Month: October 2004
Remember the John Woo movie Face/Off, where John Travolta and Nicholas Cage trade faces? Well, it isn’t science fiction any more.… Read the rest
Jacques Derrida is dead. The Telegraph has an intelligent and balanced review of his life and work. Derrida’s work had a huge influence on my college education, and it was always clear to me that his own writing was far more precise — and humane — than that of his American imitators.… Read the rest
Patrick Costello has put up the whole text of his book, The How and The Tao of the Old-Time Banjo, under a Creative Commons license. Patrick is a generous, down-to-earth, iconoclastic teacher of banjo and I am really looking forward to reading his book.… Read the rest
There are 11 different ways you can misspell “pedal to the metal,” all of which use legitimate words that Word won’t flag as misspelled: {pedal, petal, peddle} to the {metal, mettle, medal, meddle} = 12 permutations, only one of which is correct.… Read the rest
Researchers studying the behavior of software agents set up a test, called the “minority game,” where agents are competing for limited resources. In each round, the agents make choices, attempting to wind up in the successful minority. When the researchers added the ability for agents to communicate with one another to share information on successful strategies, a group of leaders emerged, amounting to about 1% of the total population.… Read the rest