Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Quite frankly, I found it mostly interesting in a Jerry Springer kind of way. White trash battling it out in public, throwing chairs at each other. SCO crying about IBM's other women ... " -- Linus Torvalds

• A very moving apology that's also a psychology lesson and an evocative metaphor by theferrett to his wife. Worth reading as literature, whether you have any idea who these people are or not. "[...] You shake away your happy dreams of being the protagonist and realize that if you're not the protagonist and you're not the comic relief - and you're certainly not the romantic interest - that leaves precisely one role for you to fill. The story rewrites itself. And there comes the guilt, rolling in on time like the 5:45. [...]"
• What those longwinded corporate .sigfiles ought to say (a quick read, funny)
• A polyamory->English dictionary, with such translations as:

  Poly phrase: "I don't use primary/secondary terminology, since I don't see my relationships as hierarchical."
  English translation: "You're a secondary."

  and

  Poly phrase: "I see polyamory as being more about relationships and intimacy, while swinging is just about sex, and sex without intimacy is just not where I'm at right now."
  English translation: "I'm more sophisticated than the guy over there, please sleep with me instead."

• Ya gotta peek at this photo of a very cheerful orchid
• In the same general vein as some of the Peeps photo-essays, here are a series of photos explaining that drugs are bad (for crustaceans). Not a groundbreaking concept, but it amused me enough to want to pass it along.
• By now everybody knows about Salam Pax, the mysterious blogger in Iraq. Well here is an article by somebody who knows him (though he didn't realize it while he was working beside him).
• A collection of quotes from US officials showing how the story on Iraq's weapons of mass distruction evolved over time. Similar, but implemented as a database that can be filtered various ways and includes links to sources of quotes, is this site
• An article in The Globe and Mail describes a propoganda movie being produced in Canada (to qualify for Canadian government financial assistance, according to the article) about the events of 9/11, to be shown on Showtime this Fall, that portrays President Bush rather differently than most other reports. "Yet compared with other journalistic accounts of the period, the movie is clearly an effort to reconstruct Mr. Bush as a determined and principled military leader. The public image of Mr. Bush -- who avoided military service in Vietnam and who has often been derided as a doe-eyed naif on satirical TV shows -- is a key concern to White House communications officials, many of them friends of Mr. Chetwynd." It sounds kind of cartoonish from the description in the article, but since I don't have cable, I won't see it to find out whether it's as bad as it sounds so far.
• "Taste for Makers", by Paul Graham, examines why taste and beauty are important in every field, why those concepts are not purely subjective, what different fields' meanings of "beauty" have in common, and how to try to make beautiful, enduring works. Or, as he puts it early on in the context of design, "How do you make good stuff?" A remarkable essay; there is something I want to quote on every other page. (I especially liked what he said about Godel's theorem, my favourite mathematical theorem.) A few things that jumped out at me: On personal style: "The only style worth having is the one you can't help." On simplicity: "When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance." (Hey, that makes a good mantra for web designers, too, doesn't it?) And. near the end of the essay, "As you become expert in a field, you'll start to hear little voices saying, 'What a hack! There must be a better way.' Don't ignore those voices. Cultivate them."
• Chameleon Guitars caught my attention at Balticon (their web site doesn't have much on it yet -- just one page and not a lot of detail -- but you can see some photos there). They're making modular guitars. Want to switch from six-string to twelve-string? Loosen a catch and pop off the strings, headstock and bridge; pop in a different headstock/strings/bridge combination, latch it in place, and tune up. Want to switch from a three-humbucker pickup package to one that has a single-coil pickup for that Strat sound? Pop out the electronics section and pop in a different one. Want to ditch the outrageously flamboyant carved body you used last night in a rock concert for a conservative-looking one to play this morning at church? The body slides off as well. At Balticon they showed me designs for a semi-hollow electric body style, a modular acoustic guitar, and a neck that can be changed from fretted to fretless by turning a knob, that they're working on. Personally, I'm inclined to hold on to multiple guitars for multiple sounds and setups, but I do find this approach intriguing. (If nothing else, the fact that the instruments fold for easier transportation is cool itself.) And I'd love to have a guitar and a bass that I can switch between fretted and fretless mid-song.

I got lost in Paul Graham's website (I made the mistake of clicking on the "articles" button and finding way too much interesting stuff there), and after reading more articles than I meant to this afternoon, a couple of thoughts have hit me:

• Damn, this guy has a knack for phrasing things in ways that invite quotation; and
• What would happen if a university started teaching Lisp as the first language in its CS curriculum -- if "introduction to programming" used Lisp? If the Algol family (by which I mostly mean Pascal/C/C++/Java) and the ForTran family had to wait until second year (or at least second semester)?

(I do know Lisp but not very well. I learned enough of it to help the-ex-girlfriend-I'm-not-supposed-to-admit-I-know pass a class in it, toyed with it briefly 'cause it looked cool, and set it down without having really done anything with it. Maybe after I catch up on all the more urgent stuff on my to-do list, it'll be time to download a Lisp interpreter.)

Not feeling great tonight. I plan to make it to 3LF rehearsal tonight, but will probably show up late.