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[2010-08-17 11:29:35] - Paul: teachers/education are a government provided service if you want to pick your teacher put your kids in private school ~gurkie
[2010-08-17 11:23:01] - Dare I ask about your opinion on Consumer Reports, US News and World Report and Yelp?
-Paul[2010-08-17 11:17:44] - I'm a little surprised that so many people think it's a great idea to hide this information from parents. Again, I'm not saying it wouldn't cause problems, but you guys really think parents should be forbidden from knowing which teachers are good and which are bad? -Paul
[2010-08-17 11:16:28] - Gurkie: So you think it's a bad thing that your parents knew which teacher at your school was "good" and that they wanted you to have that teacher? -Paul
[2010-08-17 11:15:41] - aaron: Then 20% of the students at that school would get stuck with bad teachers (assuming students are assigned at random). Parents who care about their child's education, though, would hopefully take him to a school with 4 good teachers and 1 bad one. -Paul
[2010-08-17 11:14:09] - gurkie: but yeah, the more i think about it, the more i don't think it's a good idea to give that information to parents - aaron
[2010-08-17 11:14:06] - True, I don't get to pick my chef at a restaurant, but there's not a lot riding on that (except a bad meal). If I'm having life-threatening surgery, though, I would definitely like to have a say in who my doctor is and would like to know if he's good or have lost dozens of patients. -Paul
[2010-08-17 11:13:30] - gurkie: or maybe; you can give that information to parents; but you can't let them switch teachers. or, teachers are assigned randomly, and you can only switch teachers if a student in the other class is willing to switch as well. maybe something like that. - aaron
[2010-08-17 11:13:25] - I think grading teachers is a good idea, possibly require teachers with lower rankings to teach summer school -> or take classes over the summer that could help them... ~gurkie
[2010-08-17 11:11:09] - Paul: I agree with Daniel, you really cant give that information to parents because parents are already hard for schools to deal with. When you introduce this information a lot of parents will demand that their child have the best teacher. I can gaurantee you mine would have. ~gurkie
[2010-08-17 11:10:30] - mig: sorry, replace "teachers" with "parents" in that one. a lot of parents are stuck with their closest public school. - aaron
[2010-08-17 11:09:44] - mig: no, i agree with your point. a lot of teachers are stuck with their closest public school; maybe they can't afford to move, maybe they can't afford private school. maybe they're not educated enough to understand there are alternatives. - aaron
[2010-08-17 11:09:06] - paul: and i definitely disagree that the pros outweigh the cons. assuming there's an infinite pool of teachers, cool, your system is great... but there's not. if there's a school with 1 good teacher, 4 bad teachers, and no better teachers available to hire. what do you think is a realistic outcome with your system? - aaron
[2010-08-17 11:08:15] - well, there's other stuff too like school vouchers and whatnot, but the main point still stands. - mig
[2010-08-17 11:07:37] - aaron: not all parents actually get to pick their school, unless they have the income to support private alternatives, or they are willing to relocate for their child's education. - mig
[2010-08-17 11:06:12] - paul: parents pick the school, schools pick the teachers... i think that's a better system. when you go to a restaurant you don't pick your chef. when you go to an amusement park you don't pick which rides you go on. letting customers micromanage their teachers/faculty/etc at that level is giving them too much power. - aaron
[2010-08-17 10:54:35] - aaron: Over time, that should increase the general quality of teachers. -Paul
[2010-08-17 10:53:53] - aaron: I'm not saying it won't cause problems, but I think the pros definitely outweigh the cons here. Every kid can't have a 99th percentile teacher, but you can at least start laying off the 20th percentile ones and promoting the 80th percentile ones. -Paul
[2010-08-17 10:44:14] - Aaron: Well hopefully the bad teacher level would come up with less students but I don't think that is actually a system I would want my kid in. -Daniel
[2010-08-17 10:38:19] - daniel: heh
give the good teachers such a massive quantity of students that their teaching ability decreases to the same level of the shitty teachers! the perfect system - aaron[2010-08-17 10:28:40] - Maybe good teachers taking on more kids brings their good effect down some and would leave the less effective teacher will less students perhaps allowing them to do a better job? Maybe... -Daniel
[2010-08-17 10:27:51] - Paul: yeah i'm not sure parents having the info leads to anything good. If I were a parent I wouldn't want my kid in the bad teacher's classroom but from the school's view you have to put students in there unless you put the good teachers in charge of super large kids of groups suddenly. -Daniel
[2010-08-17 10:22:27] - paul: ideally you could have like, four 90th percentile teachers and a 99th percentile teacher. parents would still probably be finicky. i mean, from a game theory standpoint, it's just an unsolvable problem. the nash equilibrium is that every parent should demand the highest scoring teacher. it's a broken game. - aaron
[2010-08-17 10:21:19] - paul: realistically, you could have a wide range (20, 40, 60, 80th percentile) of teachers and parents are OK with that.... then on the first day of school, they find out they got the 20th percentile teacher. practically all of the parents would demand to switch their student to the better teacher, and that just wouldn't work - aaron
[2010-08-17 10:19:42] - xpovos: unsurprising. teacher unions have fought tooth and nail to avoid any sort of accountability. Are there rubber rooms in California too? - mig
