- Blog
- Profile
- Homepage
-
The weird, wonderful world of bioluminescence
Everything changes when your normal environment is total blackness. If the video below does not work, then try Edith Widder: The weird, wonderful world of bioluminescence.
-
Happy Constitution Day!
Interesting that we have a Federal holiday for thumbing our noses at England, but the anniversary for founding the government for our country, Constitution Day, goes unmarked with barbeques, fireworks, and intoxication. This year is the 225th one. Not so long ago I read the Federalist Papers. It was an interesting look at how some…
-
Don’t Change
As a kid, this Tootsie Pop commercial was my favorite. They aired during Saturday morning cartoons. My parents slept in late those mornings, so I had the television to myself. For the decade or so that I watched, it aired at least once an hour. Some times several times an hour. As an adult, this…
-
TED Talk: Steven Pinker: The surprising decline in violence
Wow, not sure why I have not posted this one yet. In college, I was one of four students who showed up to the showing of a video of Pinker talking about his book How the Mind Works. It reinforced for me Psychology was a good choice for me. So this talk on decline in…
-
TED Talk: What we learned from 5 million books
Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer lets us look at the use of phrases over time. For example, my name, Ezra, appears to have been most popular usage peaks back in the 1600s and 1700s, but has been more consistently used since the 1800s. This kind of thing can get me lost for hours at a time.…
-
Collected Quotes July/August 2012
My main page on quotes is Quotes to Make You Think. Additional ones can be found under the Quotes tag. I read like a wolf eats. I read myself to sleep every night. — Gary Paulsen There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship. — Saint Thomas Aquinas If you surrender completely to the moments…
-
TED Talk: Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color
Nina’s book Skin was a great read. It was the first time I understood melanin and vitamin D. And cancer. If the video below does not work, then try Nina Jablonski breaks the illusion of skin color.
-
The Long Problem
We encountered a vexing issue where sections did not appear for the class list for students. We confirmed the students were properly enrolled. We confirmed the current date was between the dates for learning contexts and terms. We confirmed the access was granted to the students. Still, the sections were not showing, but the usual…
-
Counting
In the beginning I used TOTAL=`ls /d2lmig/*/*/bak/*/* | wc -l` to get a total count. All was good. Until at around 55,000 files I got: -bash: /bin/ls: Argument list too long. Then I used TOTAL=`find /d2lmig/*/*/bak/*/* -name *.bak | wc -l` to get a total count. All was good. Until at around 90,000 files I got: -bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument…