soapbox

A few years ago, I went on a kick of enfriending basically everyone that I knew from my home town in Alaska and I ended up with one friend who was one of the little kids in my church growing up. Of course, he grew up and was apparently gay and had issues with depression.

Sometime earlier this year, he ended up committing suicide.

That means that now I have a dead friend. Since Facebook doesn’t seem to have a policy of purging its users of the dead or just people who don’t use Facebook often, it looks like his profile will just continue on espousing “long live the flying spaghetti monster” as a religious view.

On one hand, it’s kind of odd that the page will probably last for as long as facebook does. (What is the lifetime of a social networking site anyway?) On the other hand, it’s a little bit comforting that the web will remember you even if the rest of the world doesn’t.

Maybe the image is still too small to read. Basically APS journals now allow authors to include their names in their own languages. For now this option is offered to Chinese, Japanese and Korean authors. Hmmm, should I add this to my next paper (if there’s any)? 魏群 (windows people, you probably will only see two squares….)

So, I think I know Brian’s opinion on the matter, or rather maybe I am biased by his experience, but I have a question for blog-land.  I was talking with a guy I met last week, and he asked me for backup on a disagreement he’d had with his spouse.  Being a good member of the species I naturally agreed, but it so happens that I actually DO agree with him on this one.

The question is, what is the proper use of personal cheque?  More specifically, in person-to-person interactions, is there a minimum amount below which it is really more polite to use cash?  (Brian, this is an invite to use a name-free account of a certain Ramunto’s trip.)  When forced to give money to an institution, naturally we use cheque since they demand the paper trail, and we don’t care if Bank of America has to go cash a cheque for $14.97 instead of us giving them a Lincoln and Hamilton, keep the change.

This actually turned out to be a relevant question for me as well, given the Craigslisting that we’ve done this past week.  We’ve paid with cash,  but how much does the $$ total have to be before it’s acceptable to write a cheque?  I’d say at least $60 or so, and more generally a cheque should not be written for an amount that a reasonable person (not an undergrad or grad student) could be expected to have in the their wallet.

Looking through the job adverts in Physics Today, I came across this beauty:

Even scientists do it. After meeting in Science Connection. All science/nature-philes welcome. www.sciconnect.com

seriously, good times. they even have photos to browse, the demographics are interesting.

Honestly, though, I don’t know why you’d bother with this, since in the end, chicks dig the long ball.

With apologies to the ladies out there, you’ll have to come up with your own rules (dumb idea, nevermind), I present to you a new list of man rules for the over-30 crowd. (For the well-under-thirty crowd, consider this as a reminder of things to not take for granted.)

Selected favorites (with my comments):

11. Experiment with facial hair. (true, but kinda a shame.)

20. Own a futon.

21. Own a beanbag chair.

22. Hang art framelessly. (“framelessly” is fantastic, pseudohomonymically similar to “aimlessly” and implying a lack of culture, common sense, etc…)

37. Cook exclusively on a George Foreman grill. (too bad, but one should probably have upgraded by now.)

41. Use Internet acronyms, especially ROFL and LOL. (I’d say you forfeit this “right” around age 19?)

In a recent letter to The Sports Guy, Sean from Harrisburg, PA brings up a good point about Kate Mara: She is the absolute most gorgeous thing I have ever seen AND she’s the granddaughter of Wellington Mara, which means she’s freaking rich.

So, obviously, we the blog people need to work on such a Sugar Mama list… for starters, I’d go with Demi Moore (taken, but husbands are only speedbumps, not roadblocks) and Jennifer Aniston.

if you need some guidelines for consideration, here’s the SG’s commentary on the matter: (more…)

Well, my job search may not be going awesomely, but suddenly I do feel a little better.  Or maybe more depressed actually, since apparently the competition isn’t that fierce.