| 12/03/2003 Lazy Research |
Just did something really nerdy. I was writing a paper for Hum 9 (Knowledge and Reality). While working on it, fortune showed a quote from Carl Sagan though it did not fit the paper well. *idea* I looked at the fortune file and found a useful quote from Carl Sagan including citation. |
| 11/15/2003 Proof by Tiente |
My math 1a TA went to the ACM competition as did I. Going over the rules was pretty boring so he brought along the math 1a homeworks to grade. While grading my paper, he asked what Tiente meant. It was on my midterm and homework since #3, always cited when a polynomial was integrated. He said that other TAs were grading parts of the midterm and had asked him about it. So he came up with a justification, saying it meant "this is obvious" in Latin or something. I told him it was a comment he wrote on one of my homework assignments. When we got back from the competition, there was homework 3 where it all started. At first glance, I thought he was telling me to cite the tiente theorem but it turns out he wrote -1 cite thm. Other math students are encouraged to write tiente on their papers and see if they get credit. Tiente is a word in Spanish so here are some translations: Tempt Inflected form of tentar meaning to grope, tempt, or try Entice Update 11/16/2003: My TA told the other graders about this site. Update 11/22/2003: Some other students used Tiente on their math 1 sets.  |
| 11/11/2003 Dima and Fire |
We had to fill out a form to get dental insurance and it asked for an address so I gave my permanent address. I went to turn it in and the secretary looked at me, sighed, and told me to put my campus address on there, giving me a new form. So I filled out the new one but I still had the incorrect copy and thought maybe I should burn it (paranoia :-D). There are fireplaces in the lounges of each of the houses and I went to the Dabney lounge to burn it. Jaap was there playing the piano and said hi. Oddly, the fireplace was not lit. Dima showed up. Neither of them had something to light it with. I went through Tunnel/Alley 8 to the Blacker fireplace to burn the form instead. As I was going down the hall, I heard Dima laughing a lot. Apparently Dima and Jaap looked at the copies of the Tech sitting in the lounge and then at each other. Dima came running down Tunnel, stuck half a copy of the Tech in the fire, and ran off with it. He was obviously not going to make it. Jaap thought of this and had a pie pan. Dima put the now-completely-burning copy of the Tech in the pan and started running with the pan. But it got too hot. So he put the pan on the carpet floor, stuck another copy of the Tech in, and lit the Dabney fireplace. He came back to find a pan that had burning pieces of paper in it too hot to touch. Kicking it revealed that it was stuck to the floor. Enough kicking revealed that the pan had melted the carpet and turned it black. A short while later, Dima was seen outside holding the pie pan giving people ashes. |