There should be a law: You can't post on the internet unless you know basic grammar. You should know the difference between the following:
you're and your
its and it's
their, there, and they're
There is a difference between a typo and being stupid. It's not all of you, but it does seem to be a lot of you. How do you not know how to put a coherent thought together? You can't tell me what you typed makes sense to you. Try using punctuation. Put only one thought in a sentence. Separate concepts
Just stop! If you think you need to use it, you are probably wrong. The incorrect use of the word “literally” has become an epidemic. It keeps getting worse. I seem to hear it every day. I have started keeping track each time I hear it. It is 11:30 am and I have heard it 4 times today! I listen to a couple of radio programs, and I know one of the guys I listen to uses it a lot. I know that biases my sample, but I still hear it from others as well.
The site www.dictionary.com has 4 definition
It bothers me when people are imprecise with their writing. Consider the use of the conjunctions OR and AND. You will see sentences of the form: A or B and C or D. Without parentheses this is ambiguous. Let’s examine the various possible interpretations.
Let the circle with a cross represent a logic bit that can be true or false. I like to think of it as a normally-open contact, as in a motor control logic. The lines are a flow path. Think of them like a wire in a circuit. Reading from left
I hate meeting people who say "How are you?" It is so stupid. I saw a doctor and she said "how are you" so I said "I wouldn't be here if I was fine."
Every day at work it's the same thing. "How are you today?" You see me 14 days every 28. You see me more than my family does. Why do you need to ask me the same pointless question every day? What do you expect me to say? Or sometimes it's "What's going on?" What the hell do you think is going on? I'm at work, I'm doing the same thing that I do
I hate when people use words incorrectly. The term "head canon" does not make any sense. "Canon" does not mean "back story." The word "canon" is used in the religious context to basically mean official. Using the term for fiction, such as a television show, means that something is officially recognized by the owner of the intellectual property. The only people who have the authority to make something canon are people who own the product, or who have been officially licensed to produce material f
Here is something annoying. Hidden buttons on devices. What is the obsession with hiding buttons? Here are some examples:
I rarely use Mac computers. One time I was using a Mac and it had a mouse with no visible buttons. I knew it had at least one button. Then my friend told me it had a left and right click. How was I supposed to know? It was one solid piece of plastic. There was no indication that there was a left and right button.
I had a Sansa mp3 player. It had a rotating wheel to
This blog is not intended to give legal advice. If you want to learn more, check your state’s gun laws.
I have been openly carrying my pistol around town for a few months. It is legal to carry openly without a permit in this state. Years ago, I carried my gun in a different state, where it was also legal, and the city police charge me with disorderly conduct, but the city dropped the charges because they had no case But where I live now most people own guns and don’t freak out when people ca
probability.pdf
The attached pdf is the same as the post below, but with the histogram pictures.
I like to do mathematical models and analyses of gaming, and I was thinking of this one lately.
Dungeons and Dragons Next has what they call an “advantage” and “disadvantage” system. For an advantage, the player rolls 2d20 and keeps the favorable roll. For a disadvantage, the player rolls 2d20 and keeps the unfavorable roll.
Advantage System
If the player needs the number n to succee
Logic And Society
Let us review some problems in logic. If it is assumed that “society” must provide a service to a person, then how far must society go to provide that service? Also, if a person is entitled to something, then do they have an obligation to society? How do you determine the limits of that obligation?
Take, for example, providing health care. How is health care defined? Must minor injuries be treated, or only major conditions? Go back to basic logic, meaning, model the s
Something has been bothering me for a while. This whole idea of the “nerd” sub culture. It used to be that a nerd was someone who worked with computers and math, and participated in a few obscure hobbies in some dank room on Friday nights. But now “nerd” is the new hipster. Everyone is a nerd now. I've seen people call themselves a nerd because they watch the History channel. The term is meaningless. If everyone is a nerd then no one is.
I'd like to focus the term down to describe people who
I have decided it is time to grow up and put away the toys. Therefore, I am selling all of my stuff.
I’m selling my 3,000 video games, my 2,000 dvds, my Star Trek books and toys, my D&D collection, my board games, my pony merchandise.
I have wasted decades of my life playing games, watching cartoons, playing with toys and having fun. I hope it is not too late to start a family and get on with the drudgery of adult life. Better late than never, I supposed.