[2010-08-17 10:14:49] - paul: that's probably unrealistic. i mean teacher assignments might not happen until first day of school. or maybe a week before. i agree with giving the parents the data, so they can make better decisions about which school. but i think teacher assignment should be random. - aaron
[2010-08-17 10:04:32] - aaron: In your scenario about one good teacher and five bad ones... I'm not sure what's so dangerous about the parents having the data. Isn't that exactly when what would be ideal? You would want parents to demand their kids get the good teacher so the bad ones get fired and better ones get hired. -Paul
[2010-08-17 09:59:27] - and if faculty feel like - hey, i'm one of your top 5 teachers according to this metric, and i'm not being rewarded. well, at least they have a metric they can point to to back themselves up; and if they decide to switch schools, data like that will look good on their resume as well - aaron
[2010-08-17 09:58:28] - daniel: as long as the data is being interpreted by humans, and not by an algorithm, i think it would be fine. i don't think you'd need a hard set rule; just every year, administrators and faculty would get something in the mail, saying, here's a list of your faculty; here's their value-added numbers. from there it's up to administrators how they use the data - aaron
[2010-08-17 09:41:20] - ... principal evaluations or something but test scores would be kept track of and after the 3 years of data would start to be averaged together and would determine if you got tenure maybe? -Daniel
[2010-08-17 09:40:35] - I understand somewhat the teachers apprehension at using students test scores to judge them because I can envision a good teacher who got students who didn't care for whatever reason and do poorly and screw the teacher. However perhaps after enough years you could average it out and get a more significant metric. So for the first 3? years you would get judged on...
[2010-08-17 09:37:55] - xpovos: revealing the data to other faculty, and parents - that might also be a good idea but it might be a bad one. it's easy to imagine scenarios where there's one good teacher and five bad ones, and parents have all of the data. that could be a dangerous scenario - aaron
[2010-08-17 09:36:59] - xpovos: evaluating teaching ability is really difficult. but a lot of people shoot down standardized testing without coming up with a viable alternative. i like the idea of evaluating teachers in this way and, at a minimum, just making the data available to the teachers themselves. that's harmless. - aaron
[2010-08-17 09:33:38] - Xpovos: I read a different article about the study done by the LA Times and I was most amused by the response from the teacher's union. They're trying to find out which teachers are good and which are bad? Boycott them! -Paul
[2010-08-17 07:19:34] - http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers-value-20100815,0,258862,full.story Comments? -- Xpovos
[2010-08-16 21:45:14] - sorry about the down time today, guys
[2010-08-16 15:42:41] - aaron: Actually, I have no idea. I'm going to guess not because the bulk of the damage pre-existed coverage. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-16 15:36:38] - xpovos: ugh. is any of it covered by homeowners insurance? - aaron
[2010-08-16 15:12:29] - aaron: Well, as bad as it is, it was a known factor. Just the magnitude of it got worse. That is to say, I knew there was work to be done, and rot involved, but not to this extent. So, it's probably a couple of thousand more for the repair work than I'd planned. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-16 14:51:41] - xpovos: ouch, sorry. ordinarily i might say something like "think of it as an investement". how about, just try not to think about it. - aaron
[2010-08-16 14:46:53] - Xpovos: Congratulations. -Paul
[2010-08-16 14:43:34] - I love being a homeowner. It means when the roof has a big hole of rotten wood and water damage I have to pay for it! -- Xpovos
[2010-08-16 11:41:55] - aaron: In Egypt the tour guides all posed you for the pics... So it looks like your finger is on top of the Pyramid... ~gurkie
[2010-08-16 11:20:53] - Stephen: Ooooh, poor Joshua... He had the most to learn... ~gurkie
[2010-08-16 11:06:58] - http://blog.cwtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/bg-joshua.jpg - Stephen
[2010-08-16 11:06:29] - gurkie: No, he was the geekiest guy that season. The ones that even the other geeks thought was geeky. - Stephen
[2010-08-16 10:56:08] - Paul: Sorry. I told my army in Tyrolia to disband again for good measure, and that seems to have fixed it. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-16 10:55:57] - paul: yeah exactly - aaron
[2010-08-16 10:55:49] - paul: there's always hundreds of annoying tourists doing annoying touristy things around the leaning tower of pisa. so this guy runs around and gives them high fives - aaron
[2010-08-16 10:53:40] - Oh, I guess she was pretending to "hold up" the tower, and this random guy came in and gave her a high five? -Paul
[2010-08-16 10:49:51] - was he the sweater vest guy? ~gurkie
[2010-08-16 10:47:52] - Aaron: I don't get it. What's wrong with the picture? -Paul
[2010-08-16 10:41:00] - Paul: Yes, but not as terrible as you might think. He definitely tried to participate in teh conversation, and mostly succeeded. His glasses were good, at least! - Stephen
[2010-08-16 10:38:27] - Stephen: Cool. Was he socially awkward? -Paul
[2010-08-16 10:37:19] - sorry about that, I wasn't aware a turn had processed over the weekend. - mig
[2010-08-16 10:18:17] - that is such a great action shot! he's in the air and it's a few milliseconds before she realizes something is wrong. ~a
[2010-08-16 10:09:49] - Paul: Josh, of Shay and Josh fame. - Stephen
[2010-08-16 10:06:35] - Austria and France should have no build orders to put in, and yet we are waiting for them.
