Dorkus Malorkus

toddler translator

2009-10-26T02:58:57Z

Melanie's been picking up some interesting vocabulary from daycare recently. By now we're used to her telling us "you're poopie!". The last week or so she's been telling us things like "I'm a good guy! Mommy's a bad guy!" Finally today she told me "Daddy's a super-fighter".......

Also, magical is apparently a synonym for sparkly. As in, "These stickers are VERY magical!"

crazy wife's web of lies

2009-07-08T04:46:24Z

Looking for apartments in Boston, LB and I have a deal-- she does the craigslist hunting and I do the footwork of visiting the places and choosing one or two, at which point she comes to give the final OK.

She somehow decided that using our real names on craigslist is a bad idea so she set up a fake email account using my real first name and a fake last name. I got a phone call from a broker she gave my number to while posing as me. He wanted to know what apartments the other brokers were showing us so we didn't waste his time double-dipping; I told him I totally understood and I'd email him the list (which actually, LB had). LB misunderstood and, using her fake email account that's supposed to be me, sent the broker back the list of apartments he himself had given us, which was useless.

So thanks to my wife's antics our broker thinks this person he's meeting in a few days named "Ian David" must be clinically retarded.

uh, actually its spelled "NUMB3RS"

2009-04-09T02:12:34Z

Ran across this ad while looking for jobs for mathematicians:

Mathematician 'Numbers (TV Show) guy'
at perceptu in United States — Apr 05, 2009 |

Overview
do we really need to tell you what it takes to be our Mathematician 'Numbers (TV Show) Guy'?
e-mail: joinus@perceptu.com

Responsibilities
Responsible for:
Developing/Improving algorithms
Natural language analysis
Automatic structure
Search algorithms
Schema analysis/detection
Develop/Build Virtual Economy
More...

Experience
reference the above

Skills
must be the 'Numbers (TV Show) Guy ;)

Education
hmmm...you tell us. (MS/PhD?)

Compensation
let's talk.
e-mail: joinus@perceptu.com

2012, the all-30-rock republican primary

2009-02-26T17:14:19Z

Why my wife hates me

2009-01-06T20:34:24Z

Mathematician is the #1 job based on combination of pay, hours, and work environment/stress. Physician ranked just below janitor.

The Fastidious Baby

2009-01-03T07:46:54Z

litlebanana is on call tonight. Melblogging duties will be filled in by mdorkus.

Lately Melanie's been really into cleanliness, which all in all is a good thing for a toddler to be into. Some examples from today:

This morning litlebanana's robe had a small stain on it. Melanie accusingly pointed and yelled, "Mess!" I showed her that, in fact, her own shirt had a rather large food stain on it as well. Melanie insisted her shirt be changed immediately.
While strapping her into her carseat Melanie informed me several times of the "mess!" some birds left on my car's window.
This evening after eating frozen blueberries, Melanie accidentally made a purple stain on the dishwasher. Before I knew what had even happened, she ran into the living room, grabbed a tissue, came back, and wiped it clean.

I knew dressing her in all those baby mops would pay off someday.

My father the PUMA

2008-11-24T21:07:03Z

My father just told me that Hillary shouldn't accept Secretary of State b/c it will make it much harder for her to run against Obama in 2012.

Obama baby mamas

2008-11-07T00:57:22Z

Lots of new babies named Barack, Obama, or Barack Obama. Also some Michelles.

mama voted for obama

2008-10-18T22:26:33Z

ummm

retro

2008-10-10T01:31:13Z

I'm calling it now

2008-09-28T06:27:19Z

Sarah Palin will find an excuse not to show up to her debate next week.

Call me "Slicer Mission Palin"

2008-09-17T07:37:27Z

The Sarah Palin baby name generator

a big picture to mess up your friends list

2008-08-06T06:13:48Z

random baby photo

2008-08-01T03:07:36Z

saw Batman today

2008-07-27T01:23:17Z

John McCain-- feminist hero

2008-06-28T06:49:12Z

Exhibit A: In 1998 at a Republican fund raiser John McCain told the following joke:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."

Chelsea was a teenager at the time.

