sleightofmind

The one and only jury I was seated on (civil trial) had both a Ph.D in statistics and a Masters in mathematics. The remainder (12-man jury) was probably evenly split between High School only folks like me, and BA/BS crowd. So from janitor who couldn't afford a car to a Ph.D all on one jury. We discussed matters politely, but at times with some intensity. Overall jury position swung 180-degs over 2 days. Gave me hope that the system can work.

I think you're right. In my very limited-need case, it worked fine in the opposite direction. Generating .docx files for customers who would not accept older word format files, pdf's, and certainly not odf's. But admittedly, this is not enough for most folks.

Or maybe you haven't. You can burn the sh_t out of your fingers on the glass surface of an induction cooktop. The heat does not magically stay in the cooking vessel. It radiates, as heat is wont to do. Voice of experience. I love induction and think it is safer than gas.

>What makes you think that the dress code is what made them behave...

Well, for me, it's a lifetime (nearly) of observing how people who dress up for an occasion behave as opposed to those who don't. Churches would make for an interesting exploration in regards to this topic, some still dress, many don't. I don't think your points your other three points are invalid, though.

I didn't know that the Castle had become so expensive. I was a member for about three years in the 80's. At the time, as a blue-collar stiff, I found it quite affordable -- of course, I paid no cover charge.

While some hoped to see celebrities there, a not infrequent occurrence, I was thrilled to meet close-up magic icons like John Carney, Derek Dingle, and Dai Vernon, and to watch many other notables such as Daryl, Bruce Cervon, Eugene Burger, Paul Harris, and Earl Nelson.

One day, a couple of blocks over, at Hollywood Magic (a magic retailer) I watched Harry Anderson of Night Court fame, throwing three-card monte on the customer side of the counter while holding his three-year-old daughter in one arm as he did it -- perhaps he just stood her on the counter with his arm around her as he threw? Not sure, it's been many years. Despite, being very familiar with the sleight, I could not follow the movement of the queen any better than any mark would/could. He was about as humble as they come, and I couldn't have cared much less about his celebrity, but I sure was impressed with his technique.

"this one trick will help you..."

Precisely. People can and will disagree with others. They just will. So many who are young, are certain they have attained great wisdom and must somehow, by hook or by crook, sway others to their view of what is wise and correct, never stopping to consider that they might just be a naive pup that is simply overfull with the preening pride of presumed intellect. As Mark Twain wrote (I paraphrase from memory) "When I was 14 I couldn't believe how ignorant my old man was. And when I was 21, I couldn't believe how much he'd learned in just seven short years." Maybe just chill and accept that not everyone shares the same perception of reality, or of the causes of the effects thereof.

That said, there are plenty of times when a thing simply must be sorted out to move forward.

Consider carefully whether you want to attempt to change the views of someone on matters that may not matter. My cousin just retired from a major firm in the aircraft industry. He designed components for sophisticated aircraft that most of you would instantly recognize. That he was deeply religious and did not accept the theory of evolution, seemed to have zero effect on his status or effectiveness as a senior engineer with that firm.

My father was fond of saying, "A man convinced against his will, Is a man of the same opinion still." --source unknown

Years ago, a neighbor of mine had a young pit bull dog -- well, two actually. But the dog in question had been raised by a cat. So one day I'm leaning on the chainlink fence talking to my neighbor. A grey tomcat I had at the time beside me, the neighbor's pit bull beside him. As soon as the dog saw my cat, he laid down with his nose pressed to the fence, beseechingly whimpering for attention from my cat. Cat stood back about a foot from the fence doing cat stuff, hissing, arching his back, and pressing against my leg for a sense of security. The cat was clearly puzzled. Funny, but intriguing. The dog, however, was very comfortable with other dogs as well, but the cat really took him someplace emotionally, almost like he was seeking to re-experience the feeling of being a coddled puppy/kitten again.

I've heard it as "breaking bread." I like the phrase. But yeah, it's essentially the same as eating bread, and it clearly refers to having a meal and is not limited to bread.

I don't know why.

That said, I've enjoyed using Carlo Strozzi's NoSQL program in the past. It's not NoSQL in the current sense of the word. It's a plain text database that stores data in delimited text fields -- e.g. tsv or csv. Create those fields however you want. I just used rlwrap/readline in a simple shell program for input. It does the basic relational database things, but all with plain text. A text editor will work just fine for data entry, and for viewing it later. It will be around as long as Linux commandline utilities are around.

Your data can be viewed in a line-oriented or list-oriented fashion -- the program does the conversion for you in commandline fashion. And you can view everything in a text editor. I think it's just a bit of code tying together a bunch of standard Linux commandline utilities. It's not in a lot of repositories these days. But back when, I found it quite handy for working with line-oriented tabular data. It was the guts of a bailing wire and bubblegum program I wrote to create reinforcing steel barlists back when I only thought I knew what I was doing. My ignorance persists but now I'm aware of and at peace with it.