-Paul[2010-08-16 10:00:13] - http://i.imgur.com/Hl502.jpg something douchey to do to leaning-tower-of-pisa tourists - aaron
[2010-08-16 09:46:50] - Stephen: Which one? -Paul
[2010-08-16 09:06:56] - pierce: i thought it was really cool. it met my expectations. and the plot was a little more deep than i expected, i kind of expected more of an archetypal storyline so i was pleased when it deviated from that - aaron
[2010-08-16 08:48:08] - Meg and I met a Beauty and the Geek "star" last night. I even sat next to him! - Stephen
[2010-08-16 08:06:40] - Pierce: I liked it, although it wasn't quite as awesome as I was hoping. -Paul
[2010-08-16 00:10:31] - how was spvtw? - pierce
[2010-08-15 12:22:31] - i'd say you're being pessimistic! wouldn't you expect the game sales to rise 103% for 120 months? 100% for 120 months doesn't really fit the data. ~a
[2010-08-15 12:01:55] - a: tsk that's a little optimistic don't you think - aaron
[2010-08-14 21:34:57] - fixed!
[2010-08-14 21:34:26] - sorry the link came out wrong...top 25 best movie geeks of all time. thought of you guys
~dee[2010-08-14 21:33:48] - http://insidemovies.moviefone.com/2010/08/06/best-geeks-movie-characters/?icid=main|aim|dl2|link3|http%3A%2F%2Finsidemovies.moviefone.com%2F2010%2F08%2F06%2Fbes ~dee
[2010-08-14 20:25:53] - aaron: i'd say at least 7 × 10^36.
~a[2010-08-13 14:45:02] - a: aaah nice that didnt occur to me! ~gurkie
[2010-08-13 14:42:37] - at this rate, by 2020 video game sales will account for 1.329228 × 10^36 of their current value; could be a real boon to aching game studios - aaron
[2010-08-13 14:40:47] - http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/08/12/console-game-sales-shrink-slightly-in-july-but-starcraft-ii-makes-pc-game-sales-soar/ hmm pc game sales rose 103% in july - aaron
[2010-08-13 13:49:40] - a: wait you have that many photos of me? i need to go look again - aaron
[2010-08-13 13:48:38] - a: Oh wow, that's a really good one. I can't believe it didn't occur to me to think about what is typically greater than zero, but less than five hundred. - Stephen
[2010-08-13 13:35:46] - anyways, since people stopped guessing, "Vertical axis is the number of tagged photos of that individual that you have in your photo database" was correct. everybody figured out the horizontal axis i assume. ~a
[2010-08-13 11:32:45] - a: Neither? Read my mind! -Paul
[2010-08-13 11:12:59] - paul: i don't see your guess. did you email it to me or IM? or neither?
~a[2010-08-13 10:51:41] - aaron: his response was something along the lines of did stephen or I ever play? Which was something I was wondering about too... ~gurkie
[2010-08-13 10:47:30] - gurkie: awww really? wow it's so close, it could really be it. i don't remember 100% what's on his cartridge but it matches so close - aaron
[2010-08-13 10:38:37] - a: Did I get it right too? -Paul
[2010-08-13 10:33:11] - aaron: confirmed with a that new tetris score is wrong... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 19:52:54] - good job, xpovos, for getting it right. ~a
[2010-08-12 16:14:44] - a: he didnt tell me I guessed while talking to Stephen who had talked to Aaron... It was a random off the cuff guess... Like what could it be that Aaron would have figured out and yea... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 15:16:45] - gurkie: hmmm? so aaron told you his answers i guess. ~a
[2010-08-12 15:15:19] - daniel, yes, gurkie was right. upper left = message board, upper right = ultimate. lower = sc2. ~a
[2010-08-12 14:43:32] - a: Did we ever get a conclusive answer to the venn diagram? I think we all a pretty good idea but I'm not sure if you said we were right. -Daniel
[2010-08-12 14:35:10] - a: if aaron is right then I am too... Although I think someone must have played as me cause otherwise it just seems wrong. ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 14:18:53] - right. my bad! ~a
[2010-08-12 14:14:32] - a: hence my first "ha! ha!" comment - aaron
[2010-08-12 14:14:24] - ok. ~a
[2010-08-12 14:13:36] - a: i know both axes i just don't want to spoil the puzzle for everyone else - aaron
[2010-08-12 14:03:51] - i could make aaron's "vertical axis = # of times we've seen the matrix. horizontal axis = # of sexual partners" but i would have to do a lot of guessing on both axes.
