Lots of ~ma for Grace.

Much health~ma for Grace.

Surgery ~ma for Grace!

ION, this is cool:

Data mining the intellectual history of the human race with Google Book Search

Harvard's Jean-Baptiste Michel, Erez Lieberman Aiden and colleagues have been analyzing the huge corpus of literature that Google digitized in its Book Search program, and they're uncovering absolutely fascinating information about our cultural lives, the evolution of language, the secret history of the world, censorship and even public health. It's all written up in a (regwalled) paper in Science, "Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books":

When the team looked at the frequency of individual years, they found a consistent pattern. In their own words: "'1951' was rarely discussed until the years immediately preceding 1951. Its frequency soared in 1951, remained high for three years, and then underwent a rapid decay, dropping by half over the next fifteen years." But the shape of these graphs is changing. The peak gets higher with every year and we are forgetting our past with greater speed. The half-life of '1880' was 32 years, but that of '1973' was a mere 10 years.

The future, however, is becoming ever more easily ingrained. The team found that new technology permeates through our culture with growing speed. By scanning the corpus for 154 inventions created between 1800-1960, from microwave ovens to electroencephalographs, they found that more recent ones took far less time to become widely discussed.

eta: This io9 article has more detail: [link]

BUT STILL NICE

Thank you both!

(The guns were HARD)

The guns were awesome. I approve of the guns.

I need more caffeine. And to resist the urge to get back into bed.

My boss told us we could come in late today, and I think I'm still just the second one here...

Straight lines are hard, yo.

Why am I not working from home today? That seems like a miscalculation.

All good thoughts for Grace's surgery. May it be fast and with good results.

Hey Kat, do you have to work next week? just asking.

I am not working today. I think I have mentioned how I LOVE having Fridays off. As someone about to be really and truly fully unemployed, I should maybe be less excited.

In talking with my family the other night we realized that mac is getting no toys this Christmas aside from a couple of smallish lego things and a board game (and he doesn't really love board games). Since we all refuse to buy him games for the DS and I am not ready to bring another game console into the house, mom and dad are going to get him a skateboard. I have to meet mom at like 11 or so to go shopping for it.

ION, is it tacky that I have been buying things for myself as I do all my Christmas shopping? Here's why, mom and dad have bought me chairs, I chose them, they are awesome, but they are chairs and they won't under the tree or wrapped. My guess is that mac has either gotten me a DD gc or a gc for a massage, again, useful, appreciated, but you know. Brother will have more than one thing probably, but it shouldn't be much since he paid for the movers. So I bought a purse and some flannel pjs and some fun shoes for the spring. I want to wrap them up, but I think that will cross the line. I am not using any of them until after Christmas though, I really look at them as gifts, and none of them were more than $20.

I buy my own Christmas presents, especially small stocking stuff. Otherwise I wouldn't get any. I also end up buying things I need while Christmas shopping, because I don't shop that often, and while I'm at the mall, I might as well pick up some jeans. This is how I happened to go bra shopping on Black Friday.

ION, is it tacky that I have been buying things for myself as I do all my Christmas shopping?

Oh Msbelle, presents for myself is how I get through Xmas shopping. It does not help that everything is on sale right now. I am almost at a 1:1 ratio of presents to "presents for me."