Category: wordplay

Stuff about words or phrases

Bernadette

I first met Bernadette at the Reddit Party last year. (Coincidentally, there is another Reddit party in San Francisco tonight.) She was hiding in the corner and caught me taking her photo so I introduced myself “to not make it seem as creepy as it is.”

She recently started blogging so read her blog! (Now if only Mager can get her on twitter—whoops, scratch that.)

Every so often since that party, she’ll say something just to get a rise out of me followed by a disarming smile or a laugh. Luckily I can’t hear it over the party noise, so my reaction makes me seem all cool and “mysterious” when really my hearing is just going.

A lot of people seem to think the stuff I write is fiction—that this is some made up character or persona I craft for myself. Or I’m just a very talented liar with a good memory. But no, this stuff really happens. I don’t have that good of an imagination.

Luckily, my friends do. I count Bernie as one of them.

B.B.
Posted on by tychay 4

When geeks rule politics

From Chris Kelly’s article on Huffington Post:

One good thing about Hillary proclaiming her right to a four-day national non-concession? We’ll never have to wonder what it would have been like if she’d been elected and that phone in the White House had rung at three AM.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Hello?

KIM JONG IL
All your base are belong to us!!! You are on the way to destruction!!! You have no chance to survive make your time!!!

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Can I call you back? I need at least a week for this to sink in.

(Personally, I’d move ZIG for great justice.)

Weird factoid. Back when this meme was first forming, you could type “All Your Base” into K-Mart’s website search box, and it would say. “Geeks like you also bought…”

Posted on by tychay 1

Statistics

As I mentioned before, everyone in my family but me is an expert at statistics. It’s hard to explain…

When my brother was angry that O.J. got away with it, my dad calmed him down by pointing out that in was a natural consequence of our legal system minimizing Type II error.

When my mom pointed out how unfair it was that her children were the highest rated teachers in their departments and she was the lowest rated in hers, my brother joked, “That’s just mean reversion, mom.”

I won’t get into how many times we’ve seriously argued about what the proper null for our discussion was…

Which brings me to last night’s dinner after Spontaneous Drinking Night, with my geek friends:

Statisticians

(Sometimes I think I’m living in an xkcd comic.) Also apologies to Benjamin Disraeli…and my family 😉

Posted on by tychay 1

Never ask a nerd for directions

“The front office is to your back that way and to your left,” someone says.

The delivery man walks a bit, gets confused, and looks at me across the floor, “Which way from here?” he points.

“It’s right of that.” I shout back.

He points in another direction, “That way?”

“No. Bisect the angle you just created.”

…blank stare…

“Errr…Or something.”

Mathematics is the universal language of science, not FedEx.

Posted on by tychay 2

Reading George Orwell

In my seventh grade English class, I got an opportunity to read Animal Farm by George Orwell.

My mom had read it once as a little girl during the brief occupation of Seoul in the Korean War.

“One day Ohma brought home fish for dinner, wrapped in paper. But it was too much paper—everything was scarce. I noticed that the paper was numbered and I put them together and that was the first time I read Animal Farm.”

“Did you know what it was about?”

“Of course! I really liked the part where they said, ‘All animals are equal.” and then it got changed to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ 😀 I loved it so much that when the war ended I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, but it didn’t make any sense. 🙁 I didn’t know what a ‘television’ was.”

[Politics after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

Obama's 2002 speech

“Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

“The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not — we will not — travel down that hellish path blindly.”
—Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator speaking at Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq, 2002

Brent Budowsky reminds us of Barack Obama’s 2002 speech opposing the war.

The speech is classic. The constant use of word pairs (“Auschwitz and Treblinka,” “Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz,” “Pakistan and India,” “the Saudis and the Egyptians,” “Exxon and Mobil.” “ignorance and intolerance” “corruption and greed,” “poverty and despair”), the sentence repetition an and counterpoint (“I don’t oppose all wars.” and then “I oppose dumb wars” followed by, “You want a fight, President Bush?”), the use of quick powerful sentences (“A dumb war. A rash war.” and then “He is a brutal man. A ruthless man”); it even ends, in the final sentence with three references to another Illinois politician’s reference to the greatest American speech of all time.

Truly impressive word play and well worth a read.

Read the full text here.

Posted on by tychay 0

Pragmatic bullshit

Someone took exception to me saying:

“I have yet to read a good “Pragmatic Programmer Series” book.”

…with the lines:

“I think that’s a bit of a hard knock of the Pragmatic Bookshelf. I’ve had a number of books which I’ve really enjoyed from them; The Pragmatic Programmer and Practices of an Agile Developer spring to mind.”

Hehe, he caught me! Oh, I didn’t lie—I just never actually finished a single one of their books. 😉 I started reading the Pickaxe book and The Pragmatic Programmer mentioned, but I put them down in disgust.

The book that started it all

This book is the book that launched a thousand crappy books.

[But that won’t stop me from peeing on your programming religion after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 21

Requiem for the Republican Party

Last week, the politics of fear ended:

“Because I care so deeply about protecting our country, I take strong offense to your suggestion in recent days that the country will be vulnerable to terrorist attack unless Congress immediately enacts legislation giving you broader powers to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

“If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations — including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11.

“I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

“We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.”
—U.S. Representative Silvestre Reyes, “Letter to President Bush regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” February 14, 2008

[A requiem after the jump.]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 5

Why Red States vote red

“Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.”
—Mark Penn, Chief Strategist for the Clinton campaign

By my count, if you are from Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, or the District of Columbia, the Democratic Party establishment thinks you’re insignificant.

Clearly the party is powered by idiots. These guys have won majority of the popular vote only once in the last 27 years! Triangulation my ass.

I’m so glad idiots like these will have been the first ones against the wall when the revolution came.

Parting Shot.

Posted on by tychay 11