May 2005

The Individual Lemming

by  on 
 

John Maynard Keynes said in his masterful The General Theory: ‘Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.’ (Or, to put it in less elegant terms, lemmings as a class may be derided but never does an individual lemming get criticized.) — Warren Buffett Read more →

Dying at the Right Time

by  on 
 

[James] Dean died before he could fail, before he lost his hair or his boyish figure, before he grew up. — Donald Spoto, Rebel: The Life and Legend of James Dean   One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best; that is known by those who want to be long loved. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra   Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: ‘Die at the right time!’ — Ibid. Read more →

God’s Gift to Kansas

by  on 
 

The creationists’ fondness for ‘gaps’ in the fossil record is a metaphor for their love of gaps in knowledge generally. Gaps, by default, are filled by God. You don’t know how the nerve impulse works? Good! You don’t understand how memories are laid down in the brain? Excellent! Is photosynthesis a bafflingly complex process? Wonderful! Please don’t go to work on the problem, just give up, and appeal to God. Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas. — Richard Dawkins, “Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant” Read more →

10 Best Questions to Ask at the End of a Talk When You Absolutely Have To

by  on The Programmer
 

From Bertrand Meyer: You know the feeling: You’ve accepted to chair a session at a technical conference, you’ve managed to keep the speakers on time, and a talk has just finished. “Any questions?” asks the speaker, met only by stunned silence. It’s your job as Chair to fill in, and you have no idea what to ask. Here, as a service to the community, is the list of the Ten Best Questions To Ask At The End Of A Talk When You Absolutely Have To: 10. When do you come up for tenure? 9. This doesn’t look like PowerPoint. What presentation software are you using? 8. Very interesting theorem you just proved on the last slide. It’s lemma 2 in chapter 1 of my 1977 thesis. 7. I like your accent. Where did you learn English? 6. Who does your hair? 5. On slide 2, what did Lambda stand for?… Read more →

Hey, Fat Ass!

by  on 
 

I’m 46 years old. I’m no longer young. I hate it when people ask how old I am, but it’s only going to get worse. So far, I feel like I’m aging more gracefully than a lot of people — without the use of hair coloring, ponytails, earrings, sports cars, and cosmetic surgery. I’m still married to my first wife. To the dads of several of my son’s friends, I pose this question: If you are in fact a bald, middle-aged fat-ass, how long can you pretend to still be young and hip? Read more →

Transcendental Meditation

by  on 
 

Slate summarizes an article from the American Journal of Cardiology (emphasis added): Transcendental meditation may prevent death from hypertension. In a study, hypertensive elderly people who used TM were 23 percent to 30 percent less likely to die than those who relied on other relaxation methods or drugs. What is the difference between transcendental meditation and regular meditation? It must be pretty good if it makes people “less likely to die.” Read more →

We’ll Kill Them Too

by  on 
 

I remember being told less than two years ago that if you kill Osama bin Laden, thousands more bin Ladens will rise in his place. I didn’t think so myself; he looks like a one-of-a-kind guy to me, as does Saddam Hussein. But if people rise up to take his place they’ll be killed as well. There are more of us than there are of them, and we are smarter, cleverer and more tolerant; and we, too, believe that our culture and civilization mustn’t be offended, defamed, raped and defiled. — Christopher Hitchens Read more →

The Waterfall Approach Persists as an Urban Myth

by  on The Programmer
 

Much of present-day software acquisition procedure rests upon the assumption that one can specify a satisfactory system in advance, get bids for its construction, have it built, and install it. I think this assumption is fundamentally wrong, and that many software acquisition problems spring from that fallacy. — Fred Brooks, “No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering” We were doing incremental development as early as 1957, in Los Angeles, under the direction of Bernie Dimsdale [at IBM’s Service Bureau Corporation]. He was a colleague of John von Neumann, so perhaps he learned it there, or assumed it as totally natural . . . All of us, as far as I can remember, thought waterfalling of a huge project was rather stupid, or at least ignorant of the realities. I think what the waterfall description did for us was make us realize that we were doing something else, something… Read more →

OC Real Estate Report

by  on 
 

I recently sold a house in Laguna for $3.5 million. It was on about 2,000 square feet of land, maybe a twentieth of an acre, and the house might cost about $500,000 if you wanted to replace it. So the land sold for something like $60 million an acre. — Warren Buffett Read more →