Thanks to the askubuntu stackexchange site for giving me this tip. (and while I’m at it, thanks to the superuser stackexchange site for helping me fix some problems with my parents’ machine).

Now to get the whole setup working with Tor. With the Masters starting this weekend, perhaps that will provide the necessary impetus.

In the first picture, everything exists as it should. We see the hot plates (or gas equivalent), grill and oven all appear as independent parts, a chef’s dream.

Unfortunately some modern versions have the tendancy to include the grill and the oven in the same compartment, removing the rather useful option of simultaneous grilling and baking. However even that is a rather minor sin compared to what we see in the next picture.

Absolute horror! No grill whatsoever! I have the grave misfortune in living in a place with such a lacking kitchen setup (and have suffered through such a lack of basic necessities for quite a while now). For most meats, pan frying is such a poor substitute, and without the grill there are some foods that can’t be cooked at all. If I have to walk past meat on a stick in the supermarket again and not be able to buy it because of a sub-par kitchen, I’ll go crazy.

If anyone out there in cyberland knows of a place I can live where I can start grilling food again, please let me know (reasonable rental rates will be paid). Unfortunately I have some job-related geographic restrictions, so suggesting that I move to a beaut terrace house in Carlton just won’t cut the mustard (unless you can also land me a job at Melbourne University (and kick BHP out of the MUMS room)).

The first picture below is not a very flattering portrayal, but for reasons of inclusion, see the title and above paragraph.

Me at Hakuba

Now we see some of the local wildlife. Is anyone able to provide a positive identification of the creature in the picture below?

Kono wa nani desu ka?

We conclude with a potential souvenir that, at 735,000 yen, the author found outside his price range.

A bargain at twice the price?

Notre Dame, with Siene in foreground

Paris je t’aime. Is starting with a picture of a canonical landmark considered good form?

At the Louvre

This is a picture of all the bloody tourists doing what every tourist wants to do and take a picture of the Mona Lisa. It is at this point in the exposition that I am tempted to try to insert a dirty joke, but will refrain from doing so out of respect of those who haven’t seen the Mona Lisa.

Venus de Milo

The Indian Ocean

My most local beach. The texture of the sand, the surf, really makes me feel back home.

Yes these pictures are being shown in chronological order

Lagrange, Laplace et al. I had no idea before visiting that these greats are venerated on this most famous of landmarks.

WTF mate?

Seen in Den Haag.

a church (duh)

Europe seems replete with splendid churches. This particular specimen was found in Den Bosch, which I visited as it is apparently a more “dutchee” town, and is the home of the lovely dessert, the Bossche Bol, which I strongly recommend.

Brugge, Belgium

More precisely this picture was taken from the top of the tower in the centre of town. Brugge is a quaint and beautiful town, complete with cobblestone-lined streets, delicious Belgian chocolate and a large population of tourists.

Foucault's Pendulum

mmm, science. In the Pantheon.

My office at Stanford

Yes this is a slide rule. Clearly if I want to be at the forefront of mathematical research, then I need access to all the cutting edge computational machinery that mankind has developed. (At the time of writing, I do not have a computer in said office).

Ladies and Gentlemen thank you for your attention, and I’ll appear on your RSS reader again when next something interesting happens.

Now I am not a fan of above the line voting, and to put it bluntly, if someone isn’t going to think enough about who they want to vote for to vote below the line, then their vote doesn’t deserve to count. So with this as a starting point, lets take a look at what the results would look like if only below the line votes were counted.

Rachel Sierwart of the Greens is now way out in front, with more than two quotas, with the first Liberal and Labor candidates each just short of a quota.

(name, party, votes, percent of below the line votes)
SIEWERT, Rachel The Greens 11694 30.96
CORMANN, Mathias Liberal 5215 13.81
EVANS, Chris Australian Labor Party 4692 12.42
MARTIN, Justine Australian Sex Party 2360 6.25
McCOURT, John The Nationals 1727 4.57
YOUNG, Trevor Christian Democratic Party 1436 3.8
CUNNINGHAM, Christine The Greens 855 2.26
ROSE, Linda Family First 758 2.01
YOUNG, Paul James Australian Democrats 613 1.62
PEAKE, Paul Shooters and Fishers 597 1.58
.
.
.
GOODLAD, John 10 0.03.

Now unfortunately we don’t have the information available to us to compute a proper distribution of preferences based on these results – all we know is that Rachel Siewart would get re-elected (as happened in the real thing). In the absence of any other method available, I went to Anotony Green’s senate calculator and entered the percentage of below the line votes that each candidate received to produce a result. This calculator distributes preferences as if every vote was an above the line ticket vote.

And for the results, the following candidates would be elected:

1 Rachel SIEWERT Australian Greens
2 Mathias CORMANN Liberal Party
3 Chris EVANS Australian Labor Party
4 Kado MUIR Australian Greens
5 Trevor YOUNG Christian Democratic Party
6 Justine MARTIN Australian Sex Party

Wow! What an incredibly more awesome result than the 3 Liberal/2 Labor/1 Green that the election produced. If only …

To finish on a sadder note, the number of below the line votes (37773) was less than the number of informal votes (40490).

Fuck you.

You used to know how to run a streaming site for replaying sports events. This concept of watching the replay I have found to be useful because (a) there is rarely smooth streaming for an entire quarter, and (b) the footy is on too early in the morning in this stupid timezone I’m in.

But now, if I go to the site and want to watch a replay of today’s hit and giggle, I get the following (click to enlarge)

Looking on the right of screen, there is “CHAT IN SECTION 140″, where you allow random internet turds to post things like the outcome of the game! This violates the first, and only rule, of showing a replay. I don’t want to know the score. So…

Fuck you.

Fuck you again.

I hope that whoever designed this bug gets shipped off to Guantanemo. Hurry the fuck up and fix it.

endpress
signoff

You are playing a game of 8-ball, are trying to run out the solids, and things have gone a little awry (table 1) or significantly awry (table 2). You are down to one solid ball remaining in each case. Discuss what you think the best course of action would be.

On each table, the stripy balls not indicated can be assumed to be in reasonably generic places, without any clusters. On the first table, the 8-ball does not go into any of the lower corner pockets.

table 1

table 2

Suppose there is an initially finite population consisting of males and females which breeds without multiple births according to the following rules. Each femaile continues to produce offspring until a male child is borne, and then ceases to breed. Show that (even in this ideal universe) with probability 1, a point in time will be reached after which no further reproduction is possible. We assume that births are iid with equal probability of a male or a female being born.

I suggest this as an exercise, and include a solution below the fold.

***SPOILER ALERT***

WLOG there are initially zero males. WLOG noone ever dies. Then at all times, there is an injective function from the set of males to the set of females, given by taking ones mother. Consider the difference F-M between the number of females and the number of males. Over time, this difference evolves as a random walk on the integers, at each stage adding one with probability 1/2 and subtracting one with probability 1/2. This random walk has the property that it will visit every integer with probability 1. (It is folklore knowledge that the corresponding result is true in two dimensions and false in three). Hence this value F-M reaches a non-positive number with probability 1, at which point no more births are possible, since every female already has a male son.