xkcd: So, It Has Come to This

Today's xkcd, which I thought was wonderfully funny:

http://xkcd.com/1022

Appending "of epic proportions" to nouns at the end of sentences achieves a similar effect, as several friends and I have discovered over the years.

Fire and Ice (by Robert Frost)

I presented this very famous poem today in a history class about Einstein and his work. It's a beautiful little piece, and it's interesting to consider in the context of relativity and nuclear technology. 

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost (1920)

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

I'm doing my paper on the cultural conversation between 20th century literature and Einsteinian physics. Relevant authors (of which I'll be discussing some subset in the paper) are people like Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, T. S. Eliot, Kurt Vonnegut, and of course, Robert Frost.

MSNBC: What Cars Would the Founding Fathers Drive?

Given what we know of the Founding Father's personalities, what kind of car would each of them drive, if they could? This slideshow offers some educated guesses:

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/what-would-our-founding-fathers-drive?icid=autos_2389

I'm not terribly familiar with cars, but the analyses of the various men's personalities are quite good. The entries on Samuel Adams and Alexander Hamilton, I think, capture them to a T. (The writer's clearly put effort into researching the piece -- see the James Monroe entry.)

BBC: V (for Vendetta) as a Cultural Symbol

In light of the Occupy movement's and Anonymous's adoption of the Guy Fawkes mask as a rallying image, Alan Moore, the creator of the original comic V for Vendetta writes for the BBC on the cultural cachet that the vigilante V holds in the collective consciousness:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16968689

The tagline should be V's quotation about how he's not a man, but an idea -- and ideas never die. One of the problems that the Occupy movement, at least, will have to confront, is precisely that it's an idea, an exercise of populist sentiment. Its lack of leadership and a practical agenda might well deflate the movement. The advantage that V had is that his idea was embodied in a single person, with his own goals and vision, his own coherent plan of action. He was the figurehead, if not the de facto leader of his own revolution. Occupy doesn't have that single person, than coherency. It has the mask -- many such masks -- but not the single visionary behind it.

St. Valentine's Day Cards from the Seven Kingdoms

This was on George R. R. Martin's blog, and just in time for St. Valentine's:

http://blog.chrisbishop.com/post/17554357179/game-of-thrones-valentine-cards

I thought they were particularly clever. If I had a decent color printer around here, I'd print them out for my fellow A Song of Ice and Fire enthusiasts. :D

What Computer Problems Would Look Like if They Were Literally Real

Something funny that Russell sent out:


The stories about the etymologies of some tech terms are quite interesting. A "bug" used to mean, literally, that an insect had gotten stuck in the huge, room-sized computer machinery, back in the 80s or so. Even though the enactments are rather over-the-top, you can still see where a lot of the idioms arose.

NYTimes: High Fashion in Silicon Valley

I'm a huge fan of brightly coloured, patterned, mismatching, or otherwise unusual socks. I wear them not only with sneakers, but also with sandals. Seems like I'd fit right in -- maybe there's a reason I go to Stanford. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/fashion/in-silicon-valley-socks-make-the-tech-entrepreneur.html?hpw

To all of my techie friends -- I know what I'm getting you for Christmas next year!

The Stanford Daily: Ann Patchett at Stanford

Ann Patchett came to lecture on campus last week. She's one of my favorite living authors (I definitely had a geek-out moment when she was signing my books!), and she's also a wonderful speaker. Anyhow, I got to cover her lecture for my column:

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/02/03/book-critiqua-ann-patchett/

Not only is she a bestselling author, she's also an indie bookstore owner; the write-up in The New York Times is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/us/ann-patchett-bucks-bookstore-tide-opening-her-own.html?ref=books

I especially loved her line, from her talk, about how her bookstore was "her gift to the city she loves" (Parnassus Books, in Nashville).