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Recent addenda to articles 202609: Errors, omissions, and retractions I was going to start with “it has been a while since we had one of these” but then I saw that the...
2 days ago
1

Recent addenda to articles 202609: Errors, omissions, and retractions

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

2 days ago
I was going to start with “it has been a while since we had one of these” but then I saw that the previous one started with “Wow, has it really been 7 months since I did one of these?” and that was in December 2023. Maybe I can make it a more regular thing. Anyway blogging...
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George Orwell's essay on the atomic bomb anticipates Nineteen Eighty-Four Lately I've been reading Orwell's collected work from 1945–1950, which was being deaccessioned from...
3 weeks ago
1

George Orwell's essay on the atomic bomb anticipates Nineteen Eighty-Four

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

3 weeks ago
Lately I've been reading Orwell's collected work from 1945–1950, which was being deaccessioned from the library. It opens with a short but fascinating essay on , published 19 October 1945. It seems clear that Orwell's thinking about this development led directly to his novel ,...
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Seven books I keep close because I love them The bookshelf by my elbow, the one that I can reach without getting up, has seven books on it, not...
3rd Aug 2026
1

Seven books I keep close because I love them

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

3rd Aug 2026
The bookshelf by my elbow, the one that I can reach without getting up, has seven books on it, not necessarily the ones I look in the most, but the ones whose emanations I most hope will infuse me as I write. Roget's Thesaurus (4th edition) The one I actually refer to most often...
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Starting to understand epsilon-zero This post is going to be about what infinite ordinal numbers are, and about is in particular. I...
10th Jul 2026
1

Starting to understand epsilon-zero

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in comics

10th Jul 2026
This post is going to be about what infinite ordinal numbers are, and about is in particular. I had a brainwave a while back (18 months now, wow, I have definitely not been blogging enough) and suddenly understood much better than I did before. I have several related ideas...
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Egyptian fractions for 2/105 The ancient Egyptians had a terrible notation for fractions. They had notations for for each , for...
12th Jun 2026
2

Egyptian fractions for 2/105

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

12th Jun 2026
The ancient Egyptians had a terrible notation for fractions. They had notations for for each , for , but everything else was written as a sum of these, with repeats forbidden, so that for example had to be written as . (Wikipedia) In an older article about Egyptian fractions...
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Bo Diddley Bo Diddley's cover of "Sixteen Tons" sounds very much like one of my favorites, "Can't Judge A Book...
3rd Mar 2026
1

Bo Diddley

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

3rd Mar 2026
Bo Diddley's cover of "Sixteen Tons" sounds very much like one of my favorites, "Can't Judge A Book By Its Cover". It's interesting to compare. Thinking on that it suddenly occured to me that his name might have been a play on “diddley bow”, which is a sort of homemade...
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John Haugeland on the failure of micro-worlds Buy Artificial Intelligence from Bookshop.org (with kickback) (without kickback) One of the...
5th Feb 2026
1

John Haugeland on the failure of micro-worlds

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

5th Feb 2026
Buy Artificial Intelligence from Bookshop.org (with kickback) (without kickback) One of the better books I read in college was Artifical Intelligence: The Very Idea (1985) by philosopher John Haugeland. One of the sections I found most striking and memorable was about...
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An anecdote about backward compatibility A long time ago I worked on a debugger program that our company used to debug software that it sold...
26th Jan 2026
1

An anecdote about backward compatibility

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

26th Jan 2026
A long time ago I worked on a debugger program that our company used to debug software that it sold that ran on IBM System 370. We had that could display (I think) eight colors (if you count black), but the debugger display was only in black and white. I thought I might be...
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My new git utility `what-changed-twice` needs a new name As I have , my typical workflow is to go along commiting stuff that might or might not make sense,...
21st Sep 2025
1

My new git utility `what-changed-twice` needs a new name

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

21st Sep 2025
As I have , my typical workflow is to go along commiting stuff that might or might not make sense, then clean it all up at the end, doing multiple passes with and to get related changes into the same commit, and then to order the commits in a sensible way. Yesterday I built a...
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A puzzle about balancing test tubes in a centrifuge Suppose a centrifuge has slots, arranged in a circle around the center, and we have test tubes we...
1st May 2025
1

A puzzle about balancing test tubes in a centrifuge

from The Universe of Discourse [alt+shift+b] in history

1st May 2025
Suppose a centrifuge has slots, arranged in a circle around the center, and we have test tubes we wish to place into the slots. If the tubes are not arranged symmetrically around the center, the centrifuge will explode. (By "arranged symmetrically around the center, I mean that...
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