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30 April 2002  

...and Kicking

Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?

Yes, I am alive (and well). Sorry for the absence of notice regarding my posting hiatus, but I didn't know it was happening myself. The combination of being busy at work along with training for my marathon has recently left me with little energy for thinking enough to write anything worthwhile here.

I'm not at all sure the next few weeks will be much better, but we'll see.

12:44 PM |

8 April 2002  

Running Commentary

The running page has been updated with slightly modified goals for 2002 and results from the first race of the season.

11:08 PM |

5 April 2002  

We're a Self-Deprecating Bunch For a Good Reason

What's wrong with Canada. Well, it's a good start at a full enumeration of the problems, anyway.

05:17 PM |

1 April 2002  

PigeonRank™

Speaking of Skinner, he has apparently influenced Google's ranking system technology:

Building upon the breakthrough work of B. F. Skinner, [Google founders Larry] Page and [Sergey] Brin reasoned that low cost pigeon clusters (PCs) could be used to compute the relative value of web pages faster than human editors or machine-based algorithms. And while Google has dozens of engineers working to improve every aspect of our service on a daily basis, PigeonRank continues to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.

11:41 AM |

How About the Effects of Reading Illogical Studies?

Steven Milloy does some debunking of that recent study reported in Science linking TV violence to real-world violence perpetrated by viewers. When will these researchers learn what any first year stats student learns: correlation does not imply cause and effect. And when will they learn to consider the fact that humans have free will before positing theories that have them acting like Skinnerian rats?

09:03 AM |