2024.01.15
So for a long time I've had my personal avatar/mascot Alien Bill - here is the earliest known version of him (from an unsent note/letter in high school), the one I based my tattoo on:
The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called "model agnosticism" and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski, the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, "The map is not the territory." Alan Watts, a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as "The menu is not the meal."
If you suspect that the wobbly time-sense of Eire can be explained entirely as a manifestation of the calculated procrastination of colonial peoples, you are probably missing the complexity of the Gaelic mindset. One story tells of the two clocks in Padraic Pearse Station, Dublin, which, of course, being Irish clocks always disagree. An Englishman, this story claims, once commented loudly and angrily on how "typically Irish" it was to have two clocks in a train station that gave different times. "Ah, sure," a Dublin man replied, "if they agreed, one of them would be superfluous."
Mad magazine was right in claiming "the missing link between ape and civilized humanity is us."
Karma, in the original Buddhist scriptures, is a blind machine; in fact, it is functionally identical with the scientific concept of natural law. Sentimental ethical ideas about justice being built into the machine, so that those who do evil in one life are punished for it in another life, were added later by theologians reasoning from their own moralistic prejudices. Buddha simply indicated that all the cruelties and injustices of the past are still active: their effects are always being felt. Similarly, he explained, all the good of the past, all the kindness and patience and love of decent people is also still being felt.
I just mean that the world has begun to freak out a lot of ignorant people, and America has more ignorant people than any other industrial nation, because of certain differences between European and American capitalists.
In general, European capitalists usually have broad educations, keep up with artistic and cultural trends, have long accepted some degree of socialism as inevitable, and believe they can make bigger profits with very well educated workers who understand the science behind the technology they use. American capitalists usually have narrowly specialized educations, no interests beyond profit itself, fear that any degree of socialism will destroy them utterly, and believe they can make bigger profits with an ignorant and docile working class.
I am looking for a place
Where the horizon is all sky.
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair.
Me: my stomach hurts so bad
My brain: that's because you drank a giant glass of very strong iced coffee on an empty stomach then had African peanut chicken stew with extra hot sauce for lunch
Me: it's a mystery
I'm not a linguistic prescriptivist by any means but I am not at ease with "compute" as a noun - e.g. "more and cheaper compute means better AI". It seems to have sprung up fairly recency. I think it's supposed to sound smart.
2023.01.15
"In a nutshell, our theory is that consciousness developed as a memory system that is used by our unconscious brain to help us flexibly and creatively imagine the future and plan accordingly. What is completely new about this theory is that it suggests we don't perceive the world, make decisions, or perform actions directly. Instead, we do all these things unconsciously and then--about half a second later--consciously remember doing them.
2022.01.15
Interesting, tablet-oriented stylized sketch web program: minimator
2021.01.15
Scott told me
he never wrote anything
he wouldn't want
everyone to read.
What a good idea,
and that was way
before there was a web.
That was a quote from his page on the early web - early enough that my coworker David could get his first and last name .net: (via the wayback machine)
I was thinking of putting
some photos here
of my favorite
bike trails.
Wouldn't it be fun to be a bike cop?
You could ride around
with a badge and a gun,
busting punks and degenerates!
Scott told me
he never wrote anything
he wouldn't want
everyone to read.
What a good idea,
and that was way
before there was a web.
2020.01.15
When I am with him, smoking or talking quietly ahead, or whatever it may be, I see, beyond my own happiness and intimacy, occasional glimpses of the happiness of 1000s of others whose names I shall never hear, and know that there is a great unrecorded history.
2019.01.15
2018.01.15
Can someone point me to one that was funny or insightful?
2017.01.15
1. All these classical and jazz tapes I tried to convince myself I liked, because I thought A. that's what smart people like B. I am a very smart person. This really set back my appreciation of pop music, which seemed beneath a kid of my intellectual stature. (ahem)
2. But "Weird Al" was my gateway back to pop music, starting with his self titled album, back when it was all accordion. I think I had every song on that tape memorized. (Shout out to "Even Worse" as well.)
3. "License to Ill", Beastie Boys . This album was my anthem of young teen disenchantment, I remember sulking and listening to it on repeat in the back seat on headphones. Later in a bit of personal Christian revival I destroyed the tape. And then after I got it again, though maybe not until college?
