February 2012
1 post
Optik - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →
Duality of the Embrace -a joining as well as a confrontation- is what we will explore in tomorrow’s tango workshop at Krannert (12-1pm, preceding the milonga at 1pm). Tango being a metaphor for life, the embrace between two people can span a wide a range of flavors. Simply breathing even without any steps -the pause- can constitute a dance. Sometimes, the dance is manifested instead as a...
January 2012
2 posts
“People have, oddly enough, found something interesting to say about the essence...”
– Richard Rorty’s Platonists, Positivists, and Pragmatists (Introduction to Consequences of Pragmatism)
Short version
Now is not the time for austerity, which is what sweeping cuts to government would be. I do not believe in the Austrian prescription of “the beatings (economic pain) will continue until morale (the economy) improves.
Austrian economics has little empirical evidence behind it. Worse, Austrians explicitly privilege reasoning from first principles over empiricism. I think that’s wrong....
December 2011
2 posts
BLEACH - U.S. Official Anime Site →
I liked Bleach in the first story arc and part of the second. The mythology was interesting. I liked some of the animation and use of backgrounds. I liked some of the characters, and they actually changed. It was an OK way to spend some time with Paul. However…
Since Ichigo got really powerful, it’s gotten really boring. Episodes are structured somewhat like Pokemon or Yuh-gi-oh:...
Additional songs for Festivus Playlist →
Frank Crumit
Gene Vincent
Sam Cooke
Lindsay Lohan
Rene Hall and his band (instrumental)
Johnny Cash
Versions mentioned on Twitter:
Big Bill Broonzy:
Darby & Tarlton
Lonnie Donegan
November 2011
3 posts
Occupy Des Moines summary
So. What did I learn? This mostly confirmed what I’ve read from non-mainstream sources about the Occupy movement. The media is all about conflict. The actual movement is about discussion — and about getting more shelves for the camp library. I entirely sympathize with what they’re trying to do. I’m not gregarious enough to really join in. As a process geek, I’m quite...
Lear on minimum levels of sustenance →
Lear has given over his kingdom and his power to his daughters, retaining the services of 100 knights, who are, basically, old drunken comrades who have no particular value. After a time, Lear’s daughters try to talk him down from 100 knights to 50 to 25 to… Well, here’s the last bit, which I’ve always found gut-wrenching:
GONERIL
Hear me, my lord; What need you five...
Twitter / @atduskgreg: @marick how does it affect... →
1. Brooks is taking advantage of the always-convenient Red State / Blue State “divide” by saying the 0.1% live in the blue states. But that doesn’t mean that their money comes from only the blue states. And it doesn’t mean that the political access and influence their money buys them affects only the Blue states.
The financial crisis affected homeowners in Arizona in a...
September 2011
1 post
Untitled →
The argument is that “thank you” and “obrigado” and “merci” are all ways of saying “I am in your debt”, which is a way of stating a position of inferiority. Saying “my pleasure” is saying “why no, you couldn’t be in debt to me because I did it for my own pleasure”. Saying “no problem” is saying “It cost...
August 2011
1 post
If raising my taxes means I get benefits worth...
Extra dollars come from two places:
Specialization. Michael Jordan would be better off hiring a neighborhood kid to mow his lawn, even if he’s better at it. He shouldn’t do everything for himself; he should concentrate on things that he’s exceptional at. (This is called comparative advantage.) Similarly, you’re better off doing whatever you do than, say, inspecting your...
July 2011
2 posts
Welcome To MILK Kommunikations Ko-Op →
“Nope. Milk components are mainly synthesized in epithelial cells and secreted into luminal spaces where they combine with fluid and electrolytes to make milk. It has a lot more and varied components than mucus does. Mucus is much more boring.”
“” A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring...”
– http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html
June 2011
1 post
Problems with Raymond's gift economies
My (recent) understanding of gift economies is that the rules are quite distinct from money economies.
In a gift economy, one gives a gift without any certainty about when (or even if) the gift will be repaid. There is no real notion of “balancing the books”, where a gift X will be repaid by gifts Y and Z of equal value. “Record-keeping” (among the vast majority of...
April 2011
2 posts
“Liberalism, at its core, is not so much a doctrine as a disposition, a habit of...”
– The First Liberal: How Montaigne made us modern.
“In the Sierra foothills there are the California Caverns, a gigantic cave system...”
– The Trouble With Testosterone, Robert M. Sapolsky, p. 88n
March 2011
2 posts
How to give a pill to a cat / dog
How to Give a Cat a Pill 1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in...
“I want to get at the blown glass of the early cloud chambers and the oozing...”
– Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, by Galison
December 2010
1 post
“I’ve also grown concerned that this is what getting old is all about. You spend...”
– Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Open Thread
July 2010
1 post
Twitpic - Share photos on Twitter →
Mi esposa se llama Dawn Marick a veces pero Dawn Elaine Morin, DVM, MS, ACVIM a otro veces. Es una professora de la medicina veterinia. Dice muchos buenos cuentos - sobre las vacas. Yo robo ellos y uso en mis discursos. (Esta el mejor parte.)
