The Good Ship Narcissus

Dec 02

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Pandora’s box had nothing on those rar files. I need a drink.

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How not to make your old hard drives into external hard drives.

The things we do for people we used to know.

crowth:

robot-heart-politics:unburyingthelead:

The troop increase would bring the total American force to nearly 100,000 in Afghanistan by the end of May.

Wow, West Point cadets really look like the citizens of some dystopian, corporatized, fascistic future state in those uniforms.

I thought you were blogging a Star Trek II picture.

(this post was reblogged from crowth)

An appeal has been launched to trace Charles Darwin's missing Galapagos notebook which provided crucial evidence for his theory of evolution

The notion that this could put a hole in something is rather strange to me.

My BSc dissertation was basically using evolution to solve an optimisation problem. I was not the first and I will not be the last. Evolution works. I believe in it because I have not only seen it but reproduced it myself from first-principles.

To me, evolution is a fact. It is an observed natural process, and it is something we can reproduce and use as a tool. It’s not some imaginary buzzword created to debunk religion.

Anyone who can’t see a correlation between the massive scale of life on this planet, genetic mutation, and an optimisation problem, just doesn’t want to.

That said, religious types who get upset by this are silly, and failing to see the bigger picture. So some book was wrong. Boohoo. Your book-club might have some issues to work through, but there are bigger issues at work.

Whether your god did something or not, as claimed, claimedly, by hundred+ year old writings (pick a faith, pick a translation) is hardly proof of their existence. It’s a side dish. Drop the sheep act and contemplate the real issue: existence.

While chopping an onion I slipped and almost took a chunk out of my finger. Fortunately I didn’t, as the knife was dull, and I, used to working with sharp knives, do not use a lot of pressure. It still hurt.

Being used to working with sharp knives I stopped to sharpen the knife, rather than try again with more pressure against the rounded, rubbery surface (at the wrong angle, but who has the sense to reposition things…).

So, dull knife: push harder and it fails to do the job & takes a piece out of your finger. Sharp knife: job done effortlessly, as expected, in a bad situation.

There must be a management metaphor in there somewhere.

I’m not feeling very sharp.

Played 2 times

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Bauhaus — All We Ever Wanted (was everything)

crowth:

bingoparaphernalia:

Crowth, if I engage with that drivel I’ll end up defenestrating my laptop or the nearest small child. Not today, Josephine! Not today.

I’ve just been informed that the aforementioned poster does seem to be somewhat on the young side (speaking of the nearest small child). Not to disregard his views based on his age, but I agree, probably best to give that one a wide berth methinks.

It isn’t age thing (exclusively), it’s people not wanting to see 3 moves deep. What you see is all you get. That’s where these poster(s) come from. It’s a sad way to look at things. Still a vote, though.

Picking battles, good idea! That’s probably the trick here too, I just haven’t realised it yet.

Why am I drooling rather than working. Bad bad bad.

(this post was reblogged from crowth)