Glass Maze Every jumbled pile of person

Trust

A useful way to look at politicians is as bags of action and rhetoric that approximate some set of ideals. I’m talking about the big-box ideals, certainly — conservatism, liberalism, etc — but also the more specific ones, like commitment to transparency in government, or freedom of the press, or a reformed penal system. And [...]

Little-Known Facts: The First Programmer

It is generally believed that the first “programmer”, in the modern sense of the word, was Ada Lovelace, who wrote theoretical code for Charles Babbage’s never-built analytical engine. But this is untrue. The first programmer was, in fact, Mad Annie Splatterkill, born in 1562, a prolific and insane serial killer who, when she wasn’t roaming [...]

Programming is Fun

Fred Brooks, author of The Mythical Man-Month, takes a stab at explaining why programming is so much fun. An excerpt:

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the nonrepeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes [...]

Little-Known Facts: Intelligent Zombies

The problem with being an intelligent zombie is that you’re forever trying to eat your own brains. For just slightly intelligent zombies, this is only an occasionally debilitating issue — you’ll sometimes find them gnawing at their reflections in mirrors that they’ve had the misfortune to stumble upon in their shamblings. But eventually the mirror [...]

Little-Known Facts: Columbus’ Fourth Ship

It is a little known fact that there were actually four ships that set off with Christopher Columbus on his historic journey to discover America: the Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the Exploding Flower Turtle of Sparkle-Spam — this last containing a troupe of surrealist Prussian clowns who made it their life’s work [...]

Little-Known Facts: Gravity

All of the popular theories that purport to explain the phenomenon of gravity are utterly wrong. The truth: each of us is attended by a troupe of invisible gravity fairies whose only job is to settle on our bodies and, using their collective weight, keep us from careening off the surface of the earth and [...]