Wow. George Zimmerman is not guilty. Really? Zimmerman, in a car, follows unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, gets out of his car, against instruction and advice, with his gun, confronts the unarmed youth, Trayvon Martin ends up shot dead by George…
Category: General
Help Me Beta Test Slim Surveys
I’m helping to beta test a new online survey tool called Slim Surveys. The silly little survey below was created using the beta version. If you have a minute, please: Take the survey below (there are only four questions) so…
It’s All About Abstraction
I started writing a new post this morning about one of my favorite topics: levels of abstraction. While looking for references, I ran across this post I wrote for Google+ on January 6, 2012. So, with the author’s permission, I’ll…
7 Tips for Proofreading Your Own Work
If you do much writing at all—blogs, memos, proposals, papers, even e-mail—you know the difficulty of proofreading your own work. It’s all too easy to proofread what you think you wrote rather than what you actually wrote. To paraphrase Simon…
Making Things Too Simple
The Monty Hall Problem and the Two Boys Riddle are such great riddles precisely because they exploit our tendency to make things too simple. That is, to (erroneously) “simplify” even to the point of discarding relevant information. But as Albert…
It’s Alright, Ma, Bob Dylan Is Only 72
Bob Dylan, the greatest singer/songwriter ever, was born Robert Allen Zimmerman on this day in 1941. Of course, it’s no more possible to choose a favorite Bob Dylan song than to choose a favorite food, but if I were pressed…
Thirty-one
Clearly, the smartest move I’ve ever made: It’s been a great thirty-one years. My best friend and I have managed to do quite a few things together since then. For example, we… Graduated from UM (three times); moved to Chicago (two times);…
.05% Breath Alcohol Limit? “Ludicrous”
The National Transportation Safety Board has a proposal: Reduce the legal blood alcohol limit from the current value of .08% to a newly proposed limit of .05%—and save half the roughly 10,000 people killed annually by drunk driving on U.S.…
Too big, too small, and just right (maybe)
For some reason—who knows why; does free will even exist?—I made three exercise related new year resolutions this year: Run 800 miles Walk 200 miles Do a single run of at least 8 miles Too big: As of today I’ve…
Moderately Newsworthy: 19 Wounded in New Orleans Shooting
I just stumbled across a story in the New York Times about a shooting yesterday at a Mother’s Day parade in a New Orleans neighborhood. There was a time when such a story would be been BIG news. But not…