i spoke briefly about flashmobs the other day with dan chang from his the miami herald, the article is a nice, short culture piece. have a look.

Donald Davidson dies. IN MEMORIAM Donald Davidson (1917-2003) Professor Davidson died yesterday in Berkeley. As soon as memorial notices are available about his… [The Leiter Reports: Editorials, News, Updates] —- Oh i remember reading some of his work when i was an undergrad. while it might appear that i experienced death in a remote manner […]

Bush and The Philosophers. Speaking of memes, check this one out. Back on August 5, Mark Kleiman wrote a post that concluded with the observation that “There's a great essay to be written about the second Bush Administration as our first truly post-modern Presidency.”… [Matthew Yglesias] wierd thing is that i just had a discussion […]

Tax the rich the same as the average people, Camejo says Green Party gubernatorial candidate Peter Camejo on Thursday unveiled one of the recall campaign's most detailed and liberal proposals, one he contended would lift California out of its budget morass. Camejo, who heads an investment brokerage firm he founded, called for strikingly higher income […]

Walter Cronkite clears his throat. Walter Cronkite's Ten propositions for the Democrats I respect Cronkite like I respect my grandmother. I'm also a democrat. Please someone, anyone, destroy Walter Cronkite's levelheadism here. Please. [MetaFilter]] everyone should read this, it is about democracy, and equality in the future.

well, news just hit slashdot that Virginia Tech, where i teach, is building a top 10 supercomputer cluster out of Apple G5's. it is supposed to attract researchers interested in using it to virginia tech, though there are already several groups on campus with clusters and grids opeational already…. well, it is a good way […]

Too much to read!. You know, this just shouldn’t be allowed. In fact, I think it ought to be outlawed. It’s just bloody not fair that the 2003 Extreme Markup proceedings come out just as I really ought to be getting a head start on fall reading. Oh, and, um, I guess we won… [Caveat […]

Code reading and literary criticism. Brian Marick has posted a wonderful essay on the subject of commenting code. “I do believe that code with comments should often be written to be more self-explanatory,” he says. “But code can only ever be self-explanatory with respect to an expected reader.” To illustrate, he shows an algorithm in […]

Software Patents? My view is that the success of business processes–including software–depends on subtle issue of execution, rather than on the concepts that you can explicitly patent.  So I think I'm sympathetic to Paul David, et al, who argue against a proposal for the EU that would encourage software patents. Bessen and  Hunt found that the […]

actually this is a game that should be played by everyone, not just college students. you already play it so, perhaps you should know what your playing with. in any case, i recommend distributing this game to your students and friends.