There’s a misunderstanding that the right-hand-path in spirituality, to use a short hand term, is about abasing or losing yourself or demolishing yourself. Not true at all. It’s simply about being in right relationship to the divine source of consciousness, and the Bodhisatvas who try to mitigate, and eventually end, the world’s suffering. But it’s not self annihilation. It’s more… Read more →
The McLaren Discriminant
I’ve never been one to engage in a lot of “there are two kinds of people in the world…” divisions. Oh, I think that humans are fundamentally inclined, probably at a biological level, to see things in terms of “us and them”, but like a certain brilliant Scotsman, I also tend to think that the direction of increased civilization is… Read more →
Noted
This weekend marked both the 7th anniversary of my wedding to a woman who is much too good for me“… just ask her!” Ba-dum-bump!, and the 10th anniversary of the day we “officially” started going out. Time flies. It seems like the five year mark was just a minute ago. According to traditional sources, the 7th wedding anniversary is marked… Read more →
Now that’s an old school poem
Here, underneath this little stone, Lies Robert, Earl of Huntingdon. No archer was as he so good, And people called him Robin Hood. Such outlaws as he and his men, Will England never see again. That’s my best shot at updating what may well be Robin Hood’s epitaph to modern English. I love the Internet age because I have access… Read more →
Putting My Own House In Order
Or rather, bitching about my own country’s politicians for a change. It seems like I can’t turn around lately without seeing another story that just embarrasses me as a Canadian. The classic example, which I’ve talked about here before, is the Tories’ continuing attempt to force a DCMA-style law down our throats. After getting his ass more or less handed… Read more →
SF Writers Say Smart Things: Cory Doctorow on statistics and security
I often use the same example Cory uses here in discussing security issues at work: 99% effective means 10,000 failures over a million instances. Which in turn means that if you’re trying to detect a 1-in-a-million event, then you will get it 9999 false positives for every real event you detect–and at that rate, you will never find the actual… Read more →
Y.A.L.P.
I had a definite plan this morning to do a little geohashing and see who showed up at the local meeting. Too bad the algorithm would have put me in the Atlantic Ocean off the South Shore. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be on land–easy enough to calculate with the online reference implementation. Actually, if I had access to an ocean-worthy boat,… Read more →
“Long Weekend” Bag of Links
I put it in scare quotes because I am a member of the global information economy, and apparently what that means is that I have to take some meetings on those holidays that are merely national in scope. Yes, I am a grumpy about this. Well, honestly I’m mostly grumpy about having to be up in time for an 8AM… Read more →
Proto-Muppet Protection Racket Advertising
There is an extensive explanation for this wild and bizarre sequence at the Muppet Wiki. Here’s a bit of it: In 1957, Jim Henson was approached by a Washington, D.C. coffee company to produce ads for Wilkins Coffee. The local stations only had ten seconds for station identification, so the commercials had to be lightning-fast — essentially, eight seconds for… Read more →
Compare and contrast
High culture: Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss’d Of the Two Worlds so wisely–they are thrust Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn Are scatter’d, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust. Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door… Read more →
Explanation
I spent some time last week at a professional conference. For the most part it was a relatively valuable use of my time, but there were significant portions of time where I was stuck sitting in a room with lots of people while a particularly boring speaker was presenting. I was without a computer–the conference expressly frowned on bringing one… Read more →
A Small Challenge
Answer, and explanatory story, to follow. On the off chance that someone comments with the plaintext before I get around to telling the story, I will send them a $20 Amazon gift certificate or something like that. Read more →
What You Need To Know
I have been insanely busy and travelling all week. This will continue tomorrow, hopefully reaching a peak so that things will mellow out a bit into the weekend. The remainder of this post is for the gentleman who, when challenged by me today asked me with a straight face “You don’t need proof that 1+1=2, do you?” For those of… Read more →
Yes, I just made up the term “Doom Constant”
Remember Nick Bostrom? And remember the Drake Equation? Well, the two have met, as illustrated in MIT’s Technology Review this month, in Bostrom’s article, Where Are They. Bostrom suggests, although he doesn’t put it in these terms, that the reason we haven’t met the aliens yet is that Drake’s equation is missing a Doom Constant that models some sort of… Read more →
Crazy religious people have their priorities in order
Tired of paying through the nose, Americans try praying at the pump “Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world,” he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in a modified version of the spiritual, “We Shall Overcome”.… Read more →
