davidbau.com
davidbau.com
davidbau.com
a dabbler's weblog
october 12, 2007
it's official: we picked the wrong guy
i can't help but think that the appropriate headline for gore's nobel peace prize today is this: "it's official: we picked the wrong guy...."
continue reading "it's official: we picked the wrong guy"
posted by david at 02:46 pm
| comments (3)
october 10, 2007
giving to schools
do you donate money to your school?
a few months ago i had a long new york-to-boston train ride with brad seiler, an intern from harvard, and we spent the time talking about that school's alumni fundraising....
continue reading "giving to schools"
posted by david at 01:56 pm
| comments (1)
october 08, 2007
best lego of 2007
boston is a great geek city. a few sundays ago, we walked by quantum books on the way to try out the mulan restaurant in cambridge. even though the famous techie bookstore was closed, the owner (i think it was june katitin) was in the the store and unlocked the door to let us browse around. we found a wonderful kids' book about numbers (go figure, by johnny ball) that gives a full-color treatment of such topics as primes, transcendentals, infinity, and the four-color theorem. what geek material.
another great thing about moving from philly to boston is that we now live near two (two!) lego stores. we stumbled on one on our last trip to the mall, and we picked up a new set which i suspect is the best lego set of 2007....
continue reading "best lego of 2007"
posted by david at 11:34 am
| comments (0)
august 24, 2007
looking at the sky
my soon-to-be first-grader piper has fallen in love with google earth. she has resolved to start every morning by exploring the planet. the other day she spent the afternoon exploring the new google sky feature.
"i discovered the andromeda galaxy," she explained.
in grown-up astronomy news today, reuters is reporting on work by umn astronomers rudnick, brown, and williams that has detected "a gaping hole in the universe."
in piper's spirit of naive exploration, let's take a look at where this hole is, and how big it is...
continue reading "looking at the sky"
posted by david at 09:59 am
| comments (0)
august 23, 2007
nintendo pulls ahead
mark the date!
according to vg charts, the wii has just exceeded the market share of the released-a-year-earlier xbox 360. as of today, vg charts reports 10.57 million wiis in the hands of consumers, compared to 10.51 million 360s.
continue reading "nintendo pulls ahead"
posted by david at 11:05 am
| comments (2)
august 20, 2007
marketplace ruined
i'm saddened by the recent minor tragedy on wall street.
i'm not talking about last thursday's market turmoil. i'm talking about this morning's wsj marketplace headline. the wry wit and quirky observation of the wsj marketplace writing staff has been replaced by this:
"from disturbed high schooler to college killer"
continue reading "marketplace ruined"
posted by david at 08:30 am
| comments (2)
august 05, 2007
buttonholed!
yesterday i played with mobius strips with my daugter.
but after a day of playing with the strips - cutting them in half, and in half again, and figuring out the knots that result - she asked me "what other knots can we play with?"
so yesterday evening i got a pencil and some string and a small drill bit, and recreated this classic sam lloyd puzzle.
it is a great puzzle.
you can see my father-in-law struggling with it on the right...
continue reading "buttonholed!"
posted by david at 11:10 am
| comments (1)
august 03, 2007
mortgages and sauerkraut
american home mortgage is going out of business quickly now. like their subprime customers, they can't meet their debt obligations.
are we americans just nuts for taking on all this debt? or is it rational?
continue reading "mortgages and sauerkraut"
posted by david at 06:41 pm
| comments (3)
supermultiplication
when learning multiplication in the third grade, you are taught that "times is just repeated plus." so it is very natural to imagine that sometime in the fourth grade you will learn some new thing called "supermultiplication" that is "repeated times."
unfortunately, multiplying repeatedly does not turn out to be nearly as beautiful as adding repeatedly, and so "supermultiplication" is never covered in fourth grade. exponentiation behaves differently from other operations, because it is neither commutative nor associative.
but that seems a shame. isn't it a blow to the beauty of mathematics that you can't just do the same thing again? can't we have some sort of "supermultiplication" that is just as magic as multiplication itself, with commutative, associative, and distributive properties?
of course you can!
continue reading "supermultiplication"
posted by david at 04:01 pm
| comments (0)
july 16, 2007
3r paper market failure
printing baby photos, i have been reading about kodak's cheap-ink printers, which seem like a pretty good idea. i dislike being overcharged for inks, and it's great that kodak has tried to step in with rational pricing. does anybody have any experience with the kodak printers?
but while we're thinking about rational prices and saving ink, here is real a photo printing puzzle...
continue reading "3r paper market failure"
posted by david at 08:26 pm
| comments (0)
july 14, 2007
christopher cody bau
newly arrived bau been keeping us busy!
just a few pics from the hospital for now.
