Digging Holes

2009-07-10

If we can agree that

when the surface of a perfect sphere is divided into two halves (A and B), the point directly opposite any point on half A will necessarily be on half B and vice versa
and
the earth is nearly spherical, and the equator divides it nearly perfectly in half
and
The United States of America is located entirely and indisputably within one of the two hemispheres marked out by the equator
and finally that
The People's Republic of China is located entirely within the very same hemisphere as The United States of America
then I think we can forcefully conclude that
there cannot exist any point in The United States of America that is directly opposite any point in the People's Republic of China.

Let us consider this subject completely laid to rest.

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Waa Waa Waa!

2009-07-09

Opening sentence about mildly aggravating thing that happened! Assertion that I’d prefer it hadn’t happened that way! Interrogative regarding these things always happening to me! Further developing various contours of negative feelings! Conveniently omitting positive aspects of situation! Stomp! Jump! Stomp! AAAAAHH!! Gripe! Complain! Moan! Threats not directed at anybody in particular! Lamentation about the state of things! EXCLAMATION POINT!!!

This post is a satircal look at political corruption.

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In the interest of furthering Google’s ability to solve minor development issues, I should show what I recently learned by trial and error about Clojure’s syntax for instantiating Java’s inner classes. Java distinguishes between static nested classes and non-static nested classes, and the only information I could find on Clojure syntax only applied to the static nested classes, which incidentally are instantiated like this:

(new OuterClass$InnerClass)

Not too hard. Non-static classes on the other hand must be constructed on a member of the outer class. And so

(OuterClass$InnerClass. my-outer-class)

I assume appropriate arguments could be appended to either of those statements if the constructor required it.

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Physics Too

2009-07-07

I just had my first Physics 2 lecture. According the schedule on the registration server, the class consists of a 2:15 hour period in the morning, a 2 hour lab in the afternoon with another 1 hour period immediately following, four days a week. I went to the first lecture this morning, and the professor spoke for 2 hours and fifteen minutes purely about physics, with almost no information about the class, and no syllabus. I had my hunches about the structure of the class from taking Physics 1 last fall, but I was hoping for some indication that those suspicions were correct. Instead all I got was a class decision that exams should be on Thursdays rather than Mondays, and a casual reference to the existence of online homework problems. He didn’t say anything about labs, or about the 1 hour period at the end of the day (which I concluded wasn’t a lecture because at the end of the class he said “see you tomorrow”, but at the very least was the time period during which the exams would be held, which I luckily figured out from another casual reference). When I took Physics 1 there was an extra hour session on the schedule for help with homework, but I was able to neglect attending it altogether with no major issues. All the exams were during the regular lecture time period.

Naturally I went up to the professor after class to ask for a syllabus, or at least some more information about how the class was going to be run. He told me that he doesn’t have a syllabus and doesn’t normally make them for summer classes, and when I asked for specific information in place of the syllabus, he refused to answer any of my questions, and told me to simply ask a classmate who had been in his Physics 1 class last month. I generally don’t socialize with the other students as much as I can help it, due to the fact that I’m several years older than most of them, and have an irrationally age-centered view of social status, so I didn’t like his suggestion all that much. However, he seemed pretty firm on that solution, so I decided to just forget it and make my best guess about everything. Evidently though, it upset me enough to motivate me to write two decently-sized paragraphs about it.

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Reproducibility

2009-07-06

Trying to fix a software bug that you can’t reliably reproduce is like chasing a ghost.

That’s a good analogy because it’s something that everybody has experienced.

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