~a[2010-08-12 14:02:08] - so everybody but xpovos gave up on the vertical axis? ~a
[2010-08-12 13:17:16] - wow apparently we all arent very smart... although we are thought to be... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 12:38:09] - gurkie: agreed. - pierce
[2010-08-12 12:35:37] - Thank goodness I am in the middle of the graph. -Paul
[2010-08-12 12:26:02] - y-axis: perceived IQ. x-axis: actual IQ
[2010-08-12 12:15:33] - aaron: Well, it has a lot to do with cesarean vs. natural births. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-12 12:05:31] - that was one of those weird "you're gay if" edge cases in that marilyn manson book travis was reading us in college - aaron
[2010-08-12 12:04:33] - a: how did you lose your virginity at zero? wait nevermind i think i heard about that - aaron
[2010-08-12 11:24:10] - Ok, I finally parsed the vertical. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-12 11:08:19] - my, you people must have sex on the mind. ~a
[2010-08-12 11:06:15] - geez these guesses are mean!!! ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 10:57:58] - horizontal axis: age/projected age of loss of virginity
[2010-08-12 10:55:37] - well if aaron is right I guess I am too... I randomly threw his answer out as a guess thinking it was wrong... and was told it might be right... but I dont like the answer so I will continue to think about it... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 10:54:28] - Paul: no you didnt you blocked my view of the netbook when I tried to look over your shoulder! ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 10:49:15] - Gurkie: I let you look at it, I just also wanted to look at it, and you didn't want to share. -Paul
[2010-08-12 10:13:55] - aaron: actually reading on the site makes it look less sketchy than what they were talking about doing. From 99.5 it sounded like they were saying its based on your previous performance as well as averages in the class, so they were suggesting getting a C average for the first 3 years then betting on a 4.0 for senior year... Which I think is dumb ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 10:07:09] - aaron: I heard about that on 99.5 today they were talking about gaming it... I dont know if I would want to try to game a system by getting crappy grades... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 10:06:29] - bit not but
[2010-08-12 10:06:17] - a: I briefly saw it on Pauls comp but he wouldnt let me look at it... so I have horizontal but not vertical... I wonder if Aaron is trying to throw us off with the increasing his numbers but... ~gurkie
[2010-08-12 09:37:37] - http://skunkpost.com/news.sp?newsId=2966 web site lets students gamble on their own grades - aaron
[2010-08-12 09:06:41] - a: also i'm a little ashamed at my position on the graph, i need to come over some time and increase one of my numbers - aaron
[2010-08-12 09:03:01] - i'm surprised at the lack of correlation! you should have picked a different movie - aaron
[2010-08-12 09:01:50] - vertical axis = # of times we've seen the matrix. horizontal axis = # of sexual partners - aaron
[2010-08-12 08:36:15] - a: Gosh, the horizontal axis was fairly straight-forward, but the vertical one is confusing me. - Stephen
[2010-08-12 08:07:12] - a: ha! ha! i figured out both axes, although the horizontal took me a little while. it took me a long time to figure out what thing aparna was really really good at!! when i figured it out i laughed - aaron
[2010-08-11 17:47:44] - a: I think I have the horizontal axis, and have an idea about the vertical, but can't quite parse it. If I'm right on the horizontal, it's pretty impressive how close I am to everyone else. But it makes sense, kind of. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-11 17:37:04] - scatter plot you get to guess what the axes/dimensions are. ~a
[2010-08-11 16:29:34] - Vinnie: Gurkie zerg rushed Aaron so hard he got bonerrhea. - Stephen
[2010-08-11 16:20:00] - haha. "play"? was that intentional? cause if so i don't think you understand the "game". ~a
[2010-08-11 15:44:09] - vinnie: I dont "play" I played a couple of the tutorials... ~gurkie
[2010-08-11 15:30:43] - aaron: I really liked "get to the other side". -- Xpovos
[2010-08-11 15:24:24] - gurkie: you play sc? that was the only thing that threw me off. I got the other two circles - vinnie
[2010-08-11 15:16:10] - my favorite so far is "restrooms" "outside" - aaron
[2010-08-11 15:15:53] - http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/ - aaron