There you go again. Asking a straightforward question in clear, comprehensible language, without any hand waving. How can you possibly expect the economic sophists to engage with you if you persist in this behavior?

I watched the LinnStrumentalist video per your first link. Amazing stuff. And it does seem to reduce the amount of finger contortion required compared to most keyed or stringed instruments.

It does, though, seem to demand that the player look at the keyboard. For an instrumentalist, this may not be a big deal. For a performer accustomed to connecting to his audience with his face, as do many singers, it seems like a big drawback.

That said, color me amazed.

As to frameworks, I know nothing. As to Javascript libraries and their order of appearance it was: YUI in Feb-2006; then JQuery in Aug-2006; and finally Mootools in Mar-2007. Not a developer but my recollection is the same as yours with regard to JQuery -- it roared to dominance seemingly overnight.

Does anyone know how a modern-day tribal member would have acquired the [edit]techique to go along with the knowledge?[end edit] It seems that so much time has passed since the practice was allowed that no modern-day Native American would have learned it via actual practice. Or perhaps it was allowed more recently than I think?

It seems that oral tradition alone would be no substitute for hands-on mentoring from one's elders, as mistakes could be quite costly.

My question is not asked in a snarky or critical tone. I'm genuinely curious.

"He should..."

As my great aunt (born circa 1899) said, "Sometimes the 'You shoulds are the shits.'"

I'd like to see more on topics of enduring interest from Paul than on the ever-evanescent fluff of tech. That his concern lies with teaching his kids not to be social gangsters rather than teaching them some current tech meets with my approval.

This. Exactly.

Wow! That's some serious mental horsepower and creativity. I have an old physics book for layman by him. Seems like a guy who just liked to share the wonder of the world and the imagination. I like people like that.

"but Levine's stuff is good because I don't think it pretends to have a purpose..."

Yep. Agreed. He's there to drive visits to Bloomberg, but I know what you mean, and that is indeed part of what makes him good.

As a layman and small-time investor, I like his stuff simply because he makes me aware of things I would almost certainly never encounter were it not for him. He seems to like explaining things just to be explaining them, and I like reading or listening to folks who share their fascination and insight into how their field works. I have an almost physical revulsion for dismissive people who seem never to be intrigued or surprised by anything -- those folks to whom everything wonderful is simply to be dismissed with a halfhearted wave of the hand accompanied by a yawn, sneer, or a subtle roll of the eyes. Levine's content seems so different from the usual slop about how the economy is going to do this or that, and consequently, why you should buy this or that.

Yep. Grew up in an era when mechanical typewriters were the standard "tech" of the day for writing. And yep, it's far more difficult. Finger strength, key jamming, and the regular use of white out fluid, or pen ink markup to correct first drafts. Listening for the margin warning bell and deciding on the fly if you should reach for the carriage return lever or push your luck. Centering titles by counting the letters, dividing by two and adjusting the carriage to suit. Oh yeah. Funsies. Don't miss those days. In speed tests for clerical positions, e.g. secretary in a law office, etc, backspacing to fix something meant the loss of a word in your speed rating.

"It's an incredibly rare skill..."

Well said.

Matt Levine amazes me. I cannot imagine writing so much content on a daily basis. Let alone if that content is required to be entertaining, informative, deep on industry knowledge, and useful to neophyte and seasoned investor alike.

To me, the man is a marvel of knowledge and industriousness.

I concur. Notice the hem of the garment in both cases. The successful warrior's garment is not similar.

I can't help but thinking I see two bodies on the ground, or a representation of the spirit leaving the body of the fallen. Perhaps I just perceived it incorrectly and can't shake that false first impression. Any explainers?

UHT milk is just not common in the US. It's not rare, but you won't see it in very many homes. The milk in paper cartons that we in the US speak of is almost always pasteurized whole or skim (2% or 1%) refrigerated milk that is good for about a week max after opening, and not a whole lot longer if refrigerated unopened. I kind of like the convenience of UHT milk (the kind you can store at room temp for a good while if unopened) and to me, it tastes less "cowy". I don't like a "cowy" taste, but then I'm not a milk drinker. Milk in plastic cartons is most common, but there's plenty milk in paper cartons alongside those plastic containers in the refrigerated section most US markets.

Google cone-shaped milk cartons. Interesting bit of historical trivia.

I grew up drinking mostly milk from our cow, which was usually a Guernsey or a Jersey -- fed on a combination of pasture and commercial grains. Pasteurized in the early years, but raw later on. Never really liked drinking milk. But man, my cousins loved visiting because they could have all the cold milk they wanted. Milk doesn't disgust me the way tomatoes do, or act as a near emetic the way olives do, but I just don't particularly like drinking milk of any variety, well, except for chocolate milk. But I love most of the products derived from it -- cheese, ice cream, butter, etc. With a family cow you really get used to how the cow's diet affects milk flavor -- the lush green grass in the spring was quite noticeable. And of course, I like milk with cold cereal but not with hot cereals. And our beef came from a calf raised to a yearling each year. Eggs came from the chickens, although they were the first to disappear in response to the convenience of the supermarket.

