Popshot, a new punk rock magazine, scolds naïve anti-capitalists
for getting the wrong end of the stick.
(Found in Aaron Krowne’s blog of which I was not previously aware; he was on my list of sites to look at because of mathematical material.)
Mammoth trees near Martian south pole? Well, they’re curious, whatever they are. Could be accretions of something sticky, as in the ‘Coral’ screensaver.
Reminds me of a book I have, Where will we go when the Sun dies?, which I keep only because it contains a list of objects on the Moon which ought to have a closer look because they could be artifacts, e.g. what appears to be a bridge over a canyon.
Later: Never mind that the site owner is a true believer in the Cydonia Face . . . .
New Scientist: Neural network ‘in-jokes’ could pass secrets
This reminds me of a discussion, years ago on Extropians, of “Schelling points”: for under-constrained problems there may be a cultural preference for particular solutions. For example, if I ask you to meet me in Paris on a given day (but have no time to say more), and you’ve never been there before, you’ll go to the Eiffel Tower — but if we have previously met in Paris, you’ll go to wherever we met before. At least, that’s how I’ll bet.
These are examples of Schelling points, as I (mis)understand the notion.
But.
I know two people who have various things in common.
Suppose I tell each to meet the other in Chicago on a given day.
If they know nothing about each other, they’ll go to some generic Chicago landmark.
If I tell each that the other studied physics at UChi, they’ll go to the site of Fermi’s reactor, I guess.
But if I tell Bruce only that David is a science fiction fan, and tell David only that Bruce teaches physics, they’ll probably go to two different places.
I’m not sure what this thought-experiment tells us, if anything. 😉
If I were given to clichés, I might suggest that if you were to look in the dictionary under “you cannot make this shit up” you’d find a picture of www.We Made Out in a Tree and This Old Guy Sat and Watched Us.com: “The site dedicated to odd quotes, strange statements, bad writing and other oddities of the English language.”
Anton ‘Mr.’ Sherwood wants to know
How old is the convention of writing nicknames as middle names, e.g. (taking a handy fictional example) “Tim ‘Curly’ Beamish”? Why do you see even “Tim ‘Curly Tim’ Beamish” (gordelpus) rather than “‘Curly’ Tim Beamish”? What is the convention (if any) in other languages?
2004 Nov 12: KBLX has a disc-jockey called Victor ‘Big Daddy’ Zaragosa
in announcements, but he calls himself Big Daddy Victor Zaragosa
.