The Windkey and the Lamplighter

Proof that Python is no good for serious work: its arithmetic operators
don’t handle expressions more than 8 operations long. Certainly the
tens digit of this ought to be 0 or 5:

>>> 950 + \
... 850 + \
... 750 + \
... 650 + \
... 550 + \
... 450 + \
... 350 + \
... 250 + \
... 150 + \
... 050
4990

Isn’t it amazing that this sort of code persists?

Think big. Spend time in the woods. Eat plenty of greens. Hold your head up high. Keep your nose clean. It’s OK to be a little wild!

I’ve been hearing about their gourmet mountain pies for some time. This trip, I got to see
a menu and eat a pie. These are pizzas sold by the pound. Says the
menu:

One pound: 1-2 people or one voracious wolverine.

Two pounds: 2-3 people or a half-dozen mongeese.

Three pounds: 4-5 people or two Diamese gorillas

Five pounds: 6-7 people or one wooly mammoth*

(*) It is currently impossible to acquire a wooly mammoth.

Kat and I tried to visit the Denver art museum, but discovered that it had been destroyed. Here you can see the ship, a fortress built by the inhbitants, and a Zentradi’s finger. Sadly, they were too quick to present a clear photo. I did get a clear shot of their repair tools, though.

What do you know? The TSA does have a sense of humor, though they seem to have used it up here.

How small is the world, really? Is it actually that strange that my
grandmother’s cousin’s wife’s brother works with my husband?
Or that my officemate’s childhood schoolmate (from Mississippi) works
for our company here in Massachusetts?

I can’t really wrap my mind around the odds, but I guess they’re
really not as long as I always think they are—I mean, my grandmother
has like 30 cousins, and my officemate probably had 100 schoolmates,
and each of those is only one path through which we could have
connections. So why does it seem so unlikely?

"Trust" is thrown around in computer security and information
assurance circles all the time. Mostly, people use it to refer to a
vaguely beneficent moral quality. "This system has to have trust,"
I’ve heard in such conversations, or "We must trust this system."
There’s a famous definition of Infosec trust: you trust anything that
can hurt you. You trust it not to hurt you—because you can’t
prevent it from hurting you. Trustworthiness is a different matter
entirely, and I won’t talk about it today.

I’d like to see a shared definition of trust. Trust is a
relationship. It has three arguments: Alice trusts Bob for some
property. If you just say that Alice trusts Bob, you haven’t said
much. If you just say that Bob is trusted for some property, you
probably haven’t said anything. And if you just say that Bob is
trusted, you’ve said even less.

Everyone has been very hard on Michael Griffin, NASA’s director, about
his comments to NPR. (In case you’ve missed them,
Stephen Colbert mocked him mercilessly, as is his wont.)

But they’re all missing something. I think Michael Griffin knows a
secret. Remember [this story][], where former Astronaut Rusty
Schweickart criticized the NASA report on Near Earth Objects?
"Schweickart reported that by 2019 asteroid watchers will have on the
books upwards of 10,000 objects with a non-zero probability of
impacting Earth." I think Griffin’s found one, headed straight for
us, and we’re not ready. Why worry about global warming when an
[extinction event][] is right around the corner?
I think Griffin wants to ignore global warming and divert the money to
building a [giant escape ship][] in which the [DNA of all living
creatures][] is stored…

I felt like writing bad poetry, so I have started a category for it.
You do not have to read it.

This is Not My green Subaru

It’s raining, and I left my umbrella somewhere
(where? Not sure. Not here, anyway)
But I got a close parking space, so it won’t be so bad.
I spot the car on the far right of the parking lot,
about three rows back, and run for it,
clicking the unlock button as I get closer.
The lights do not flash, and soon I realize why.
This is not my green Subaru.
Someone else got a closer parking space.

Leaving the grocery store, hands full of milk and bread and cheese.
I walk towards where I think I left the car—a bit left of the exit,
and near the back of the lot. The bags are heavy, and the one with
the milk is ripping, as usual. I passed a red Subaru, a blue one, and
now a green one, but I still have further to go. That is not my green
Subaru.

Sitting at a stoplight, I notice the cars ahead of me.
One is red, one is sea-foam green, and mine is pine green.
All Subarus, but only one is mine.