By way of Raymond Johnson, the best statistics multiple choice question ever written on a chalkboard. Try not to think too hard. [via]

YouTube link. YouTube link.These are stories of people trying to make the transition—and the difficulty of making the transition—in a new place, from outsider to insider... The first day inevitably means mistakes, mishaps, fiascos. A true story, told by a former rookie cop. (14 minutes).For years I've wanted to embed selected segments from Ira Glass' remarkable NPR program This American Life, but have been recurrently stymied at my attempts to embed the scripts (I keep getting "cross-scripting errors"??).  Earlier this year, giving up on embedding,  I did link to the fascinating "Running After Antelope" story.Now I'll try another workaround, taking advantage of YouTube versions. At the top of this post is one of my all-time favorites - the well-known "Squirrel Cop" story - said to be true, but almost too perfect to be so.  And here below is a thought-provoking essay about flight vs. invisibility:John Hodgman conducts an informal survey in which he asks the age-old question: Which is better: The power of flight or the power of invisibility? He finds that how you answer tells a lot about what kind of person you are. And also, no matter which power people choose, they never use it to fight crime. (14 minutes)YouTube link. This American Life is so beautifully crafted that it seems a shame to distract from the audio with the visual elements.  Perhaps for newbies it would be best to start the video, then open another browser window to continue surfing while enjoying listening to the stories.

Since no one will ever post a better comment than this, we should probably just shut down the internet now and all go home.

Bud Light Presents… Real Men of Genius.

(~*Reeeal Mennn of Geniuuussss*~)

Today we salute you, Mr. Unappreciated and Uncredited Spotter Guy.

(~*Mr. Unappreciated and Uncredited Spotter Guy!*~)

Any 12 year old can put the crosshairs on the target. But YOU put the math on the crosshairs, and tell your buddy how to make the clicky adjustments of doom.

(~*Which cargo pocket did I put my TI-89 in?*~)

You do trigonometry in your sleep, calculate windage and distance just by feeling the wind on your eyeball, and routinely make the Coriolis Effect your bitch!

(~*Wicked windy, super far, a buncha mils, send it!”*~)

And do you get mentioned in a single article about the extreme-distance shots, or how hard it is to do ballistics math on a battlefield? Of course not.

(~*They all think “there’s an Aaaaapp for that”!*~)

So crack open an ice cold Bud Light, oh Sheldon Cooper of the infantry. Because why get all the girls, glory, and news attention, when you can carry the 1 for your buddy…

(~*Mr. Unappreciated and Uncredited Spottttter Guyyyyy!*~)

Quote by “Ace of Kings” on this Gizmodo article found via Gun Free Zone.

A scholar, a bald man, and a barber, travelling together, agreed each to watch four hours at night, in turn, for the sake of security. The barber’s lot came first, who shaved the scholar’s head when asleep, then awaked him when his turn came. The scholar scratching his head, and feeling it bald, exclaimed, ‘You wretch of a barber, you have waked the bald man instead of me!’

– The Town and Country Alamanac, 1799

“The world is filled with conflict and strife, but there is also bacon—so it kinda evens out.”

- Russ

* The North Pole
*  Panty Claus
* My Little Red Rider
* “The Package”
* Kris Dangle
*  Bowl Full of Sexy
*  St. Tickle-Us
* The Velvet Elf
* Cocoa Breath
* Triple-Ho
* Studs McSleigh
* Man Toy
* Mrs. Santa’s Workshop
* The Blizzard of Ahhhhs
* Naughty Bootz

The president’s deficit panel says the best way to cut the deficit is to curb increases in Social Security, cut defense spending and do away with a bunch of tax breaks currently in effect. That loud mooing sound is “When hell freezes over, pal!” in Sacred Cow.

Up in Alaska, they’re trying to decide whether write-in votes for Morkowski, Murkrowski, or Mascousci should count for Susan Murkowski. See, your second-grade teacher told you spelling would be important later in life.

