This video, “Four Letter Words,” is cool for several reasons. First of all, this engineer has found a way to depict all 26 letters in an arrangement of fluorescent bars; the linguistic equivalent of a digital clock radio display. Secondly, the words that come up are entirely of the computer’s choosing. They are assembled by an algorithm from a word association database.
So, yeah. Those strings of words were actually chosen by the computer, itself. HAL seems rather repressed. I’d leave those pod bay doors closed if I were you.
And here is the proof. I realize that there is no special significance to this diagram given the arbitrariness of English, and the fact that pi is a Greek character, but still, a worthy effort.
This diagram reminds me of the time I did a Fibonacci derivative of the Fibonacci sequence and was left with numbers which corresponded to letters that were an anagram of “magic hoax.” Think some of us are trying a little bit too desperately to find meaning amongst the nothingness? Pi is an irrational number, they say, but its got nothing on human beings.
A 92-year old farmer and his son set themselves on fire yesterday in protest of a forced sale of their land to Chinese authorities. As reported by the Shanghai Daily, the bulldozer operators respectfully delayed their demolition for two full hours, and then proceeded to tear down the farm once the corpses had been fully extinguished.
Terrific and heart-rending article written by a GTA4 addict who consciously decided to abandon his life of productivity to gain a greater understanding of both cocaine and Pixeltropolis, San Andreas.
For more on video game addiction, listen to this classic Mep debate on WoWs similarity to crack.
As you probably read in the news today, President Obama officially announced a new START arms control treaty with Russia which will reduce each side’s nuclear arsenal to 1,500 strategic warheads, along with other delivery and verification protocols which will ensure the reduction is actually happening. (This is, of course, still more than enough to annihilate everything hundreds of times over, and there are many more warheads “in reserve” on each side, so we’ve got a long way to go…but still.) Assuming the Senate ratifies said treaty (which, admittedly, might take a little time thanks to the party of teabaggersparty of inciting violenceparty of liesparty of No Republicans in that august body), and for those keeping score at home, that means that in the first fourteen months of the administration:
Just another couple people thinking for themselves.
For 63 years, Goshen College has refrained from playing the national anthem before sporting events because the song prioritizes war and allegiance to country over peaceful devotion to God. Sixty-three years ending this year.
I’m late to the party here, but I just spent almost an hour catching up on this group: a chorus of fifth graders from Staten Island, in a public school no less (how shocking! /snark), who thanks to exactly the kind of music teacher the schools need more of (and believe me, he’s not getting rich doing this) is producing some pretty amazing arrangements. They’ve been featured on Nightline, Good Morning America, and have had a bunch of celebs weigh in with their praise, all while fighting budget cuts and skeptics who wonder whether this is the “right kind of music”…but that’s not really important. What’s important is that, every once in a while, something comes along to remind us that there might be some hope for us after all.
