December 2009
86 posts
Forums about Caml →
xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and... →
Excellent visualization of the relative sizes of the gravity wells of the planets.
http://www.lisperati.com/ →
Quirky, mostly Lisp, tutorials.
CLISP - an ANSI Common Lisp Implementation →
GNU’s CL.
lordverulam.org →
Fan page for Francis Bacon.
“Cruise control transfers regulation of your car’s speed to a computer. In some...”
– Book Review - History of Darpa - ‘The Department of Mad Scientists,’ by Michael Belfiore - Review - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
An insurance analyst should know better. No car manufacturer wants to make robotic cars. When you drive a car, you are liable for accidents. When a robot drives a car,...
“The good craftsman needs to avoid pursuing a problem relentlessly to the point...”
– On perfection / from a working library
“The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming...”
– The Destruction of Sennacherib, by Lord Byron
If you read this very sad, dramatic poem aloud tonight of all nights you may suddenly find yourself laughing.
Clement C. Moore ruined anapestic tetrameter.
“Those represent more than five or six sounds in English (consider the a’s in...”
– Difficult languages: Tongue twisters | The Economist
No, other languages do not vary more widely. English has almost the most complex system of vowel sounds of any language.
“After nearly a month of no progress, Derrick fired the Kerbleckistanian,...”
– Maybe I Needing Later - The Daily WTF
I guess they don’t teach eval() in Kerbleckistan.
I do admire that he took the time to comment his backdoor.
“Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Harvard University...”
– Laudator Temporis Acti: Docendo Discimus
Op-Ed Columnist - Heaven and Nature - NYTimes.com →
Dipshit op-ed about “American pantheism” that blames it all on Hollywood—omitting, say, Transcendentalism, and equating religion with post-Reformation Christianity. More proof that the ability to…
What Linux/Unix commands are outdated and have... →
Useful list of newer/better alternatives to common shell commands.
“And this is where Lisp comes in. Because Lisp, as a tool, is to the mind as the...”
– The Bipolar Lisp Programmer
Op-Ed Contributor - Clear-Cutting the Truth About... →
Confused article about forests as carbon sinks.
“Dickens can animate anything. Even an oyster opener: for what happens to oyster...”
– Adam Thirlwell (via ayjay)
“Prohibition movement runs into some difficulty in France. The Anti-Alcoholic...”
– News from 1930: Saturday, December 20, 1930: Dow 168.99 +2.28 (1.4%)
“Thanks to Alan Knell for an interesting email in response to Kingsley Amis on...”
– Laudator Temporis Acti: Parodies of Housman
Avatar Review
unsolicitedanalysis:
The raw material for 3D has been around forever, and the first thing that always comes to my mind is a plunger being thrust at me in some ridiculous “WHOA, WHOA” homage to the technology. There’s noise about expensive 3D televisions available to those of us with lots of disposable income, about how Blu Ray players could potentially store 3D content. It’s dry tinder for a...
The real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental...
symphonyno2ineminor:
- George Bernard Shaw, 1893
I’d buy a Brahms album entitled “Sentimental Voluptuary”.
“Not merely individuals, but communities and nations, put their cultural good...”
– Art as Experience, by John Dewey (via lethebashar)
As only an American could view it. Europeans, of course, built opera houses, galleries, and museums in order to house their “native and spontaneous culture”; later the culture changed and these buildings anchored the preservation of...
The Physics of Space Battles - Space battle -... →
Elaborate speculation on the design of space combat vehicles.
“Some people derive strength from knowing their symptoms aren’t their...”
– The Last Psychiatrist: When Therapy Won’t Work, Try Cymbalta. When Cymbalta Doesn’t Work, You’re Dead Meat
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Any chance Tumblr will expose tagging in the bookmarklet as they have for reblogs? I do love to tag but as things are I have to reach for the mouse to do it, which is just too much to expect.
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“I’ve been using the internet since before images were supported. I’ve been a...”
– Is Facebook unethical, clueless or unlucky? « The Jason Calacanis Weblog
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“If a man does not make new acquaintance as he advances through life, he will...”
– Samuel Johnson (via vanbuiten) (via my-ear-trumpet)
[Add a “samuel johnson” search to my dashboard? That’s a great idea.]
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“I used to resent the gaudy consumer orgy of Christmas… so calculated, so...”
– Austerity Christmas | Beyond The Beyond
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“The Visigoths vanished into the rising tides of French, Spanish and Moslem...”
– The Last of the Goths | Beyond The Beyond
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symphonyno2ineminor:
Of significant influence upon the teenage [Glenn] Gould were Artur Schnabel (Gould: “The piano was a means to an end for him, and the end was to approach Beethoven”); Rosalyn Tureck’s recordings of Bach (“upright, with a sense of repose and positiveness”); and Leopold Stokowski, about whom Gould would later write and produce Stokowski: A Portrait for Canadian Radio (CBC)....
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“If we choose to pry culture away from capitalism while the rest of life is still...”
– Jaron Lanier (I could extract this book all day) (via asphalteden) (via thisworldwemustleave)
“In short, encryption without authentication is not only useless against an...”
– Risks Digest 25.87 - comp.risks | Google Groups
“Or as blogger Jeff Jarvis posted, “For the FTC to go after bloggers and...”
– Gordon Crovitz: Bloggers Mugged by Regulators - WSJ.com
[Grow up.]
Sed - An Introduction and Tutorial →
Daily Meh: A dialogue. →
Euthyphro parody, with “good music” for “good” and “blogs” for “gods.”
“I have pointed out in the past that many great thinkers have their influence via...”
– Distilling Famous Thinkers, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
[There’s an apropos quote from Keynes that I can’t remember well enough to search for, about how what the man in the street considers common sense is actually the ideas of the last generation of...
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“Distillation works best in very exact sciences, such as physics and mathematics....”
– Marginal Revolution: Distilling famous thinkers
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“It is perhaps not so much that England transmitted something to Japan as that...”
– TIMEasia.com: Japan - As the World Sees It: 2001