[2010-08-11 10:04:29] - aaron: yea I also found the actual blog to be more interesting but at that point I had already posted the initial link so I didnt bother with the second. ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 22:59:21] - a: good point to whomever said that... ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 19:14:02] - correlation is not causation "More likely, it’s how the camera was used rather than what kind of camera it is. Isn’t it more reasonable to expect that someone with a DSLR ... is going to compose and expose the photo best, followed by higher end P&S users, followed distantly by folks with crappy Kodak P&S cameras and phone cameras?" hmmm. right, good point. ~a
[2010-08-10 18:59:45] - a: yeah the bounce flash is something i just learned about last month from a wedding photographer. cameras are complicated! - aaron
[2010-08-10 18:52:32] - aaron: flash is on: 50% of my 17k photos, but only 19% of pictures i thought were good, and only 15% of my profile pictures. an analysis of the f/stop (f-number) actually showed that i liked photos with a higher f-number (smaller aperture). but that's probably because i need to do a better job taking/keeping good photos with lower f-numbers. ~a
[2010-08-10 18:30:35] - pierce: i don't know.... there's so much to be pissed off at you for, it all runs together in my mind. - aba
[2010-08-10 18:14:29] - aba: does that mean you've forgiven me for the zergling rush? - pierce
[2010-08-10 18:07:25] - paul: if i bought sc2, i'd have to drop something i currently do from my life and i didn't want to make that sacrifice. i guess the beta wasn't compelling to me, and i've started a couple of new characters in wow that i'm having a lot of fun playing. - aba
[2010-08-10 18:04:22] - aaron: yeah the actual blog reminds me that i need a new camera.
~a[2010-08-10 17:40:16] - "those poor losers with androids have only had 6" haha. "only" 6. ~a
[2010-08-10 17:12:53] - if i had to guess at a reason for the correlation, i'd guess that more tech savvy people pick android, and are also less attractive. i'm guessing if you did similar charts for ubuntu v. OSX, newegg vs. best buy (for computer purchases) you'd see similar trends for similar reasons - aaron
[2010-08-10 17:10:34] - gurkie: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/dont-be-ugly-by-accident/ i found the actual blog more interesting/in depth - aaron
[2010-08-10 16:16:42] - http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/08/10/new-report-iphone-users-have-more-sex/?hpt=C2 ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 15:35:23] - Ted Stevens died yesterday in a plane crash. ~a
[2010-08-10 15:22:44] - aba is still mad at me for zergling rushing her during the alpha preview at blizzcon. It was a dick move, I admit, but I didn't know the "15 minute limit" was really "15 minutes or one game, whichever is faster." - pierce
[2010-08-10 15:09:28] - And a few days... -- Xpovos
[2010-08-10 14:42:24] - aba: Sad. Why no Starcraft 2? I remember playing with you and Krissy during college. WOW taking that much of your time? -Paul
[2010-08-10 14:36:32] - xpovos: 4 months?
[2010-08-10 14:08:43] - i have another one. but i'll have to decide if i want to use a logarithmic scale or not. i love the logarithmic scale, but i think it will actually make the data harder to visualize for once. ~a
[2010-08-10 13:57:00] - a: I did get to play on the last one, but if I create one I dont get to play... which is why I nominated Aaron! ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 11:36:26] - you didn't get to play the last one? ~a
[2010-08-10 11:09:33] - aaron: yep! this way I get to play! ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 10:59:32] - gurkie: my turn to make a diagram? - aaron
[2010-08-10 10:42:05] - a: I think it was a fun diagram! I enjoyed trying to puzzle it out... This could be a fun game... aar your turn next! ~gurkie
[2010-08-10 08:36:30] - a: Then you can flip Aparna and I on the diagram, since I'll have SC2 in a bit. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-10 01:38:42] - aba: you were playing the ai on "very easy" mode. "easy" is even a pretty dumb ai, and so is "medium". i think there are three settings above "medium". ~a
[2010-08-10 01:35:33] - that's because the ai and the single player content was to be released with the final game. ~a
[2010-08-10 00:17:05] - i played a few games on beta but wasn't very happy with the AI and was disappointed that there was no single player content, so i hardly spent any time on it. - aba
[2010-08-09 21:46:55] - i thought you were playing the beta though i don't think we ever played any games. ~a
[2010-08-09 21:44:23] - yeah i guess. ~a
[2010-08-09 21:28:05] - i actually haven't bought starcraft 2 (and don't plan to), so i'm guessing i got miscategorized. - aba
[2010-08-09 17:38:39] - yeah and daniel and stephen i know. it wasn't a "mistake" since i did it consciously, but really just a badly defined category. ~a
[2010-08-09 17:31:56] - a: yes maybe but you also included nina. i think it was OK just a little mistake but it was a fun puzzle - aaron
[2010-08-09 17:11:56] - aaron: in my defense: dewey = 958. dave = 9572. ~a
[2010-08-09 16:41:17] - gurkie: yeah.
