No, not that – Programming. I need to do some statistical work to test a theory. The best approach in order to compare my results is to do the work in R. But it looks like I’ll need to extend a package. I download the package from CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network), unpack it and start trying to figure out how it all works. Unfortunately, it is written in Fortran, C and R. Untangling it will take forever. ...

IT security (and for that matter, other security concerns too) are often seen as conflicting with usability. There is something to that. If you take any given technology and turn up the level of security it provides, you will almost always decrease the usability of the system. Consider passwords. If people are allowed to choose their own passwords, they will typically choose something very usable for them. They’ll pick their dog’s name, their wife’s name, their userid, etc. These passwords don’t provide much security. To compensate, we often turn up the security knob and require “stronger passwords, e.g., minimum of six characters with no dictionary words and multiple “character classes. ...

I’ve never understood why the separation of church and state is still debated in this country. I have an even harder time understanding why people would try to undermine the separation of church and state, but as this article in the New York Times shows, they do. Keeping religion out of politics and politics out of religion has a long history in this country. Our first amendment has a clause which states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This clearly states that congress may not create a national religion. But, may congress write laws with respect to a religion? Can congress financially support or encourage a religion? Supporters of the separation of church and state say, “no, while many religious advocates say “yes. ...

and if you haven’t seen this, you should – it’s very good.

Time Magazine publishes a letter from a Marine officer in Iraq – read it.

When your day is lacking surrealism, visit the Nietzsche Family Circus

Brad DeLong discussing why we like diversity and identitity notes that in addition to prefering to discuss diversity because it is easier than tackling the hard problem of a lack of equality in opportunity, we like identity and diversity because they are inherently a good thing: Now normally–in my usual mind–I am an enthusiastic supporter of what I take to be Walter Benn Michaels’s central point: that we have collectively gotten ourselves off balance because we are responding to the fact that celebrating diversity is easy and doing something about upward mobility and the intergenerational reproduction of economic and social inequality is hard. ...

For HeatherS… First you make a roux [1]: ~1/2 cup oil ~1/2 cup flour Mix the flour and oil into a large pot and turn the heat on low to medium, depending on how often you want to stir. Stir while on heat until a dark brown. While the roux is browning, finely chop: one onion a couple of stalks of celery 1/2 bell pepper You can use a cuisinart, but don’t puree the trinity (inside Louisiana joke). Once the roux is dark brown, add the vegetable mixture and stir for about a minute. Then add: ...

My father once told me about a military training exercise that took place for a month in Egypt. The only available food was early generation MREs. Everyone lost weight except for the cajuns – who all put on 10-15 pounds. Their secret was combining their MREs into a communal pot, add the seasonings they brought from home and produce something that you wanted to eat. Since MREs have 4000-6000 calories, eating the whole thing could easily make you gain weight. ...

Caveat lector – this is not a fully formed thought, I’m just trying to get some ideas down. I worked with a guy (not a friend) who was obsessed by workplace culture. As near as I could tell, he came from an environment with an entirely different culture and didn’t care for the one we had. At one point, he and another person (a friend) gave a talk on culture. They described different aspects of culture, including appearance and behavior. ...