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on Open Mic for the week of 5/22/2023Maryland actually does quite badly when adjusting for student demographics, or at least did in 2015. It looks…
on Open Mic for the week of 5/22/2023Do me a favor and read "Black Rednecks and White Liberals".
on Open Mic for the week of 5/22/2023That certainly would explain why their averages are higher than Texas's despite having entire schools that don…
on Open Mic for the week of 5/22/2023Would it surprise you to learn that Maryland regularly places in the top ten for public schools overall, and m…
on Open Mic for the week of 5/22/2023It’s not merely a distrust of government that makes Appalachia poor. Not nitpick, but to be clear, a distrust…
ICYMI
FIRST!!Report
First!!!Report
OK, so I have a question for the post’s author.
When you create a post, you can see the most-used tags, if you want to attach any previously-created ones to the post. They are arranged in a “word cloud” type format, with more frequently-used tags such as “Obama” or “politics”, or “conservatism” looming large, due to the political focus of this blog.
Can anyone explain to me why the only OT author that appears there is “Conor Williams”; and not only that, but in medium-size font (smaller than “Obama”, but larger than “Iran” or “Republican Party” or “Democrats”?)
Is Conor secretly editing random posts to add his name as a tag, and why?Report
Conor’s the only writer here smart enough tag himself in his own posts (which is actually a wise move).Report
But he hardly ever posts! How is he bigger than “civil liberties”, or “same-sex marriage”?
I call shenanigans.Report
I’m not sure how many of the writers here actually use the tags; that might explain it.
Plus he’s super awesome.Report
I’m going to start surreptitiously editing everyone’s posts, to add my handle as a tag. I’M COMING FOR YOU WILLIAMSReport
@glyph U mad bro?Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQw2fnIM2ooReport
I feel we should make Conor’s experience with comments just as he expects it; full of unreasoned aggression and one-upsmanship/performance. Like interviews with pro wrestlers. It’s the least we can do.Report
I also want to flood his inbox with email notifications.Report
ThatReport
isReport
alsoReport
anReport
excellentReport
idea.Report
I call shenanigans.
You need to examine your privilege, you live white male. “Shenanigans” begins with the word, “she.” You think that’s a coincidence? The inherent meaning of the word is a mockery of women and all that they do. It’s offensive.Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtEpy37-LFIReport
First of all, can we just take a step back and revel in how cute that little girl is?
Second, I think all you are wrong about pretty much everything, and this suggests that you may be worse people than Hitler.Report
@chris You know who else thought everyone else was worse than Hitler?Report
“Shenanigans” rhymes with “Hannigan”, which sounds Irish, which is next to Scotland, and you know how men dress there. And it almost rhymes with “Harrigan”, which was written by George M. Cohan, who you probably think was Jewish. So I know exactly what you meant, mister, and from now on you’d better keep your anti-Semitic slurs to yourself.Report
I swear to God I’m going to pistol whip the next guy who says, “Shenanigans.”Report
What are your feelings on tomfoolery, hijinks and monkey business?
I’m pro-all-three, for the record.Report
Shenanigans, shenanigans, shenanigans!Report
“Hey, Farva, what’s the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?”Report
@glyph,
“Tomfoolery”? Unless Tom comes back to protest, I guess it’s ok.Report
@jm3z-aitch
How dare you! How dare you assume that I’m actually alive!Report
But…but… I’ve met you!Report
But that was in the past,
manperson-as-deserving-of-respect-and-dignity-but-no-more-than-anyone-else.ReportConor, do you ever worry that your unwillingness to entertain comment sections is indicative of an unwillingness to consider different viewpoints?
Also, wouldn’t you love to see the education sector completely privatized?
If you don’t reply, I’m going to assume that the answer to each question is, “yes”.Report
RON PAUL 2016!Report
Everybody likes Drag Racing, and I appreciate his industry-encouraging message telling everyone (even supermodels) that they gotta work; but does he have any real political experience?Report
I don’t get either joke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_PaulsonReport
You will Ru the day you posted that.Report
I thought this would be a good post to intentionally pose as the creepy gnome dude and @mike-schilling’s avatar for some reason is making me hungry for pizza.Report
Get back in the kitchen, woman!Report
I should offer a prize to the first person who recognizes it.Report
If it’s pizza, I’m in.
Chicago style, Gino’s East? Delivered?Report
@mike-schilling That would be from Parks and Rec (a show I have never seen by the way) Will the prize include pizza?Report
I’m not at all surprised that you got it first, but if you’ve never seen the show, how?Report
good google karmaReport
Unfortunately, none of my favorite pizza places deliver to Michigan. How about a post on a subject that you choose?Report
Hmm I’m thinking about a San Francisco housing related post for opposite day or an intersting math post someone who is math challenged could like.Report
I don’t know much about SF housing, since I’ve never lived in The City itself (well, for a month after we moved here, but I was 4 at the time), so I’ll try to think of a good topic for the latter.Report
Mike, here’s a suggestion I’d like to read about: there’s a proof that you can break the surface of a sphere into pieces then reassemble them into a shape with a greater volume. Which seems crazy, to me anyway. You mathematicians seem to find this stuff “intuitive”.Report
I don’t think I can explain that one more simply than Wikipedia already does, certainly not in a piece of reasonable length. Even the basic underpinnings for it (measure theory and using the axiom of choice to create unmeasurable sets) would be hard to explain to someone without the requisite background.Report
Well, thanks for giving it a look. I’ll just have to settle back into my earlier view: that the conclusion holds because of magic.Report
Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced mathematics is indistinguishable from magic.Report
Not sure if this will help, but:
The reason it seems impossible is that the two spheres have twice the volume of the single sphere, and you’d expect cutting a sphere into pieces and reassembling the pieces to preserve volume. That is, I have a sphere of volume 1, and I cut it into four pieces of volume 1/4 each, it seems like whatever I make with those four pieces would also have volume 1. And that’s true.
The thing is, some shapes are so weird that you can’t assign them a volume. (It’s the construction of these shapes and explaining why they don’t have a specific volume that I despair of trying to explain.) So if you cut the sphere into shapes like that and then reassemble them, you can’t apply the logic from the paragraph above, and so you can’t conclude that volume is preserved.Report
People who open comments are fascists.Report
People who openly comment are narcissists.Report
People who post comments are exhibitionists. People who read them are voyeurs.Report
Sesquipedelianism simplifies thought.Report
Ah!
Fish, now that I can comment, there’s nothing to say!Report
On a more serious and non-opposite-day style note:
Ever since the recent (by a few months, I think) threads on Conor’s decision not to allow comments, I’ve tried to really examine how much my commentary is for self-regard and how much is for the purposes of advancing discussion. At least some of the time, maybe even the majority of the time, I can’t definitively say that my commentary is not for self-regard. In other words, I think I’ve learned a lot and at least for me, am partially convinced by Conor’s argument.Report
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GpXYKp7_QwReport
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