I was born in the early 50s and my folks were Californians from small-town Minnesota, so I'm used to the idea of very sweet dishes being considered okay at all meals. An example, my mom picked up from her Dutch-immigrant mother, a breakfast dish made from thoroughly dried out bread scraps, simmered in milk with cinnamon and liberal amounts of sugar. They called it (I don't know the Dutch spelling) stoot-uh-bray (phonetic) which I suspect meant something like stewed bread. Loved it and the many other fattening 30s concepts of what constituted a proper meal. A slightly less chocolatey version of homemade pudding over graham crackers was considered a perfectly acceptable lunch, Grandma called it cocoa-dope. And though no one pushed my mom to cook all our meals, it was clear she felt it a failure if any of us in our family of six found it necessary to prepare their own meal. Dad was a railroad conductor on 24-hr call. When he got called, she got up and prepared him a meal and/or lunch, regardless of time of day or night. He simply could not break her of this habit. But yeah, my folks and their folks definitely grew up on a diet resembling at least some of what the article referenced, and held similarly strong attitudes about the kitchen being the center of home culture. Sit down meals for the whole family were mandatory until such time as we left home. No TV or radio during meals, just conversation. Not such a bad deal, really -- three mandatory whole-family conversations a day -- two if school was in session. Occasionally I used to quickly walk the 600-yards home (from elementary school) for lunch. Some days I'd trade my homemade-bread sandwich for one of my schoolmates Wonder Bread sandwiches at the outdoor lunch tables of elementary school, both parties usually felt they got the better of the deal. Different times, different attitudes.

I get one every now and then. I just ask if they still have those Double Decker tacos. Every time, without fail, they've said, "No, but we can make you some." Maybe it's just a Southern California thing, I really don't know. And yeah, I share your sentiments about its excellence and its "mouth feel". Yum.

>>People get upset if you try to charge them a monthly fee for a desktop app. Yet they are happy to rent a SaaS solution.

So don't. Set a fair price and sell me a license. I don't want you in my checking account. I don't want you looking over my shoulder. I find the privileges which purveyor's of web/phone apps have arrogated to themselves to be creepy for the most part.

Then, again I'm pretty sure I've turned into a grumpy old man.

I'm with you.

I'll get to Taleb, really. I can't say that any book changed my life. The Christian Bible shaped it, as I was forced live with it as a child and young adult (although the thought that I was "forced" did not occur to me til much later in life). I'm no longer religious, but neither do I share the sciento-athiest's belief in something from nothing, or accidental "is". To me they (sciento-athiests and religious teachers) are just warring priesthoods, the ancient and the modern, both pretending to knowledge they do not possess and can never rationally hope to possess. Please do not conflate my coinage of sciento-athiest with scientist -- overlap is possible, but that's not the fault of the honest scientist.

But Taleb, despite what at times seems to me nearly unbearable self-serving pomposity, gets at some real truths in both of the books mentioned. Oddly they are the only two Taleb books I've read. Of the two, I found Antifragile the better. I read it fairly carefully despite my inclination to skim at times. I'm glad I did. A careful reading makes it clear that he carefully qualifies the limits of antifragile strategies. And it took some repeated explication from Taleb to see that the idea he was poking at was subtle, important, and nowhere near as obvious as my initial reaction would have indicated.

Former California governor Pete Wilson practically refused to say, "uh." So much so that I used to listen to him just to see if I could catch him at it. My successes were few. He would simply pause, mid-sentence if necessary, to phrase his thoughts precisely. He was governor from 1991 to 1999 and his precise manner of speaking was noticeable even in his era.

Ramanujan.

Edit: Apologies to user gilleain below who mentioned this first. Should have read a bit more before commenting.

Good observation. I would not be surprised if the answer to your question is, Yes. An MRI does have some effect on currently active memories and thought. It seems to a non-scientist like me that it would be difficult to use the usual tools to measure this inside an MRI tube, so maybe a hard question to answer for even the experts in measuring such things.

Plenty of folks who do not consider themselves claustrophobic just completely fritz out inside an MRI tube. Could their usual ability to reason about and maintain composure be reduced by just such interference?

Thank you for this. The author may have simply made a mistake. That's quite possible. It's also possible that he was referring to wheat beyond the producer's own need -- exports -- and if this is the case, it appears that Russia and Ukraine produce somewhere in the neighborhood of 30% of the combined total of the top ten producers -- see here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wheat_exp...

So, not quite a third, but not much of an exaggeration.