Whew

The presentation went pretty well. Got compliments, got laffs at the right places, and some people came up to chat about my topic afterwards, so that's cool. (Even though one of the chatters referred to the whole database-driven, yea, even the whole computer-based research model as "all this foolishness". And this was someone my age! But it shows that even the skeptics are curious about my project, and that's good.)

As expected, most of the Q&A was answered by my boss, who has much better idea of the big*big*picture than I do. Now to start my week...

(no subject)

Since seeing Bowling for Columbine, my feelings about the typical Metro or Herald screaming-yellow headline has gone from annoyance to disgust and maybe even mild anger. Today's Herald has "SARS Death Toll Rises" across the entire front page, which, while technically true, deliberately inflates the terror angle to sell papers, and not caring about the memetic pollution they're generating as a consequence. (Out of context, this headline makes it sound like the SARS epidemic is spiraling out of control and is scything across humanity, when in fact it's so far being rather effectively contained, and may have even hit its peak; and a significant portion of the rising (but still relatively small) numbers are from China's government 'fessing up in fits and starts as to how long they've been harboring the disease and not telling anyone (including the Chinese people).)

I don't think that most media outlets do this sort of thing on purpose, but enough do it to upset me.

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Also someone ripped off all the Expo dry-erase markers from this office, leaving us only with Egan markers, which smell like butt. Rrrrr.