Exhibit B: While McCain was a POW in Vietnam his wife Carol (a former model) faithfully waited for his return. During this time she had a car accident and had to use crutches, and wasn't as hot anymore. McCain returned, with his own health problems from being tortured for several years, and promptly started cheating on his wife with younger women, finally deciding to divorce her for the rich, young, hot Cindy he's now married to (17 years younger than him).

Exhibit C: In 1992 after losing his temper he called his current wife Cindy a cunt in front of reporters.

trollup

2008-06-19T07:54:25Z

this is based on a true story

Left Behind

2008-06-09T07:03:05Z

i'm reading through a liberal evangelical christian's ongoing scathing review of the left-behind series. every week he deconstructs a few pages of the book, so the review is long, but highly recommended. left behind is the insane fundamentalist belief that in the next few decades jesus will return and take good christians up to heaven and the antichrist will show up to torture everyone else and destroy the earth.

the book is marketed as a fictionalization of true biblical prophecies. it's sold millions of copies. based on the review it's also hilariously terrible in several different ways: filled with plot holes, misogyny, mysticism, antisemitism, and completely amoral heroes with names like buck, dirk, and steele.

some of my favorite parts of his review so far:

Steele's "libido" seems firmly in check. He keeps it -- like Hattie -- subservient to his need for emotional dominance. Throughout the book, Rayford keeps Hattie in her place -- waiting for signals from him, but always withholding those signals. The authors seem to regard this as a sign of Steele's virtue and self control, but it reads more like something deeply kinked and cruel. He gets off on this.

On the third page of the book we read:

He was no prude, but Rayford had never been unfaithful to Irene. He'd had plenty of opportunities. He had long felt guilty about a private necking session he enjoyed at a company Christmas party more than 12 years before. Irene had stayed home, uncomfortably past her ninth month carrying their surprise tagalong son, Ray Jr.

By this point, Rayford Steele's warped sexuality -- the book's primary theme thus far -- has become so blatant that one begins to hope the authors are attempting something more subtle and artful. Perhaps Steele is an antihero -- an unreliable narrator like something out of Nabakov? (The voice is not first person, but our omniscient narrator is, so far, focused on Steele's P.O.V.)

But little in the rest of the book supports such a view. The only unreliable narrators here are the authors themselves, apparently agreeing with Steele that his "private necking session" (who talks like this?) with a nameless, undescribed, inconsequential female does not constitute "unfaithfulness" to his pregnant wife.

LaHaye and Jenkins strayed from Rayford for a few pages there in order to introduce us to Buck Williams, and to provide a little more background. Through Buck's eyes, we learn that this story takes place in the proverbial "not-so-distant future," in a world very much like our own. Only a few, minor details have been fictionalized for the sake of the novel. I've noticed four so far in the book:

1. In Left Behind, our Newsweek magazine is replaced with its fictional counterpart, Global Weekly.

2. Rayford and Hattie work for a fictionalized American-based airline, called "Pan-Continental."

3. While in our world the Concorde has ceased making commercial flights, it's still flying in the pages of Left Behind.

4. There's a miracle formula that turns desert sand into fertile soil; the world's economy has been transformed so that agriculture is more lucrative than high-tech industry; Israel has made peace and lasting friendship with the Palestinians and all her Arab neighbors, who have happily ceded their territory and sovereignty; Russia has formed an alliance with Ethiopia -- now a feared nuclear power -- and launched tens of thousands of warheads at otherwise tranquil, peaceful Israel, but all of the missiles are destroyed harmlessly in a blatant act of divine intervention, providing such overwhelming, incontrovertible evidence of God's existence that everyone is forced to ignore it.

Left Behind has its own moral rules that function like the rules for slasher flicks that Jamie Kennedy's character outlines in Scream. By violating those rules, Smith dooms himself as surely as that teenager who says, "Don't believe those crazy stories. Let's sneak off into the woods and have sex."

Rayford's indignant response at the time makes it clear that LaHaye and Jenkins want readers to regard Smith's accepting of a ride as an unpardonable sin. "Rayford glared at him ... 'I should write you up for this.'"

But it's difficult to puzzle out exactly what Smith did that was so wrong. The airline sent a bus to pick up its flight crew and Smith was willing to accept this privilege. Steele later accepts special privileges afforded to pilots (a special phone line, a helicopter ride home). And Buck Williams, the book's other protagonist, regularly cuts in line and takes advantage of his status as a privileged customer and club member. The lesson, I suppose, is that our heroes are allowed to be selfish because they are our heroes. Other people, like Smith, are not.