¡Tiene un trabajo! ¡Me aguanta! No muchos mujeres pueden hacer los dos.
Nos conocimos en un concierto de bluegrass - Allison Krauss, antes de que ella...
May 2010
2 posts
Rand Paul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia →
If I were writing speeches or talking points for Rand Paul:
Q: Would you vote to repeal the Civil Rights Act or the Americans With Disabilities Act?
A: Look. I have a principled stance in favor of the free market and against government interference in a properly functioning market. We don’t have a properly functioning market yet. We didn’t have that from the beginning of our nation....
http:// →
Catchfire, The Jesus and Mary Chain
Crossfire, Béla Fleck
Fire, Etta James
Fire, Pointer Sisters
The Fire Down Below, Bob Seger
I’m on Fire, Bruce Springsteen
Into the Fire, Bruce Springsteen (Both makes me sad and pisses me off every time I hear it. What a country-wide spirit wasted.)
Metal Firecracker, Lucinda Williams
Dance of the Spirits of Fire (from The Perfect Fool), Gustav...
April 2010
1 post
http:// →
Sometime within the last 10 years, I was unpacking a suitcase after a trip and found a pair of women’s underwear (black). I tossed it to Dawn and said, “Oh, look. There’s some of your underwear in my suitcase.” She said: “That’s not mine.” My look of surprise at that moment was probably a good thing.
Time passes. Was just texting to Dawn, who left this...
January 2010
2 posts
Amtrak - Reservations - Select Train →
We’ve got a saying in the US: “the grass is always greener on the other side of the street”, meaning that what’s over there looks better than what I’ve got, even if they’re exactly the same. I’m definitely a person who’s prone to that, so I’m suspicious of this:
When I go to Europe, I feel like the public infrastructure in the US is...
http:// →
Here’s the real story behind Avatar. The key idea - the creation of the Nav’i - isn’t original. I got it from someone else (I can’t remember who). I’ve just elaborated on it, paying special attention to Bruce Sterling’s “The Swarm”.
A human exploratory mission lands, looking for a harvestable source of unobtanium. The planet-spanning...
December 2009
1 post
Twitter / Ron Jeffries: What could ordinary joes a... →
Arguably only successful “janes&joes” movement recently was the Tea Party demonstrations over the summer (though they got significant behind-the-scenes logistical and probably financial help from astroturf organization). They did it by getting together and acting like jerks in public on an issue that let politicians posture between them and the cameras.
In contrast, the supporters...
November 2009
5 posts
Cthulhu and other crazies » Blog Archive »... →
… The argument goes something like this. Racism is a system in which one group of people exercises unjust power to the disadvantage of another group of people. Part of the way such a system survives is by reinforcement, by enough people continually affirming that the system is the way things should be.
Now, the fact is that, all things being equal, you’re better off in your country...
Consciousness Explained - Wikipedia, the free... →
“The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task it has a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it doesn’t need its brain anymore, so it eats it.
“It’s rather like getting tenure.”
– Daniel C. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 1991
Twitter / Home →
In the following, notice that r.time= works for heroku-staging, but not from heroku.
I did a 'git push' for both of them, so they have identical code.
I did a db:pull and db:push from critter4us to critter4us-staging, so the data should be identical.
Note that the 'time' column was recently added. (That was part of the newest feature.)
576 $ heroku console --app critter4us
Ruby console for...
Twitter / Home →
Until evolutionary psychology became trendy, workers in that field struggled with the legacy of the sociobiology of the 20’s and 30’s, when claims about the way evolution worked were turned into claims that the existing structure of society was Right. The people dominating society justifiably dominated society because they were the most fit.
After Naziism, that kind of thinking was...
Twitter / Brian Marick: Decided to follow @geepawh... →
“Microtest with emotional baggage” is supposed to remind you of working with people who have emotional baggage. You’re trying to talk about some simple thing, and suddenly they fly off the handle because of some connection to some bad experience once. That’s like a microtest that can’t be run unless you instantiate 8000 classes that have nothing to do with the point...
October 2009
1 post
A Picture of 3 objects →
See the linked picture.
I had tests that:
- in response to a, C sends ca and cb to mock versions of A and B.
- in response to cb, B sends ba to a mocked version of A and deals with the (faked) results appropriately.
The bug was that C sent cb before it sent ca. However, ca causes a change in A that affects the results given by ba.
There were a couple of things that contributed to the bug:
1....
September 2009
4 posts
http://exampler.com/tmp/critter.mov →
I’m building an app for my wife’s secretaries, and will be for the foreseeable future. It’s used to schedule animals for student practice or professor demonstrations.
I’m doing this mainly to practice on something of respectable scope, but we might as well get as much out of it as we can. So if people want to teach testing courses from it, teach TDD by adding onto it, or...
