June 2008
Project Indigo: Design of a vertical seaside... →
I enjoy good environment concept art, and Jesse van Dijk knows how to do it well. (via mefi)
Jante Law →
I love these because they so clearly encode close-minded thinking.
Thou shalt not believe thou art something.
Thou shalt not believe thou art as good as we.
Thou shalt not believe thou art more wise as we.
Thou shalt not fancy thyself better than we.
Thou shalt not believe thou knowest more than we.
Thou shalt not believe thou art greater than we.
Thou shalt not believe thou amountest to...
Compulsory Reading →
Great graphic piece on reading and motivation.
The Nine Billion Names of God →
Short story by Arthur C. Clarke.
“You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
– Ray Bradbury (via Projectionist).
Recent internet drama got me thinking. If I have no haters when I die, I’ll know I’ve been doing something wrong. All interesting people have haters. Humans are so put together that if someone does anything out of the ordinary, some of us will hate them.
Science tumbled →
I suppose it’s time to quit the reblogging and announce this thing. I’m no scientist, but I have a strong interest in science. So, I decided to create a space to put pretty pictures and interesting links relating to science that I come over. It’s working out pretty well so far.
It’s a Tumblr group, so if you’re smart and interested, you can probably come play in it...
History Project →
Kate Beaton’s history-themed comics (part two here) are awesome.
The Itch →
Science tumbled:
A fascinating New Yorker article that starts off with the case of M., who had such a terrible itch that she — or so the story goes — scratched through her skull to the brain; from there, it continues with a discussion of the nature and neuroscience of itching, of phantom sensations and ultimately of perception itself. (via Neurophilosophy)
Having endured a lot of goddamn...
How Computers Boot Up →
Starting with this post, continuing with how computers boot up and finishing with the kernel boot process, this series takes a look at how a computer boots up, delving into the actual technical stuff, without relying on silly metaphors. Which is fantastic. Maybe I ought to dust off my copy of Operating Systems Design and Implementation and have some low-level fun.
“During World War II Picasso suffered some harassment from the Gestapo in...”
– Pablo Picasso quotations.
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den →
This is like Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo on speed. Raised to the fourth power. It’s a text written in Classical Chinese relating the titular story, consisting only of 92 copies of the sound shi, in different tones.
This works because Chinese is a tonal language: the tone you say syllables in (rising, falling, etc.) determines part of the meaning.
The Girl Effect →
“It’s no big deal. It’s just the future of humanity.” Well, I don’t know about that, but if there was ever a meme that deserves to be spread, it’s this.
Twitter / MarsPhoenix →
Apparently the Phoenix Mars Lander has a Twitter account. That’s pretty cool. (Apologies if you’re one of the 22,800 followers of MarsPhoenix to whom this isn’t news.)
Sweden approves wiretapping law →
Sweden’s parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic. Under the new law, Sweden’s intelligence bureau will no longer need a court order to begin surveillance, unlike the police.
Sad. And this will probably be used as a success story when the fearmongers start selling this kind of law to the Norwegian...
reddit – Trac →
Reddit just outsourced (er, open-sourced) itself. Nice.
We’ve always strived to be as open and transparent with our users as possible, and this is the next logical step. When we say ‘open-source’ we mean specifically that the code behind reddit is available to the public for download, and we’re inviting the public to submit code to help improve the site.
“I’m an accomplished Googler, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how...”
– Remiel, via inky.
The Science of Gaydar →
An article describing current research on “gaydar”, or our remarkable abilities to identify sexual orientation just by looking at or listening to someone. Speaking of scientific inquiry into the origins of homosexuality, there’s also this recent article, which takes on the question, “How come homsexuality persists when it’s an evolutionary disadvantage to those who...
100 Thing Challenge →
In an effort to challenge consumerism and “Fight Stuff” (edit: actually, it was the other way around), whatever that means, this guy has decided to whittle down his belongings to just 100 things. I’m wondering what he’ll accomplish, even if he meets his goal, especially since there are a lot of things he doesn’t count towards his 100 things goal.
That said, I’m...
