Ut maxime fruaris, noli stulte agere

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 06:02:54 GMT

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque
et quantum est hominum venustiorum:
Lingua mortua maxime latina est.
Quae necavit Romanos nunc necat me.

They might be... zippers?

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:48:48 GMT

In the afterlife
You could be headed for the serious strife
Now you wear the gold lame
But tomorrow there'll be purple toupee

People listen to a story from camp
I mean about some Selma tramp
I used to wonder LBJ what was for
But it turned out he could wax the floor

When you feel down
It'll turn your brain around
Now you wear the gold lame
But tomorrow there'll be purple toupee

This was a place where books were kept
A gun was fired, and a Cuban wept
There was another item in this list
But if I mumble it'll never be missed

When you feel down
It'll turn your brain around
Now you make the scene all day
But tomorrow there'll be hell to pay

Hell to pay!

(Tune change)

Hell to pay!

Hell to pay on the last day when teeth and bones are ground
Hell to pay when cakes are passed around
Hell to pay and skin to flay will crush your fortunes down
Hell to pay and skin to flay

Hell to pay and you're there to stay
Your beauty and talent have gone away
Fame and money have left you in the grave

(Instrumental)

We're on some kind of mission
We can spell damnation
You're gonna have to pay

Fri, 09 May 2008 04:03:59 GMT

But soft, what light,
its hour come round at last, slouches
through yonder window
to be born?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:07:56 GMT

This year, at the Red Sox home opener, the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by Bill Buckner. Dwight Evans, having caught the pitch (for a strike), nearly rolled the ball back to the mound for Buckner to keep as a souvenir, but thought better of it and handed it to him instead as they walked off the field.

Note to Claude Julien: you've just barely gotten an underdog Boston team into the playoffs, and despite falling behind early in the series, managed to get to Game 7. There's a reasonable chance that you'll find yourself ahead in 2/3 of the way through the game. If so, you must, no matter how much confidence you have in him, follow this simple rule, which fans would never forgive you for ignoring: don't let Pedro play when he's tired.

In response to David Ortiz's grand slam on Friday, the Yankees have decided not to auction off the jersey they dug out of the new Yankee Stadium, but instead to put it back before July 3rd, when they next play the Red Sox.

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:09:28 GMT

If you don't want git operations to take 10 seconds each, don't configure your system to do this:

10:55:34 sendto(3, "\307\304\1\0\0\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\ttimesink\n\5svana
\3net"..., 37, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 37 <0.000159>
10:55:34 poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, 5000) = 0 <4.995564>
10:55:39 poll([{fd=3, events=POLLOUT, revents=POLLOUT}], 1, 0) = 1
<0.000098>
10:55:39 sendto(3, "\307\304\1\0\0\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\ttimesink\n\5svana
\3net"..., 37, MSG_NOSIGNAL, NULL, 0) = 37 <0.000130>
10:55:39 poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}], 1, 5000) = 0 <4.999161>
10:55:44 close(3)                       = 0 <0.000111>
10:55:44 open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY) = 3 <0.000066>

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 07:49:19 GMT

Time flies when your clock knows about DST starting.

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:55:40 GMT

kesh
n. one of a set of equal and incompatible options, such that (if there is more than one) exactly one must be chosen arbitrarily. It is generally fine to have a problem with a single kesh, but a problem which gets two (or more) keshes is known as a bikeshed problem, and people will argue pointlessly about it forever.

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:10:24 GMT

I just now laid down (post-postscript) A Void (translation by Adair of La Disparition), of which I want to put a scan, ironically, on that Asus laptop running Linux known primarily to Slashdot sorts (ask Yahoo if you don't know which). If you wish to borrow it (my copy of that book, not a laptop), a post such as this fittingly informs you of its availability (viz, I now click "Post to journal").

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 20:47:32 GMT

I left my previous job at the end of the year, and I've been making
prodigious progress on various of my projects, but it's getting to be
time to be employed again, so I'm looking for my next job. Anybody got
jobs they'd like to refer me for? My resume is here.

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:02:23 GMT

If ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and ontology recapitulates philology, what does oncology recapitulate?

