Performative contradiction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oh ffs..."The statement "Hierarchies do not exist" offers a more subtle example of performative contradiction referring to the very capacity of making a statement, because the statement itself is a hierarchy of semiotic relations of letters (as symbols) formed into words (as signifiers) formed into a sentence (as a statement)."

Dawkins Review of Intellectual Impostures

Penises are equivalent to the square root of -1.

Psychopaths Among Us, by Robert Hercz

Fascinating distraction material (hacker news)

Interview: Encyclopedia Dramatica moderator

"Let us talk epistemology for a moment. The minute there is a hidden limit on speech, it is no longer free. Free speech with limits is not free speech under any circumstances. But Matthew 15:11 (what goes into a man's mouth does not make him "unclean", but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him "unclean") certainly applies to some users of ED"

Cookery Books: Britain's Gift to America - Food - The Atlantic

'Across town, in Bloomsbury, Persephone Books (59 Lamb's Conduit Street, Russell Square tube station) reprints "20th century classics by (mostly) women."' Unusual London cookbook shops

Aboriginal recognition a farce: Tuckey - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This is from the same people who say the Lord's Prayer before each session of Parliament. Looking forward to hearing about the "tokenism" of that gesture.

§ 161. Idea worth minus a million

'When telling others about their ideas, every inventor or designer should say honestly: “I have an idea worth minus a million.”' ... however, the concept of Evian-branded ice makes me want to punch kittens.

Call Me Fishmeal.: TED 2010

"I, for instance, don’t like the taste of tripe, but I don’t begrudge those who do. It seems to me that the problem came because the people who didn’t think Sarah was funny either (a) took her seriously, and so thought she was the most idiotic, venal, and horrible woman who ever lived, and/or (b) thought everyone else must be hating this as well, because so clearly WE ARE EATING A STOMACH OH GOD THIS IS DISGUSTING I FEEL LIKE IT IS EATING ME BACK THERE MUST BE SOME KIND OF MISTAKE." Will Shipley's writing is as good as his code.

"M.I.A.", M.I.A., clap clap blog

Interesting political / musical analysis of this song. I think this sort of writing is hard to do well, but he managed it. :)

Robot Chicken Unicorn Attack 'Chase Your Dreams' Shirt -- Adult Swim Shop

USA and Canada only. Why must you destroy my dreams, adultswim. :(

Have tracing JIT compiler's won? | Lambda the Ultimate

Scott and Scurvy

Fascinating account of the discovery, and subsequent loss, of the cure for scurvy between the 18th and 20th centuries. I can understand how it was lost: fresh lemon juice conveyed a benefit but lime juice stored in a copper vessel did not; fresh seal liver helped but preserved meat didn't. It must have been completely baffling.

Tony Abbott "Threatened" By Gays on SameSame.com.au

I know a good cure for feeling "threatened" by gays.

Leviathans may battle in remote depths - latimes.com

Bookmarked for title alone

Face-Off: Final Fantasy XIII | DigitalFoundry

The comparison video is *amazingly* well-done. I want to find the person who made this video and shake their hand. And then slap them silly with the other hand.

Human Nose Shapes

typesofnoses.com. Thanks, Internet!

Mother insult - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia finds a mum joke in Shakespeare. Chiron: "Thou hast undone our mother." Aaron: "Villain, I have done thy mother."

Robot Unicorn Attack - A Free Online Flash Game From Adult Swim

ALWAYS I WANNA BE WITH YOU (via liedra, second-best Flash game ever)

Mind Hacks: Subliminal cigarette marketing

Your subtle ploy to titillate your audience with pornographic imagery of male genitalia disguised as harmless camel heads has not gone undetected.

The Volidity Report: Profanity Superpower

American swearword dominance (though might be inaccurate---Catie reckons "abgefuckt" is plain German) with Latvian swearword intermezzo.

Boston Review — Ned Block and Philip Kitcher: Misunderstanding Darwin

It's sometimes hard to work out whether a particular evolved trait is there for any specific adaptive reason, and, even if it is, it's hard to know what for. Therefore the entire structure of Darwinian evolution is guilty of the intensional fallacy. Says Jerry Fodor. This article is skeptical.

Climate scientists 'under cyber attack' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

"Did you want to offer your children to be brutally gang-raped and then horribly tortured before being reminded of their parents' socialist beliefs and actions?" Stay classy, Australia. (Reddit)

How To Boil Corn On The Cob

Another "simple recipe with a lot of photos" dedicated site. Just look at that pat of butter!

DICE 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation Videos - G4tv.com

Introduction to the Diagrams of UML 2.0

There are 13!

