Tag: Entertainment
-
Understands that science is entertainment
In Preparation is a fairly new Substack publication performing a task that has been missing for a LONG time. It treats science as entertainment, parodying the bizarre excesses of Publish Or Perish and other old and new trends. The writer is extremely careful to label it as satire, which is crucially necessary in the online…
-
Why I never re(re(re(re(re(curse)))))
In 40 years of active programming I’ve never used a recursive function. I don’t see why you’d want to GUARANTEE problems. I know the Turingian theorists and Computer “Science” classes advise recursing everywhere, which is an added reason to avoid it. In the AI era, text witch hunters search for em-dashes. In coding the witch…
-
Blazer
Via Spokane News: = = = = = On June 15, 2026, at approximately 4:30 am, Spokane Valley Deputies responded to the report of a suspicious vehicle at the Exxon station in the 3400 block of S. Dishman Mica Road. The caller said a vehicle, later found to be a red 2007 Chevrolet Trail Blazer,…
-
Cute and true
What your favorite programming language says about you. Note that Basic and Cobol aren’t even there. Basic is mostly gone but Cobol is still very much alive and modern. Google shows a dinosaur as the Cobol logo, but apparently that’s a joke, not the official design. Later thought. Most of these aren’t real logos anyway,…
-
Relaxing vacation
Lately I’ve been getting some nice laughs from a Reddit section that calls out stupid computer tricks. The most common items are AI running off at the mouth, getting lost in endless random numbers or stuttering the same word forever. Especially good: Commercial display boards stuck in BIOS setup mode. This one gave me a…
-
What did they see?
This morning’s walk to the store was hurried and drab. I just wanted to Git-R-Done so I could resume working. We’ve been under a slowly rotating weather system for a couple days, with rain at times and breeze at times. Fortunately the heavy part stayed well to the south. Along the way I passed through…
-
Language joke
This is a bit unfair but it gave me a much needed laugh on a hard day. 99 in French is quatre-vingt dix neuf, which translates as “We do not have a functional numbering system.”
-
New automotive feature
Car dreams aren’t rare. Many of the items on my bedtime playlist are auto dealer films with tech details about cubic inches and suspensions. Those details inevitably leak into dreams. In this morning’s dream I was trying out a very specific car, a ’66 Plymouth Belvedere wagon, like this except dark blue: My wife [who…
-
Why I bought a house
From Spokane News: 900 East Sitka Ave, Assault Reported. Reported male cut a hole through his apartment into another apartment and was caught by the resident in the other apartment. Police arrived and male fought with Police and now detained. The new Facebook explainer bots don’t offer any fake explanations or point-missing fake questions about…
-
Gernsback’s 1918 iPhone
The idea of a portable videophone was common around 1910, written and illustrated in electronics and sci-fi mags. Here’s one I hadn’t seen before in a 1918 Gernsback magazine. I’ve modeled it with one age-appropriate improvement to free up the user’s hands. Gernsback’s version resembled a vanity mirror mounted on a candlestick phone, including the…
-
Hey four eyes!
Via Smithsonian, a close look at an early vertebrate shows that it had four eyes. = = = = = START QUOTE: The earliest known fossil vertebrates, from 518 million years ago, may have viewed the world through four eyes — and one pair of them was the precursor to the pineal gland, according to…
-
Imagination, not Intelligence part 2
The silliest point-missers think the I in AI stands for Intelligence, and bash it for “hallucinations” instead of logic. Nope, the I stands for Imagination. Altman knows what he’s doing and knows who he’s destroying. There’s no need for a new kind of intelligence. COMPUTERS BEAT RATIONAL INTELLIGENCE CENTURIES AGO. The first mechanical adders were…
-
Reprinting Ferguson’s orrery
Reprint from 2021, triggered by previous item about ancient mitochondria. Are mitochondria the sensors for universal magnetic influence? Is Solarion the original orrery? = = = = = Picking up from previous post on James Ferguson. Previously I showed a couple of science entertainments using static fields to drive gadgets. Ferguson’s main focus was orreries…
-
Ned Green and enjoyable science
Linked in previous, worth a reprint. = = = = = START 2021 REPRINT: Following part 1 and part 2 and part 3. Saved the best for last. Colonel Ned Green was the most influential of these three men. Money talks, and intelligently-directed ENJOYABLE money talks best. His mother Hetty Green was the equivalent of…
Polistra's Mill 