Misc

For some time now I’ve been posting links I find interesting at hecker.tumblr.com. This is mainly for personal reference, but I thought it might be useful to collect those every week or two in case anyone else is interested. Some of these inspire blog posts, others I use as reference for various projects. This week was a political philosophy week. “Occupy Wall Street, Social Unrest and Income Inequality” This is an interesting riff on John Rawls and the “veil of ignorance,” starting with the following assumption that “[absent] a policy of income redistribution, capitalism plus stability leads to income disparities.” I wrote a blog post based on this. ...

It’s now been five months since I started the Newt Gingrich weight loss program, and I’m overdue for another report. (I forgot and didn’t post the month 4 update in time, and by the time I remembered to do so it was far enough past the due date that I decided just to skip month 4 and do the month 5 post instead.) Unfortunately at the moment I’m doing about as well as Newt’s campaign, which is to say not that well: I weighed in this morning at 70.8 kg, which is 0.8 kg over my final goal weight of 70.0 kg. So I screwed up my courage just now and went to Newt’s site to make a donation; if you’re the sort of person who likes to read FEC reports then you’ll see my name there in future. ...

A continuation of my history of Howard County Council redistricting series is coming soon (I promise! really!), but after an evening at the HoCo Blogtail party I’m not in any shape to do any serious historical blogging (even one blogtail will do that to you). I thought I’d use the opportunity instead to plug my other blog math.hecker.org, on which I publish worked out exercises from my attempt to relearn various branches of mathematics. I’m starting with linear algebra, a field of study that isn’t as well known as calculus but in some ways is even more important as a basis for a lot of real-life applications. ...

I’m now at the three month mark in the Newt Gingrich weight loss program, and it’s time for another progress report. Just as Newt feels “liberated” by the resignation of many of his campaign staffers, I myself again feel liberated from having to carry around excess weight: I weighed in this morning at 70.0 kg, 1.6 kg less than my weight a month ago, 5.0 kg below my official starting weight of 75.0 kg, and right at my goal weight. That’s one more month I can spend $10 on myself and not on Newt. ...

It’s now two months since I started the Newt Gingrich weight loss program, and time for another progress report. The stakes are higher now that Gingrich has officially announced he’s running for president. Fortunately I was able to meet this month’s goal, as I weighed in this morning1 at 71.6 kg, 1.3 kg less than my weight a month ago, 3.4 kg below my official starting weight of 75.0 kg, and 1.6 kg away from my goal weight of 70.0 kg. Once again I can keep $10 in my pocket and out of Newt’s. ...