I have to admit Marilyn Manson scares the shit out of me. But ‘Putting Holes in Happiness’ somehow found a place in my rusty ears. Maybe because it’s a much softer song on their otherwise hard metal genre. The video still scares the shit out of me, though.

On an entirely unrelated note, I found this little gem singing beautiful French songs on virb.com. Her name is uhm, Little, an Asian-looking girl with an angelic voice. She does not scare the shit out of me. I like Petite Coccinelle the best.

• asiancomic.jpg (image)
• 20071002.png (PNG Image, 705×290 pixels)
  aha!
• Software Is Hard
• Accessibility Is About Minimizing Requirements - The Future of the Web
  Amazingly simple explanation of what web accessibility is…
• Sketchcast.com
• Lord-of-War.jpg (JPEG Image, 1340×2000 pixels) - Scaled (44%)
• Radiohead lets fans pick price for new album - Boing Boing
  respect.
• The Omni Group - OmniGraffle

Update: I went with the second one.

by david in brasil
A couple of times a year, I pull up the following and read it, trying to realign my thinking process. I don’t know who originally wrote it; I’ve had it for years. I apologize for the long post, but it’s worth it.

Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The instructor and the student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected.I read the examination question: “SHOW HOW IT IS POSSIBLE TO DETERMINE THE HEIGHT OF A TALL BUILDING WITH THE AID OF A BAROMETER.”

The student had answered, “Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it,lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building.” The student really had a strong case for full credit since he had really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this.

I suggested that the student have another try. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. I asked if he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute, he dashed off his answer which read: “Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a stopwatch.Then, using the formula x=0.5*a*t^^2, calculate the height of the building.” At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded,and gave the student almost full credit.

While leaving my colleague’s office, I recalled that the student had said that he had other answers to the problem,so I asked him what they were. “Well,” said the student, “there are many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building,and by the use of simple proportion, determine the height of the building.” “Fine,” I said, “and others?” “Yes,” said the student, “there is a very basic measurement method you will like. In this method, you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units.” “A very direct method.” “Of course. If you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of g at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building,in principle, can be calculated.” “On this same tact, you could take the barometer to the top of the building,attach a long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a pendulum. You could then calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession”. “Finally,” he concluded, “there are many other ways of solving the problem.Probably the best,” he said, “is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent’s door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: ‘Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine barometer. If you will tell me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer.”

At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think. The student was Neils Bohr.

The original slashdot’s post is poorly formatted, so I decided to repost it here

• You can hate Zune, but not their lovely commercial…
• Enhanced Javascript Lazy Function Definition Pattern
• Loaded Blanks HQ {CARDS}
  Unique, awesome comic cards
• The Journey of Khalil Islam, the Man Who Didn’t Shoot Malcolm X — New York Magazine
• .:[ Ajile ]:.
  Importing & Loading Extension brings immediate support for load, import, include and namespace to a wide variety of JavaScript-enabled browsers.
• freshmeat.net: Editorials - Excessive code and excessive nudity. What gives?
• Templatica: Validation = web standards?
  well said

For those Redditers who complain on just about every entry about XKCD, Ron Paul, Pics or whatever, if an awfully simple solution such as downmod the story, don’t upmod the story or just ignore the story (duh?) doesn’t work for you, here’s a greasemonkey’s script to treat your pain.

Please don’t mind the name of the script, that’s just how the tiny little me inside me feels about you guys. Tiny Alvin can almost hear the echo of your long, high-pitched cry all the way inside here!

// ==UserScript==
// @name           reddit-whiny
// @namespace      redditWhiny
// @description    excludes posts in reddit that contain the words 'XKCD, Ron Paul, Pics...'
// @include        http://reddit.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

(function()
{
	try{
		//EDIT HERE
                //if the post title contains these words, filter it out, you whiny bastard.
		//it's case insensitive, so you don't have to specify XKCD and xkcd, you weenie whiny.
		var banWord=new Array('xkcd','ron paul','pic','video'); 

		//DO NOT EDIT ANYTHING BELOW THIS
		var mainContent = document.getElementById('main');
		var alink = mainContent.getElementsByTagName('a');
		var count = 0;
		for (var i=0, j=alink.length; i 0){
			var dbody = document.getElementById('siteTable');
			var note = document.createElement('div');
			note.innerHTML = '
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