…who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis at Rice today! 
I believe that Madhu summed it up best in his e-mail to me: “Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, I am done. everything went more than better.”
Hard to top that, folks. Plus, we got ourselves a new superlative phrase: “Everything went more than better.” Define it however you like it to be defined, just be sure to use it. 
First, there’s a group on facebook called “Make Genocide History” or something similar. Whenever I see the title, I always add a “by …” to the end. Depending on the day, the ellipses get replaced by a method and a ethnic group. It’s never pretty.
Second, Korn and Amy Lee just collaborated on an live version of “Freak on a Leash.” It is one of the worst things that I’ve ever heard. I kind of like Korn, but their music lives and dies by the heavy crunching guitars in the background. Take that away and you have nothing. The video was a bad idea too since it’s now very clear that Korn’s lead singer is a vaguely puffy looking middle-aged guy who looks like you’d see him coming out of a porn store and say “oh, that’s so sad.”
Guy Fawkes’ Day is a bit of an odd holiday - what do you celebrate? The effort to blow up a corrupt government, and honor the efforts of a folk hero? Or the foiling of such a plot, a victory against terror? In the wake of 11th Sept, lots of people have thrown all sorts of extra meaning onto an innocent little holiday, too. In England it’s losing ground to Halloween, while Scotland has the 31st as a separate event: Halloween is for guising, the 5th is for burning a Guy and going to parties.
…but what if he’d succeeded?
If you have some time to waste, this is a pretty funny blog.
Kinda interesting headline on WebMD last week - is there a correlation between relative finger lengths and athleticism? They say that “for women whose second and fourth finger lengths translated into a low ratio, there was greater likelihood the women played sports at higher levels, the researchers report. A low ratio would result if the index finger is shorter than the ring finger.”
First of all, terminology question: isn’t the index finger the first finger, the middle finger the second, the ring finger the third, and the pinky the fourth? Don’t remember that from Aberdeen.
Second, a negative number is a “low ratio”? They need to be a little more clear/precise, here.
You might have thought we had 9 planets in our solar system. If you were nerdy enough to keep up with current events (and most of us fit in that category), you might have said 12. But you’d be wrong there too - Pluto just got fired, so we are down to 8 actual planets.
Two interesting things that Baltimore people say.
1) Hon. Short for “honey” I think. Kirsten and I went to a 7-11 to get a slurpy last weekend and the [older] cashier managed to use it like 5 times over the course of two sentences. I just don’t understand why they spell it “hon” instead of “hun”. That’s the way I’d do it.
2) The correct way to say “Baltimore” is Bah-more. It’s almost like you make a sheep sound and then put a more on the end. Bahmore. So I actually live in Bahmore in Bahmore City county. (Yeah, that’s another fucked up thing.)
See you when you come to visit Bahmore, hon.
