February 2010
Lingua::Romana::Perligata -- Perl for the XXIimum... →
Perl in Latin. Featuring Latin vocabulary, syntax and morphology in place of Perl keywords, syntax and, among other things, sigils ($, #, @). Adspice:
domus Specimen. # package Specimen;
newere # sub new
sic # {
meis datibus. # my %data;
counto intra Specimen
...
“Nearly all blogs and books about programming are about how to do something, not...”
– A minor but important point in Marco’s post about something else. I would be more general: nearly all blogs and books about anything — assuming they purport to be relevant to the general reader, and not simply to the author’s friends, like an online diary or a family album —...
15 Lombard St. by Janice Kerbel
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15 Lombard St. is a rigorously researched masterplan of how to rob a particular bank in the City of London. By observing the daily routine in and around the bank, Kerbel reveals the most detailed security measures such as: the exact route and time of money transportation; the location of CCTV cameras in and around the bank along with precise floor plans that mark the building’s blind...
The Case of the Haunted Avatar
Once upon a time, I got invited to join a group blog. Then the group blog published something I’d written, and the founder told me I should get an avatar for the blog. This was his suggestion:
I agreed. I’ve since come to dislike having this picture represent me, because it either sets the expectation that I’m some sort of “profound” thinker, or that I’m the...
Jesus, “sports journalism” (which is neither) is depressing. Well, to be exact, the post-competition interview kind is depressing. Here’s a collection of insightful questions to medalists:
Are you happy?
How do you feel?
Was this your dream?
Tell me about your gold race/performance/run/whatever. (That’s not even a question!)
You just won an Olympic gold medal....
The Folklore Of Our Times, by Haruki Murakami →
I was born in 1949. I started high school in 1963 and went to college in 1967. And so it was amid the crazy, confused uproar of 1968 that I saw in my otherwise auspicious twentieth year. Which, I guess, makes me a typical child of the sixties. It was the most vulnerable, most formative, and therefore most important period in my life, and there I was, breathing in deep lungfuls of abandon and...
World Record: Most Consecutive Blog Posts About... →
Hah. 37? Ever been to LiveJournal? (Also. Meh.)
Expedition to the Geoglyphs of Nowhere →
BLDGBLOG and Atlas Obscura are arranging an outing to the unfinished utopia of California City on Saturday, March 20. I wish I could go, but alas, it’s too far.
CinemaScope →
I’ve written before about the significance of aspect ratios. One thing I’ve wondered is: why is film so wide? Film, and today also most television, is generally much wider than photographs and paintings. This development can be traced back to 1952 or 1953, it seems. That’s when the technology that made widescreen projection possible was developed. The movie industry pushed...
Steven Frank wrote: “there are some seriously deep issues to analyze here for anyone interested in HCI.” First thought: I’m more of a sulfuric acid man, myself. I like my strong acids diprotic.
This is why having the same glyph for capital “i” and small “L” is a bad idea.
It’s sad but true: many of the people I admire — artists, scientists, activists — are people I could only vaguely recall when they died. Some I hadn’t even heard of when they died. My reaction runs: who is this? Reads eulogies. Interesting. Looks at their work. Wow! Why did I not know about this person! Thinks. Fuck, I wish this person didn’t die. Considers some more....
Sternfeld, American Prospects
American Prospects is a book of sighs, puns and awe. They are the kind of sighs, puns and awe that last longer than a moment, though; the kind that aren’t unreflective emotional ripples, things you experience in a moment and forget in the next, but rather, the low-key kind of emotion you experience when you’ve observed something for a long time, thought about it, and finally come down...
“The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people...”
– T. S. Eliot, as quoted here.
Moore's paradox →
Moore sentences — like “It’s raining but I don’t believe it is” — seem like a candidate for this. Bonus: there is no generally accepted “solution”. Minus: who would say anything like that?
The problem is that the assertion itself is not contradicted, but what seems to be a natural implication not of the assertion but of asserting it, namely, the...
K Foundation Burn a Million Quid →
Burning substantial sums of money raises interesting questions: critique of the power that useless tokens only our minds give value have over us, or extravagant bullshit? Is it immoral to burn money? After all, you could have used that money to save dying children or campaign against war or poverty. But if those who would burn a million pounds have an obligation to give it away to charity, what...
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Mohism →
While the Greeks where founding the Western philosophical tradition, Confucius was busy founding the Eastern (or at least, the Chinese) philosophical tradition. The problem is, to put it bluntly, that Confucius is much cruder than Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: where the latter analyzed theoretical concepts and employed rigorous arguments, Confucius was busy established his ritualistic,...
“Ultimately, when writers and artists think they’re co-opting pop culture, pop...”
– Stephen Elliott.
2 tags
Fun with morphosyntactic alignment.
This is a subject that fascinates me, and I’ve been meaning to write about it for years. But every time I try to write about it, I have a hard time making it accessable to people who aren’t linguists or language nerds. I’ve decided that I can’t avoid all lingo, and I can’t possibly please everyone, so I’m writing it up, technicalities and all. I’ll say...