~a[2010-08-09 16:22:58] - a: does yeah mean we are right? ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 16:10:17] - gurkie: i had a few meetings. ~a
[2010-08-09 16:10:00] - gurkie: yeah. sorry again for the upper left section being so weird. ~a
[2010-08-09 16:07:58] - ... where did a go??? ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 16:07:55] - everybody: i have to admit that my definition for the upper left section is fairly non existent. i wasn't sure whether to put dee, dewey, dave, mel, sam, etc in that section. i stuck with just dave. ~a
[2010-08-09 16:02:33] - aaron: You would know, you're a member of all three groups. - Stephen
[2010-08-09 16:01:27] - stephen: waaaait a minute that sounds JUST like something a puppet would say to throw us off his trail :-O - aaron
[2010-08-09 15:44:06] - aaron & gurkie: Maybe you're both part right. It's addicted to zoloft (upper left), adopted (upper right), and Starcraft (bottom). - Stephen
[2010-08-09 15:43:16] - aaron: hmm yours is good, I might have to change mine... ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:39:18] - a: We need more games like this. A++ WOULD BUY AGAIN. -Daniel
[2010-08-09 15:36:04] - gurkie: wow that's way different... i had, people who are adopted, people who are addicted to zoloft, and people who have a tiny person living inside them moving their arms and legs with controls - aaron
[2010-08-09 15:35:13] - aaron: dewey doesnt check the msg board anymore... so I can see him not being there... I dont know if he plays starcraft or not though.... ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:33:03] - a: ultimate, starcraft, msg board? I cant take credit for this guess as I talked to quite a few people before stating it... And I dont think it actually works... but on the off chance that dave somehow qualifies as msg board while dewey doesnt... ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:32:02] - gurkie: hmm yeaaaaaah, dewey should be in the top left. probably a mistake. - aaron
[2010-08-09 15:15:17] - Aaron: Gurkie has a good guess for the bottom which I had also thought of, but wasn't sure about two names. -Paul
[2010-08-09 15:14:08] - aaron: issues with stephen's upper left is Dave... he doesnt belong there if dewey isnt there... ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:09:19] - stephen figured out the upper left section
now we just need the bottom, hmm. - aaron[2010-08-09 15:08:38] - can we clarify which mark this is? Is it Mark from HS, Tim's friend or Paul's former coworker (now my coworker)?? ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:06:07] - i thought i had the bottom one but nina and aparna are messing me up. - aaron
[2010-08-09 15:04:48] - Ohh I have a guess on the bottom too... now I just need the upper left... ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 15:04:20] - Yeah, I have the upper right, and thought I had the upper left, but one name doesn't work. -Paul
[2010-08-09 15:02:28] - the only one I have identified is the upper right... or so I think ~gurkie
[2010-08-09 14:57:39] - i think i have a vague idea of what the upper left one is but i think it's more specific than that. - aaron
[2010-08-09 14:55:52] - a: i know them all except the upper left section... hmm... - aaron
[2010-08-09 14:53:58] - a: Sure, sure. No doubt there was a lot of skill too, but a lot of the other hammers the rest of the night weren't nearly as on target. I think if we put them on the same team again, we would get something more like 3/6 instead of the 5/6 that happened last night. -Paul
[2010-08-09 14:49:28] - venn diagram you get to guess what the three sections are. ~a
[2010-08-09 14:00:36] - Paul: We'll just have to put me and Tim on the same team again next week and see how it goes. -Daniel
[2010-08-09 13:57:33] - i'm glad we split them up though. it was an over used play. ~a
[2010-08-09 13:56:47] - paul: lots of luck sure. but more skill. a few of those hammers were across the whole field where both tim and daniel were both being covered. you can't blame all of that on luck. ~a
[2010-08-09 13:23:24] - http://notalwaysright.com/aint-no-mountain-wry-enough/6488 an misunderstanding involving a jewish couple at a fast food restaurant - aaron
[2010-08-09 13:21:45] - a: they didn't find optimal solutions - a lot of the 20-move solves could be improved. however, they know that a lot of the positions can not be improved, so they can give a rough estimate. kind of like how my ricochet robots program could say that the best solution was about 13 moves - aaron
[2010-08-09 12:58:44] - a: Yeah, not to be mean, but I think the Tim to Daniel connection where they went 5 for 5 involved lots of luck. Tim usually isn't that accurate with his hammers.