Happy birthday to the greatest country in the world. Here is a thought experiment. Imagine you are not perfect, and you made some mistakes in your life. Not hard to imagine, right? Imagine you have a friend who found out about your mistakes, and every single day they bring them up. At first, you apologize, acknowledge your mistakes, and talk about how you are a better person now because you have learned. But this is not good enough for your friend. He continues to bring up your past transgressio
I am working on a hypothesis that horror movies suck. Even fans of horror admit that most of the movies suck. To support this idea, I have compiled scores from Rotten Tomatoes . I plotted the movie score vs release year. I wasn't able to get the movie titles on the charts, but you can cross reference the year with the movies listed in Wikipedia. So far, I look at Friday the 13th, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and for a comparison Star Trek. I then list what ratio of the movies got a scor
I don't have any friends where I live now, in Canada. I took a job that pays a lot. Technically I have 5 friends from school, but I see them once in a year at most. Really there are 3 that I have seen in the past year. And even then, there is 1 that I have a lot in common with. We play video games and watch some cartoons. But I don't have any friends who would go to conventions.
When I go to cons I meet people who like cartoons as much as I do. It's nice to know those people exist but I wish
Assume it is Friday, the 1 st of the month. What does it mean when someone says, “this weekend?” Are they talking about tomorrow, the 2 nd? What if it is Monday, the 28 th and someone asked, “What did you do this weekend?” Do they mean yesterday, the 27 th? Surely not, because in one case “this” means the upcoming weekend, while in the other case it would mean the past weekend. In fact, it makes no sense to say “this X” unless you are in X.
Consider the logic. If you say, “this year” you mea
I just finished Beauty and The Beast, the animated adaptation from Burbank Animation, Australia. This story is a textbook case of Stockholm Syndrome. The Beast attempts to murder Beauty’s father until the father mentions that he has a daughter. Suddenly, the lecherous Beast decides to spare the father’s life if the father gives his daughter over to Beast. So the daughter has to become a hostage in order to save her father.
As Beauty is kept prisoner, Beast manipulates her by going in
Random Stat Generation
I do not like games where you randomly determine your character's statistics. Dungeons and Dragons is the most famous example of this, and that is the game I will be talking about for the most part. There is a fatal flaw in creating a character this way. The problem is you could end up rolling a really bad character. Who wants to play a character with bad stats? Some will claim that this is not a problem because you could also roll a character with really good stats. B
Gun control advocates believe that restricting the types of guns available will have an effect on crimes committed with guns. This idea is untrue. The type of gun used has very little effect on the outcome of the crime. To understand this, we first have to understand the different types of crime that might involve a gun, and we have to understand the different types of guns that exist. Foot notes are provided for some interesting data, but for now we shall look at the argument from a theoretical
Assertion: Irrational numbers have decimal digits that do not repeat, nor do they have a pattern of digits that repeat.
An irrational number cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers.
Proof by contradiction. Assume that the irrational number does have a repeating pattern of decimals.
First, consider an assumed irrational number x = a1a2•••am . am+1•••am+l•••x1x2•••xn•••x1x2•••xn•••
Where the digits a1a2•••am are the part of the number greater than one. Note the decima
Here is a companion piece to @PawelS ‘s blog on time paradoxes
He mentions the idea of a consistent time loop. This is the idea that if you go back in time and perform an action, that action was “destined to happen,” and therefore isn’t a paradox. The opposite of this is, of course, a paradox. The classic example being that you kill your grandfather before you are born, so how can you be born to go back in time to kill your grandfather?
One solutio
Continuing in my line of grammar rants, I talk about the phrase "digital download" or "digital content." The problem is when the term "digital" is used to mean "...as opposed to content on physical disk." For example, a movie package might say "DVD, Bluray, and digital download."
The truth is DVD and Bluray are digital as well. Wikipedia defines digital as information being stored in discrete segments. People say "digital" when perhaps they should say "medialess." I have seen DVDs that say "
I start by saying that I am a fan of AVGN. However, I have not seen the movie. From what I have seen of it, it does not look like the kind of thing I would pay money for. In general, I do not buy content from internet reviewers. I believe that I could spend my money on better entertainment. My level of enjoyment of reviewer content ends at watching their videos on line.
Since I have not seen the movie I cannot offer a scene by scene review, not that I would have a desire to
You know what putrifies my punch? End of the year “best of” lists. They always come out before the year is done. How can you have a Person of the Year in November? What if someone cures cancer on December 31? What about best movies? What if there is a great movie that comes out at the end of December? There’s countless end of year lists of best ofs. People want to relax at the end of the year. When the new year starts, people go back to work. Nobody is in the mood for “best of” lists. But that d
