News You Can Bruise for 1999 June 28

In the LA Times: Computers Used to Make Science Fun. Nowadays they just make it more boring.

I will probably regret this, but I'm going to stay in the Linear Algebra class despite the better time-coordinates and superior easiness of the Differential Equations class. I just don't want to deal with differential equations anymore.

The Linear Algebra class is easier to justify to UCLA as a technical minor in conjunction with my two number theory classes, anyway.

And then there's that chilling sentence on the top of the DE instructor's homepage...

Someone spent a little time doing a Jar-Jargonizer. Fine. Wholesome family fun. But they didn't spend just a little time on it, because they spent enough time on it to exhaust the conceptual space to the point where they came up with a hook for the phrase "Austin Powers" (See my page). And who knows what else. I dare say someone spent a whole weekend on this.

In my Texas travelogue, I make reference to a bit on an old Cowboy Copas tape in which Cowboy Copas and his pal play the same little country riff over and over again, calling it by names like "The Great Speckled Bird" and "Dreamin' Tonight of my Blue Eyes". I had thought that the bit was that they were making up many different titles for the country riff and calling them different songs, but it turns out that those are real country songs which all use that same riff, and the bit is making fun of the repetitiveness of those songs. It's still a funny bit, though not quite as funny as I thought it was. Cowboy Copas needs a page on mp3.com.

Woohoo! An A in 199 means a 3.66 GPA for the quarter, which (I think) means I get on the dean's list. I don't know why I'm excited about that, but I am.