posted by david at 10:03 pm
| comments (3)
july 06, 2007
murdoch's world
with a murdoch wall street journal i expect to see front page articles about nigerian kidnappers that begin with brilliant hooks like this:
it was a phone call from out of a parents’ nightmare. a hoarse voice on the other end whispered: "we have your daughter and we will kill her...."
you need not wait if you want this flavor of journalism in your prestigious centuries-old-paper. this is what you get today in the venerable times of london - the murdoch-owned times.
wince.
so what should i read when murdoch ruins the wall street journal?
continue reading "murdoch's world"
posted by david at 09:43 pm
| comments (2)
about david bau
-
list of all articles
calendar
october 2007
sun
mon
tue
wed
thu
fri
sat
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
search
search this site:
archives
all articles
october 2007
august 2007
july 2007
june 2007
may 2007
april 2007
march 2007
february 2007
january 2007
december 2006
november 2006
october 2006
september 2006
august 2006
july 2006
june 2006
may 2006
april 2006
march 2006
february 2006
january 2006
december 2005
october 2005
september 2005
august 2005
july 2005
june 2005
may 2005
april 2005
january 2004
december 2003
november 2003
recent entries
it's official: we picked the wrong guy
giving to schools
best lego of 2007
looking at the sky
nintendo pulls ahead
marketplace ruined
buttonholed!
mortgages and sauerkraut
supermultiplication
3r paper market failure
christopher cody bau
murdoch's world
live iphone shows
internet-free week
got my number?
99 cents solved
gladwyne home for sale
is toyota the microsoft of cars?
99 cent game
hat hints
guessing your hat
where's dave?
google's secret fortress
fox street journal
a nintendo blunder?
an easter discovery
white person vacations
kid's garden bench
bruce sterling's rant
politics in a youtube world
still waiting for a wii?
python string functions
boston is expensive
indexing and risk
vitamin religion
the web's c-span killer
obama's weak speech
kidnapping statistics
python templates
everybody votes
presidential qualifications
superbowl sunday
history is demographics
rps battle of wits
learning to program
the lebanese street
a late first snowfall
anthony's fireball for the wii
got a wii
mortgage tax deduction
magic lessons
a letter to santa
why lebanon?
an invoice for nasrallah
a roshambo walk
an ntdoy poem
innovation, copying, and eukaryotes
syrian-style politics in lebanon
yahoo beats google
boston iq
vote today
a geek tries the enlux
walkie talkie web
flood maps
ignoring moore's law
simonyi in space
world's best flashlights
the inner life of a cell
best science writing of 2006
operational efficiency
project runway
printable mazes
the moscow puzzles
longer life or more stuff
the race to mars
a coding puzzle
für elise pickup
nut free zone
the turbot
milksop nation
sudoku generator
image game
eight planets
nonahexaflexagons
world's best marble roll
paper dragon
lebanese peace
totten on lebanon's liberalism
masi is a hero
my landline is a honeypot
python curses life
lebanon war in google earth
a meeting place
wartime advertisements
lebanon bloggers
back from taiwan
rorschach missiles
economics of religion
sudden-onset slothfulness
is moderation a blip?
links
joe
gary
eric
gayle
reza
rod
ulysses
blossom
howie
nelson
glenn
463
pop
wag
physics
nature
mg
legoed
anita
bernie
pcal
cedric
adam
mark
scott
ted
stpeter
joel
xmlbeans
quick search bar
battelle
bricklin
digg
jake
gilmour
googlers
hotlinks
mini
raymond
rb
rmack
sam
tm
volkh
wonkette
waxy
witt
xooglers
zawodny
econview
uchicagolaw
older writing
dabbler
dave on microsoft
dave on web services
dave at webword
dave's linear algebra book
about
about david bau
about this site
copyright 2007 © david bau. all rights reserved.
davidbau.com Précédent 873 Précédent 872 Précédent 871 Précédent 870 Précédent 869 Précédent 868 Précédent 867 Précédent 866 Précédent 865 Précédent 864 Précédent 863 Précédent 862 Précédent 861 Précédent 860 Précédent 859 Précédent 858 Précédent 857 Précédent 856 Précédent 855 Précédent 854 Précédent 853 Précédent 852 Précédent 851 Précédent 850 Précédent 849 Précédent 848 Précédent 847 Précédent 846 Précédent 845 Précédent 844 Suivant 875 Suivant 876 Suivant 877 Suivant 878 Suivant 879 Suivant 880 Suivant 881 Suivant 882 Suivant 883 Suivant 884 Suivant 885 Suivant 886 Suivant 887 Suivant 888 Suivant 889 Suivant 890 Suivant 891 Suivant 892 Suivant 893 Suivant 894 Suivant 895 Suivant 896 Suivant 897 Suivant 898 Suivant 899 Suivant 900 Suivant 901 Suivant 902 Suivant 903 Suivant 904