Johnny Logic

1. B.B. King, “When Love Comes To Town”: Gotta love the King.
2. Iron & Wine, “Teeth In The Grass”: Iron and Wine is an excellent alt-folk group and this is one their most likable and vaguely menacing.
3. Smashing Pumpkins , “We Only Come Out At Night”: Simple, but incredibly catchy tune for alienated youth.
4. Neko Case, “In California”: Glorious melancholia from one of my favorite alternative country singers.
5. Jurassic 5, "Red Hot": Jurassic 5 is a great hip-hop group, though this is not one of their best. It took me far too long (late last year) to catch-on to them.
6. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, “Fortune Teller”: This is a decent collaboration, though in some ways it doesn't totally gel for me.
7. Sage Francis “Got up This Morning”: Funny song, but Sage has deeper rhymes.
8. The White Stripes , “Now Mary”: Good tune with the reliable spare allure of the White Stripes.
9. M.I.A. / Diplo, “Bucky Done Gun”: A good sample of the MIA/Diplo grimy Funk Carioca sound. Like J5, a recent (and welcome!) addition to my music library.
10. Charlie Parker, “Dizzy”: Classic bird. Beboppin'!

Writing about music damned difficult.

This is not the most sophisticated humor, but it is terribly funny.

Hat tip to Dani for the link.

Ah, I have been tagged by Robin.

The rules:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
Find Page 123.
Find the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

Now let us substitute my error statistical construal of probable success (for some specified measure of "successful outcome"). Evaluating H's probable success (or H's reliability) means evaluating the relative frequency with which applications of H would yield results in accordance with(i.e., specifiably close to) what H asserts. As complex as this task sounds, it is just the kind of information afforded by experimental knowledge of H.

This passage comes in the near conclusion of Mayo's criticism of the Bayesian approach to scientific inference (a la Howson & Urbach), and right before her presentation of her error statistical rehabilitation of Neyman-Perason statistics. I would be remiss to mention Mayo without pointing-out Cosma's excellent review of EatGoEK .

As for the five people, I tag Dani, Otis, Josh, Richard, and Michelle.

Thanks in part to the encouragement of a friend's father, I have submitted my curriculum vitae to the Dean of Arts and Sciences at the local junior college in the hope of doing some adjunct teaching in addition to my current job. Though the wages are ridiculously low once you factor in prep time and grading, I look forward to the possibility of sharing my enthusiasm for learning and reengaging in academic life.

In particular, I am would enjoy teaching two courses that appear in the college catalog, but have (to my knowledge) never been offered:

CMPSC 54 Data Mining
This course is designed to familiarize individuals with current and emerging data mining technologies using the Internet, database software, and other application software packages as needed for project completion. Data mining knowledge topics will include the process of model building. Students will create a representative model based on an existing dataset to help understand trends, patterns, and correlations, as well as forming predictions based on historical outcomes. Students will be introduced to the tools and technologies needed to research and analyze data, resulting in a strategic decision making, marketing plan development, goal setting and identifying business opportunities. (CSU)

PHILO 5 Introduction to the History and Philosophy of Science
An introduction to the ideas, processes and consequences of science through history. The historical development of philosophies of science will be central throughout. Critical reasoning and extensive writing will be required. Contextual cultural analysis is expected. Credit may be earned for only one of the following: HIST 5 or PHILO 5. (UC/CSU).

Just thinking about teaching these has me roughing-out syllabi , setting-up moodle on my site and rummaging through my books to review relevant works.

Any profs out there with some interviewing and teaching advice?

• Transaction cost economics and Stiglitz's information economics as crucial modifications of Walrasian markets.
• The relationship between mathematical notions of invariance, symmetry and periodicity and their relationship (if any) with notions of inductive complexity outlined by Kevin Kelly (Point-set topology and all).
• How throwaway was my idea about Goodman-esque entrenchment as efficient coding (Huffman, maybe)?
• How to construct an optimal model for capital expenditures with limited reliability data, and how I may be able to leverage the DODs work on Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM).
• Whether or not to install Weka and MySQL on my laptop for some data mining practice (and/or R)

Please comment if (and this is a big if) you find any of these admittedly fragmentary ideas/questions intelligible.

• Locus Recommended Reading: 2007: Locus' recommendations for the best science fiction and fantasy of 2007. I've only read two of the recommended books (The Yiddish Policemen's Union & Brasyl) and I greatly enjoyed them.
• A Conversation with Jorge Luis Borges: A newly translated conversation with the great Argentinean fabulist. I adore Borges, so I can't resist posting this bonus linkage to an illustrated version of The Book of Imaginary Beings and the Dictionary of Borges (.pdf warning).
• Evolutionary Psychology: This new entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy admirably summarizes the core of the theory, and the surrounding philosophical disputes, such as the massive modularity hypothesis. Still, Tooby and Cosmides' Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer is an indispensable starting point for any one interested in EP and its many controversies.

A plug for the worthy-- Warren Ellis is just about to release FreakAngels, a free webcomic saga told in 5-page weekly installments.

First Half of February

• Holy Fire, by Bruce Sterling (in progress)
• Data Mining: Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques, Second Edition, by Ian H. Witten and Eibe Frank ****
• Specimen Days : A Novel by Michael Cunningham ***1/2
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy ****
• Reality and Rationality by Wesley C. Salmon *****
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz ****1/2

January

• Letters to a Young Mathematician by Ian Stewart ***1/2
• The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture by Andrew Keen **
• My California: Journeys By Great Writers by Donna Wares (Editor), Mark Arax (Editor) ***1/2
• Brasyl by Ian McDonald *****
• The Absolute Sandman, Vol. 1 by Neil Gaiman ****
• Assassin's Quest (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 3) by Robin Hobb ****
• Royal Assassin (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 2) by Robin Hobb ****

December

• Assassin's Apprentice (The Farseer Trilogy, Book 1) by Robin Hobb ****
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union, by Michael Chabon ****
• The Annotated Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien and Douglas A. Anderson *****
• The Road to Middle-earth: Revised and Expanded Edition, by Tom Shippey ***1/2
• Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem****
• A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 4) by George R.R. Martin ****
• A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 3) by George R.R. Martin ****

November

• A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 2) by George R.R. Martin ****
• A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) by George R.R. Martin ****
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath ****
• American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly ***
• History of the Sierra Nevada by Francis P. Farquhar ****
• Middlesex: A Novel by Jeffrey Eugenides ****
• Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose ****

October

• The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson*****
• The Android's Dream by John Scalzi****
• Soon I Will Be Invincible: A Novel by Austin Grossman ***1/2
• Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk ***1/2
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart by Ian Ayres ****
• Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge by Cass R. Sunstein ***1/2
• Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean by Douglas Wolk ***1/2