 3 combine to reinforce point 1. That is, if you are trying to escape the cannibals, you might very well need endurance. Those on the paleo diet are counting on everybody else learning that they aren't worth eating.
I believe the last time I saw a similar strategy spelled out, the wording was "Eat the rich; the poor are tough and stringy."
Someone cleverer and more motivated than I should create a Back Pain Mix CD for oudemia.
Maybe we could crowdsource it. Suggestions?
121: The rich have gotten smarter since then. They've made subsidized corn syrup and palm oils for the poor. Then, they ruined the economy so that the poor weren't working or doing anything that might require muscle. Next up, the TV news will start to burst forth with stories about how a daily bath in soy sauce prevents cancer.
122: "Have ye got a bad back? Well, put some of this on..."
http://www.myspace.com/thechronicbackpain/music/songs/another-saturday-night-70543267
Amy Winehouse "Back to Black"
ACDC "Back in Black"
Jackson 5: "I Want You Back"
et cetera, et cetera
http://www.allmusic.com/search/song/back
http://www.myspace.com/theraa/music/songs/muscle-relaxants-79835957
123: the low-income diet of salty-sweet processed foods will give the meat a delightfully savory quality. Kind of a natural barbecue sauce.
It was the sunglasses gave me away, wasn't it.
Early music or nice electronica, I guess. Soothing or relaxing music is really personal, hard to pick for someone else. I like instrumental early music a lot, Machaut wrote a fair amount that's preserved. This kind of music really does lend itself to a CD's worth by a single artist rather than streaming or mixing. this disc is nice.
Qualifiers aside, here's a mix:
http://8tracks.com/lw208xx/baroque-and-earlier-small-ensembles-or-choral
122: Ah, I missed the CD part of the "Back Pain Mix"--I thought this was a call to the pharmacologically adept.
I am so sleepy, and I'm getting hungry. I'm trying to figure out what time I can reasonably leave the group home, get some food downtown (away from this dangerous neighborhood with only junk) and go somewhere else to do paperwork.
And I'm not allowed to drink my diet coke in the living room of this particular group home. The dining room is uncomfortable and gross, because they don't clean the table cloth.
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http://www.lyricscrawler.com/song/101194.html
OT: does anyone here know someone who makes maps? I'm not looking for anything super elaborate. I just need someone who can create some digital maps for a project I'm finishing. And given that these are pretty crude maps, I don't feel like using the (insanely expensive) person that my publisher is recommending.
Anyway, if you know of someone, please e-mail me: akelman AT ucdavis DOT com. Thanks.
First, the paleo diet doesn't seem to be concerned about endurance, only strength in short bursts. Obviously, this is because you don't need endurance if you're going to kill as soon as possible.
This is especially ridiculous, as it is entirely contrary to everything we know about exactly how early humans hunted creatures (basically, dogged persistence, cross-country running, and teamwork, so a bit like a school games lesson if it ended with a barbecue).
137: DOT edu, one presumes unless that is part of your bot defense.
139: wow. That's really quite something, isn't it? What a fucking fool I am. Oh well.
But hey, map boy, while you're here: do you know anyone? This is really easy stuff, I'm pretty sure. I have the maps. They're in a government publication, so they're in the public domain. But their quality sucks. In other words, all I need is someone who can scan them and clean them up. That should be easy, right?
140: Situated as you are in a university, what would happen if you flipped to the Art and Design faculty section of the phone list (assuming there is such a section) and started calling random design profs and asking if they had a competent student who wanted to earn a couple of bucks? Or something like that.
140: Check what I think is your e-mail.
Or something like that.
As I am attacking this issue on several fronts, I have done something very much like what you suggest: I've called the geography department to see if there's a non-stupid student who can help me. But! Experience suggests that locating a non-stupid (or, more accurately, non-incompetent) student won't be easy.
You want me to find you one? I'm at a good university.
Experience suggests that locating a non-stupid (or, more accurately, non-incompetent) student won't be easy.
Clearly, the University system is doing its job well.
I'm not sure why University was capitalized there. Or why I thought that was funny. Whatever. I'm an intuitive dude.
I'm at a good university.
I'm only interested in your help if you're at a world-class university.
144-146: Oh, well, it make me chuckle. Then again, I have a wicked head cold.
Of course I'm at a world-class university. The polio vaccine was invented here. The guy who invented it waited three weeks afterward before using his newly found fame to move to California.
The classrooms of the nations or whatever they're called in the big building at (what I think) is the Hammer's university are pretty sweet. I think that makes it world-class by definition. Lithuanian classroom come to life!!
The Nationality Rooms. I keep meaning to go see them.
Those rooms are awesome though insufficiently emblematic of national stereotypes for my tastes.
The Turkmenistan room used to be just a regular class room with a giant statue of Saparmurat Niyazov.
studying effectively is a really higher-order thinking skill. We get a lot of them there over the course of four years, but they definitely don't come in that way.
This was definitely my experience. I came to college with moderate-to-poor study skills. Got significantly better by my Junior year and then, IMO, got significantly better again after I'd been working for a couple of years.
I'm occasionally curious about whether, if I ever went back to school, the skills that I have learned professionally would translate as well as I think they would to study skill. Perhaps not.
The Steeler Nation classroom is kind of tacky, frankly.
Where's the classroom with a goat head I can kick around?
One guy said "oh! I was trying to figure out how that mask worked, and I thought you were a really cool t-shirt!"