Saturday, May 23, 2009

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.

Someone's birthday is coming up...

I've never really understood what people mean when they say that. You know, we're getting close to 7 billion in terms of global population. The number of days in a year are 365. So with some crude maths, you expect to have 20 million people who have a birthday every single day (that's wonderful if you're in the Happy birthday business). Therefore, it's kind of a pointless thing to say that someone will have a birthday soon (assuming soon means two-three days) because a subset of humanity equal to france in terms of population will have a birthday in that time period. You may as well say that the Taj is a pretty nifty tomb.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

To those who like to use foul language...

...Randall Munroe has something to say to you:





But Intellectual badassery is immune from the jumping hyphen. If you make the hyphen jump, you shall be hung, drawn, and quartered with an industrial laser.

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had to include a conversation with a friend about abovementioned lasers

qubit85: what kind of laser are we talking about here?
me: I don't know
the kinds that can cut you into half
the kinds sean connery faced in goldfinger
or the kind pierce brosnan faced in die another day
as you can see, my knowledge of lasers is rooted in James Bond movies

Intellectual badass-hood

So on the way to NCUR23, I met an interesting and dauntingly intelligent bloke from Johns Hopkins. He introduced the concept of intellectual badass-hood to me. This is an astonishingly appealing idea for nerds of my ilk. No longer shall we suffer under derogatory titles reminiscent of Homo unpleasantus characteristics(refer to previous post for obscure reference: http://comprehensiblecomplexity.blogspot.com/2008/10/well-theoretically.html).

So, if you are sufficiently smart, reasonably ridiculous, engagingly eccentric, adequately attractive, and compellingly competent in your field you shall henceforth be allowed to lay claim to a glorious title: Intellectual badass.

For once in my life, I am making an exception in my escewal of words with the gratuitous suffix of 'ass' because 'intellectual badass' just sounds BADASS.

P.S: There is a species barrier between Homo unpleasantus and intellectual badassery.