I previously warned in this open letter, "[c]ontrary to popular belief, koala bears are nasty creatures that hate humans. Through millions of years of evolution, they have evolved an interesting tactic of luring prey close to them by being unbearably cute. Do not fall for this. They will eat your face."
Well. Game. Set. Match. One of these little fuzzballs was finally caught just before pouncing on a delicious face dinner.
Watch ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!!!
....how small does your eco-penis have to be to buy a 863hp hybrid car?
I truly, madly and deeply love Microsoft's Excel. Over the years I've learned that the program is more than just an excellent tool for generating quantitative answers - reflected upon in the abstract - it is also an excellent life coach.
The Problem - Mainly, trying to convert dates in excel to the format YYYY.QQ, where QQ is a decimal point equivalent of quarters (e.g., 1Q 2012 would be 2012.25, 2Q 2012 would be 2012.25, etc). Additional constraints included showing only the earliest of five dates and also having logic whereby if a certain condition was met forcing the entire solution to zero.
The Solution: -
=YEAR(MIN(INDEX(Control!$X$138:$X$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$AT$138:$AT$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$BP$138:$BP$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$CL$138:$CL$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$DH$138:$DH$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1)))+INDEX(Names!F11:F22,MATCH(MONTH(MIN(INDEX(Control!$X$138:$X$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$AT$138:$AT$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$BP$138:$BP$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$CL$138:$CL$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$DH$138:$DH$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1))),Names!E11:E22,0))-IF(revenue_eu5_pop1*(24)>0,0,YEAR(MIN(INDEX(Control!$X$138:$X$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$AT$138:$AT$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$BP$138:$BP$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$CL$138:$CL$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$DH$138:$DH$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1)))+INDEX(Names!F11:F22,MATCH(MONTH(MIN(INDEX(Control!$X$138:$X$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$AT$138:$AT$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$BP$138:$BP$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$CL$138:$CL$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1),INDEX(Control!$DH$138:$DH$143,MATCH(asset,Control!$A$138:$A$143,0),1))),Names!E11:E22,0)))
The Lesson: For life's simple problems, there always exists a path to the correct solution that is complex, convoluted and inefficient. Avoid this path.
Hadn't listened to a complete album from The Beatles in years. I've crushed four in the last couple hours and it's pretty clear to me that the thing about the The Beatles is that they are really very good — in spite of all the people who say they are very good.
Before...
After...
Chief among the admittedly cornucopia of things I fail to understand despite years of math and scientific study is quantum mechanics. A news story today added a confirmatory check mark next to my complete ignorance of the subject. Apparently, and in completely contrast to everything I've ever learned about temperature, there is a temperature below zero degree Kelvin. And it's infinitely hot. But I digress.
I had always understood the absolute temperature of a gas to be related to the average energy of its particles and therefore, absolute zero corresponds to the theoretical state in which particles have no energy at all, and higher temperatures correspond to higher average energies. In general, most particles are close to the average.
Fig 1. Boltzmann distribution diagrams
This is false.
Without trying to actually explain what the hell is going on here (see first paragraph about the contents of the cornucopia), from what I can gather, by using lasers and magnetic fields, the Magicians (as I'm calling them now) kept the individual atoms in a lattice arrangement. At positive temperatures (albeit a few nanokelvin above zero), the atoms repelled each other and the configuration was stable. Then, the team then quickly adjusted the magnetic fields, causing the atoms to attract rather than repel each other. This shift in magnetic field really pisses off the atoms and they suddenly shifted from their most stable, lowest-energy state to the highest possible energy state before they reacted. Then they held them there. Bada bing. Bada boom. Negative temperatures.
Did I lose you there? Did you not adequately connect the dots based on my description? Yeah, well, me either. The take home message is that physics is magic and you should eat more spinach.
I came across this description of procrastination in a reading and thought it was worth keeping.
Imagine you have two days to write a paper. You believe it will take about six hours. To avoid being rushed, you decide to get to work. . . . Now suppose you had to decide what to do for the next five minutes—either work on the paper or play one game of pinball . . . . In the short run, five minutes of pinball is far more pleasurable than five minutes of paper writing, and after all, how much of a paper can you do in five minutes? Pinball is the obvious choice. The game is over so you must decide about the next five minutes. The situation is only trivially changed, so you will reach the same result. Once . . . you’ve fragmented your night into fiveminute intervals, you may be doomed to play until you run out of money,the machine breaks, or someone meaner than you wants to play. . . .One of the ways of being irrational and procrastinating is to act on rational calculations for intervals that are irrationally short.
JOHN SABINI & MAURY SILVER, MORALITIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE 133 (1982)
To Whom It May Concern,
You’re welcome in advance for the advice I’m about to dispense. Undoubtedly, it will save you many hours trying to “figure things out” on your own and will likely save your life at least twice. I’ve boiled everything you need to know about visiting Australia into four key points:
1.) Everything there can and will kill you (e.g., sharks, spiders, snakes, scorpions, rays, dingos, children, etc).
2.) 18+ hours is a long time to be on a plane. I would suggest push ups and other calisthenics (for a whole hour) alternating ever other hour that isn’t a prime number, to prevent deep vein thrombosis. Also, as much Aspirin as you can fit in your mouth at one time.
3.) Contrary to popular belief, koala bears are nasty creatures that hate humans. Through millions of years of evolution, they have evolved an interesting tactic of luring prey close to them by being unbearably cute. Do not fall for this. They will eat your face.
4.) Kangaroos love to be ridden. They consider it rude NOT to ride them.
Again, you’re welcome.
Pugnaciously,
Eben
Gather round, ye band of merry men. I'd like you to imagine the following:
Imagine yourself standing in the doorway between your kitchen and the living room but facing the kitchen (I am making a large assumption here about the layout of your house. Semantics, I assure you).
Now imagine you are holding - with both hands - a soft plastic 1 liter water bottle with squirt nozzle, filled with extra-dark chocolate milk. Still with me? Good.
I'd now like you to think about performing the following procedure:
What a mess, right? Finally, imagine you standing outside your house/apartment/condo and walking in to this mess de novo with an additional three pieces of information:
The next time you think you've had a bad Monday, remember this and buy me a beer.
The song is melodic. Similar to what I belive the Rolling Stones would have sounded like had they done twice the weed and half the cocaine. The guitar work is stellar and, best of all, is performed by a guy named Ry Cooder. It might be my favorite name of all time. Ry Cooder. Say it with me.
Click the link below to listen to Boomer's Story by Ry Cooder on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/track/6Sn2MliuenXMplGhO1UtQF
@VertexPharma is a great place to work. And now thanks to our new Code of Conduct guidelines, I'm obligated to disclaim my opinion. My views do not necessarily reflect those of the company. They may think it's a terrible place to work. Thank you. (Code of Conduct, Adopted May 12, 2011, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc, p.14-15)
Tangentially, I wonder if citing the Code of Conduct recursively violates the Code of Conduct rule on page 10 about disclosing confidential information (re: the Code of Conduct itself)?
I don't condone torture. Well, mostly.
