February 2006

On the lottery.

February 28, 2006

Today, my roommate mentioned that he forgot to buy a lottery ticket. Apparently the jackpot, which is approaching $300 million, is now big enough to warrant his attention. Many people say that they’ll wait until the jackpot’s “big enough” before playing the lottery. Here’s what they mean, translated into economics: Multiply the lottery payout by [...]

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On teacher certification exams.

February 24, 2006

Most states require at least three tests to earn a teaching certificate: a basic test of English and mathematics, a subject area exam, and a professional teacher’s exam, such as Illinois’s Assessment of Professional Teaching (APT, which I’ll be taking in a few weeks) or Florida’s FTCE Professional Education Test (PET). In my humble estimation, the professional teacher’s [...]

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Washington’s Birthday.

February 20, 2006

It was so cold Friday night that I froze myself off. I did not freeze my butt off, my hands off, my feet off, or any other part of my anatomy off. I froze off. My whole entire self. The whole thing. That’s how cold it was. … The federal government calls the third Monday in February [...]

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Three matters of monumental unimportance.

February 16, 2006

I have discovered strange white lines on several of my shirts, and have not yet determined their origin. The lines are about an inch long and slightly faded. There are usually two of them, roughly parallel, though sometimes there’s just one. They appear in the same location on each affected shirt: where the right-side love [...]

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On Iran.

February 12, 2006

The CIA would probably love to have my friend “Nikita” working for them. She’s a workaholic, she’s cultured, sharp, very good with computers and systems-integration, and speaks Farsi (though I might be mistaken, it could be Arabic. I’ll get corrected or confirmed soon enough). As far as I know, she has no great love for the [...]

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“Don’t insult my intelligence, Kirk.”

February 6, 2006

Royal Caribbean International just commissioned a cruise liner weighing 220,000 gross registered tons, with a maximum capacity of 6,400 passengers, at a cost of $1.24 billion. That’ll make her the largest, most expensive cruise liner ever… and just to make sure that nothing good can possibly come of it, the ship’s code name is “Project Genesis.” [...]

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Remember kids, cutting yourselves is bad.

February 5, 2006

I read a startling article this morning, which pushed my planned article to the back burner. In April, the UK’s Royal College of Nurses will debate how best to treat self-mutilation or cutting. According to the article: “Patients who want to harm themselves could be given clean blades and advice on where to cut, under plans [...]

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