So just like the peripheral characters who die for their "sins" in a slasher movie, we know that Chris Smith is doomed. The next time we see him we can expect he'll be dead, another bloodied corpse in the woods of Camp Crystal Lake.

Sure enough:

[Hattie] turned and spoke into his ear. "They wheeled him past us while I was going into the lounge. Blood all over! ... I think he was dead!"

Rayford shook his head. What next? "Did he get hit or something? Did that bus crash?" Wouldn't that be ironic!

Here again is the major theme of the book. "Bad people" break the rules and die horribly. "Good people" see this as poetic justice and enjoy a chuckle.

The helicopter pilot fills Steele in on all the amusing details: Smith arrived at the terminal and learned that "his boys had disappeared and his wife was killed in a wreck." In grief, loneliness and anguished despair, Smith slashed his wrists and died.

Isn't that ironic?!?

The remainder of the e-mail -- three pages long -- has nothing to do with the disappearance of more than a billion people, including every child and infant on the planet.

Instead, Plank speculates about what he sees as the really important stories -- stories about Jews, international bankers, the U.N. and international Jewish bankers at the U.N. Plank suspects that those Jewy Jews are up to something. He's not sure what it is, but his nose for news tells him that it's a bigger story than the anguish of every parent on earth. After all, these are Jews we're talking about, and if something Jewish is afoot, then he needs his best reporter on the job:

... Political editor wants to cover a Jewish Nationalist conference in Manhattan that has something to do with a new world order government. What they care about that, I don't know and the political editor doesn't either. Religion editor has something in my in box about a conference of Orthodox Jews also coming for a meeting. These are not just from Israel but apparently all over ...

Plank apparently believes that New York is a city of 10 million gentiles. I can't begin to describe how incoherent and bizarre the rest of this e-mail is:

... and they are no longer haggling over the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're still giddy over the destruction of Russia and her allies -- which I know you still think was supernatural, but hey, I love you anyway. Religion editor thinks they're looking for help in rebuilding the temple. That may be no big deal or have anything to do with anything other than the religion department ...

Because, you know, the destruction of one of Islam's holiest sites couldn't possibly have any political ramifications ...

... but I was struck by the timing -- with the other Jewish group meeting at pretty much the same time and at the same place about something entirely political. The other religious conference in town is among leaders of all the major religions, from the standard ones to the New Agers, also talking about a one-world religious order. They ought to get together with the Jewish Nationalists, huh? Need your brain on this. Don't know what to make of it, if anything.

There's no indication from Plank, or from LaHaye and Jenkins, that the chaos and mass disappearances might have altered the schedules of any of these upcoming conferences. Global gridlock and the closing of all airports couldn't possibly interfere with a meeting of the Parliament of World Religions. And while such conferences usually only merit passing mention in the paper -- perhaps a paragraph at the bottom of Peter Steinfels' Saturday column -- Plank views this meeting as rivaling the disappearances for the attention of his star reporter.

Buck Williams and the authors have been so busy checking his e-mail that they seem to have forgotten he has a gory wound on the back of his head from his odd and violent pratfall on the tarmac.

He'd better see a doctor. Maybe we could just have one wander by:

Buck kept pressing a handkerchief soaked with cold water onto the back of his head. His wound had stopped bleeding, but it stung. ... when he was tapped on the shoulder.

"I'm a doctor. Let me dress your wound."

Whew. That was convenient. What're the odds?

"Just let me do this, pal," the doctor says. "I'm going crazy here with nothing to do, and I have my bag."

You can understand why the doctor is getting antsy.

Nothing to do in the airport except to sit around in the "exclusive Pan-Con Club" and stare out the window watching the rescue workers and EMTs below scurry from plane crash to plane crash. It's kind of amusing for a while, seeing them set up a desperate triage there among the smoke and the broken bodies, separating the gravely wounded from those in need only of First Aid and those merely suffering from shock after the loss of their loved ones. But it gets old eventually, just sitting there, so what the heck -- why not patch up that rich guy's bleeding scalp over there?

