Daily Archives: January 4, 2011

Scientific Method Acting

Posted on by

The Best Debugging Story I’ve Ever Heard

The Expert got a chair and a cup of coffee and sat in the computer room – these were the days when they had rooms specifically dedicated to computers, after all – and watched it as the attendants queued up a large print job. He waited until it crashed – which it did. Everybody looked to The Expert – and he didn’t have a clue what was causing it. So he ordered that the job be queued up again, and all the attendants and technicians went back to work.

The Expert sat down in his chair again, waiting for it to crash. It took something like six hours of waiting, but it crashed again. He still had no idea what was causing it, other than the fact that it happened when the room was crowded. He ordered that the job be restarted, and he sat down again and waited.

By the third crash, he had noticed something.

Anthony Michael Hall Effect, 2010

Posted on by

The weirdest of 2010’s Weird Science

First you fight, then you protest, and then you just stop going: This story gets extra Weird Science credit for the Orwellian-sounding journal name: The Journal of Positive Behavior Interventions. The topic is quite good too: a large study of precisely why kids get sent to the principal’s office, enabled by the fact that over 1,500 schools used an electronic system to track this stuff. The data reveals a clear trend: in the early years of school, kids mostly get sent for fighting with each other. By middle school, they’re getting sent in for (verbally) fighting with their teachers. And, by the time they hit high school, apathy has set in, and most of the incidents are because they’re late for or skipping class.

Making It Sound Worse Than it Really Is

Posted on by

Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf post small December sales

This was the year General Motors Co. and Nissan made good on their promise to bring mass-produced electric cars to the market. But don’t count on seeing one in traffic soon. Sales so far have been microscopic and they’re likely to stay that way for some time because of limited supplies.

GM sold between 250 and 350 Chevy Volts this month and Nissan’s sales totaled less than 10 Leaf sedans in the past two weeks. Production for both is slowly ramping up.

It will be well into 2012 before both the Volt and Leaf are available nationwide. And if you’re interested in buying one, you’ll need to get behind the 50,000 people already on waiting lists.

One might argue that extremely limited availability doesn’t count as “bring(ing) mass-produced electric cars to the market.” It’s bringing a small amount of cars to market. The headline makes it seem like there isn’t much demand, rather than the companies selling every electric car they’ve made.

It's Not All Glamour

Posted on by

Grad School Cost of Living

[S]top trying to make a bong out of a damn Pert Plus bottle and pay attention you undergrad noobs, I’m about to drop some grad school economics on you.

Alternate version, via an MIT professor: Girlfriend, car, hobby. Pick one.

I bit the bullet and shared a house with two other grad students for four of the six years I was in school. Rode my bike or walked to school on weekdays when parking permits were required. Tutored for beer money.

via @JenLucPiquant