Florence Lawrence: The First Movie Star
Interesting fact: Prior to 1910, movies did not list the names of the cast members! Actors were just nameless faces on the screen . . .
You’re Welcome
My son and I are enjoying a weekend nap . . .
“Thanks, Dad,” he says.
“What are you thanking me for?”
“Nothing really . . . just everything . . .”
The Individual Lemming
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.)
Dying at the Right Time
[James] Dean died before he could fail, before he lost his hair or his boyish figure, before he grew up.
One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best; that is known by those who want to be long loved.
Many die too late, and some die too early. Yet strange soundeth the precept: ‘Die at the right time!’
God’s Gift to Kansas
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.
10 Best Questions to Ask at the End of a Talk When You Absolutely Have To
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?
4. Did you do your PhD in physics at Brigham Young University?
3. Have you thought of using a scientific approach instead?
2. Does your university offer courses on how to speak in public?
1. What else do you do?
Hey, Fat Ass!
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?
Transcendental Meditation
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.”
I Know Lots of Different Languages
My son is looking over my résumé, including the part where it says I’ve worked with lots of different languages.
“You don’t know a lot of languages,” he says.
We’ll Kill Them Too
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.
My Dog Sends a Bark Out to His Mom
Hi Mom!
Happy Mothers Day!
I know you were sad when I left, but I live with a loving family now, so you don’t have to worry about me.
Say hi to Dad.
Love, Lightning
P.S. Here is a picture of me with my owner.
— Lightning 
The Waterfall Approach Persists as an Urban Myth
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.
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 unnamed except for “software development.”
In his book, Agile and Iterative Development, [Craig] Larman has well documented the history of the many disasters introduced by accident when the Department of Defense standardized on a non-iterative method that was unproven on large projects. It was essentially a blunder by a consultant who had little experience with real software development.
The DOD has long since abandoned the waterfall method, and the consultant has recanted, but the waterfall approach persists as an urban myth in many software development organizations.
OC Real Estate Report
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.
My Son Points Out Something . . .
. . . that I’d already noticed:
You know, nobody really cares what you have to say about anything.
You Asked For It
My wife wants a massage . . .
“Moderate pressure or deep?” I ask.
“Deep . . . AAAAHHH! Moderate!”
Sports Parents Are Ruining the World
To parents who wish to lead a quiet life I would say: Tell your children that they are very naughty — much naughtier than most children. Point to the young people of some acquaintances as models of perfection and impress your own children with a deep sense of their own inferiority . . . This is called moral influence . . .
One of the moms from my son’s hockey team tells me that there’s too much “silliness” on the team, that the kids need to prepare for games with a little more seriousness.
Frequently Wrong But Never in Doubt
Absolute moral certitude through the ages
I read today where someone called the new pope, Benedict XVI, “a tremendous intellect” because he speaks 10 languages and has written 40 books.
I don’t know if that’s true, but let’s say it is. What are the 40 books about? His unquestioned acceptance of everything he’s ever been told?
Evidence?!
Explanations of daily changes in aggregate stock market indices are among the most ridiculous, speculative, and uncertain causal inferences made by journalists . . .
The Happy Wife
Today I saw a woman driving a car with a license plate frame that read:
A HAPPY WIFE
IS A HAPPY LIFE
How ominous is that? It’s a threat, really. Get ready to have “I’m not happy” brandished as a weapon against you for the rest of your life.
You see, the wife can’t figure out how to be happy, therefore the husband must devote all of his energy and attention to figuring out how to keep her happy, solve her problems, and somehow get her through the day.
And what if, as a result of this, he is not happy? Who cares!?
Be very careful, young man, is what I’m saying here . . .
99 Rules
Here’s a short excerpt from an article called “Ninety-Nine Rules for Managing ‘Better, Faster, Cheaper’ Projects” by Alexander Laufer and Edward J. Hoffman:
In a dynamic environment, project management is not about performing according to plan, with minimal changes. It is about meeting customer needs, while coping successfully with unavoidable changes. Therefore, the planning system should be capable of coping with changes.
Jesus Christ, if I could articulate even one rule that perfectly, I’d publish it and call it a day . . . but there are 98 more of these!
Here’s another one:
More paperwork does not ensure greater information reliability or accuracy — it only adds to the non-value-added cost. It only seems that adding more measurement and reporting means better control. The illusion of control may partially explain an obsession with control.
A must read!
Thus spoke The Programmer.