How to Make Friends - wikiHow

"Make eye contact and smile. If you have an unfriendly countenance, people are less likely to be receptive to your friendship." Fuck off, WikiHow. (via previous link)

Why Your Friends Have More Friends than you Do

"the mean number of friends of friends is always greater than the mean number of friends of individuals." (reddit once removed, as the reddit linkee is annoying)

CREATURES FROM PRIMORDIAL SILICON

The hardware evolution article I mentioned before. "Although the configuration program specified tasks for all 100 [FPGA] cells, it transpired that only 32 were essential to the circuit's operation. Thompson could bypass the other cells without affecting it. A further five cells appeared to serve no logical purpose at all--there was no route of connections by which they could influence the output. And yet if he disconnected them, the circuit stopped working." Amazing.

Researchers accidentally create strain-specific antibiotic

Ending up with unexpected specialisation via evolution. Reminds me of a similar experiment with evolution of a circuit on an FPGA. In that case, experimenters ended up with a circuit much smaller than expected, but that only worked within a very small temperature range--that of the lab in which they were evolved.

Zero Copy I: User-Mode Perspective | Linux Journal

Clear article, most obtuse diagrams I've ever seen

Preferred number - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I always suspected there was conspiracy, and now the sinister truth is revealed.

Neil Dawson's Horizons | Alan Gibbs' sculptures | The Australian

mind=blown

Barbie® I Can Be...™ Computer Engineer Doll - Shop.Mattel.com

Stupid Mattel isn't shipping these until December?!

Grace Hopper - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"1969 – She won the first "man of the year award from the Data Processing Management Association." Good job, Data Processing Management Association.

Original IBM Fortran manual from 1956

"The IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System FORTRAN is an automatic coding system for the IBM 704 EDPM. More precisely, it is a 704 program which accepts a source program written in a language -- the FORTRAN language -- closely resembling the ordinary language of mathematics, and which produces an object program in 704 machine language, ready to be run on a 704." World's second compiler (and first resembling a modern compiler).

Roman Mythology - Crystalinks

Greek god narrative was much more focused on god-as-person than Roman god narrative.

Rice Pudding - ABC TV: The Cook and the Chef

"This is what success tastes like" - Bryn

4 Ingredient Sloppy Lentils - Longevity Girl

Given I wrote a satirical post about "omitting needless ingredients" today, I feel I ought to try this recipe. ... wait, ketchup and molasses? (reddit)

SPERMEX: Hagat

The very good udder texture of Hagat-daugthers definitely above average udders was impressively shown.  Fore udder attachment is a bit weak but this can be compensated with a very distinctive suspensory ligament. 

70% support "gays and lesbians" in the military; 59% support "homosexuals" in the military

facepalm

My big fat geek wedding: Tears, joy and oxytocin - life - 10 February 2010 - New Scientist

Bride-to-be plans pilot science experiment on herself and her groom during her wedding: "to measure blood levels of oxytocin in the bride, groom, three close members of our families and eight friends both before and after the ceremony." Awesome (Wired <- Fark)

Interview with a scammer: Part Two | Scam Detectives

"We had something called the recovery approach. A few months after the original scam, we would approach the victim again, this time pretending to be from the FBI, or the Nigerian Authorities. The email would tell the victim that we had caught a scammer and had found all of the details of the original scam, and that the money could be recovered. Of course there would be fees involved as well." Ouch. (Bruce Schneier)

Keep your 20-sided dice, I have D&D on the Surface | Crave - CNET

I hate everything.

A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World | February 2010 | Communications of the ACM

"Parsing is considered a solved problem. Unfortunately, this view is naïve, rooted in the widely believed myth that programming languages exist." Very entertaining account by the Coverity people of the differences between "works in the lab" and "works in a commercial setting". (Bryn)

Joseph Ducreux - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "disregard females, acquire currency" guy painted some entertaining self-portraits. In the 1700s.

Parsing C/C++ code without preprocessing

This is a neat trick. Or, rather, a collection of neat tricks.

Measuring Complexity

Complexity of EEG and ECG signals could be used to predict various disorders (depression and schizophrenia; and heart disease). One measure of complexity is "Lempel-Ziv algorithmic complexity". Yes, that Lempel-Ziv: one respectable way to measure the complexity of such a signal is to gzip it.

YouTube - Vampire Squid from Hell (3200 Feet Under Sea Level)

It's the vampire squid (from Hell).

Jumpcut: Minimalist Clipboard Buffering for OS X

Remembers previous clipboard contents for later pasting.

if you lay all the blood vessels in your body end to end by jeak

Nice. Bit expensive. (reddit)