Simpson's Paradox

I’m kind of jealous that with all the time I’ve spent waiting at Newark Airport (For Christmas 2006, I flew in on AirIndia, Stick came in on British Airways and we both lost our luggage), I’ve never seen a singalong.

I’ve been hearing disjointed quotes from the now-infamous Palin resignation speech for a couple of days and I decided to read the whole thing myself. I’m not going to go over the whole thing, because I was much more confused after reading it than before. But the speech ends with:
In the words of General MacArthur [...]

The Chocolate Bean
280 Meeting St
Cary, NC 27518
I’m lucky enough to do a lot of my work via my laptop, so I’ve been looking around for a local coffeeshop with wifi. I’ve been shopping around, and discovered that Borders, Barnes&Noble and Starbucks all charge for internet. (I don’t know if this is a new worldwide trend [...]

This is right where Stick and I lived in Beijing! You can see the drum tower, the bridge by Qianhai, and my own private landmarks, like the exercise equipment and the bird cages on our old street. The narration is a bit annoying, full of comments like the news that Beijing is changing and the [...]

I have mixed feelings about Colleen McCullough. On one hand, she wrote the well-researched and racy Caesar’s Women and other novels set in ancient Rome. On the other hand, I haven’t quite forgiven her for Thorn Birds.
Now, I love Pride and Prejudice.The story is an understated comedy of formal manners and romantic expectations, plus nerdy [...]

We don’t have cable (we wouldn’t have a TV if Stick didn’t need it for his console games) so I had to find out about the national rickroll through Twitter.

It is so awesome to see a nerd joke make its way into the Thanksgiving Day parade.

Canadian comedians called Sarah Palin pretending to be Sarkozy. I’ve seen this a few places, and I wasn’t going to listen to this because radio pranks are usually stupid set-ups and the punchline is somebody saying a dirty word to a celebrity, which really isn’t my sense of humor. But I read a bit of [...]

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Joss Whedon’s new project, recently put out a call for supervillains to submit their applications. Stephen Follows sent me his villain, The Garnisher. It’s very Mystery Men, only with music. And garnishing.
The Garnisher – Application to the Evil League of Evil from The Garnisher on Vimeo.
Related: Stephen’s Space Chase

Barbie just introduced me to N., a Stephen King story, about a psychiatrist and his patient, who might be saving the world or just garden-variety insane. The story is intriguing and it’s been turned into a series of short, comic book-style videos (adapted by one of the Eli Stone guys, too). It’s completely addictive, each [...]

Stick left today, which was just as miserable as the last time he left China. Airport goodbyes don’t actually get any easier with practice. We had a really insane 36 hours getting him ready to go. Finally, as he was stuffing the last few things in his bag, the seam popped! I sewed it back [...]