It’s the last week of the month, so it’s time to condemn yet again!
What’s worthy? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious, and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You may condemn anything you like except for the Goths Up Trees photoblog, where I found this video about Goth-watching from a 90s Swedish comedy show.
I condemn the rain.
And I condemn the bad cold I’ve had for a week, which the ongoing rain decreases the chances of my losing before I’m due to fly north next week.
I want to condemn R, the open source stats package, unreservedly. It was running from midday yesterday, eating my computer, which was why I was free to comment here. By this morning it still hadn’t finished a relatively simple task on a relatively small data set (230 sequential model tests on 70,000 records), and it had actually stopped doing anything at all.
I’ve been struggling with R for weeks now – basically every single package I add to it seems to fail spectacularly, where it wouldn’t in Stata.
I know it’s got some nice features, but my god it’s an annoying package.
Just for good measure, I’ll extend that condemnation to open source software everywhere. I’m looking at you linux, you awesomely annoying pile of turds.
I condemn people who attempt to demonstrate their superior Australian patriotism by flying Chinese-made flags bearing the Union Jack from cars manufactured in Western Europe and East Asia.
I condemn the makers of Australia day flags who, not content with encouraging people to buy cheap Australian flags with which to display their jingoism, can’t even leave the bloody thing alone and have to design (and I use that word with hesitation – “spew forth” or similar would probably be better) a new “flag” with the words AUSSIE PRIDE in blue, red and stars. EWWWWWWWWWWW.
Now now, we already have an Australia Day thread! Don’t cross the
streamsthreads, please!I condemn the use of the incorrect term Union Jack in place of the correct Union Flag.
I think I’m going to have to condemn the Indian cricket team. They really have put in a very poor showing.
I’d like to condemn plastic stickers on fruit.
I condemn the ALP backroom for managing to reduce their majority from +2 to -1 overnight. Good work lads, I’m sure Abbott will send you are crate of chardy to cry into.
I condemn my poor spelling and grammar as well.
I condemn the people who take the plastic stickers off of the fruit and stick them to the nearest convenient thing.
I also condemn those people who didn’t take the trouble to read this web-page before they did whatever it was that they did with the blueish quadrilateral piece of fabric that they thought was such an important part of their activities yesterday — thus managing to defeat the entire purpose of what they were doing.
I condemn the online commentary about Julia Gillard’s cankles.
I condemn the Radio National for starting 2012 sounding even more like a commercial station than they did 2011.
I have nothing to condemn. So I condemn myself.
Eric, totally agree. Just now realised, much to my chagrin, Lucky Oceans slot at 2pm has vanished.
I condemn that ‘market innovation’ gadfly cavorting around the top floor big cheese chair at what was once the ABC.
Ootz, Lucky Oceans is still on, but only at 11:20 at night. I, too, condemn the ABC for removing it from the afternoon slot.
I condemn my shire council for potholes in local roads some of which now appear to have developed an independently menacing life of their own. Here is a typology of potholes: the Bellbird mine disaster rerun where entire villages disappear; the yawning canyon signified by total council inertia in the face of complaints made by people looking for their families; last, the overnight sensation which is usually found at the apex of a sweeping turn set on the crest of a hill right where the timber jinkers enter the road and it wasn’t there yesterday.
I condemn Andrew Bolt. Julia was monstered by the cops [redacted], not the protestors.
I will weigh in to condemn the late night gig they have dropped on unlucky Lucky at R.N.
Margaret Simons also gets an condemnatory gong for her fawning appraisal of Mark Scott and her failure to mention that his second term appointment came in the last minutes of the Howard controlled ABC Board.
Maurice Newman, before he departed as Board Chair, managed to continue a liberal chain that most surely should have been pulled. Minister Conroy, sadly, had no say in the matter of an appointment of Managing Director.
Lucky’s a musician, joe2. They always keep funny hours, and he used to be on at night as well anyway.
David, he has been shafted for Robbie Buck.
Well, yeah joe2, I condemn Robbie Buck (naturally). His show isn’t nearly as interesting as Lucky’s. I had the misfortune to hear some of it this afternoon in the car.
I condemn radio. There are better uses for electrical components in the modern world than delivering classical music (or Sandilands’ bile) to commuters!
I condemn SMH commentator Paul Sheehan. When will the SMH ever get rid of that nasty little man?
I’m sorry 23 but I have to condemn you broad condemnation of radio. I would have no issue if you had broadly condemned TV. Certainly much radio is worth of condemnation but surely not ABC local, national or classic fm.
I condemn people being allowed or encouraged to live in high risk flood and bushfire areas without properly protecting themselves or the wider community from the consequences/costs of said floods or bushfires.