The doctor is exactly like Dives, the rich man in the parable, ignoring the pain and need of the beggar Lazarus on his very doorstep (see Luke 16:19-31). But at least Dives did not complain of his boredom while feasting in his first-class travelers' club.

The doctor's boredom is monstrous. It is sociopathic. It is a violation of medical ethics, of the Hippocratic oath, of common decency, of the Golden Rule.

Yet LaHaye and Jenkins do not seem to intend us to view the doctor as monstrous. His behavior, after all, parallels that of Rayford Steele and Buck Williams -- our sympathetic heroes.

The authors, like all of their characters, seem to have forgotten entirely about the scene of tragedy and suffering they have just left behind them. It's out of sight and out of mind. For L&J -- as for Rayford, Buck and the doctor -- those other people and their suffering and need simply do not exist. Lazarus is invisible. Lazarus does not exist.

That's the central characteristic of the morality L&J are portraying. That is the morality they are teaching.

And that is the morality that 40 million earnest Christians are learning from these books.

Calculus

2008-06-07T06:20:31Z

Just finished proctoring the final exam for the calculus class I'm teaching this quarter. Per the honor code, we don't actually proctor so much as hang around nearby in our office, in case a student comes up with a question. Two hours into the test a girl from the class comes in the drop off her exam. She's nervously telling me how she thought she didn't do very well and was upset, so I suggested she take the remaining hour to try to improve her score. She gasps, her eyes wide with horror, as it suddenly dawns on her that it's a three hour test, not a two hour test. She hurries back to keep working.

With about ten minutes remaining the same girl comes by again.

her: Ok, I think I did everything I can but I still didn't do great on this test. Can you look it over and tell me how I did?

me: Well, it really depends on how the rest of the class does. Until all the grades are in I can't give you any real information.

her: Yeah but can you look it over and tell me what you think?

me: OK. Let's see.. [I go through her test and point out some mistakes she made here and there]. Well, I can't really tell you anything except that four students took the exam yesterday b/c of a scheduling conflict, and you did about average among them.

[she gasps, her eyes wide with horror]

her: I have a perfect homework grade and got [good grades] on my midterms. Do you think I can get an A in the class?

me: Well again I can't really say anything until I see how the rest of the class does. Four students isn't a representative sample.

her: Suppose I got average on this final what would my grade in the class be?

me: Uhh... I can't really say, I'd have to crunch the numbers.

(she looks expectantly at me)

me: ..maybe a B+ or A- ?

[she gasps, her eyes wide with horror]

me: Well, if you're on the borderline between two grades I'm willing to bump you up to the higher grade, since anyone can have one bad test. So if you're between a B+ and an A- I'll give you the A-.

her: And if I'm between A- and an A I get an A?

me: Uh.. yeah. [I have a hunch] Say, what major are you?

her: I'm a pre-med.

[hunch confirmed]

me: I understand. My wife is a doctor actually.

her: Oh really? Did she have trouble with calculus too?

me: Uh.. no. Actually she was really good in math. She was a math major in college. But, uh, she knows other doctors who had trouble with calculus.

her: Oh. So is it OK if I email you on Monday to find out my grade?

the next president of the united states

2008-06-05T04:14:32Z

also compare to the competition:

I dream of

2008-03-17T16:15:36Z

http://idreamofhillaryidreamofbarack.com/

pacifier

2008-03-07T05:27:44Z

Lip strummin'

2008-02-01T05:58:50Z

Melanie has been strumming her lips for a while now (not sure this is the right term, but I'm talking about when you move your finger back and forth over your lips while humming, making a repetitive noise, like in old looney tunes cartoons).

One cute thing she does is she lets us strum her lips for her. If we start off moving our fingers over her lips she knows to start making the noise to go with it.

But in the last month or so she's branched out to strumming our lips. She'll reach out and start plucking away at them. The best part is that if we don't start making the humming noise, she'll keep plucking our lip and start making the noise herself to prompt us until we do. She's a very demanding baby who doesn't take no for an answer.

The Gospel of Archie

2008-01-25T19:51:51Z

Archie Comics was drawn by a crazy fundie in the 60's, apparently.

i thought babies are supposed to sleep at night

2007-12-27T09:46:18Z

apparently not :(