A life in words

  • Dinner on 19 October 2009

    Tonight for my dinner group I cooked an assortment of dishes: 1. Greek-inspired beef. I bought several pounds of roast for something like 5 dollars, sliced it into long strips, and cooked it along with fresh parsley, tomatoes, fresh spinach, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, tomato paste, a little bit of hot hungarian paprika (which…

  • Real, or Ideal? OR What To Name A Post When No Cohesive Theme Binds It Together

    1. Academia Last night I went to the “Evening for New Graduate Students” at BYU (which was actually secretly or not-so-secretly open to all graduate students—note for next year 🙂 ). President Samuelson spoke first. During that short talk and during his devotional address on Tuesday, I had the feeling that I have really undervalued…

  • So Far, So Good

    Of course, having a good first day as a graduate student is bound to be a poor predictor of the whole graduate experience: everybody knows that nothing but syllabus-reading ever happens on the first day of class. Nevertheless I am glad to have had a good first day in the computer science MS program today.…

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776