Category Archive

I just completed the final requirements of my Masters degree today (the details of which I will save for a future post).  It has been a difficult road, and I’m glad it’s done.  I didn’t attend any sort of graduation ceremonies, because I don’t go for that sort of thing — at all.  Until today, it didn’t feel like the weight was off my shoulders.  Now I actually feel like celebrating!  But I won’t, because I’m a nerd.  I’m currently celebrating by working on a programming puzzle.  And surfing the blagoblag.

I still have a couple months of servitude to complete the requirements of my fellowship, but the degree is mine.

RedOrbit named me one of their blogs of the day today. Go me! I had come across them a time or two before. They are a space/tech news site. Not bad for that sort of thing and certainly less spammy and clunky than Space.com.

Created by OnePlusYou

Apparently, I run a rather clean shop. Whodathunkit. And probably most of the cussing comes from my posts on brainfuck.

[Via]

By now, the April Fools’ Day blog post shtick is so done that it has been reduced to one bad joke after another. It’s too much! I will be joining the Kloonigames Alliance Against Awfully Horrible Need-a-word-for- jokes-starting-with-N (KAAAHN).

It’s a morning of fun new words! First I hear greenwashing on the Today Show, which Donna likes to wash while she eats brekkie. Then, Language Log delights me with nanoblahblah, henchgoon, and celebufreak. Erin McKean, the Dictionary Evangelist, twitters words of the day so I also got a nice infusion when I examined her twitter feed for the past week or so. A few selections I particularly like that she found: paracosm, yostelumpet, and anthroponymy. And now for the definitions!

• anthroponymy - the study of the names of human beings [emckean@twitter]
• celebufreak - a freak with fame (e.g. Kim Kardashian) [Wordlustitude]
• greenwashing - marketing a product as green when it’s really not [Today show]
• henchgoon - alternate term for administrative assistant or “assistant of doom” [Wordlustitude]
• nanoblahblah - very, very tiny nonsense (nanotechnobabble) [Wordlustitude]
• paracosm - a private imaginary world, esp. made by children to escape harsh circumstances (think Pan’s Labyrinth) [emckean@twitter]
• yodelumpet - a singing style that combines yodeling and Louis-Armstrong-style trumpet-like sounds [emckean@twitter]

Please note that the twitter links are stable in terms of link permanence, but are unstable in twitter’s ability to serve up the page. So if at first you get a bizarre message with birds, try again. This has also led to the re-discovery of the most excellent Wordlustitude site. I had seen a while ago but for whatever reason didn’t subscribe to it. This has been remedied, and if you like neologisms, I recommend you do the same.

Perhaps it’s a little late to do a recap of my blogging from last year, but I was just thinking about which posts I made that were the most popular and which flopped. It was very interesting to me that the most popular ones tended to be those I invested myself in the least. The ones where I felt like the writing and/or content was the best saw relatively few hits. There are exceptions, of course. My favorite post almost made the top 5 most popular list and the 4th most popular would be in my top 10 or 15 favorite. So here are the top 5 most popular posts and my top 5 favorite posts from 2007, my first year in the blagoblag.

Top 5 Most Popular

1. You have no soul — 9 Nov 2007 — 29,326 hits
2. Ambigrams — 16 Oct 2007 — 353 hits
3. Hanukkah Dog — 24 Nov 2007 — 245 hits
4. Old English Translator — 8 Nov 2007 — 193 hits
5. Salad Fingers 8 — 30 Sep 2007 — 176 hits

Top 5 Favorite

1. Netflix Prize: Good science or not? — 14 Dec 2007 — 161 hits
2. Mrs. McGrath — 6 October 2007 — 26 hits
3. The Noob’s Guide to Parsing — 25 Oct 2007 — 27 hits
4. The case for nuking Greenland — 6 Dec 2007 — 79 hits
5. Inbred Mice and Appalachia — 14 Aug 2007 — 20 hits

When you subscribe to a crapload of feeds that have overlapping subject matter, you see interesting themes emerge. In the astronomy subblogosphere, the recent news about the double galaxy 3c321 has sparked yet another competition over who can come up with the coolest headline. In case you haven’t heard about it, 3c321 consists of two galaxies, one of which is shooting a jet of particles at the other (via its black hole) which could strip the atmosphere off any planets in that galaxy. Here are the headlines I have collected in the wild:

1. Bad Astronomy: Taste my death ray, 3c321!
2. Space.com: Galaxy blasts neighbor with deadly jet
3. NASA: ‘Death Star’ galaxy black hole fires at neighboring galaxy
4. NASA Image of the Day: Black Hole Bully
5. Discovery News: Galaxy zapping neighbor with deadly beam
6. National Geographic: ‘Death Star’ galaxy found blasting smaller neighbor
7. Celebritycraps: Black Hole ‘Owns’ Galaxy!!!
8. Cumbrian Sky: ‘Death Star’ galaxy lets rip…
9. BBC: Black Hole ‘bully’ blasts galaxy
10. ArsGeek: I swear, some peoples galaxies…

And the list goes on with variations on the theme. Almost as shocking as the campy puns are the multitude of posts that just regurgitate titles from the major news outlets.

