December 2009
51 posts
WatchThis video is popular as a kind of joke about “WTF, how did this get on Lawrence Welk,” but I legitimately like the song. The words have a certain spiritual longing that I can identify with, apart from the drug thing.
Here’s a related video that’s funnier than good.
WatchBlue Scholars - HI-808
I blogged this before, but it’s still so Hawaiʻi.
“Reading and writing are not discrete activities; they occur on a continuum, with...”
– A Working Library - Ways of Reading
If I were to vote for song of the Nothings, I’d say it has to be Outkast’s “Hey Ya.” Can anyone come up with a better suggestion than that?…
WatchMarxy - The 00s’ most underappreciated Japanese music
“Religion exists, in part, precisely because humans aren’t at home amid these...”
– Ross Douthat - Heaven and Nature
John’s Top 1000 Games of 2009 →
Updated essays →
Updated my site to feature HTML versions of all my essays and also three new essays from this semester. Check it out, y’all.
WatchShosha & Maura Capps - Cry (Slaid Cleaves cover)
Making Programming Masculine (PDF) →
An interesting article that explains that in the early days of programming (the 1960s), it wasn’t seen in strongly gendered terms yet. In retrospect, I would say that programming conforms pretty well to female stereotypes in terms of requiring a very detail oriented focus on ;s and properly spelled KEYWORDs.
WatchMagnify… Enhance!
Via the comments at nedroid
Redefining Definition →
Erin McKean, America’s best dressed lexicographer, argues in this week’s On Language column that reading definitions is a bad way to get the definition of a word.
There’s a philosophical point to be made here, but let’s not be belabor it.
Watch8 Kilomètres
Sign that I’m too sleepy: when reading Plato’s Crito, feeling bad about Socrates dying, even though he probably would’ve died by now anyway.
“Two thousand (and) nine” was fun but it’s up to us to say “twenty ten” instead of “two thousand ten.” If we fail kids in 2100 will hate us.
“(1) Principle of Epistemic Rationality: (PER)- It is not epistemically rational...”
– Bryan Caplan - Philosophy and Rational Irrationality (via llimllib)
Downside of livin’ in Hawaii #423: When you see an idling car with no driver, you can’t steal it, run away to New York, and make a new life.
“The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we...”
– William Wordsworth - The World Is Too Much With Us
Rands In Repose - Gaming the System →
Geeks are system thinkers. We see the world as a very complex but knowable flowchart where there are a finite number of inputs, which cause a similarly finite set of outputs. This impossible flowchart gives us a comfortable illusion of control and an understanding of a chaotic word, but its existence is a handy side effect of a life staring at, deducing, and building systems. It’s also why we...
WatchKekkyoku hitori (cover of Gilbert O’Sullivan - Alone Again)
Via No-sword
I don’t know how all y’all pull all nighters on term papers. I find that I become too stupid to write anything quite promptly come midnight.
WatchAwesome Zelda commercial!
Via 4 color rebellion
I can’t believe JAMA is continuing in its refusal to publish my thirty page paper about why IBS should be renamed “Exploding Butt Syndrome.”
WatchHalcali Medley
See also Halcali Sensation.
Getting it Wrong →
Via Phantom Leap, an essay marking the 5th year of Nintendo DS.
The true failure in every prediction of doom for the DS was that they mostly consisted of gamers looking at the device and saying, “I don’t like it, and nor do my mates” - without ever wondering what people who weren’t raised on a diet of Quake and Tekken might make of it. This week’s figures are a...
The year is two thousand and nine, and for the first time, I have in my possession a phone that can do QR-codes. Take that, late ’90s Japan!
Watch8-Bit Operators - WANNA HLD YR HANDHELD, VOL. 1
Via shauninman
“Now picture you are in a room with 10 people screaming. You hate it when people...”
– Mike Konczal - The Persistence of Poverty, and Increasing Marginal Utility (via llimllib)
WatchHI-808 (Milkbag Rainbow Remix)
So Hawaiʻi!
WatchClassic The Critic.
A decent précis of the central problem of all metaphysics might be, “Yeah, but what if the keys are in the bushes and not under the lamp?”
New Super Mario Bros. Wii pocket review: Level 8-3 has massive rolling waves of molten death. Do you really need to know any more than that?
Man, my papers have this really annoying tendency: the more stuff that I write about in them, the longer that they end up becoming. Gwargh~.