no foolin’

Posted on Tuesday, 2002 June 04 by Anton

I awoke today from – or perhaps ‘through’ fits better – a dream that Diana and/or Paul Hsieh (neither of whom I know from the neighborhood raccoons, but whose blogs I read yesterday) had replaced my bedroom window with their interesting webpage.

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the dark side of Sanrio

Posted on Tuesday, 2002 June 04 by Anton

“Hello Cthulhu“. (Sent to me by Astraea, under the title “NEXT election”)

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“It’s a good tax code.”

Posted on Sunday, 2002 June 02 by Anton

When I was a young idealist, finance was beneath me; now it’s merely beyond me.

I got a form letter from my late employer (a firm that essentially shut down in December), saying that my 401(a)(4) money is waiting for me to collect it. I can transfer it into “an eligible employer plan” (if I had an eligible employer!) or into my IRA, or take it as cash (with a 10% penalty because I’m not 59½ years old, as well as regular income tax). Neither option appeals much.

What I want is to buy a car. My One True Ex says one can borrow against a 401 (wish I’d known that a year ago!), but it appears I won’t have one much longer.

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stream of pseudothought

Posted on Sunday, 2002 June 02 by Anton

Columbia Newsblaster cobbles together phrases from various news sources to generate summaries of top stories. The result can be surreal:

. . . Congressional Republicans are using a government – paid videotaped message from President Bush to parry Democratic attacks against them concerning Social Security and prescription drugs for Medicare. The Libertarian Party is looking to spoil a few good elections. Max Cleland (D – Ga.), Max Baucus (D – Mont.) and Tim Hutchinson (R – Ark.) and Reps. Why? The lawmakers, now in recess, can show the videotapes to constituents in town hall meetings.

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D120

Posted on Sunday, 2002 June 02 by Anton

Thirty fair dice (rotating in Java; still GIF) most of which you won’t find at your game supply store.

It’s misleading to imply that there are exactly thirty. Several of the figures are special (more regular) cases of others shown; others (the dihedra) are representatives of infinite sets. Apart from the dihedra, each can (I believe) be continuously deformed into any of the others without losing fairness.

2008: see also.

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pity the poor little superpower

Posted on Sunday, 2002 June 02 by Anton

Pejman writes:

We want to pursue this particular dream that we have, and we would like it if the world left us alone to pursue it. We don’t particularly lust for an empire, or for hegemony – we take up the task of superpower out of a sense of obligation, not out of a desire to bestride the world like a Colossus. There is no song exhorting “Rule Americana.” Many of us would be perfectly happy to be able to drop all of this superpower stuff, and take our society closer to the principles and ideals that bind us as a nation.

Then, something invariably intrudes on that dream. Something inevitably threatens those ideals. Something unfailingly presents itself as a mortal peril to America.

Something inevitably gives the imperial politicians what they crave: a pretext to denounce those of us who’d prefer to shrug off the White Man’s Burden.

One doesn’t hear much on Memorial Day about the lies that Presidents told so that Our Boys could have an opportunity for dulce et decorum.

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yet another way in which I’m like Einstein

Posted on Sunday, 2002 June 02 by Anton

“I have never belonged wholeheartedly to a country, a state, nor to a circle of friends, nor even to my own family.”

Found in Quotations from Mathematicians

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