This phenomenon is not limited to the domestic abuse in double galaxy 3c321. I have observed it occur again and again. I suppose it comes from probably three different causes: catchy headlines attract readers, blogs are supposed to be creative outlets and so bloggers try to be creative (and I guess newspaper editors as well), and a natural desire by people to show off their wit. I decided to combine all three by going over the top and using a fake word just to make it rhyme. The result attracts readers, is creative, shows off my prodigious wit, and thumbs a cynical nose at the blagoblag for its absurdity while ironically increasing said absurdity. Insert arrogant, fake, British-gentleman laugh here.

As a side note, wouldn’t be interesting if we’re actually witnessing a galactic war between two ridiculously advanced civilizations who don’t mind taking millions of years to kill each other?

Astronomers have theorized for years that there must be more mass out there than we can see. Based on the movements of galaxies, star systems, and gas clouds the number of stars just can’t account for it all. Enter dark matter. Matter we can’t see. Special stuff. Even a whole Dark Galaxy.

On a side note, I’ve always thought that would make the perfect penal colony for an intergalactic empire.

“Mr. Adams, for your crimes against the Blagoblag, you are hereby sentenced to spend the rest of your natural life exiled to … the Dark Galaxy.”

“Noooooooooo!! Please, execute me instead!”

So a couple of Canadian astronomers (why their Canadaness is important, I don’t know) have proposed a new theory of gravity that dispenses with the need for dark matter altogether. From a strictly lay viewpoint, since I don’t have enough of a physics background to make an informed assessment, dark matter has always struck me as ad hoc. So dispensing with it would be much more elegant, in my opinion. Of course it would mean the end of the Dark Galaxy and my dreams of a vast network of prisons for political dissidents from the Rebel Alliance.

Last summer, observation of a galactic collision in the Bullet Cluster was touted as an event that caused dark matter to separate from the regular matter in galaxies and was considered evidence of dark matter’s existence. Enter Canadian astronomers: claims of dark matter’s existence premature. They have proposed a modified theory of gravity (MOG), which would account for everything observed in the collision. Excellent. Note: they are not announcing the theory, which has been around for a year or so, but the application of the theory to actual observed data.

John Moffat, the lead researcher, makes a great point that mirrors my feelings about dark matter quite well. He compares theories of dark matter to the 19th Century theory of the luminiferous aether, the hypothetical medium of space through which light was able to travel. “They saw a glimpse of special relativity, but they weren’t willing to give up the ether. Then Einstein came along and said we don’t need the ether. The rest was history.” [source]

Language Log has a nice salute to Talk Like a Pirate Day, where I found this clip:

I used to have a pretty good pirate accent, but lately it’s been turning into an Irish leprechaun accent.  Avast ye scurvy laddy, come look at me pot o’ gold.  I’ll have to practice.  Oddly enough, my irish accent degenerates into a pseudo-pirate imitation.  My current best is ze Frenchman and my Scottish brogue.  Be sure to check out that Language Log post for the pirate ergonomic keyboard.

There are a disturbing number of Jason Michael Adamses in the world. Two years ago, I tried googling myself and gave up after 20 pages. Using searches that included schools I went to yielded two math competitions from high school in 1992 and 1994 where I ranked in one and my team ranked in the other. Now I am proud to announce that I have made it to page 2 for the search “Jason Adams”. Woot! And “Jason M. Adams” puts me on page 1. I don’t know why I care about this since I’m the only one liable to search for myself. I’m very happily married so I’m not out dating, which is probably the main purpose of googling. I guess people might also google me when I make stupid comments on other blogs. Maybe I care because it’s like being on TV. You might not want to admit that you want to see yourself inanely answering a question on the 6 o’clock news about Mother’s Day cards just after you were ambushed at a local Wal Mart, but you rush home and program your DVR.

On a side note, my friend Melinda clued me in on the term Googlewhackblatt. A Googlewhackblatt is a single word that has only one search result on Google. There is perhaps some debate whether additional search results that were omitted (because they come from the same site and the same link on that site) might nullify Goolgewhackblatt status. My contention is no. If the primary search returns 1 of 1 results, it’s a GWB (I’m getting tired of typing it out). So anyhow, Mendicant Bug is not a Googlewhack (when it’s two words instead of one). Obviously it’s not anymore since I’ve been blogging under that title, but even when I started there were search results like “… mendicant. [BUG] 2006-04-31″ etc. I couldn’t find any uses of the term that were in the same sentence, though, so decided to go with it.

