A Clever Way to Increase my h-index

So if I violate this, I can improve my h-index...?

Hmmm... pic.twitter.com/YF3mGriXql

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 16, 2019

"Subtitles: What the Book is Actually About"

Just for the irony, I'd like to write a book called "Subtitles: What the Book is Actually About". :)

A Table of Perverse Incentives in Academia

I can't argue with this table.

It would also be relevant to include a line for "tenure", because that too has a very good intended effect (time to work on impactful blue-skies research without undo pressure and harmful immediacy) and unfortunate side effects (e.g., slacking, dead weight, insufficient accountability on certain things).

Here's the horrifying key table from the paper Siddhartha Roy co-authored on perverse incentives in academia. #AAASmtg pic.twitter.com/sdrUlPmXs7

— Mike 48% Tⓐylor (@MikeTaylor) February 18, 2017

Update: There are some worthwhile comments in my associated Facebook post.

The Best Thing Since Something Other Than Sliced Bread?

A phrase I used to hear many years ago—do people still use this phrase?—was to say that something is "the best thing since sliced bread."

But before there was sliced bread, did people use an expression like this? And what was used in the expression instead of sliced bread?

(I am obviously far from the only person to wonder about something like this. See this page and various other Web pages.)

Birds on a Wire

On the taxi ride to the airport, I saw a set of three power lines that were parallel to each other and arrayed vertically.

The bottom one had 1 bird perched on it, the middle one has 3 perched birds, and the top one had a large number of birds on it (too many for me to count).

Any ideas what the mechanism is for this? Is there a preference for height? Does it have a bit of a DLA-like flavor in that a bird lands on the first available wire from something like a random walk or Levy flight such that it's more likely to "stick" on the top one? Does anybody know if somebody has tried to model this?

Also: Mine.

The Internet of Stuff

In honor of George Carlin, the Internet of Things really ought be called the "Internet of Shit" (or possibly the "Internet of Stuff").

Induction and Birthday Parties

Well, this is a very depressing way to apply induction.

I find this SMBC perversely amusing, though I have been in this kind of situation before and it's not fun.

Live Action Paper Mario in the Best Western?

The Best Western breakfast room in a small American town provides an interesting cross section of the population.

If this were a Paper Mario game, I would start querying them to check if any of them had seen Luigi.

Hmmmm.... I Think Oxford is a Cult

If you think a bit about this comic from SMBC a bit, it does kind of make one ponder the possibility that University of Oxford is a cult. There does seem to be some level of truth to that perspective.

Epiphany on the Use of Time Machines

You know, it occurs to me that if I had a time machine, the main thing for which I would want to use it would be so that I wouldn't have to wait for anybody to respond to my messages.

Because I'm such a patient person. :) [In fact, my patience is legendary.]

If you think about it, this should not surprise anybody who knows me.

Google's New Tool

Google Lab's new tool, called Books Ngram Viewer is extremely awesome. I think I should be able to use this for some really fascinating networks projects in the future. There are things that I have wanted to do that would involve text searching, and this might well allow me to do it (or at least to help me to do it).

And as you can see from my chosen plot, baseball has defeated cricket. (And I am damn curious about baseball's spike in the 1700s.)

(Tip of the cap to Bernie Hogan, who told me about this at the pub tonight.)

Update (12/23/10): Here is a link to the article about the new tool. One of the authors is Martin Nowak, who is quite a familiar name. Also, I love the use of the monicker "The Google Books Team" as one of the authors.

Riddle Me This

Why am I often in my worst moods on Friday evening?

(And I was in a shitty mood before I realized I'd still be working after midnight, when I ought to be letting it all hang out.)

Let me know if you have any ideas, but the Friday evening blues seems to have become a bit of a trend with me. (And it's not that I don't have shitty moods at other times, because I am a very moody person, but there does seem to be a Friday night spike with me.)

Mechanical Properties of Ice Cream

Does anybody know why ice cream sometimes gets chewy when it gets old (you know, when a lot of crystals settle inside the container)? Surely somebody has studied the mechanical properties of aging ice cream...?