A Smart Human Being

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

Robert Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

Doctor's Appointment

Well, I just got back from another good karate workout :-) got practice on my kicks and punches and breathing and moving. The teacher today didn't even wear a uniform, which I thought was interesting.

I went to see a specialist this morning for my chronic back problems. I had to wait more than a half hour before he could see me. He did an exam on my body for reflex and flexibility and such, but he said in the end that I have one of those hard cases that isn't serious but is really hard to diagnose.

So he told me about a few treatments such as taking ibuprofin every day, or going to physical therapy, or having anesthetics and steroids injected into the "trigger points" where my problems are centered. I dunno if I'll want to do any of those. If I had money I'd start going to a chiropractor again, but alas, I am poor. But at least I have health insurance to take care of me for a lot of things :-)

"Meow? Meow-meow? PUUUURRRRR!!!!! PUURRRR!!!!!"
--Kitty

A Good Park

I've finally found it! It is exactly the kind of park that I want. It's Meadowbrook Park in Urbana, and it's really close to where I live :-) It has multiple paths, with a long nearly two mile circuit on the border.

It's a prairie restoration park, so the whole thing is covered in tall grasses and sprinkled with nice deciduous trees. One of the paths is a sculpture path, and there's also a wildflower walk. I think when it's a little warmer I will start running there. Since Rachel and I have always enjoyed walking together, I'm definitely going to take her here :-)

I woke up too late for the advanced karate class this morning, oh well. I played some Warcraft 3 instead.

Job Opening at UIUC Linguistics

So, yesterday I went to a really good talk given by Chung-chieh Shan from Harvard University Computer Science. He's a good guy and according to one professor gave one of the best Linguistics talks she'd ever seen.

Whoever fills this position for a Computational Semantics professor will probably end up being my advisor, so it's in my interest to see the candidates.

If you wanna see the project I'm currently working on, go here. I only work 10 hours a week, but it's fairly interesting work on automatically identifying and classifying proper nouns in text of various languages.