“If you eat a frog, first thing in the morning, nothing you do that day could be less pleasant than that.”
This is supposed to be motivational?
Motivation is a weird thing. You decide you want to do something, and yet you find yourself not getting it done. So there grows an entire industry devoted to helping you do something you’ve already decided to do.
But if you actually wanted to do it, wouldn’t you.. just do it?
Anyway. I decided I want to write more. But I don’t write. So I’m forcing myself to eat the frog this morning. This blog post = a frog.
SLUUURRP.
Yo, OS Vendors —
I hate you all equally;
Satan knows his own.
News like this makes me glad I don’t bank with HSBC…
Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we’re now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals.
via Outrageous HSBC Settlement Proves the Drug War is a Joke | | Rolling Stone.
But of course there’s nothing about HSBC that makes it special for this. Â Probably all big banks do it.
I had an insight about the utility of political discussion in the wake of a tragedy. Â The point is, a tragedy tends to excite system AÂ and so almost by necessity leads to reconfirmation of existing beliefs.
I thought about it and decided to write a post about it, trying to start a meta-political discussion. Â Specifically, I wanted to identify the kind of comment that is likely to be productive in the wake of a tragedy. Â I could think of one kind: people who had experienced a sudden, sincere change of beliefs as a result of the tragedy.
Since then I have had a new insight. Â It’s about the utility of meta-political discussion in the wake of a tragedy.
I’m not going to share my insight with you, but I bet you can guess what it is.
If you had  ‘political belief X’ before a tragedy;
and then a tragedy happens that reinforces your belief in X;
and then you re-iterate your belief in X;
then I really doubt you’re going to change anyone’s mind.
Now, anyone who used to believe X and now believes Y — say, a former gun-control advocate who now wants armed guards and teachers in schools, or a former gun-rights proponent who would like to see the US adopt a restrictive regime like Canada’s or Sweden’s — that might actually change some minds.
But even for that, today is not the day to talk about that. Â Let the grieving families receive their dead. Â Leave the politics out of it.
A consequence of using the
Heisig system to learn the Kanji — the mnemonic “Olive, the other ringwraith”
Resurrected from my facebook dustbin by request from my kids, now here in easy-to-find web-searchable format:
Olive the Other Ringwraith
Olive, the other ringwraith
hadn’t even been a king
She didn’t have a throne
She didn’t even have a ringAll of the other ringwraithsUsed to hiss and call her namesThey never let poor OliveJoin in any ringwraith gamesThen one foggy Durin’s DaySauron came to sayOlive with your knives so cruelWon’t you make some hobbit gruel?Then all the ringwraiths loved herand they screamed aloud with glee“Olive, the other ringwraithYou’ll go down in history!”  (like Númenor…)
And the motivation is that the character nine (ä¹) is mnemonicized as ‘baseball’ – since there are 9 players on the field – but someone suggested ‘ringwraith’ which is much better for me since I am a sports dunce. Then there’s a component that occurs in a few characters of 9 (ä¹) over 10 (å), as in the right-hand side of smash (ç •). I have decided that’s the little-known tenth ringwraith, Olive, aka “Olive the other ringwraith”.So smash (ç •) is a stone (石) smashing into Olive’s face, as opposed to the more abstract concept stone + nine + ten.
Here comes Jabberwock, here comes Jabberwock
Right down Jabberwock lane
Gyre and gimble the slithy toves
The borogoves are mimsy again!
Hear that sword go snicker-snacker
Oh what a frumious sight
So leave it dead and bring its head
For it’s a frabjous night!
With apologies to Gene Autry and Lewis Carrol.
Why do they only offer *accidental* death and dismemberment insurance? What about intentional dismemberment?
How is a bad credit score like an ex-spouse?
One a sucking FICO, and the other …
Andrew Plotkin:
If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
That works for now, but what are we going to do for a base case when Hofstadter dies?