David M. Levy on how we increasingly have no time to think. I like the parallel to the environmental movement, and his point that easy access to vast quantities of information discourages thinking – I’ve experienced this firsthand during library research days in school. Everybody reads and reads and reads, and then when they sit down a couple days to actually write the paper, they have to start actually thinking, and it’s an “oh shit” moment. Even then, the papers are mostly bullshit. Anyway, getting away from a computer is always good for thinking, because of the lack of new information.
06:16 PM | 0 CommentsThe Glouchestershire Cheese Rolling Contest. This must be the funniest thing I’ve seen in a while.
09:00 PM | 0 CommentsThe future of search is a conversation with someone we trust.
— John Batelle on “Siri”, an NLP and web service based “personal digital assistant”. Funny how technology comes full circle.
The Case for Working with Your Hands
Great article in the New York Times Magazine. His description of being a mechanic reminds me of debugging a program.
07:47 PM | 0 CommentsProblems With This Blog
As the subtitle suggests, this blog is supposed to be a record of things that have influenced me. But it’s not very effective:
- not all influences can be adequately captured in a quote, link, sound, video, or block of text (maybe they could if I were an artist), so many important influences go unrecorded
- I don’t know when I see something new if it will influence me or not, so I post things that I think will have a big influence on me but turn out not to and don’t post things that I don’t think will have a big influence on me but turn out to
- Sometimes you realize your way of thinking has changed, and it’s hard to pick out what influences caused that change
I’m fascinated with the notion of tracking intellectual influence, but I still don’t have a good way of doing it. In the meantime, the only thing this blog can do is prove to myself that I’m at least taking in new material.
04:56 PM | 0 CommentsCoherent Reaction
A proposal from Jonathan Edwards for a new type of programming language — a way to manage side effects without sacrificing mutable state. Very interesting — I’m starting to think this way…
04:48 PM | 0 CommentsEver since I’ve discovered functional programming (with Learn You a Haskell for Great Good, via Alex), imperative code seems hopelessly ugly and fragile. Normally, I would just jump on the functional boat and joyfully leave imperative programming behind, but I’ve just written over a thousand lines of Java for the Hobbes interpreter. I don’t understand functional programming enough to design a functional language or even write a reasonably complex program in a functional language. So I’m stuck with this procedural, side-effectful, fragile imperative code that just keeps seeming uglier and uglier. Why couldn’t I have just continued to exist in the imperative word I understand so well, blissfully ignorant of any better way of programming? Ah well, all for the best in the long run, I suppose.
10:49 PM | 0 CommentsA Seed Salon with Janna Levin and Jonathan Lethem. I’ve watched this 3 times in the past couple of years, and it always leaves me deeply confused.
10:29 PM | 0 CommentsFor a baby, every day is like going to Paris for the first time. Just go for a walk with a 2-year-old. You’ll quickly realize that they’re seeing things you don’t even notice.
— Alison Gopnik in “Inside the baby mind”
I also prefer static typing for its tendency towards bug prevention, and it often acts as a form of self-documentation.
— Alex Suraci, creator of Chyrp, on the design of his new language, Atomo. This is exactly why I want to at least allow types to be specified for parameters in Hobbes.
Pool-Pah
Shit storm.
This is probably my favorite Bokononist word, or at least my favorite definition — it makes me crack up every time.