Author Archives: Anton

are they trying to be killfiled?

I’m the gatekeeper for two small mailing-lists. For months now, nearly all the spam submitted to those lists comes from addresses of the form word21word@hotmail.com — e.g. in the latest batch chance21sunbird, church21lorraine, cougars21molly1, pedro21bridge. Why?

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movies rented recently

Witness for the Prosecution (1957), from a story by Agatha Christie, is of course clever; though the byplay of the convalescent barrister and his nurse is a bit tiresome. South Pacific (1958). I thought I’d enjoy it more. The plot … Continue reading

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a party for every taste

For my sins I’m doing data entry at, of all places, the Registrar of Voters for Alameda County — and missing Knuth’s talk on Friday! The software, by the way, is from a subsidiary of Diebold. I thought you might … Continue reading

Posted in politics | 2 Comments

Daleks with badges

Next time my dearest friend asks me to deliver something to a Feral office, I must remember to say no. I had my state-issued annotated portrait in my pocket, and was resolved not to bother the Marshal at the gate … Continue reading

Posted in security theater | 1 Comment

never enough

Saturday I bought yet another historical atlas: Muir’s (1927/52). I learn to my surprise that southern British Columbia was once called New Caledonia, and northern Manitoba (before 1912) was New South Wales. Why isn’t there a New North Wales or, … Continue reading

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squished hypertorus

This is intended to be an orthographic projection of a stereographic projection from S5 (the five-dimensional surface of a sphere in six-dimensional space) into E5 (flat five-space) of the cartesian product S2 × S2, a kind of torus. The colors … Continue reading

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | 2 Comments

filkosophy

“Nominalist Things” (The site to which Bruce cites is dead, so I’ve no idea whether this is the whole song or not.)

Posted in humanities, music+verse | 1 Comment