-Paul[2010-08-09 12:40:23] - aaron: someone on sd brought up a good question. the chart on the bottom of the page. it says "about 300,000,000" for the last row. why doesn't it give an exact number? don't they have this information since they needed to solve all of them? or does reducing symmetrical configurations also lose information about what was reduced? ~a
[2010-08-09 12:37:21] - a: it might have been some kind of cloud computing service offered by google. - aaron
[2010-08-09 12:36:51] - a: hey one of those two hammers you caught was thrown by me
- aaron[2010-08-09 12:34:12] - "Finally, we were able to distribute the 55,882,296 cosets of H among a large number of computers at Google and complete the computation in just a few weeks". i see, so to solve such a problem, you must have administrative rights to a large number of the computers at GOOGLE.
~a[2010-08-09 12:27:54] - i don't think tim posts here. . . . i feel like i need to learn to catch the hammer since a few people love it a lot. i think it was thrown to me five (?) times yesterday and i only caught it twice. some of the hammer throws weren't even close though. ~a
[2010-08-09 12:18:54] - http://www.cube20.org/ rubiks cube is always solvable in 20 or fewer moves... wow! that's quite a jump from the previous number - aaron
[2010-08-09 09:08:25] - Tim: HAMMER! -Daniel
[2010-08-08 13:18:53] - omg, i'm an painfully tired. ultimate is going to suck
~a[2010-08-06 14:58:28] - gurkie: yep. ~a
[2010-08-06 14:49:49] - a: you checking your email? ~gurkie
[2010-08-06 13:41:01] - Paul: "The thermo-analyzers have jammed. One of them reads over a million degrees, the other's at minus 5000... Never seen anything like it." -- Xpovos
[2010-08-06 13:33:09] - oal = oil. -Paul
[2010-08-06 13:32:02] - Pierce: It's fine. We'll burn coal and oal until we heat up the Earth enough through global warming, then we do nuclear power to get a nuclear winter. -Paul
[2010-08-06 13:31:14] - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/04/AR2010080407323.html?sid=ST2010080407417 talk about possibly doing away with the ABC, and letting private retailers sell alcohol in virginia. - mig
[2010-08-06 13:17:55] - My fear about destigmatizing it is that I don't want to have to argue with the Pauls of the world about the merits of deregulating nuclear power, and I don't think we can risk losing that argument when the failure case is so much more catastrophic than other energy sources. - pierce
[2010-08-06 13:16:19] - here's my thing about nuclear: yes, it's cleaner and safer than our other energy sources statistically. but a large part of that is specifically because of the stigma against it, which has inspired aggressive regulation. - pierce
[2010-08-06 12:52:53] - "no way"? what makes you say that? 1. i'm not sure it's impossible. 2. there's a nuclear plant right outside of richmond. i'd much prefer to be in richmond than DC (there's a coal plant right next to the washington dc mall). 3. infrastructures WILL change. ~a
[2010-08-06 12:42:32] - a/aaron: I'd love to see more nuclear. However, there is absolutely no way we'll add enough nuclear capacity to cover that much energy consumption. 1) I'm not even sure it's possible [do we have enough fuel?] 2) WAY too much NIMBY-ism. 3) Even if we got past that, the infrastructure is insufficient to process that new capacity--but that's really a separate issue. -- Xpov
[2010-08-06 12:39:22] - http://www.rinkworks.com/said/warnings.shtml here's a pretty good list of warnings - aaron
[2010-08-06 12:26:42] - xpovos: yeah i agree with adrian on nuclear energy. hopefully we'll see more nuclear plants in the future as stigma/pronounciation mistakes decrease - aaron
[2010-08-06 12:11:46] - xpovos: can't? what makes you say that? there are TONS of ways of making electricity that we've only begun to tap. nuclear for instance puts out TONS of electricity and is much better for the environment (in almost every way) than internal combustion engines. ~a
[2010-08-06 10:35:32] - a: But assuming those numbers are correct, our oil energy consumption dwarfs our coal energy consumption. Which isn't too surprising. It's one of the reasons why a plug-in electric car is doomed to failure. We just can't replace our oil consumption with electricity consumption. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-06 10:33:34] - a: Good question, and one I don't think I can answer easily. Oil, e.g. is used very little for electricity generation (1% according to Wikipedia), but we still consume 1.95x10^8 barrels or BoE -> 3.32x10^11 KwH whereas the closest I can find per day on coal would be "less than" 8.7x10^9 KwH. I just can't find accurate numbers. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-06 10:00:09] - Xpovos: I remember enjoying Howard the Duck when I was little, but I also remember enjoying Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey... so I don't trust my memory much anymore. -Paul
[2010-08-06 09:51:42] - title: haha. i think you're skipping a very important fact. emissions come from many things that are not electricity related. what percent of ENERGY generation comes from coal plants? cause that would have to include car energy generation and other things that put out emissions like oil refining etc etc. ~a
[2010-08-06 09:43:13] - See, I feel like I'm probably in the minority. No doubt, Howard the Duck was a bad movie. But I felt it was comically bad. -- Xpovos
[2010-08-06 08:50:27] - "George Lucas stepped down as the president of Lucasfilm in order to focus on producing films, including Howard the Duck"
[2010-08-06 00:06:45] - vinnie: list of fictional television shows. ~a
[2010-08-05 16:25:27] - aaron: I didn't realize it was a reference, I thought it was a really funny phrase
- vinnie[2010-08-05 16:16:47] - vinnie: also don't give me any credit for the wilt chamberlain analogy, it was all spelled out on the hack-a-shaq wikipedia article i linked to - aaron
[2010-08-05 16:13:45] - gurkie, you can change the title if you want
~a[2010-08-05 16:13:00] - I liked the last title better... all the smiley faces! ~gurkie
[2010-08-05 16:07:17] - vinnie: heh heh did you get the reference? - aaron
[2010-08-05 15:53:38] - omg I just saw "who poop last?!"
