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.
Category Archives: humor
27 Jun 2009
Alexithymic world
I was browsing around Netflix and ran across this review, by ‘SK 1596697′, of “The Invasion” (yet another remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers“, this time with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, et al): I’m a research psychologist who studies alexithymia, which is a personality trait that involves difficulty in identifying and expressing emotions. This [...]
19 Jun 2009
Today’s snarky comment
“IE8 is pretty reliable. It finished downloading Firefox without a single crash.” – a comment on Lifehacker’s Microsoft’s Browser Comparison Chart Offends Anyone Who’s Ever Used Another Browser
16 May 2009
Panic
“More people are killed by deer than sharks, but you don’t see park rangers running around like nutcases.” –Seth Godin, Might as well panic image: White-tailed deer.jpg, Wikimedia Commonsimage: Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos wake.jpg, Wikimedia Commons
20 Feb 2009
The first Twitter?
Long ago, on a VAX cluster far away, I was systems manager. phone was among the many utilities available, and was quite handy for chatting with other users on the cluster. Students seemed to enjoy it a lot, so much so that some would randomly phone other users just to say “hi”. Unfortunately, college faculty [...]
16 Feb 2009
What would the neighbors say?
Sometimes, when I’m looking at the code of a complete stranger, I get that same, weird feeling I get when I’m creeping through my neighbour’s house. Picking up their stuff, looking through their fridge. That’s from item number 5 (Read the code from an open source project) in Leon Bambrick’s 8 ways to be a [...]
13 Jan 2009
UFOs integral to understanding humanity’s origin?
“It’s pretty hard for someone to draw conclusions on mankind when Darwin had never seen nor heard of UFOs. That’s kind of like teaching math but not understanding trigonometry.” –John Kocsis, letter to editor, St. Catharines Standard, Ontario, CA “you have achieved a discontinuity of meaning” –Fanny Mae, in Whipping Star (Frank Herbert) h/t: PZ [...]
29 Dec 2008
Zen and the Art of Existence
Q. Do I have a right to exist?A. Does 8? From comment #22 on Scott Aaronson’s What can first-order logic do for your self-esteem?.
16 Dec 2008
I’ll be watching you
“[I]nvestigators have used an MRI to read images off the visual cortex [...] Before you get all panicky and worry that now the CIA will be able to extract all of those sexy librarian fantasies out of your brain by aiming a gadet at your head, relax. This is an interesting piece of work, but [...]
12 Dec 2008
Not Occam’s Razor
I recently found this Gillette Fusion razor while straightening up my desk at work. Synchronicity with the resurrected ads I’ve begun seeing again. I’d received it in the mail a year or two ago — Gillette trying to boost sales for this monstrosity, I guess — and had taken it to work to serve as [...]