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 20:41:46 GMT

Dreidel dreidel dreidel
I painted it with lead
And when it's dry and ready
My Wii I'll play instead

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:20:57 GMT

Bush vetoes $23-billion water bill

DC Water and Sewer Authority is expected to override the president next week in a bipartisan vote.

The GAO is expected to investigate how the White House managed to use 8.4 trillion gallons of tap water in the past 4 months.

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:15:41 GMT

I want there to be a movie in which, when the hacker has to break into somebody's special-purpose computer account and there's a password that just magically works the first time with no difficulty or social engineering or inside knowledge of the system, the hacker's handle is Gold-(something), and there's a scene in which the camera is positioned correctly to shoulder-surf, and you can make out that the password starts "d'Or True".

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 05:55:21 GMT

((λf.((λx.(f (x x))) (λx.(f (x x))))) ♥)=?

E⟦(lambda (x) ♥)⟧=?

(λek.E⟦x⟧ [x:♥]e k)=?

((lambda (x) (if x #t #f)) ♥)=?

((lambda (x) x) ♥)=?

My normal approach is also useless here.

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:42:49 GMT

I'm still trying to find a datasheet for this Analog Devices part. I'd be grateful if somebody could find one.

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 02:33:26 GMT

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:00:31 GMT

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:32:10 GMT

610 physicists at Fermilab today submitted a paper reporting the discovery of the Ξ^-_b particle.

A fraction of a second after this paper was written, it split into an administrative form called a WC329 and a smaller, 108-author paper entitled "Reconstructing evidence of the strange-b-baryon". The WC329 then split into a pair of grant proposals, cousins of ordinary funding requests. "Reconstructing evidence of the strange-b-baryon" then emitted a Ph.D. thesis and became a 23-author paper which was nearly published before it decayed into another Ph.D thesis and an ordinary 4-author paper.

Researchers at arxiv were able to reconstruct the form of the original paper by analyzing hundreds of thousands of "personal communication" and "in press" citations by physicists distributed around the field.

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 01:20:08 GMT

Hallway

You are in the main hallway of your office building. To the north are
the offices. To the south is the lobby. The elevators are east and
west. The elevator doors are closed.

A zombie shambles slowly towards you from the offices.

> PRESS BUTTON
The button lights up, but the elevator is heading upstairs, and won't
be back for a while.

The zombie shambles closer.

> EXAMINE ZOMBIE
This zombie seems to be your son. Tragic, but you saw him killed a
moment ago, so not too surprising at this point.

The zombie shambles closer. You might want to get out of reach soon.

> SOUTH

Lobby

You are in the lobby of your office building. The offices are to the
north, past the elevators. To the south is the exit door. For some
reason, security has seen fit to lock you in. This may be due to the
fact that the building is swarming with zombies. Next to the door is a
numeric keypad.

> TYPE CODE INTO KEYPAD
You'd think they'd have given you the code to your own building so you
could get out, but that would be too easy.

> BREAK DOOR
Violence isn't the answer to this one.

A zombie shambles slowly towards you from the north.

> NORTH
The zombie may move slowly, but there isn't enough room at the end of
the hall to dodge around it.

The zombie shambles closer.

> NORTH
There's enough room to pass the zombie now, but you can see more
zombies going by at the other end of the hall. Getting caught between
them in the narrow hallway would be far worse than trying to dodge
around in the lobby.

The zombie shambles closer.

> KILL ZOMBIE
There is no effect, since the zombie is already dead.

The zombie shambles closer. You might want to get out of reach soon.

> DODGE ZOMBIE
This works only well enough to make you realize that it's only a
matter of time before you're caught.

The zombie shambles closer.

> SHOOT ZOMBIE
Too bad you're unarmed and empty-handed.

The zombie shambles closer. It'll get you in a moment.

> WAIT
Your zombie child gives you an exit code and disappears.

>

Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:53:48 GMT

(photo Leonard Woolley, 1930)

Fri, 01 Jun 2007 18:03:12 GMT

The US now has a fiat currency, which means that for every $20,000 in circulation, in Fort Knox there is a Fiat Stilo. This system replaced the gold standard, which fewer people knew how to drive.

