Nobrainer’s Think Tank

PBS continues to make up a decent amount of the television I watch. ‘This Old House’, ‘Ask This Old House’, ‘the New Yankee Workshop’, and ‘America’s Test Kitchen’ are among my favorite shows, period. (Although it seems like the current ‘This Old House’ project has been going on for about 3 years now.)

Anyway, earlier this year there was a bit of a brouhaha when some members of Congress suggested that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have all of its federal funding removed. I was of course in favor.

What has really caught my attention lately was how many commercials existed on this “commercial free” network. Sure, there are no direct commercials through the program, but once each program ends, there are 7 minutes of air time that have to be filled. “This show was brought to you, in part, by the Home Depot.” Enter into a Home Depot commercial. “And by GMC trucks. GMC — we’re professional grade.” Enter into a GMC commercial.

I ask again, if CPB recieves only 15% of its funding from the government, and seems to have plenty of advertisers buying time for non-commercials, why keep it? Oh yeah, Big Bird. Right.
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N. Korea Pledges to Drop Nuclear Arms

BEIJING — North Korea pledged to drop its nuclear weapons development and rejoin international arms treaties in a unanimous agreement Monday with other countries at six-party arms talks. The joint statement was the first ever after more than two years of negotiations.

The North “promised to drop all nuclear weapons and current nuclear programs and to get back to the (Nuclear) Nonproliferation Treaty as soon as possible and to accept inspections” by the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the agreement by the six countries at the talks.

Who thinks that this will actually work? Raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone?
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New trigonometry is a sign of the times

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

What’s more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater accuracy.
[snip]
“Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry because the framework is wrong,” says Wildberger, whose book is titled Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry (Wild Egg books).

Dr Wildberger has replaced traditional ideas of angles and distance with new concepts called “spread” and “quadrance”.

These new concepts mean that trigonometric problems can be done with algebra,” says Wildberger, an associate professor of mathematics at UNSW.

“Rational trigonometry replaces sines, cosines, tangents and a host of other trigonometric functions with elementary arithmetic.”

“For the past two thousand years we have relied on the false assumptions that distance is the best way to measure the separation of two points, and that angle is the best way to measure the separation of two lines.

“So teachers have resigned themselves to teaching students about circles and pi and complicated trigonometric functions that relate circular arc lengths to x and y projections – all in order to analyse triangles. No wonder students are left scratching their heads,” he says.

“But with no alternative to the classical framework, each year millions of students memorise the formulas, pass or fail the tests, and then promptly forget the unpleasant experience.

“And we mathematicians wonder why so many people view our beautiful subject with distaste bordering on hostility.

“Now there is a better way. Once you learn the five main rules of rational trigonometry and how to simply apply them, you realise that classical trigonometry represents a misunderstanding of geometry.”

Well, Dr. Wildberger has certainly caught my attention. What’s more, I can only wonder what this would do to so many other studies with foundations on trigonometry. Despite the $80 price tag, I just might have to get a copy of this book and check it out.

Don’t let the score fool you, Maryland got killed by West Virginia today. King Hippo and the Terps really looked overclassed by the Mountaineers today. I really wish there was a highlight video I could share with you because WVU won with hard-nosed football. They racked up something like 300 yards on the ground, maintaining their status as the leading rushing team in the country. Not exactly what you would expect from a team coached by former Clemson OC Rich Rodriguez.

What’s more, I don’t know how many times the Maryland QB set his receivers up to receive bone-jarring hits. That none of the receivers left the game due to broken bones or decapitation is a testament to their toughness. The QB himself took some shots and kept standing. I’ll also add that WVU had some pretty run-stopping tackles for the day — just good, solid hitting of the ball carrier and knocking him on his ass.

It was a good win for the Moutaineers, who are now 3-0. Sure, it would have been nice to see Maryland win to help out our strength-of-schedule ranking, but it’s nice seeing West Virginia win and equally as nice to see the Terps lose.

BTW, UC sucks!

Excellent work, Swillsters!

BATON ROUGE, LA. – The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000.

[snip]

The move has been met with incredulity from the beleaguered residents of Louisiana.

“Shuba-pie!” said New Orleans resident Willis Babineaux. “Frafer-perly yum kom drabby sham!”

Read it all.

More to the point, I hate my bathroom scale. That or I hate myself. But we know that there is no room for personal responsibility in this country. Therefore, by default, the scale is the one with a problem.

Well I guess I still haven’t really gotten to any points yet. Hmm, that’s troubling. The government or big business must have hatched a scheme to lace my sustenance with some sort of mind-alterting narcotic.

Whoops, there I go again.

Ok. I’m back on track. I swear. Earlier this week the ol’ scale said I hit a buck seventy-five. This is definitely not good as it said I was at a buck sixty when I bought the damn thing earlier this year. (clearly the scale is at fault because my weight wasn’t going up before I bought it).

So Wednesday morning I was at 175. Great, or not great. Pick as you like. After some work, I went home mid-day as I was expecting a delivery for which I needed to sign. I had a wonderful turkey & swiss on toast. Then I had another. And another. In total, I think I had 4… and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Fast forward to about 8 o’clock, just after my 6:30 class. I was jonesin’ for some Chinese food and conveniently there’s a Chinese place right in between work and home. Sadly, I remembered the 3 lbs of chicking in the fridge that was only a few short moments away from going bad. 1 lbs was mixed with some szechuan seasoning, 2 onions, and some veggie-rice mix. (note: when opening the szechuan seasing package, do not inhale any of the powder.) The other 2 lbs I just baked in the oven. I had my fill washed down by about 2 liters of my homebrew. The remainder of food went into a big ol’ tupperware-like bowl.

The next day, ie Thursday and also known as yesterday in this instance, I was pretty sure that my package from UPS would show up in the morning (which it did). Aside from a brief jaunt to campus around noon to drop off some papers, I pretty much stayed in the apartment finishing off the pounds-o-leftovers. That was until 3:30. Thursdays at 4 we have seminars, which are all prefaced with refreshments (read: coffee, cookies, and donuts). After a donut, 2 cookies, 2 cups of coffee, and a pretty neat presentation about cadaver response to car impacts and tendon failure testing, I got a little work done before heading back home and eating a banana. I don’t remember eating dinner. But I do remember drinking 2 glasses of homebrew before heading out to see the Shooter Jennings show. Add to the tally a couple PBRs, and a few Jack & Cokes.

This all leads me to this morning and the scale. 170. A fucking buck seventy — minus 5 pounds in two days. How, in the name of Columbia Hell did I pull this off? (yeah yeah yeah, water weight, got it. Let me go. I’m on a roll) I need to tape an infomercial and turn this into the next big weight-loss phenomenon. “By eating just 3 lbs of Chinese food a day, drowning yourself in beer and whiskey, refusing to exercise, and paying me the low, low price of just $99.95 (in 5 easy to handle payments of $19.99), you too can lose 25 lbs in a week be the model of physical health like me. It’s a no-brainer!”

Then maybe I can buy a scale that won’t lie to me in useless attempts to pad my ego.