A Couple of News Stories

If you are going to have the bad luck of having your vehicle smashed up, I cannot think of a cooler way to go.

The Harper government continues to make a mockery of environmental policy by asking the Americans to weaken EPA regulations on lake freighters.

New Blog Excitement

My girlfriend has a new blog called The Language of Bad Physics. Although I don't understand everything that she talks about, if you like physics and like nonsense getting eviscerated, you will probably enjoy her blog.

Midweek Quotations

Since it was an extra long weekend for me this past week (well, I am currently unemployed, so some may argue that I live in a perpetual weekend, albeit a poor one, but this past weekend was Thanksgiving at my girlfriend's family's house, and we stayed until last night), I did not get a chance to give some start of the week quotations. Here, then, are the quotations for the week.

Also, my last set of quotations sparked some confusion among some of my readers. Yes, it was a random hodge-podge of quotations, many about things which I have no experience (namely, fatherhood and homosexuality). That is often the case, however, and it is hard to tell exactly what I look for in quotation selection. Those just happened to meet my criteria for that section of the alphabet.

"An expert is one who knows more and more about less and less." - Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University from 1901-45, 1862-1947

"It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence."
"The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places."
"Young as he was, his instinct told him that the best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way."
"It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four."
- Samuel Butler, English novelist, 1835-1902

Puzzle Number 9: Final Hint

This post is a couple days late, mostly because it is the Thanksgiving long weekend in Canada which threw my "update on the weekend" clock off. Anyway, now I am finally get around to it. As promised, the last hint for Puzzle Number 9 will outline the number of letters and punctuation in each of the planned sentences. As before, I am also open to novel solutions. The clue is given using the following notation: in parentheses, the word length is given. If the word is a contraction, the number of letters before the apostrophe is given, then the apostrophe, followed by the number of letters after the apostrophe. The punctuation at the end is the punctuation at the end of the sentence.

1.) A A C G G H H H I I I L M N N N O O R S T T U W Y
Six words, one is a contraction.
(3'1) (4) (8) (2) (2) (5)?

2.) A A A E E E E E E E E E F G H H H H I I N O O P P R R R R S S S S S T T T T T V Y
Eight words, none are contractions.
(5) (3) (3) (7) (2) (3) (8) (10).

Scientist Appreciation: Persi Diaconis the Mathemagician

Dr. Persi Diaconis is a fascinating man, and part of that fascination comes from the fact that he can claim title to one of the simultaneously coolest and silliest job names ever: mathemagician. I saw Diaconis give a talk on mathematics and magic at the Fields Institute a couple of years ago, and it is one of my favourite all time talks. Diaconis is engaging, charismatic, and relates a sense of absolute enjoyment of both mathematics and performance trickery. Having worked as both a professional magician and as a professor in departments of both statistics and mathematics, Diaconis exudes the combined sense of wonder and power that can be found in the study of mathematics.

Aside from the one talk I visited, I don't have a lot to present about Persi Diaconis that is not available on either Wikipedia or his website. I had intended to share one of his tricks that I saw him demonstrate, but I think it would be better to try and show it. That, however, requires a little more organization than I currently have (including a tripod for my camera and a volunteer to be in the video with me), so you will have to wait for me to get everything together. In the meantime, if you get the chance to see a talk by Dr. Persi Diaconis, I highly recommend it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian readers. Unfortunately, I did not have access to my pictures of turkeys from around my parents' house (they are on my desktop and I am spending the weekend at my girlfriend's family's house), so I had to use this image I pulled off a quick Google search. Still, it should serve well enough to put in mind the festiveness of the long weekend.

Puzzle Number 9: Hint One

As promised, here is the first set of hints for puzzle number 9. I should also point out that one person has sent in solutions that use all of the letters (and are totally unrelated to my starting sentences, so clearly there are other possibilities). Of course, one of the solutions is not actually intelligible, but it is still a set of real words that use all of the letters.

Anyway, this hint gives the number of words in each "official" sentence (in other words, the one I started with to come up with the letter list). On the weekend I will release the number of letters in each word along with the punctuation in the sentence, before giving the answers next week. Of course, one should not feel constrained by the hints. Novel solutions are still very much appreciated. Please just point out whether or not you used the hints in coming up with your solution.

1.) A A C G G H H H I I I L M N N N O O R S T T U W Y
Six words, one is a contraction.

2.) A A A E E E E E E E E E F G H H H H I I N O O P P R R R R S S S S S T T T T T V Y
Eight words, none are contractions.