Isotropic is …
... my personal blog.
Unless otherwise indicated, anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Monthly Archives: April 2008
17 Apr 2008
Dazed and/or Confused?
Seemingly simple words and phrases can turn out to be befuddlingly complex, particularly in a legal context. Still, 14 pages to discuss and/or? It’s a wonder that we don’t argue about something as trivial as what is is … oh, wait. In his excellent book, The Language of Judges (Chicago 1993) Larry Solan (who is [...]
13 Apr 2008
Quick and Dirty Perl – #001
Recently a coworker requested a quick and dirty way to extract a list of successfully delivered email addresses from a qmail log file. A message had been sent to several hundred recipients at example.com. Unfortunately, one if the domain’s two MX hosts would permanently reject messages, while the other would defer some messages because it [...]
13 Apr 2008
The Star II
This is a followup to my previous post The Star. The most powerful explosion ever observed may have been even more powerful than first thought. Nearly three weeks after the bright ‘gamma-ray burst’ occurred, it is still outshining its host galaxy, dumbfounding astronomers with its amazing longevity. [...] For a brief period on 19 March, [...]
12 Apr 2008
ICLS Junk Mail
I received another postal spam (pspam?) from Internet Corporation Listing Service (ICLS) today. For a mere $35.00 / year, they will submit my domain to “14 established search engines”, and send me quarterly reports of my ranking. The Wikipedia entry for ICLS describes their “fraudulent” service. The solicitation is designed to look like an invoice, [...]
01 Apr 2008
The Star
“Yesterday [March 19], the gamma ray burst GRB 080319B was observed. What is so special about this one is that it has been determined to have happened at a distance of 7.5 billion light years, and yet its optical afterglow was briefly visible with the naked eye!” –Giant cosmic explosion visible for an instant at [...]