A woman may have been fired for being “too sexy”.  We’re just glad people can’t be fired for being “not nearly sexy, like, at all.”

A drive-thru sex shop has opened in Alabama.  Pretty much everything is super-sized.

A girls’ soccer team has acted inappropriately in one of the first signs that soccer may finally be moving up to par with football.

Alcoholic energy drinks are being banned because folks who drink them are apparently too dumb to know you could get the same effect by alternating beers and cups of coffee.

Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert were the big winners in last night’s County Music Association Tribute to Plastic Surgery and Pitch Correction.

Hillary Clinton was kinda funny during a radio interview. On purpose.

Protesting at funerals may be banned.  May?  Might?  Could be?  Seriously?

* Conantown
* Suck It, Jay
* Conan’s Shore
* @#$! My Conan Says
* Mad-At-NBC Man
* Conan 4.0
* The DVRed From Last Night Show
* Andy’s Back … Again?
* Carrot Top’s Comeback
* The Andy Richter Show, Featuring Conan O’Brien
* Conan’s Revenge
* “O” (Already used for something.)
* Conan the O’Brienarian

Credit to Fake Science, via 22 Words.

“Life can sometimes seem pointless, like those tiny little pockets they sew on a baby’s outfit.” – Stephen

* Okrah
* Abcess Hollywood
* Fiends
* Diff’rent Smokes
* America’s Next Top Motel
* The X Films
* One Lay At a Time
* Big Bong Theory
* The Veal World
* The Amazing Rice
* Hippy Days
* One Tree Hell
* How I Bet Your Mother
* Prey’s Anatomy
* Smellville
* Dancing With The Stans

* “We need that bear to be more gender-neutral.”
* “I like how you drew the fart green.”
* “Can you photoshop the puppy to look more soulful?”
* “There’s glitter all over your face.”
* “Grandmas are not above fart jokes.”
* “Change the old lady to 17% more jiggy with it.”
* “Let’s put a hamster on the cover. Hamsters don’t alienate anyone.”
* “that penguin is supposed to look passionate, not horny.”
* “the kitty in this photo looks taxidermied.”
* “Shouldn’t the hamster be wearing pants?”
* “ferrets are out. meerkats are in.”
* “This is an emergency! Call the ‘hang in there’ kitty!”
* “This sounds too ‘greeting cardy,’ followed quickly by “this sounds too real, make it sound more ‘greeting cardy.’”

FRAMINGHAM, MA—With the back-to-school shopping season in full swing, office-supply chain Staples announced that it would be hiring thousands of additional sales personnel to mope uselessly around the store and sullenly count the hours until closing...

Fairy tales always start with “Once upon a time”, and programmers tales starts with “when I was at a client”…
Two days ago I was a client, and the discussion turned to bad code bases, as it often does. One story that I had hard time understanding was the Super If.
Basically, it looked like this:

I had a hard time accepting that someone could write an if condition that long. I kept assuming that they meant that the if statements were 50 lines long, but that wasn’t the case.
And then yesterday I had an even more horrifying story. A WCF service making a call to the database always timed out on the first request, but worked afterward. What would be your first suspicion? Mine was that it took time to establish the database connection, and that after the first call the connection resided in the connection pool.
They laughed at my naivety, for it wasn’t connecting to the database that caused the timeout, it was JITting the method that the WCF service ended up calling.
Yep, you got that right, JITting a single method (because the runtime only JIT a single method at a time). I had even harder time believing that, until they explained to me how that method was built:



Some interesting stats:
It had a Cyclomatic Complexity of either 4,000 or 8,000, the client couldn’t remember. The entire Rhino Mocks codebase fits in 13,000 LOC, so this single method could contain it several times over. But you know what the really scary part is?
I upgraded from Super If to Black Hole Methods, and I am afraid to see what happen today, because if I get something that top the Black Hole Method, I may have to hand back my keyboard and go raise olives.