Transportation

Many people bring their bikes to college. Quite a few bring skateboards, and some bring scooters. Some people bring their vehicles, then walk to class when they find out how hard it is to park. Many students don't bring anything.

But one student brought a novel method of transportation - a unicycle.

Why?

Futility

...is having the sprinklers going full blast in a pouring rain.

You'd think there'd be an automatic shutoff. Or at least a manual one.

Your attention, please.

"An emergency has been reported in this building. Please leave the building as quickly as possible. Do not use the elevators."
---BEEP---BEEP---BEEP---
[Repeat ad nauseam]

I hate fire drills.

Arrrrrrrr!

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day, me hearties!

Get yer Pirate Name and learn to talk like a true scurvy son of the seas!

And if there be any other links ye need for a truly piratical day, look herrrrrrrrre!

Pirate Snow the Mauve

Question of the Day

Seen on a whiteboard -

What is:
√onion
?

Traffic...

I'm almost starting to prefer driving to biking around campus. Driving at least has rules. Biking, I have a choice. Heading to campus, I can take the bike lane in the road, which is very rough, about 1½ bikes wide, and usually occupied by bikes going the other direction, and occasionally cars pulling into parking spots. Or I can take the sidewalk, which is usually crowded with students going veeeeerrrry slllloooowwwwlly (compared to biking speed). Then there's the grass, if I feel like dodging the trees.

On campus, biking is a hair-raising experience. The paths are full of students - mostly pedestrians, quite a few bikers and skateboarders, but also cars, roller bladers, even wheelchairs. None of them stay on one side of the path or the other. People stop to chat in the middle of the path. Faster transportation (bikes, skateboards) have to dodge and weave among slower. Periodically two bikes going opposite directions will head for the same gap in traffic, with potentially disastrous results.

And I can STILL never remember where I parked.

Book of the Day

A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates.

Don't you want to just rush right out and buy it?

Belated...

Happy Free Hugs Day!

Geek Joke of the Day

A quantum physics student forgot his homework. He told his professor, "Last night I calculated the momentum of my homework so precisely, it could be anywhere in the universe."



If you understand that, shave Schroedinger's cat with Occam's razor.

Rationale for Procrastination

Originally found in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.

Alert biologists search for the potential survival advantage of structures or behavior patterns which occur commonly and in diverse groups. Procrastination behavior is analyzed here to determine if procrastination does more than merely satisfy Parkinson's Law, that work tends to fill the allotted time.

Most procrastination behavior is performed against a deadline, e.g. a manuscript which requires one month's effort is due one year from today. A skillful procrastinator will spend at least 11½ months working on other projects and trying, but not quite coming to grips with, the project under discussion. The work of the 11½ months will probably be necessary to clear the desk as it is covered by work that is past due, i.e. work which cannot in clear conscience be further postponed. In examining the merits of the procrastination strategy - that of starting two weeks before the deadline rather than a year before - the following attributes of procrastination become apparent.

1. Procrastination shortens the job and places the responsibility for its termination on someone else (the authority who imposed the deadline).
2. It reduces anxiety by reducing the expected quality of the project from the best of all possible efforts to the best that can be expected given the limited time.
3. Status is gained in the eyes of others, and in one's own eyes, because it is assumed that the importance of the work justifies the stress.
4. Avoidance of interruptions including the assignment of other duties can usually be achieved, so that the obviously stressed worker can concentrate on the single effort. Under non-stressed conditions, the refusal to answer the phone, host visitors, or attend to routine matters wold be considered intolerably rude.
5. Procrastination avoids boredom; one never has the feeling that there is nothing to do.
6. It may eliminate the job if the need passes before the job can be done.

These advantages which accrue from the strategy of procrastination obviously serve to reinforce procrastination behavior. An in-depth examination of such rewards or payoffs of games has been made by Berne. A study of the survival and reproductive rates of procrastinators and controls is beyond the scope of this report.

The time spent on this effort was a form of procrastination on all the other things I should have been doing. This effort was supported by no grant.

Office Game of the Week

Faceball.

Whose brilliant idea was it...

...to put the frats right by the dorms? (Or for that matter, right by anything except a nuclear testing facility.) I can hear the music two blocks away. That's still more pleasant than the shrill screaming contests.