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Scheme
When I was in school I wrote programs in Scheme and its variant T. I still remember that as the easiest programming language I’ve ever used. In Scheme you never waste time on pointless boilerplate. You just write code. In order to run some function on a bunch of data, a very common operation, you…
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Left Behind
On Bruce Schneier’s blog he pointed out a service on the Left Behind website. Left Behind is of course a reference to the popular series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (my capsule review: first volume is a decent thriller, subsequent volumes become increasingly pointless, I stopped after four). The website lets people…
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Disastrous Government
The recent natural disasters in Myanmar and China have led to terrible suffering. I know that many people are doing everything they can to help the people who have been hurt. My comment is that it is clear that there were significant governmental failures in both cases. In Myanmar the government appears to be actively…
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Oil Speculation
I’ve seen some arguments that the current spike in the price of oil is being driven by speculators. The general argument seems to be that people are betting that the price of oil will rise in the future, and are locking in prices now via futures contracts. They plan to sell those contracts in the…
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Why Blog?
An article in the New York Times Magazine this week discusses why people blog. It is by Emily Gould who used to work for Gawker. She describes herself as an “over-sharer”, and attributes her blogging, and the problems that resulted from it, to that. There are blogs in which people mainly discuss their personal lives,…