- vinnie[2010-08-05 15:48:12] - good analogy with Wilt Chamberlain btw - vinnie
[2010-08-05 15:46:57] - aaron: yeah I don't actually blame shaq for his strategy or the teams that foul him for what they do, everyone's trying to act in the best interest of winning the game. in both cases, it's more of a rules problem I guess? makes the game a lot less fun to watch - vinnie
[2010-08-05 15:37:01] - aaron: pretty sure fistfights are not actually allowed... they get thrown in the penalty box for that ~gurkie
[2010-08-05 15:31:00] - or just allow fistifghts, like in hockey - that would be a pretty big deterrant - aaron
[2010-08-05 15:30:03] - vinnie: i don't know it still seems like as much of a rules problem as it is a shaq problem. they just need to amend the on-the-ball foul rules in some way to discourage intentional fouling - aaron
[2010-08-05 15:26:40] - vinnie: it sounds like the same thing happened with wilt chamberlain back in the 60s/70s - from what i've read on wikipedia the only reason there hasn't been a rules change for Shaq is that the tactic isn't effective enough to see widespread use, because shaq is actually good enough at free throws that fouling him repeatedly ups his percentage - aaron
[2010-08-05 15:26:05] - Stephen: Yeah, I liked them back when it was Bibby, Christie, Peja, Webber and Vlade. I still like them, even though they've been horribly bad. Things are looking up with Evans and Cousins, though. -Paul
[2010-08-05 15:25:10] - vinnie: You forgot a step.... back down, back down, back down, throw and elbow, back down, back down, turn and shoot. -Paul
[2010-08-05 15:12:14] - gurkie: they're fouling him cause he sucks at free throws, I entirely blame him for it.
he pretty much has one strategy (back down, back down, back down, turn and shoot) and never bothered to learn how to shoot. in fact, I sort of don't like him for that either, just seems like he barely tries - vinnie[2010-08-05 15:05:45] - mig: is that Shaq's fault or the other teams? Seems like that isnt something you can blame him for... How dare the other team foul you! ~gurkie
[2010-08-05 15:05:18] - Paul: You like the Kings? We agree on a team! - Stephen
[2010-08-05 15:04:41] - http://kotaku.com/5602257/400-turns-of-civilization-v kotaku has some cool screenshots and tidbits on civ v - aaron
[2010-08-05 14:53:56] - Gurkie: I mainly don't like him because he is an ass, and he was a very prominent player on the Lakers teams which kept eliminating my Kings.
-Paul[2010-08-05 14:41:41] - gurkie: a common thing teams would do is intentionally foul shaq to force him to shoot foul shots (he's bad at them at shooting them), it really slows the game down. - mig
[2010-08-05 14:40:18] - I dont know what "the strategy of hacking him on defense" means... I can see not liking him if he is a total ass, that was the part I was missing... ~gurkie
[2010-08-05 14:25:42] - the celtics are going to be disappointed when they find out he's not actually irish - aaron
[2010-08-05 14:14:18] - he was in a really funny episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. that was about the time I started to find his assiness funny - vinnie
[2010-08-05 14:11:58] - gurkie: where to start? the biggest thing is I find his strategy of playing and the strategy of hacking him on defense very uninteresting. just makes games he's in a lot more boring to watch. he's also a total ass, and I used to hate that, but eventually I started finding it funny. regardless, it pains me to have to root for him - vinnie
[2010-08-05 14:03:15] - dare I ask, whats wrong with Shaq? ~gurkie
[2010-08-05 13:36:50] - ugh Shaq. I will probably still be rooting for the Celtics, but man, I don't like that guy - vinnie
[2010-08-05 13:01:21] - Daniel: I actually think the Celtics will be a little better this year (although the competition around them has also gotten a lot better). I think an extra year removed from knee surgery will offset the extra year of age for Garnett, and Shaq and Jermaine O'Neal should offset Perkin's injury. -Paul
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