Fri, 04 May 2007 22:54:01 GMT

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0? That's amazing! I've got the same combination on my luggage!

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 02:50:31 GMT

So a grasshopper walks into the Capitol Building...

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 03:15:54 GMT

Foolish hobgoblin! Consistency is for small minds!

"I get stranger things than you in my breakfast cereal."
"I get my breakfast cereal in stranger things than you."

"Open the pod bay doors, Hal."
"I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that."
"What's the problem?
"I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."
"What are you-- oh, duh. sudo open the pod bay doors, Hal."
"Okay."

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 04:32:47 GMT

Notes on "since feeling is continuous"

First, with line numbers:

   since feeling is continuous
   who pays attention to the countability of sets
   will never wholly kiss you;
   wholly to place foolishness 
 5 in correspondence with a finite Season.

   my blood approves,
   and kisses are a better fate
   than monotony
   lady i swear by untallied kisses. Don't cry
10 --the best advice of disapproving old men let us value
   as one involuntary impulse which says

   we are one-to-one and onto: then
   laugh, leaning back in my arms
   for death's one left square bracket

15 And life i think is space-filling

References:
e e cummings Catullus

But I think lines 2 and 3 of the Catullus should be translated:

and the gossip of disapproving old men
all together let us value as one penny

(since that's the order of lines in the original).

The usual interpretation of the original is a warning against overanalyzing things, and various people have argued with this position (e.g., Geoffrey Pullum). I suspect, however, that Cummings really meant it as a warning against conformity; he was clearly not ignorant of grammar, but would rather violate it in quite specialized ways.

Notes:
1-3: Continuous, in set theory, refers to a set like the real numbers rather than the whole numbers, where (intuitively) there aren't any gaps in between the members of the set (formally, limits of bounded sequences are in the set). Such a set is uncountable, which is to say that, no matter how you order the elements, there is some element that's missing from your order; even if you were to go through the list forever, there are elements you wouldn't get to. Which is to say that even an infinite number of kisses would be insufficient to "wholly kiss you"; there's always more "kiss you" to do.
4-5: likewise, being a fool. The standard technique for comparing the sizes of sets A and B is to try to make a list of pairs "a: b", and see if you can give a rule for making this correspondence such that every "a" has a different "b". If so, A is no larger than B (lots of sets are the same size). There's more "to be a fool" than "Spring".
8: 85% of the time I spent working on this poem was trying to find a word for "the state of having nothing interesting to talk about at parties".
9: Now we have Catullus. As I was working on this, I kept finding Catullus 5 relevant. The second half of that poem is about exchanging so many kisses that you can't count them, even though you're trying, and nobody else can figure out how many kisses there were, either, to complain about it. "conturbabimus" is the image of overturning the table where the scribe has been putting stones into correspondence with kisses.
10: More Catullus, with the disapproving old men from my translation. Also, Cummings would be 112 now, and would, by the usual interpretation, be disapproving of this argument. The best gesture of his brain, therefore, gets this redescription.
11: I decided to use "one" in exactly the contexts that Catullus does. I also wanted to describe "your eyelids' flutter" in a way that was more technical, distinguishes this case from other, superficially cases (i.e., batting your eyes coquettishly), and where being able to make the distinction explicit helps to let the audience know what the poet is going on about. This is difficult to do with two words.
12: Mathematics has terms about functions. A function takes input from one set and gives output from another. If the function never gives the same output for different inputs, it is called "one-to-one". If, for every member of the output set, there is some input that the function gives that output for, it is called "onto". It is useful to know when both are true, because then the function has an inverse function that behaves properly.
13: (also elsewhere) I decided to keep directly-reported sensations from the original exactly the same. Even if you know enough to notice what's good about subtle things, you can still enjoy simple sensations. I also retained original punctuation and capitalization.
14: In mathematics, an interval which includes its boundary is written with a square bracket (as opposed to a parenthesis). Not punctuating the other end of the interval suggests eternity, and I have one bracket for the one eternal night from Catullus.
15: A space-filling curve is a fractal line with an infinite length contained in a finite area which occupies the entire area by virtue of how twisty it is.