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Answers in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
Liquid Assets, Compounded
[Image: "Butterfly Splash," by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an "e-videobook" tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer's site, which is where I found it.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist Each pebble in this world keeps its own counsel. Certain words — these, for [...]
The History of English, in Ten(ish) Minutes
When I was a sophomore in high school — this was just a plain old everyday public high school, not a school for high-achieving nerds or anything — our English teacher let us write an end-of-year research paper on any topic we liked. I have no idea why, of all possible subjects, at the age [...]
“The Logic of Irrationality”
[Original image found at the MathWorks site (slogan: "Accelerating the pace of engineering and science"). It seemed too good not to use.] I haven’t read the book in question (Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman), but this book review got it a spot in the queueueueue. Especially this bit: Kahneman’s approach to psychology spurns [...]
Alien You
From whiskey river: One Source of Bad Information There’s a boy in you about three Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl. This child has to make up its mind How to save you from death. He said things like: “Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.” [...]
Whiplash Misreadings
So I’m in bed last night, reading a little bit (as is customary) before shutting out the light. I finish one article and move to the next. The title of this new article is “Sleeping with the Enemy”; and the subtitle, “What happened between the Netherlands and us?” The Netherlands? I wonder. An enemy? Are we [...]
The Whole Sweet World Is a Garden
[Video: Rowlf and Fozzie collaborate, after a fashion -- and much to their surprise -- on an instrumental version of "In an English Country Garden"] From whiskey river: The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we [...]
What Did the Dormouse Say?
[Image: T-shirt available from the Skreened store. Of all the images of this moment which I found online, the original Tenniel still seemed best. Disclaimer: I have no interest (vested or, ha, shirted) in the store other than this photo of this T-shirt.] From whiskey river: Brotherhood Homage to Octavius Ptolemy I am a man: [...]
The Shape of What You Live
[Image: "Angular Momentum," from xkcd.com. The tooltip/"hover title" at the original page says: "With reasonable assumptions about latitude and body shape, how much time might she gain them? Note: whatever the answer, sunrise always comes too soon. (Also, is it worth it if she throws up?)"] From whiskey river: Remembering And you wait. You wait [...]
A Conspiracy of Pages
[Etching: "The Hall of Planets," by Erik Desmazières, #5 in a series of eleven illustrating an edition of "The Library of Babel," by Jorges Luis Borges; click to enlarge] From whiskey river: The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was [...]
