Our 3.0-year-old boy stunned tonight by asking “How many things are there in my imagination?”.
It probably passed in one ear and out a hundred times: “Minimize noise in your working surroundings!”. I got so used to the loud fan noises from my ordinary workstation that I was no longer aware of the slight tension and dread at approaching my home office. Finally, the computer performed an exquisite, maddening, death spiral of instability, which last week resulted in its retirement.
My new workstation arrived just two days after ordering it from the other side of the country. It’s a lovely little nearly-silent machine from Anitec. There is a serenity in the room that has been missing for a long time. The downside? I listen to music rather quietly now, and it doesn’t quite block out brat noises from the rest of the house.
Winter weather brings out the worst and the best in people — along the thin spectrum of normalcy in north american suburban life.
The first snowfall of the season caught our street off guard. Everyone fended for himself, and people worked their snow shovels hard. The few that tried their snow blowers ended up with sputtering failures. The second snowfall, just days ago, was rather different: people were prepared, and had less snow to shovel. So, how did people react?
| adjective | behaviour |
|---|---|
| catatonic | does not clear driveway or sidewalk |
| indifferent | shovels own driveway and sidewalk, pays no attention to neighbours |
| normal | shovels own areas, and token segments of neighbours’ sidewalks |
| ostentatious | uses brand new snowblower on own ridiculously tiny area |
| spoilsport | shovels own areas with brand new snowblower, then proceeds to ruin it for everyone else’s new snowblower by clearing whole swaths of the street |
| boy scout | buys and maintains a high-powered, fuel-guzzling, awesomely noisy snow blower; after finishing own area, invites neighbours to play, er, use the machine too |
May I advance to the highest stratum.
What’s the death rate of US soldiers in Iraq, as compared to civilians in the US? Make a guess, then read on.
My calculation is only a back-of-the-napkin kind of approximation, just to check one’s intuition. Here’s some data google found for me:
- Troop levels in Iraq – take 130000 as of 2006, a bloody year.
- Combat deaths in Iraq – take 830 as of 2006.
- US Census 2004 Death data – from page 4, take 900 per 100000 – for the overall population; adjusting it to match the age distribution of deployed soldiers is an exercise for the reader.
OK, math time: 830/130000 = 0.6% – the actual death rate for US soldiers in Iraq; 900/100000 = 0.9% – the actual death rate for US residents in the US. Unless my eyes, my sources, or my miniscule powers of interpretation are deceiving me, 0.6 < 0.9, and thus the death rate for the civilians is 50% greater. Somebody, sign me up!