Anarchism in Iceland
Just read this interesting post[Polycentric Order: First Draft of Anarchic Iceland] about Icelandic history. Apparently, from 930 CE to 1096 CE, they had a tribal form of government with no really official rules. Just that the chieftans met for 2…
Information Uncertainty Principle
Through Denning’s Presentation Great Principles of Computing I heard of this fascinating tale regarding Buridan’s ass. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since…
Why Grading Sucks
It’s not just that the student provided solutions are unexpectedly “creative” and don’t fit the designed rubric. Nor that they make you wonder “Why am I even trying?”. Nor that they invoke thoughts such as “How did we ever make…
Segregate Third-Party JS Libraries
Typically, web authors simply load whatever library they’d like to use with full trust. In JS, such loading amounts essentially to a #include. I’m flabbergasted that this practice remains normal. It could be paranoia, but even without invoking all the…
Editor Wars
Normally, I use vi for most of my editing work. But, I’ve been hearing much about emacs and its ability to do a better job at syntax highlighting, code completion, spell checking, even a writegood-mode for detecting passive voice. Emacs…
Illegal Everything
John Stossel (I’m really starting to like this guy) recently did an episode titled “Illegal Everything” in which he make the following observations/arguments: Legalizing drugs does not lead to more use, but does lead to less violence. (example: Portugal, as…
What you should know about type systems
I read today, a really good essay on type systems. It covers what they can be used for and the differences between dynamic and static systems (although the word ‘type’ is used in both, it doesn’t mean the same thing…