July 2008
35 posts
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The lame lament of the summertime academic →
Teaching is the most visible and intelligible aspect of what academics do, but it certainly is not the most important.
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“John Mccain Sex Video Yanked From Youtube.Com”
– I thought SPAM titles were supposed to make people want to click on the message not close the window and run away from the computer in horror…
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Dinner—Wednesday, July 23
Tried a new dish out of Mollie Katzen’s The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest:
Sweet and Sour Tofu with Cashews
I served it with mixed brown-white rice, and it was delicious. Two short notes: 1) The recipe calls for a 20-oz can of pineapple chunks. It took me several re-reading of the recipe before I realized that pineapple chunks themselves do not go into the dish, only the juice. 2) Despite...
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Dinner—Tuesday, July 22
This took a little longer than expected to prepare:
Roasted Beet, Onion and Orange Salad—added butter lettuce to make S happy
Three Vegetable Penne with Tarragon-Basil Pesto
Everything’s ready to go, but S is on the phone prepping someone for an investigative interview. So, I haven’t tasted stuff yet.
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“The Itch” →
I have realized over time—mostly due to various articles in the New Yorker—that I am fascinated by neurosciences and linguistics. Just finished this article about phantom sensations and “mirror therapies.” In today’s Science Times, there is an interesting complementary article—“Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes.”
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Presidential Campaign TV Commercials
I realized sometime last week that this is the first time in my life that I am regularly seeing presidential campaign TV commercials. It is interesting to be in a swing state as opposed to California. It is striking how different McCain looks now from how he used to look several decades ago.
Also, I’m just waiting to see a campaign commercial that is not approved by a candidate.
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“I neither want to be strategic in my postings nor selective in my friending, but...”
– David Carr, “Hey, Friend, Do I Know You?” New York Times, July 21, 2008
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Dinner—Sunday, July 20
We are definitely taking matters into our own hands with the lack of good Asian cuisine around here. For dinner tonight, we made the Vietnamese summer rolls that I was planning to make a few nights ago:
Summer Rolls with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce
Peanut Sauce
We also put in julienned cucumber, red cabbage and pan-fried tofu and chicken. The dipping sauce was delicious (made with 1/3 of the...
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Define: grawlix →
That %!@#&!% word is still not in the OED.
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On the pending death of Polaroid instant camera... →
As Jason Santa Maria points, out changes in the realm of photography have been beyond the technical and the technological to encompass the social and the cultural.
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Dinner—Thursday, July 17
Last night, we gave in and got take-outs from Khow Thai. It’s so uncanny how the owner of that place recognizes my voice every single time. Tonight, to satisfy S’s pseudo-cravings for Vietnamese food, I tried something new.
Summer Rolls with Sweet Chili Dipping Sauce (originally planned for but nixed in the interest of time)
Vietnamese Coconut Lemon Grass Chicken
Made two versions—one with...
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“Paris peace summit cancelled”
– This is one of the more unusual spam titles. It certainly is not as amusing as this one. Needless to say the content of the message had nothing to do with Paris, peace summits or cancellations.
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How to Educate (Undergrad) Students →
I’m very explicit to my undergraduate students that universities and professors are not very good at training students to be creative—“novel problem-solving.” What I do try to teach students is to always keep an open mind and to question their underlying assumptions, so they can be open to new ideas.
WatchA new JibJab video! It’s pretty good but not as good as some of their older ones.
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Dinner—Monday, July 14
Haven’t been posting our dinner menus for a while.
I was going to make Broiled Tilapia with Horseradish and Herb-Spiked Mayo, but S wanted it bread-crumb covered so that’s what I made.
Creamy polenta, although it turned out to be lumpy (Emeril would not be proud…)
A simplified version of sautéed mushrooms
The usual grilled asparagus
By the way, the low-sodium diet seems to have been...
The 20 Healthiest Foods for Under $1 →
Continuing my linking to healthy food references…
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WatchJust got a Casio Exilim Z80 to shoot video clips, since my D40x doesn’t do video. This is a test clip.
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What You Should & Shouldn’t Buy Organic →
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Google AdSense
I don’t think this will ever be a big revenue stream, but I decided to put up Google ads on the three sites. They just went up there today, so I’m sure they will change over time. But right now the link ads are showing the following:
Moon Moon Moon Cycles Lunar Moon Moon Calendars
This is interesting, because I don’t think my name is mentioned anywhere prominently on the site, so AdSense...
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United Nations Reform →
A student in my summer term class lifted this whole essay as his final research paper. I haven’t been teaching for too long, but I certainly could smell a plagiarized paper right away.
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Daniel W. Drezner » Is that your ‘stimulus... →
Is a ‘stimulus package’ a stimulus package when only unproductive activities are being stimulated?
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Shoot me…shoot me now!
This is the opening sentence of a student’s final paper I’m grading:
When evaluating the importance of environmental issues within the international community empirical happenings, especially within the United Nations hold clues as to how environmental issues are pegged.
Okay. After reading it over three times, I think I finally get what the student is trying to say. It’s 4:43PM right now. I...
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Poking fun at Facebook →
This is exactly the reason why I have my Facebook policy. A few weeks ago, I actually de-friended some people that I barely knew but were on my “Friends” list.
[via TR]
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Dinner—Wednesday, July 2
The low-sodium diet continues. Chili is on the menu tonight:
Ultimate Veggie Chili
Couscous with parsley and cherry tomatoes
Tzatziki (τζατζίκι)
It’s flabbergasting how much sodium is in canned tomatoes and beans! Dried beans are soaking at home right now, and I will crushing and dicing fresh tomatoes.
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DSL Speed Boost
Qwest has been upgrading its network to fiber optics. Although 20Mbps connection is not yet available in Boulder, they now offer faster speeds than before at same prices. We’ve upgraded to the 3-7Mbps download speed. The results are okay so far. The speed has been slowly increasing everyday, so I hope it reaches closer to the 7Mbps limit eventually.