New personal best: 13 years. (2013/05/26)
So, you know that thing where people say they’ll get back to you, but they don’t? I had one of those pending from a programming conversation. I finally went back and tracked it down and sent a followup message. It’s been 13 years.
[read more...]On being made out of meat. (2013/05/14)
We are, by and large, made out of meat.
[read more...]Dear Ms. Scott: I believe you misunderstand the term "heart-breaking". (2013/05/13)
Peggy Scott’s heart breaks for the state of Minnesota.
[read more...]The mirror test and cats (2013/05/03)
One of the standard tests for self-awareness is “the mirror test” – put dye on a creature in a place it can’t see but could see in a mirror, give it a mirror, see whether it investigates the dyed spot. Cats, in general, fail this.
[read more...]The bat: Nature's temporary pet! (2013/05/02)
Now available for limited time trials: The bat, nature’s temporary pet!
[read more...]Living in Minnesota (2013/05/02)
So, last week, we had a brief bout of freezing weather and snow, with rumors that temperatures would rise. And they did, fast enough that about a day after the snow, I installed a window air conditioner in my bedroom, since I have trouble sleeping when it’s warm. And then we had three consecutive days where it was warm enough that I ran the air conditioner so I could sleep.
[read more...]Defining "proceeds": Harder than it looks (2013/04/30)
So, there were bombs in Boston recently. You may have heard. And there are people in Boston, and a lot of them feel that this is sort of a thing which affects them. It may in fact affect them significantly. And if they run, say, a company, one of the obvious things to do would be to collect some money and donate it to a charity.
[read more...]Dear Casey's: Also, autistics speak. (2013/04/15)
While I was out picking up delicious pizza last night, I noticed that our local convenience store (Casey’s General Store) was doing fundraising for Autism Speaks. This makes me unhappy. On the whole, I like existing.
[read more...]The difference between doubts and questions. (2013/04/14)
There is a fascinating dialect quirk which has caused occasional confusions, which I think ought to get talked about. Many people who learned English in India tend to use the word “doubt” where most other English speakers would use “question”. I have been told that this is because, in one of the common languages around there, there’s a single word which is the best translation for both “doubt” and “question”, and people get told to translate it to “doubt”.
[read more...]A thought experiment... (2013/03/18)
As commented previously, there’s a lot of outrage because a couple of kids who raped underage girls got sentenced as though they had comitted a crime.
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