Another thing that has gotten me excited is finding search terms that put me very close to the top on Google. I’ve compiled a short list.

• blagoblag
• “evil politicians”
• “dogbook parks”
• “language technologies institute” (this is my academic home page)
• “nasa slogan” (i was #2 a couple days ago, but more popular sites have dominated me)

So anyhow, if you’re bored out of your mind and find more, let me know.

 Update

• “philosophical status updates facebook”

I happened on a political tracking website today that rocks. Wonkosphere scans the political blagoblag for buzz about presidential candidates. Blogs are classified as conservative (if they support a conservative candidate), liberal (if they support a liberal) or independent (if they don’t indicate support of anyone and choose to be considered as such). Scanning these blogs, they keep track of the buzz in the blogosphere that each candidate is generating. Each candidate’s page shows a graph of the amount of buzz amongst conservative and liberal blogs they are generating as well as the tone on those blogs. The tone is gauged by the language used on the blogs and it would seem that the average tone is slightly in the positive range (or else Wonkosphere needs to tweak its tone algorithm). This is some seriously cool analysis all done automatically. I wonder how well this will correlate with actual elections.

Sadly, Dennis Kucinich isn’t generating a whole lot of buzz at the moment. I submitted this blog to them and we’ll see if they accept me. I’m not exactly a political blog, but I don’t shy away from voicing my opinion here and there. Dennis appears to be largely ignored by liberals but is attracting some conservative attention. The negative levels in conservative blogs for him is definitely much higher than is typical, which means he’s doing something right.

Over Christmas while visiting family in Greenville, SC, I bought a stack of books at my favorite old haunt: Barnes & Noble. Among those books was Stardust by Neil Gaiman (more about this in a sec). Being a grad student with a raging blagoblag addiction, I don’t have a whole lot of time to read for pleasure. When I had a week to read during my vacation this summer, I did manage to catch up slightly. First I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which I loved. I also read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Mind you, I don’t read anything because it’s an Oprah Book Club book (the thought sickens me to the core), but I did first hear it mentioned when my wife Donna was watching Oprah a while back. I tend to sit by on the computer while she watches TV. It’s an unfortunate feature of my brain that I can’t not pay at least a little attention to the tube when it’s on. So I heard about the book and the premise seemed interesting. I’m big on post-apocalyptic stuff, and The Road did not disappoint. It was a very dark and sad tale of a father’s love and perseverence in the face of utter desperation.

Returning from this digression, I actually finished reading Stardust just prior to said vacation, but it had taken me several months to do so. Really that’s a shame when you consider how short the book is. Just before I finished reading it, I saw a preview on TV that looked extremely familiar: an air ship, a fallen star, a unicorn, and Wall. I love when a movie comes out that really gets me excited. When Stargate came out years and years ago, I was just walking by the TV and it captured my attention and riveted me for the remaining 20 seconds. I remember thinking, I have to see this movie. I didn’t quite get this thunderbolt for Stardust, but I did get a nice chill.

I deliberated reviewing the movie here with spoilers, but decided in the end to avoid that. I highly recommend reading the book. One of the things I like about Neil Gaiman is that he takes old ideas, like fairy tales, and makes them new. If you haven’t read his short story “Snow, Glass, Apples” (off of Smoke and Mirrors), you are really missing out. Stardust the movie was good, but there were additions, deletions and modifications that bothered me at first. The fact that Gaiman is an executive producer eased that pain a little, since I can only assume he had a major creative influence in the end product. The main thrust of the book — the central love story — still came through in the movie, which was the important part. Also, the special effects were decent and the pace of the adventure never left me wondering what time it was. So all in all, a very enjoyable movie. If you haven’t seen the movie or read the book, then I suggest starting with the movie if you suffer as I do with modifications.

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

- Albert Einstein

Therefore, I propose a new, more correct name for the Internet: the Intercat. There will one day be a battle for the real name of the Information Superhighway, between the Einsteinians (advocating the Intercat), Stevensians (advocating the Intertubes), and a coalition of smaller factions known collectively as the Blagonites (advocating Blogosphere, the Interblag, and the Blagoblag). Who will win is anyone’s guess (but my money is on the Blagoblag).

Well, I have finally decided to join the Blagoblag. This will be my second blogging attempt. The first was forced as part of one of my German classes. I actually got into it after a while, but when the class ended, so did my enthusiasm. I believe this confirms the fact that I am in love with anything school related. In fact, when I was a child, playing school was my favorite game. That’s fairly understandable for pre-school children, but I still enjoyed it even after I started going to school.

So anyhow, I’m really writing this blog because I forget who I am every couple of years. I hear about things I did five to ten years ago and wonder, who the bloody hell was this guy doing this crap? So maybe here will be a record of who I was when and then I can look back over these posts and remember.