Twitter / Home →
What happened at Munich? The leader of a weaker power (Britain) was faced with a stronger, more technologically advanced power that had shown it was not shy about using force. That leader (Chamberlain) attempted to appease the stronger power by giving it what it wanted.
What those who talk about appeasement act like they don’t believe is that *we* (the US) are the stronger, more...
“”
– 32320007-6b893af39294608a95fda380863a53ca.4abe6a11-full.png 507×223 pixels
“For instance there’s a fire house near the conference hotel and I spent...”
– SCNA 2009: Impressions and (actionable) feedback - software_craftsmanship | Google Groups
August 2009
1 post
“Honda was trying to develop the CVCC engine, which had lower emission and higher...”
– JUDE Community Site - JUDE Developers Blog
June 2009
5 posts
Uncle Bob on Life, the Universe, and Everything ... →
* Abortion
I’m not happy with abortion. My bias, though, is to defer to actual humans rather than to abstractions or to potential humans. So I want to let the woman decide.
(I don’t believe, by the way, that your way of thinking works. (1) We don’t generally get to define contractual agreements for other people. “What you *really* meant by offering me a ride was a...
ScrumMaster of Last Resort
That’s something I think the Agile Alliance should do.
Too often these days, the ScrumMaster is thought of as the boss of the team, when in fact the roles were originally reversed: the team was the boss of the ScrumMaster. The team would say, “Behold, there is an obstacle in our path. Pray remove it, Good ScrumMaster.” And the ScrumMaster would do so.
I care about joyful teams....
Where my process wouldn't work
About a decade ago, I wanted to arrange a panel session of process methodologists who would describe situations in which they would NOT recommend the process they were known for.
“When the people are not properly trained” and “when there isn’t enough management support” were banned as answers. They were to describe situations in which, even with willing,...
Boy, Was That Guy Naive!
From time to time, I tell people that whenever I look back at myself five years ago, I think “Boy, was that guy naive!” — and that, if I ever stop being able to do that, it’s time for me to shuffle off and never be seen again.
For example, five years ago, I was totally naive about the difficulty of implementing business-facing TDD. I was naive about how easy it would be to...
Pay me until you're done
I always tell people that an ideal Agile project works like this: each iteration, the business picks things to get done. Those should be the most valuable things remaining to be done. Therefore, the ROI of the team decreases each iteration. Eventually, anything left to add to the product is worth less than the cost to add it. That’s the point at which the business should find something else...
May 2009
5 posts
Exploration Through Example →
….
There’s something of a difference between claims about facts or techniques and claims about fundamentals - about what Lakatos (in the link) calls the “hard core” of a research programme. The difference is that a research programme (like, in my case, the idea that Agile is context-driving software development rather than context-driven) is considered to be...
By "prickly", I mean...
If a “back to roots” movement is needed, it must be because people have abandoned at least some part of the original foundation. They did that for reasons: perhaps abandonment was easy, profitable, what the cool kids were doing, etc.
For a “back to roots” movement to succeed, it has to counter or repel the forces that caused that first abandonment. Something needs more...
Suppose management is messing things up. Chances are good they’re deluding themselves about the consequences of their actions.
If team members trickle away one by one, each departure is easy to rationalize, and the deluded behavior can continue.
A spinoff can be harder to cope with, because more people leave at once, but it probably won’t take the entire team. There will still be the...
“People have, oddly enough, found something interesting to say about the essence...”
– Exploration Through Example » Blog Archive » Stepping in the same river many times
“The marginal man…is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies...”
– Robert E. Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
April 2009
4 posts
http:/// →
EagleFiler is good about letting me stuff all kinds of things into it. Also good about letting me drag entries out. And it stores things as real files with real URLs. So here’s a scenario:
I’m going to be revising my RubyCocoa book for MacRuby eventually. I’m finding links to topics or examples I’ll want to cover. As I find those, I can pop them into EagleFiler and tag...
http:/// →
Title: So What *Are* the Roots of Agile?
Talk: “If this conference is about going back to the roots of Agile, what are they? My belief: if you think of them as a cross between artisanal retro-futurism and team-scale anarcho-syndicalism, you won’t go far wrong. <pause> Thank you.
<pause>
OK, let me explain…”
A look at some artisanal foods in New... →
‘But he gladly lets technology lend a hand. Twice a day, in the “milking parlor,” a computerized lactation carousel that handles 60 sheep at once—the only one in the U.S. for sheep, Wajswol claims—milks 300 ewes per hour. In the cheese room, vats of milk are heated to the precise temperatures required to activate specific strains of bacteria to produce just the right texture of curd.
...
http://www.exampler.com/tmp/cocoapuffs1c.mov →
1. Would you watch this to the end, if the whole thing were twice as long as this excerpt? (The remainder would be a walkthrough of what the print statements show, plus a diagram - similar to the one at 2:32 to 5:56 - that explains a gotcha with containers like NSArray.)
2. Would it be interesting enough to watch if it used a program contrived to show just the bug and nothing else? (This would...