4. "Christmas Rap", a holiday tape with a ton of artists. especially the crazy mechanical looping beat of Sweet Tee's "Let the Jinglebells Rock", it really stuck with me years later...
5. "Basin Street" by the Canadian Brass. I remember listening to this over and over while writing a nerdy paper on Charles Babbage in middle school. It's not bad, but kind of feels rather square to me now . Saw them in conert a few times.
6. "Chameleon" by Maynard Ferguson. This is literally one of the first three CDs I bought when my family finally got a CD player - and the screaming title song is super influential in honk bands, and a staple of JP Honk.
7. Dirty Dozen Brass Band "New Orleans Album". One of the other first 3 CDs I bought (the other was a Glen Miller tape). Of all ten albums on this list, maybe this one stands up the best from a sheer music standpoint.
8. "Soundtrack to the Blues Brothers". Man, every stage/jazz band kid in america wanted to be these guys. We tried to dress like them, a bit, in Euclid High School's "222nd Street Jazz" Now it seems a little white guy co-opting, but back then it was just so cool. Worked up a version of Peter Gunn JP Honk sometimes does.
9. Ugh, reaching here. PID (Preachers in Disguise)'s "Back to Back". Christian Hiphop. And what good white christian in the late 80s DIDN't try to rap? Again trying to find something in the faith I had here. (Similarly- One Bad Pig's "Smash", Christian Heavy Metal. I remember arguing with my cousin about if that term was a contradiction.)
10. "Dr. Demento Bootleg Mixtape" compiled either off the radio or off the albums by Thomas Shenk. Made for my dad when he was sick, I listened to it a lot.
BONUS: EMF's "Unbelievable" single. A few variants. It was instructive that people in the band room didn't want to hear Africa Bambaataa's "Hip Hop remix" - they wanted to hear what they liked. (Runner up in the 'random cd singles' category - U2's "Mysterious Ways"
I guess this is all "middle school and high school". In college I'd be able to add The Beatles (missed them somehow growing up), Paul Simon's stuff, Deee-Lite, Ani Difranco.
animals.alienbill.com - I de-adventized my collection of Ed Emberley inspired animal puppets, to make it a less seasonal showpiece.
You know how you *shouldn't* eat those hundred calorie snacks? Seven at a time.
2016.01.15
Slate on serious problems with student evaluations of teachers. Yeah, besides the gender bias pointed out here (which is a little weirder than the lede suggests) student evaluations of teachers were like Yelp before Yelp was Yelp; you praise teachers you like (or worry about), you rip into teachers especially when your grade wasn't what you hoped for/expected.
2015.01.15
Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.So by Venn diagram logic the former is "more probable" since it's a superset of the latter, but most people will say the second is more likely. The trouble is most people read in an implicit "and is not active in the feminist movement" after the first. (Or, more cynically, "is just a normal person"). So it IS revealing about our psychology, but more more so in terms of how actual humans tell stories about other humans vs how folks in the lab try to lay things out. It's sort of like how casinos and lotteries are artificial environments constructed outside the rules of the overwhelming bulk of the rest of our experience. And these chapters of the book are full of this self-congratulatory, look how broken we found people's analysis is. (And *sometimes* that breakage significant, but again, it says more about how we can be misled by the setup of stories. I think the chapters on "priming" are much scarier and prone to exploitation.)
Which is more probable?
Linda is a bank teller.
Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.
They follow up with this example of a bunch of dishware: Set A has like 8 good plates, 8 good bowls, 8 good dessert plates, 6 good cups and 2 broken ones, 1 good saucer and 7 broken ones. Set B just has 8 good plates, 8 good bowls, 8 good dessert plates. From the researchers point of view, OF COURSE Set A has more value, since unbroken dishes can only add value, not subtract. To anyone who has ever bought dishware at a garage sale, however... you know that the condition of some of the stuff tells a story about how the set as a whole has been treated.
The book ends chapters by expressing phrases of how they'd like to enhance people's ability to recognize fallacies etc, and they say how like "adding a cheap little gift to the whole package actually decreased the perceived value of the whole thing, in this case less would have been more". And THAT is a reasonable takeaway in a world that never gets away from imperfect information. And imperfect and asymmetric information is so often ignored in the setup of these clinical-ish problems that assume the God's Eye View of everything in the stories.
It's so much "First, Assume a Spherical Cow" style thinking. Yes, there are valuable things to be learned with that, but no, you can't get to the finish line with it.
