Month: March 2008

hmmmm

how to derive a heuristic like this?

If you find 3 or more typos in the menu, ask for bottled water; 6 or more, consume only that water; 9 or more, take the menu home as a souvenir.

how to derive a heuristic like this?

If you find 3 or more typos in the menu, ask for bottled water; 6 or more, consume only that water; 9 or more, take the menu home as a souvenir. Submitted by: abrador, Professor, Berkeley, CA, USA [From ORTHOGRAPHY AND HYGIENE IN RESTAURANTS]

why would you say a thing like that?

In case you missed it, Hillary Clinton (D-Entitlement) thinks that she and Sen McCain (R-Whichever Way the Wind Blows) are qualified for the job, and Obama isn’t.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat’s fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party’s or the nation’s.

In case you missed it, Hillary Clinton (D-Entitlement) thinks that she and Sen McCain (R-Whichever Way the Wind Blows) are qualified for the job, and Obama isn’t.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat’s fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party’s or the nation’s. [From Crossing The Threshold]

I’ll take judgment over experience every time.

story ideas

I keep flashing back to Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything and the idea that a meteor 1 mile wide could destroy all life on the planet, as he explains it…. I realize it’s unlikely no one else would spot it, but for reasons of narrative, no one does.

One more. This one is probably just a short story. I keep flashing back to Bill Bryson’s Short History of Nearly Everything and the idea that a meteor 1 mile wide could destroy all life on the planet, as he explains it.

What if two astronomers spotted one that was on course with sufficient velocity to do just that? There’s nothing anyone could do. Do they announce what they have found and when the end will come? Or do they keep it to themselves?

Having two people makes it possible to look at both sides of the story. I think they agree not to tell anyone, not even their own families.

I realize it’s unlikely no one else would spot it, but for reasons of narrative, no one does. Deal with it.

What would you do?

book ideas

I was reading over The Battle Cry of Freedom and was struck by the illustrations — pencil drawings, paintings, and photographs — and how they were commissioned and used by Harper’s Magazine, in the case of the pencil drawings.

…The idea of a book on that topic was more fully-formed earlier today, with other examples, but I seem to have lost them.

Two ideas for books I would read:

  • A History of Printed Communications, from moveable type to MovableType (or from Gutenberg to the Internet). The obvious pseudonym is Etaion Shrdlu. I was reading over The Battle Cry of Freedom and was struck by the illustrations — pencil drawings, paintings, and photographs — and how they were commissioned and used by Harper’s Magazine, in the case of the pencil drawings. This is the artist — Alfred Waud — captured by another great of the time, Timothy O’Sullivan.200803072253.jpg What was the process of getting those images into print? I have worked with everything from cold type to these evanescent pixels, with hot wax and tape along the way. But even that span of technological history doesn’t quite cover it. What were the lags in time? How current were they when published and delivered?
  • Another title would be a history of social mobility. Again inspised by that great Civil War book, but by others as well (I am currently reading Ghost Map). The end of Battle Cry mentions the tanner’s son from Ohio — Grant — dictating the terms of surrender to Lee, a descendant of the First Families of Virginia. The idea of a book on that topic was more fully-formed earlier today, with other examples, but I seem to have lost them. Something to do with the democratization or flattening of society, an end of hereditary hierarchies, it seems to me.

Of course, the thought occurs to me that maybe I should write them (ha!). The first is more interesting, from that standpoint.

this is handy

(We understand that there has been some confusion about this in the past, but to settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)200803052319.jpg For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank.

Here’s something I just learned about. I know lots of people do the +modifier stuff with email, but this is effort-free.

I recently discovered some little-known ways to use your Gmail address that can give you greater control over your inbox and save you some time and headache.

usernames.png

When you choose a Gmail address, you actually get more than just “yourusername@gmail.com.” Here are two different ways you can modify your Gmail address and still get your mail:

  • Append a plus (“+”) sign and any combination of words or numbers after your email address. For example, if your name was hikingfan@gmail.com, you could send mail to hikingfan+friends@gmail.com or hikingfan+mailinglists@gmail.com.
  • Insert one or several dots (“.”) anywhere in your email address. Gmail doesn’t recognize periods as characters in addresses — we just ignore them. For example, you could tell people your address was hikingfan@gmail.com, hiking.fan@gmail.com or hi.kin.g.fan@gmail.com. (We understand that there has been some confusion about this in the past, but to settle it once and for all, you can indeed receive mail at all the variations with dots.)200803052319.jpg

For me, the real value in being able to manipulate your email address is that it makes it really easy to filter on those variants. For example you could use hikingfan+bank@gmail.com when you sign up for online banking and then set up a filter to automatically star, archive or label emails addressed to hikingfan+bank. You can also use this when you register for a service and think they might share your information. For example, I added “+donation” when I gave money to a political organization once, and now when I see emails from other groups to that address, I know how they got it. Solution: filtered to auto-delete.

[From Official Gmail Blog: 2 hidden ways to get more from your Gmail address]

the truth will set you free

It’s by no means clear that emancipation would have happened, as Lincoln seems to have been persuaded to use it as a lever as the war dragged on. He did come to see it as the only honorable and moral thing to do but that took more time to arrive at than the political strength of the move.

…I’m not sure those who deny that the unwillingness to do away with chattel slavery and who refuse to understand that secession was an appallingly bad idea (that would cost uncounted lives (600,000 uniformed men on both sides and who knows how many civilians) and enormous devastation to land and property) are living in the same reality.

I finished reading a great book last night, and this morning, for Read Across America day, we had a local theater company present Minty, from a book about the young Harriet Tubman. florida_2.jpg

It was pretty hard to take in, as raw as I felt after reading the history of the most revised period in American history.

I had just assumed or understood that slavery was at the heart of the rebellion, not realizing how open and honest the people of the time were about it. The code words “state’s rights” are really a modern phenomenon. That phrase was used at the time, yes, but getting a Southerner to admit that slavery was what was meant was by no means difficult. Today, it’s not so easy. But a review of the events of the 1840s through 1861 makes it clear that the irrevocable enshrinement of human bondage into law was the issue, no ifs, ands, or buts.

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Continue reading “the truth will set you free”

borrowed quote of the day

“Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.”

“Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.” [From The collected controversies of William F. Buckley]

Does this not sum up modern conservatism?