No matter how many computers you happen to have, the absolute minimum you need in order to get your work done is at least 50% greater.
I can confirm that this law continues to scale quite effectively over several orders of magnitude. I cannot (publicly) confirm precisely how many.
Your picture of the day…
Picture from The Onion, 2/25/2004
Edit: I’m somewhat amused that so far three people have independently come up with the same caption…
A random amusement for your evening
A new penguin-bapping game. This one is essentially indirect-fire penguin darts. It involves a yeti and an orca.
Things you learn…
One of my favorite Jack Chick tracts. (For those of you not familiar with these, they’re… shall we say… very Christian little pamphlets that evangelists hand out on street corners. This one in particular is about evolution, and why it’s obviously incorrect and against all religious law)
According to this tract, quantum chromodynamics is a lie, gluons do not exist, and strongly interacting particles are held together by the direct force of divine intervention. (Which is, apparently, somehow distinguishable from gluons. Maybe it has different scattering properties or something.)
That’s going to be a very busy personal divinity. There are a lot of baryons in this universe.
I think I’m going to have to start using the phrase “As busy as the Holy Ghost during baryogenesis.”
The civil law, Part II: Gay marriage
A previous post discussed the general notion of civil law and why I believe it to be the foundation of the American legal system and a general good thing. I’d like now to continue with a series of posts in the next few days trying to apply this principle directly to some contentious issues today.
Subject 1: Gay marriage
On the civil law, Part 1: General issues.
In the past few months, I’ve heard the issue of gay marriage being debated on a number of fronts, like “civil rights,” “the sanctity of the institution,” and so on. But on thinking about it, I’ve realized that there’s a separate issue involved: The existence of civil law. Since this seems to have implications substantially beyond this one issue, I thought I’d put some notes about it here.
This first part is of a general nature: It’s about the whole idea of civil law and why it’s important. Part 2 will talk about the applications of this idea to specific political issues.
(more…)
Barbie girl
Mattel has specifically but somewhat unfirmly denied that the much-discussed breakup of Ken and Barbie has anything to do with the new “Cali girl Barbie” that was recently introduced.
This took a whole different spin in my head when I saw a print ad for the latter in a local paper, and noticed that when printed on low-grade newsprint, a lower-case i looks an awful lot like an l.
Yonatan Zunger’s Blog 