On the one hand, maybe Obama shoulda been there, gesture-wise. On the other hand it was a big photo op, not a legitimate bit of international leadership. On the other other hand, what a security nightmare to have tried to do for reals.
Interesting - this Swedish "yes" vocalization (kind of a sip-py inhale) was my personal word for "juice" when I was a baby. A tongue click was my word for chocolate-- clearly I had my bases covered.
Man. Nothing has made me feel more like a toddler in a toy store than this article on new-ish features on CPUs in a while. Most coders have NO IDEA what's going on in them there chips, myself included.
Crap, false positives on Gmail's spam filters, from folks I'd corresponded with before. Worrisome.
GEEKNESS Wrapping my head around Grails. Wish the principle of DRY (dont repeat yourself) was matched by DASMS (dont assume so much sh...tuff. Shtuff.)
Seriously sometimes I think the balance between "conciseness" and "I actually feel I understand what is going on" is way the hell out of wack.
2014.01.15
See more map animals here
2013.01.15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Museum -- Warhol may well have put a crudely scribbled penis on the boon, making humanity's tradition of graffiti dicks interplanetary
Hard part in devops is make money from wheel after you are reinvent it.
I'm starting to suspect the abyss gazes into me no matter what I'm doing.
http://kirkdev.blogspot.com -- on my dev blog, a cool (albeit chrome only) way to ctrl-v paste images right into the browser -- really solved a problem for us.
from 22word's Scenes from the Inauguration Dress Rehersal:
2012.01.15
"Wow, 50 people are missing in an Italian cruise accident."
"Yeah, sounds horrendous, like a real life Titanic."
"...Titanic was real life."
"..."
On the day the world ends, be happy. If you accomplished a lot, you won the game. - If not, you bet on the right horse!
2011.01.15
I am part of Team "Left As An Exercise for the Reader" for the 2011 MIT Mystery Hunt. Here I am dressed as the Left Pong Bat in "Pong", who is in turn in a pirate costume (you can tell by my sword and how my Pong Ball is dressed up as a parrot. I am accompanied by Elaine who is dressed as the Sunflower from "Plants vs Zombies" who is in a pirate costume, you can tell by the eyepatch.
2010.01.15
| --Also from Cracked.com, The 5 Creepiest Unexplained Broadcasts. I just like the mix of Agitprop and Robots! |
http://www.glorioustrainwrecks.com/node/437 - WHAT'S EXCITING? WRITING 371 GAMES IN THE LAST WEEKEND OF FEB THAT'S EXCITING - JOIN IN!!!!!!!
Did that "txt HAITI to 90999 to donate $10" thing - man, that is a damn convenient way of doing charity...
http://www.leftasanexercise.com/ -my MIT Mystery Hunt Team... ohboyohboyohboy -- hard core makin' me feel so stupid! There goes the weekend-
In what are they created equal? Is it in size, strength, understanding, figure, moral or civil accomplishments, or situation of life? Every plough-man knows that they are not created equal in any of these. All men, it is true, are equally created, but what is this to the purpose? It certainly is no reason why the Americans should turn rebels.
2009.01.15
Open Photo Gallery
JZ is now getting into bowling. He actually bought his own ball. Here he is bowling it for only the second time ever. His ball has not one but two brands on it, "Hammer" ('cause it's heavy) and "Venom" ('cause it has 'bite', i.e. will curve on down the lane, or something.) That's pretty macho! Also, a nasty split there.
Had a drink with cmg at Teatro near Boston Common. It has the loveliest light on the ceiling...
For me, this is a very good visual metaphor for winter.
I'm kind of proud that this as cluttered as my desk gets at work these days. I was trying to figure out how to get the same minimalist vibe at home. I'm afraid the secret is "get rid of stuff!" but it's really tough to muster up the gumption to get that done.
KHAAAAAAAAN! ... Khan? ...khan.
Big Comedy from the accidental (but benign) "Reply to All", the "I think I got this accidentally", the "Please stop cc'ing all", the "OK"...
Today I got two "help wanted" type emails for techies, though that reminds me that before the holidays, there was more of a steady stream.
New Yorker article on the "Eureka" effect. Feynman like to ponder at topless bars?? Twitter helps me capture my own transient thoughts--FWIW
Concentration, it seems, comes with the hidden cost of diminished creativity.Implications for geeks? Or dot com playrooms?