All publicity is good publicity...
I’d like to personally congratulate Mozilla on its fantastic PR stunt. I didn’t hear of this “Firefox 3 download day” idea until today, which happens to be the day, and then only in conjunction with the words “fucking thing sucks!”
Not only has most of June 17 gone by and they still haven’t updated the links to point from FF 2 to FF 3, but now the site is...
Apple's open secret: SproutCore is Cocoa for the... →
SproutCore is an open source, platform-independent, Cocoa-inspired JavaScript framework for creating web applications that look and feel like Desktop applications.
Why, why do people think this is a good idea? Why make a crappy copy of a desktop app just so it can be a web app? If you’re gonna run in the browser, use the browser like a browser is meant to be used. If not, you’re...
3 Species of Nonsense
Auto-Meme:
12 YEAR OLDCAT IS A 12 YEAR OLD
Communications from Elsewhere:
In the works of Fellini, a predominant concept is the distinction between closing and opening. But predialectic objectivism states that consciousness is capable of intent. The characteristic theme of la Fournier’s model of Foucaultist power relations is the paradigm, and subsequent failure, of capitalist society.
The...
Custom Tumblr Themes →
Richard takes it on himself to correct the sad state of affairs that is Tumblr theme aggregators.
“It is not enough for a wise man to study nature and truth; he should dare state...”
– Julien Offray de La Mettrie, one of the earliest materialists.
Wikipedia: Lamest edit wars →
I had no idea this page existed. These are so lame they’re amusing. For instance, there’s been a pagemove controversy over whether the title of the page on Euler’s number “begins with the letter “E” or the symbol “℮” (which resembles the letter “e”)”, and about whether “In the name of the programming language C#, is that #...
Andy Gill: 'Why I hate Coldplay' →
Pompous, mawkish, and unbearably smug, Coldplay have conquered the charts with the sonic equivalent of wilted spinach, argues Andy Gill. And in the process, they’ve poisoned an entire generation of British rock music.
Wow. Can you say hate? (And “obvious target”?)
Quantum Mechanics and Immortality →
The idea of “quantum immortality” arises from the combination of the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics and taking the point of view of the cat in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment. The MWI says that the reason we observe randomness in elementary particles’ behavior is not that they’re random, but that every possible outcome does happen, in...
“As soon as I came out of the hotel—Yes, now I think I have found the right...”
– Excerpt from Nabokov’s short story “Terror”, via Steve Dekorte. The only online version I could find was this.
It’s a fantastic and frightening description of depersonalization. The feeling of detachment from your own mirror image described in the beginning of this story is...
Slide words (if that's really what they're called) →
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard the term used for the kind of words you slip into a sentence when you’re trying to keep it going without knowing exactly what to say — um, er, etc. — but in any event, this is about a different sort of slide word: a word or short phrase that has become a stand-in for an entire argument. Except there is no argument. I’ll let David A....
Paragrasp →
Introducing Paragrasp, an extension for Mozilla Firefox, to aleviate your problems. It adds a highlight to the current paragraph you’re reading, and allows you to use simple keyboard shortcuts to navigate forward or backward, moving the highlight and automatically scrolling the window to focus your reading attention to the center of the screen. Each window and tab has their own highlighter,...
Dear Jakob →
I’ve noticed something strange afoot on Jakob Lodwick’s tumblelog of late. Instead of continuing the conversation, he’s been taking it, and starting his own. What I mean by that is, instead of reblogging something he wishes to respond to, he takes a screenshot and makes a new post with his commentary…
Ordinarily, I don’t care enough to take public objection to a person’s tumblelogging...
“I have a theory concerning committees. A committee may have different states,...”
– Rob Weir.
Principle of explosion →
There’s a logical principle called the principle of explosion. Isn’t that fun? Now, the principle of explosion deals with the consequences of a contradiction. It’s no wonder that “all or part of this article may be confusing or unclear”, when you’re dealing with the unthinkable.
Socialism, the word.
It doesn’t mean what you think it means.
Regards, someone who lives in an actual Social Democracy.
PS: Political science student? Haha.