Condemno the rain and relative lack-of-summer sunshine that has brought forth tomato vines of lush foliage and sparse fruit.
Condemno the lack of jokes about how much the late Kim Jong Il, in the right sunglasses, resembled the late Roy Orbison. Now it’s all too late.
Condemno soft-tissue damage. How can it be so debilitating when there’s no bones, ligaments or tendons involved?
Condemno our hypocritical legalisation of tobacco while taxing it to smithereens and making such an addictive and dangerous substance so widely available. It should be completely banned for commercial growth/sale, and only allowed as home-grown backyard crops for personal use. No tax, no legalised misery, and us addicts (myself included) would have to work for our fix…libertarians rejoice!
What! They got rid of Lucky Oceans? Nooooooooo!
What’s the condemned soft tissue damage, Merc?
I condemn broad condemnations. in this age of smart bombs and surgical strikes, condemnations should be precisely targeted. So I condemn myself, and also Salient Green.
Why have the surgeons gone on strike, faustusnotes?
I know this aint allowed, but I condemn the racing industry for putting the flag on racing colours, divvied out to the horses they felt most likely to succeed,that is beyond the pale.
And I condemn every employer who has whinged about penalty rates for the lowest paid workers in this country and I remind them that until the lying rodent ditched said penalty rates you all paid your workers extra for the shit shifts.Cause you had to, and you never professed that it would send you broke. But now it will??? Huhhh?
and faustus, when was a bomb ever intelligent?
Condemno Espanglish, Senor Merc
@33 condemno the decline of recognition of Latin…
faustusnotes – in a past life I was working in a group where we were successfully running sequential tests on rather larger datasets in R, maybe 10X larger. OTOH we had access to a couple of people who really understood memory management in R.
terangeree, something to do with the NHS.
Feral abacus, that task very much suits your name.
In my experience, a dataset 10x larger than the one I am using is tiny. I am running a function call like this: glm(outcome~(18 terms)^2). Then running the step function on the result. This should not require memory management in a modern computer, and it certainly wouldn’t if I were using a professionally developed package (I’ve seen much, much worse in SAS).
So, I left it running on a windows machine with 32gb RAM and 4 processors. Assuming that my attempts to turn off the auto-update worked, I’ll see if it produces a result by Monday.
On which topic: I condemn the auto-update vociferously and viciously. I worked with a woman in London who ran a Stata program that took (due to RAM requirements) TWO WEEKS to run. On a windows computer, what are the chances you can leave your machine running for two weeks without a restart? Fortunately, we remembered to turn off all updates (and power management) after 2 days.
faustusnotes – yes, I was wondering how many parameters you were trying to estimate, and that is an unseemly number. I don’t envy whoever gets the task of trying to interpret the results.
We were conducting ensemble modeling, so a much smaller number of parameters being estimated, with the estimates being obtained by 7 or 8 different methods, and then iterated many times so as to get a handle on various sources of model and data uncertainties (of which there were many).
Mr. Abacus: There is to be no interpretation. It’s not that sort of model. Were it the kind of work I do professionally, I would spit on any such suggestion and refuse to proceed. But it’s a mathematically and computationally tractable problem that R can’t handle. Which is condemnable.
I condemn my Satnav system. I wanted to go from lilyfield to epping. It took me to the Harbour bridge and whilst I was in the middle of the bridge suggested that I make a U turn.
I condemn the Humidity here in Melbourne, which has produced lush fungal growths on my tomatoes and zucchinis.
I condemn the makers of feminine day to day footware for not learning from Drs Hartnell and Troughton and their companions.
I condemn all the adults that have looked at me funny since my kids, 2 and 5, painted my toenails. I condemn myself for only having one scungy pair of sandals with which to show off said toenails.
@34
Mea culpa, mea culpa, Mercurius magister.
Pax vobiscum
I condemn dull-witted chess players who habitually bring out their queen too early, and then instead of developing, simply swan around all over the board with it, trying to poke you off balance. It’s not very hard to defend and counterattack, but it makes for a rather dull game.
Thought about you chaps since I saw in the news that Gillard was subjected to an unpleasant scrap, and I thought, Wow, thanks to LP I know a fair bit more about the PM than any other kid on my block!
Hope you’re all doing grand.
Merc — funny catch about Kim/Roy Orbison; even better is, if you saw Team America, Kim actually _sang_ like Roy, too. (And covered the same topics!)
Cheerio!
I condemn Radio National for dropping the National Interest by Peter Mares – he covered topics that the rest of the media totally ignored
I condemn unnecessary formality – we’re all amici around here.
Pax tecum is entirely appropriate.
but I called him magister
(entirely suitable since he had corrected me)
so the formality was invited by me
….. or he was referring to the Roman Mass, perhaps?
I condemn the lack of posts by Anna Winter