2008.01.15
Ah well, this is New England in Winter. So Eden sank to slush / Snow covers all this day / Nothing gray can stay.
Blenderisms of the Moment
"Love has as few problems as a motorcar. The only problems are the driver, the passengers, and the road."
human hearts are composed of crushed stoneJust dug these lines for some reason.
and lusty cream
So I got the issue of the Blender of Love out, finally. Plus there's a new feature where people can go back and edit works after they've been submitted, a feature that was a LONG time coming.
2007.01.15
Software Toy of the Moment
Pictaps is amazing... make your own Parappa-the-Rapper style dancer. This monkey is my best one so far (I also did an Alien Bill)
So many great details, like how you can watch the creation being drawn in, or how the central dancer is surrounded my a giant crowd of clones... Make your own and post the # or link in the comments!
2006.01.15
How misguided is it that one of the big things attracting me to a job with travel, besides scouting out various regions, and having the experience of more client-facing work, is that I think I might get in some solid extra time to read? I just assembled a "remember to pack this list" on my Palm and while "swimming suit", "GPS" and even "laptop" had question marks after them, "books" did not.
And by the way: Merry Christmas, Broncos. Pats, five turnovers do not a returning champion make.
Music of the Moment
So years I got this CD Cra-a-zy Hits, a collection of 60s novelty songs. I think I wanted "Wipeout" for our new CD player, but far and away my favorite song on it now is Pigmeat Markham's "Here Comes The Judge"...
It's a very odd song. For one thing, it has a terrific funk groove that sill sounds good these days. But beyond that..it predates the mainstream appearance of Rap by like two decades but still has the exact cadence of early Hip Hop. And the whole thing carries an anti-Vietnam message, to go along side the bragadoccio, now-racist-sounding black types and corny knock-knock jokes....that Amazon link has a clip from it, it's worth checking out. But here's a big chunk of the lyrics:
Hear ye, hear ye!So final bit of Kirk trivia: Pigmeat Markham is probably most well known for the "Judge" routine on "Laugh-In", along with his catch phrase "You can look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls."...and my family had a set of Funk and Wagalls encyclopedias when I was growing up, so I will always have a soft place in my heart for that line...
This court is now in session!
His Honor, Judge Pigmeat Markham presidin'
Hear ye, hear ye, the court of swing
It's just about ready to do that thing
I don't want no tears, I don't want no lies
Above all, I don't want no alibis!
This Judge is hip, and that ain't all,
He'll give you time if you're big or small
All in line for this court is neat...Peace brother,
Here comes the Judge! Here comes the Judge!
Everybody knows that he is the judge!
Everybody near or far!
I'm goin' to Paris to stop this war!
All those kids gotta listen to me,
Because I am the judge and you can plainly see
I wanna big 'round table when I get there.
I won't sit down to one that's square
I wanna lay down the law, it better not budge,
I'll bust some head because I am the judge!
Here comes the Judge! Here comes the Judge!
Everybody knows that he is the judge!
[then the song breaks for some knock knock jokes...]
*knock knock* Judge: "Who's there?"
Guy: "Eyes"
Judge: "Eyes who?"
Guy:"Eyes yo' next door neighbor!
[wild laughter]
Judge: "Order in this courtroom! Order in this courtroom!"
Gal: "Judge, your Honorship, High sir...Did I hear you say order in the court?"
Judge: "Yes...I said order!"
Gal: "Well, I'll take two cans of beer, please."
He is the judge, he is the judge!
Everybody knows that he is the judge!
2005.01.15
BushlipsA kind of pun on "Bullshit" based on the President going back on that "Read My Lips No New Taxes" promise.
An unfortunate winner, according to the author of this Slate article but for some reason the term has been rattling around in my head ever since I read it. This year it's "Red/Blue/Purple States". Unfortunately, "Santorum", this year's "Most Outrageous" winner, isn't getting picked up by the coverage in the mainstream press. The article also linked to this New Word Blog...it looks like they're careful to report more on words found in the wild, not cutesy neologisms that no one uses, which are the staple of Wired's Jargon Watch feature, for example.
Quote of the Moment
"A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver"
2004.01.15
The speech accent archive is strangely compelling...hundreds of speakers of English, native and not, reading the same passage, with a sound clip and phonetic "ipa" transcription.
