Wednesday Zeitgeist

An actually-on-Wednesday Zeitgeist. Good for me.

Nothing to report. WorkWork. TopSecretWork. Usual stuffs.

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - Wikipedia : “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs.”

ClientCopia - stories about stupid clients. Stuff gets boring fast, but still a few amusing moments for a lunch hour.

From the Department of the Obvious:
“What happens when you take a 40-year-old CIA memo on losing a war and replace the word “Vietnam” with the word “Iraq”? The result is a set of conclusions that are just as true today.” Foreign Policy: The FP Memo: The Endgame in Iraq

I'M IN YOUR NEWSPAPER WRITING MAH COLUMN:


Tommy and I invented LOLporn last week. Oh yes. Imagine some rude pictures with captions like "YOU HAS A FLAVOUR" and "I AM IN YOUR ****" and ... well, probably something about a "BUKKITS" but I am not touching that one.

Work gets a little boring.

Artifacts from the Future - Fido Fusion:


Jesus holding a dinosaur proves creationism. Or something:


For making your blog much betterer:
Fifty (50!) Tools which can help you in Writing

I like this one:
Writing Tool #1: Branch to the Right

CritBuns - Supporting creativity where others can't. It's a chair cushion thingy for sitting on the floor.

I want this:


The Best Thought Experiments: Schrödinger's Cat, Borel's Monkeys

“Suppose that, many years from now, we have constructed a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. In other words, the computer takes Chinese characters as input and, following a set of rules (as all computers can be described as doing), correlates them with other Chinese characters, which it presents as output. Suppose that this computer performs this task so convincingly that it easily passes the Turing test. In other words, it convinces a human Chinese speaker that the program is itself a human Chinese speaker. All the questions the human asks are responded to appropriately, such that the Chinese speaker is convinced that he or she is talking to another Chinese-speaking human. The conclusion that proponents of strong AI would like to draw is that the computer understands Chinese, just as the person does. Now, Searle asks us to suppose that he is sitting inside the computer. In other words, he is in a small room in which he receives Chinese characters, consults a rule book, and returns the Chinese characters that the rules dictate. Searle notes that he doesn't, of course, understand a word of Chinese. Furthermore, he argues that his lack of understanding goes to show that computers don't understand Chinese either, because they are in the same situation as he is. They are mindless manipulators of symbols, just as he is — and they don't understand what they're 'saying', just as he doesn't.” - Chinese room - Wikipedia

Some space thing that I can't remember (Galaxy M81, maybe?):


This article is AWESOME. Read it!
“As Bruce Sterling puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach."” - Charlie's Diary: The High Frontier, Redux

The gist:
Space is basically really really BIG. The amount of energy it would take to get someone and some equipment to the nearest star is REALLY REALLY BIG too. And it gets worse from there.

“Zugzwang (German for "compulsion to move", IPA: [ˈtsuːk.tsvaŋ]) is a term used in combinatorial game theory and in other types of games (particularly in chess). Zugzwang means that one player is put at a disadvantage because he has to make a move — the player would like to pass and make no move. The fact that the player must make a move means that his position will be significantly weaker than the hypothetical one in which it is his opponent's turn to move. In combinatorial game theory, it means that it directly changes the outcome of the game from a win to a loss.” - Zugzwang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joy Division live: