November 20, 2007
In Which A Lengthy Passage is Quoted; Feathers are Ruffled, Without Recourse Given to Smoothing; The Text is Endlessly Self-Referential; And In Which the Conventions of Victorian Literature are Cruelly Mockèd Via the Title
“The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be. ... The computer resembles the magic of legend in this respect, too. If one character, one pause, of the incantation is not strictly in proper form, the magic doesn't work.” – F. Brooks
I will now make a controversial assertion. Ready?
“Computer science, as a major, requires the most writing of any save English.”
Why is this?
November 13, 2007
Because Thoth Said So
"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this.
- from the notebooks of Mr. Ibis" – Neil Gaiman, American Gods
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September 28, 2007
That was... how many again?
What’s the world’s new favorite toy?
If you answered Halo 3… you’re right, but for the purposes of this entry I am going to pretend that you’re wrong, because I don’t want to talk about Halo 3 (mostly because I’m jealous of all the people who 1. Got their hands on a 360 2. Got their hands on Halo 3 3. Planned far enough in advance to save up sick days so they could take off work for a few days to play it).
The correct answer is the MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game, and they’re teaching today’s youth all the wrong things.
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September 22, 2007
In Soviet Russia, Air Go On YOU!
The default title provided for Case blogs is “My Thoughts on the Discourse.” However, discourse is less about “My Thoughts” than it is about “Your Thoughts”, and therefore body modifications present problems for workers.
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September 14, 2007
Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin
According to Wikipedia, the idiom “the writing on the wall” derives from the Biblical Book of Daniel, in which a disembodied hand appears at a Babylonian feast and writes on the wall a portent of the kingdom’s destruction. Today, however, mention the words “writing” and “wall” in conjunction around any red-blooded university student and they will automatically assume you’re talking about Facebook.
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August 31, 2007
Go, and Sin No More
“Economics is, at root, the study of incentives… An incentive is a bullet, a lever, a key: an often tiny object with astonishing power to change a situation.” – Freakonomics.
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August 27, 2007
This is a test
We be testing this feature, mon.