It's so odd how difficult it is to discern your own accent. Hey, Erin, or anyone whose crossed big accent lines--if you move someplace with a very strongly different accent than what you grew up with, like down south, do you stop hearing them as "accented" after a while?
Quote of the Moment
'You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?' Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.
Bumper Sticker of the Moment
|
Nietzsche apologized and we're having a fine time hanging up here. Get over it. --God |
2003.01.15
"[This news report about American military pilots being given amphetamines] gives a whole new meaning to 'Winning the war on drugs.'"Heheheheh.
Unfunny of the Moment
BoingBoing is in mourning over news of a Surpreme Court decision extending copyrights to 95 years for corporations (70 years after the death of the creator for other works.) The Constitution grants Congress the power to grant copyright for a "limited" time--the defintion of "limited time" will be "for as long as Disney has lobbyists". Trot out the usual (but somewhat justified) handwringing about how this stomps all over the concept of Public Domain (which most people really don't get anyway) and speculation about what this kind of thought would've done for Shakespeare et al.On the other hand...I dunno. The landscape is different with corporations about. Corporations are kind of scary, actually, yeah, they're "virtual people" but they're potentiall immortal...that's kind of trippy.
These problems aren't new though. Dickens had to fight pirate editions of his works...and Cervantes wrote part 2 of Don Quixote partially because of some unauthorized sequels that were gaining popularity. From that perspective, a certain amout of piracy is probably helpful to individual artists (at least in the long term) and to culture as a whole. On the other hand, it's probably good if it stays a bit at the fringes, other wise content producers do risk getting royally screwed, and thus less likely to produce interesting content.
Equation of the Moment
Happiness = P + (5*E) + (3*H) [...] "P stands for Personal Characteristics, including outlook on life, adaptability and resilience. E stands for Existence and relates to health, financial stability and friendships. And H represents Higher Order needs, and covers self-esteem, expectations, ambitions and sense of humour"
Quote of the Moment
The closer political metaphor [than 'regime change'] would be 'new blood'--and perhaps quite a bit of it.
2002.01.15
 virgin shark mary on the halfshell: coming soon to a yard near you? |
Quote of the Moment
"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."It's rather a zen point of view, come to think of, it the importance of living in the moment, appreciate what you're doing for the sake of doing it.
Useful Link of the Moment
A very convenient page of opt-outs for popup/under ads. (via webword)
2001.01.15
My girlfriend has a cold. She told me to get her a large caramel cider from starbucks (super tasty, like drinking a caramel apple) or if they didn't have that a chai latte. They were out of cider so I bring her back the chai. Half an hour later she says "Man, the trouble with being sick is that nothing tastes right. That cider was really weird."
I find coffee cups incredibly satisfying to doodle. I suggest you try it. They're easy and fun. I included one even though there wasn't actually any coffee in that story, they're that much fun.
Link of the Moment
I wish my website was as smart and funny as 15 Megabytes of Fame by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, and maybe with the same touch of wistfulness. It's updated every week. My friend Dylan told me to get her book The Book of Eleven. He said it was the funniest thing ever, and it wasn't, but it was funny, and I could really connect with the things she was saying. It's worth going to your local bookstore (Preferably not Barnes and Noble) and having them order it. Her site is so good that I'm tempted to start a 'best links' page just for sites like that.
Quote of the Moment
I don't like the idea of anybody getting killed, but especially me.
In America we really don't have a speed limit. Nobody knows what it is. Everybody drives in packs. If the lead car is going 85, by God, so be it. It's amazing when people go to work in the morning. It's like a gang in the Old West going to rob a bank: "Awright, we're a goin' inta town. We're all a gonna drive 75 miles an hour. They can't catch us all! Move 'em out!"
--http://www.bahnhof.se/~sk/Transportation/Car_Traffic.html
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Had a good talk with Mo the other night; when I'm interested in touch, I need to use my seductive skills. Despite my desire to sometimes just make blunt suggestions, I can see where that would be a good thing.
She also mentioned that her dad said he'd be willing to take the traditional "Bride's Dad shells out" role were Mo and I to tie the knot.
00-1-15
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My name is Leonardo
I am a retardo
I climb up the steeple
And spit on the people
And they say,
"Hello--
What's your name?"
My name is Leonardo...
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"They go in and out- nipples. Stylistically I mean... uh, and physically."
--Paul Morville on the relatively recent phenomenon of mannequins with nipples
98-1-15
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