Bragging Thread January 2015

Pointed out to my boss that my new job responsibilities will mean I've dramatically underpaid compared to industry average. He went from "we see this as a role where you'll be learning a lot, so that's the extra compensation and there's no need to change the pay" to giving me a 20% raise. (Actually did this late December.)

My MSc thesis topic got approved. Nothing of interest to LW (EE, control systems engineering), but finishing it by the end of this year will allow me to get into a subsidised machine learning/big data PhD course.

Asimov’s Science Fiction has published one of my stories! "Red Legacy," on page 48 of the current issue. Details on how to get it at my blog if you're interested. I think it's a rational story, but I'm interested in opinions if anyone here ends up reading it.

Discover and subscribe to lesswrong.com. Read about cognitive biases, heuristics, and critical thinking. Learn about and identify fallacies and false or bad arguments in general.

The only thing is that now that it is more visible for me how corporations, the media, and politicians are so blatantly dishonest I am even more frustrated!

I bought spores of Ceratopteris richardsii, which if I will be able to grow, might become the most researchable plant among all species our Department works with. Who knows, we may even enter the international community, win grants and publish papers in serious journals... Sorry, I'm posting this mostly to have some warm feeling to counteract the cost of delivery to Ukraine. Still, it's a start, isn't it?..

Not much, but I have finally (a decade too late) properly understood and hopefully internalized that Penrose diagrams show only a/the rotation axis.

Is it allowed to talk about what you have done in january 2015 even if it is no longer january 2015, or should I wait for another bragging thread and tell about what i did in january 2015? This thread seems kinda dead :D

Improved the speed of some code by at least 1 to two orders of magnitude by moving all the disk IO that happened while crunching numbers to RAM. The code is run at least 30,000 times a day and is part of a set of steps that can end with my company sending an urgent text message to first responders (e.g. firemen, police chiefs, etc.).

(Retracted--wrong month!)

I guess there some questions about my brag, which I can't reply to. So I'll just do that here.

If most people are captivated by an idea, which was technically falsified many dozens of times over the decades and for which there is no technology or practical application, and I realize it's all wrong, then that deserves a brag.

Some folks here think its silly the Earth could have been formed in 6 days. But inflationary theories say the great structure of the universe was made in a fraction of a second. Surely somebody realizes that's a mistake.

The CMB has major anomalies that now cast the entire theory in doubt (to anyone willing to question it), the observations of mature galaxies at great distances, there is literally nothing the Big Bang gets right as of 2015.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141030101241.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141119084506.htm http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26272-cosmic-inflation-is-dead-long-live-cosmic-inflation.html#.VFyIwFS9-k0 http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/7528/20140611/galaxy-formation-theories-undermined-dwarf-galaxies.htm http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/spitzer/splash-project-dives-deep-for-galaxies/#.VBxS4o938jg http://sci.esa.int/planck/51559-hemispheric-asymmetry-and-cold-spot-in-the-cosmic-microwave-background/ http://mq.edu.au/newsroom/2014/03/11/granny-galaxies-discovered-in-the-early-universe/ http://carnegiescience.edu/news/some_galaxies_early_universe_grew_quickly

I can't believe any person actually believes the Big Bang happened.

I do believe, people think that rational is some kind of synonym for logical. Which is sad.