Might as well linkblog–can’t dance.
- I don’t know whether to be amused or disheartened about the whole “25% of Brits think Winston Churchill is fictional” thing. On the one hand, it’s pretty funny. On the other hand, what does it say about the education system that this result is even possible. On still a third hand, it’s not like North America can do any better–what is it, 80% of people believe in the literal existence of angels? And there’s still around a hundred million people who think Bush is doing a good job?
- I have often maintained that part of the reason I like Minneapolis is because when you take a city that size, and isolate it in the middle of an (at least) 800 mile circle of no other decent-sized town, the people get a little… well… off. I’m willing to chalk Geist up to that. I’m not sure how to explain the other 200 “reals” though.
- It is funny because it is true.
- While we’re talking about computers, let me just say that I write complex multi-threaded enterprise applications. That’s what I do. I work with these things EVERY DAMN DAY. I have servers doing complex processing for thousands of client simultaneously, where handling each client might involve processing thousands of things, while interacting with large databases and directories. Large here meaning “routinely with more than a million things in them.” And then I cluster them. I dream in growable connection pools, write-preference read-write locks, and message-driven asynchronous processing. There is no other point to this bullet except deep nerd chest-beating.
- It’s not possible that I could be less interested in any argument than I am in the “how do we define science fiction” one. But, on the other hand (again), I am fascinated by ontologies. So Hal Duncan’s recent post on a possible hierarchy for classifying weird fiction was a good read for me. I’m not interested in finding ways of saying whether or not something is or isn’t genre X, but a framework for saying “this piece of writing fits into categories A, B, and C because…” is a whole different thing.
- You know Kevin Burton Smith is right. Toronto just isn’t a noir city. Now Halifax, Halifax could support noir.
- OK, seriously, we’re going to use “has had sex in the last year” as a measure of being sexually active inside a marriage? Seriously?
- You could learn some history, and see some Canadian in-jokes, by just reading these 20 comics. Me, I particularly like the one about Margaret Trudeau. (If that one confuses you, check out this and this and this.)
- If you can tell who these seven guys are, then you’re a science fiction geek. If you spend some serious time doing a “one of these things is not like the others” analysis over the inclusion of one of them
Actually, I though the PKD pic looked a lot like WJW. That would have really been a generational gap. , then you’re a hopeless science fiction geek. - The World War I and II posters at the American Merchant Marine At War site are pure gold. I especially like the nearly 40 “loose lips sink ships” examples. One particular favourite of mine is this “can’t trust those women” themed one. I am also quite tempted to print up a couple of hundred of these and post them at gas stations the next time I’m traveling through the U.S.
- McLarens are often vulgar or crass, but in a very honest way. It’s a rare McLaren that can manage to be tacky in the most tiresome way. I am happy to learn the word SaumassigeSchreibmaschiene though, and I will endeavour to use it where appropriate in my discussions. I can’t wait until the next time someone brings up Dan Brown.
- While I’m glad to hear that the amount of paper we use per-person in the first world is finally declining, I am SHOCKED to find out that it’s currently over 500 pounds per person per year. Yarg–we can do a lot more declining, that’s for sure.
- I am prepared to declare Harvard’s new policy the thin end of the wedge that will break the current academic journal cabal. Peer review and the ongoing cross-pollination that science requires go with the open source ideology like peanut butter with raspberry jam.
- There are some pages in Wikipedia I should never look at. I could get lost in there for days.
