Page of Moss - bloglet for Tuesday 23 October 2001

Best\. [A-Z][a-z]+\. Ever\. _
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07:57:53 PM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

Okay, at long last, I present my version of...
Why Mirabai Shouldn't Join The Navy:
They won't let you wear trousers. _
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06:44:02 PM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

I think this is a little bit encouraging. _
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05:41:14 PM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

Then when modernity gets really far along, the whole notion of being comes crashing down around you. _
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04:23:25 PM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

Wretched once, wretched twice, wretched chicken soup with rice. _
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04:22:15 PM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

Your revolution will not set you free. _
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01:05:33 AM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

A special kind of hell called grad school. That's not altogether encouraging. _
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01:01:59 AM, Tuesday 23 October 2001

Thinking about this MeFi thread, I have, in classic Johnny fashion, been going over all of the classics, and I'm starting to realize: the twentieth century was a really great period for humor. _
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06:05:40 PM, Monday 22 October 2001

The Pixies have a song called Distance Equals Rate Times Time. They can do that. They're just that cool. _
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01:14:56 PM, Monday 22 October 2001

Both those who support the bombings and those who oppose the bombings find the arguments of their opponents hopelessly naïve. How can they blather on about their idealistic opposition to all war when their country is being attacked? How can they think that this war will do anything but cause more destruction? _
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12:59:00 PM, Monday 22 October 2001

Listening to Tori Amos singing "Time", I'm reminded of what a genius Tom Waits really is. _
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12:57:16 AM, Monday 22 October 2001

Katherine-- Your copy of AIM is transmitting properly, but seems not to be receiving IMs. _
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12:44:03 AM, Monday 22 October 2001

I have been remiss in my blogledyte announcing duties, but thanks to Remi, many of you will already know that Liz Sudduth now has a bloglet. Welcome, Liz!

Additionally, as of yesterday evening, Kerne Fahey has seen the error of his ways and gotten himself a bloglet again. Welcome back, Kerne.

And finally, I know y'all must know about Andrew Sarazin and Seth Lombardi having blogs, but I've finally gotten around to adding them to my sidebar thing. _
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12:04:26 AM, Monday 22 October 2001

Being a bastard works. _
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07:11:56 PM, Sunday 21 October 2001

My own variety of "linguistic liberalism" (gad, what an ugly phrase) could best be summed up with these two observations:
1) Almost every problem of grammar is more accurately considered a problem of style: when a native speaker of a language breaks the rules of that language, either they have been simply careless (for which the solution is more proofreading), or the rule they have violated is not properly part of the formal structure of the language.
2) Many questions of style can be answered well with general rules: in learning to write more clearly and beautifully, we find that many of our habitual patterns of speech are ugly or ambiguous, and can be categorically avoided to improve style. _
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11:52:02 PM, Friday 19 October 2001

So I went and saw Serendipity last night, and I found it really delightful.

Two things:
1) I decided what movie to go to based on what was starting when I got to the theater. Ladies and gentlemen, fate is real, but its only aim is humor.
2) At one point in the movie, someone randomly selects a number. The number they choose is 23, the least random number. I want to know if the filmmakers knew what they were doing there. _
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01:12:04 PM, Friday 19 October 2001

How did the right in this country manage to claim personal responsibility as a partisan issue? _
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04:18:48 PM, Thursday 18 October 2001

Ladies and gentlemen: The Coolest Optical Illusion Ever.
(via MetaFilter) _
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03:38:30 PM, Thursday 18 October 2001

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask if it's done anything for you lately. _
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12:17:53 PM, Thursday 18 October 2001

So I'm thinking about writing a new content management system for my website (for the blog and some other sections), probably one with a non web based client, better template control, an integrated commenting system, and a better ability to edit things after they've been posted. I'm doing this solely for my own benefit, and, as is usually the case with my projects, I'll probably think about it for a long, long time before either deciding it's unnecessary, or building it all in a couple of nights of furious hacking. That said, though--if I did do something like this, are there any features others would like to see in such a system? _
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08:52:22 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

As usual, it's not that simple. _
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07:02:11 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

Two computer questions, one mathematical and one technical. I'm hoping someone who reads this will know the answers better than I.
First: If I'm connected to a server through SSH, and I open an SSH connection from that server to another one, is this a security risk? My thought is that, if someone could record the data being sent between my client and server 1, and between server 1 and server 2, they could compare them, and, since they'd be encodings of the same text, use the correspondences to deduce what the plaintext was. Does this make sense?
Second: Why does full motion video so often manage to crash otherwise stable systems. Is it because the direct hardware access required for decent performance is more susceptible to failures? _
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04:21:08 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

I don't believe the generic sense of 'he' exists in modern American English. _
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03:37:40 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

--Let's go do some crimes!
--Yeah! Let's go get sushi and not pay! _
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03:07:07 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

Observation: There are four songs on The Cranberries's No Need To Argue that I really, really like, but I have almost no interest at all in listening to the other songs. _
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02:51:32 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

Oddly, I think this is one of the better responses I've seen to everything that's happening. _
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01:11:01 PM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

It's the little things in life that count. For example: I can't even remember the last time I had to do long division. _
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03:01:50 AM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

but it isn't about beautiful speeches, it's about what they actually say. _
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02:55:23 AM, Wednesday 17 October 2001

In something I was reading just now, I saw quantum mechanics contrasted with Newtonian physics. I have seen this pair used in opposition before, but is it really Newtonian physics that quantum mechanics replaces? Wouldn't the more correct contrast be between quantum mechanics and classical electrodynamics? Or is there something I'm missing? _
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07:08:20 PM, Tuesday 16 October 2001

Join AOL now and get a thousand million billion hours FREE!^*

* Free hours must be used in first 30 days of service. _
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06:20:52 PM, Tuesday 16 October 2001

The Pacific Coast Highway. _
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03:48:24 PM, Tuesday 16 October 2001

Nate has comments. _
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03:25:00 PM, Tuesday 16 October 2001

What about the other direction, though: going from ought to is? Actually, Kant seems to be getting at something like this with the idea of moral certainty. _
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05:40:58 PM, Monday 15 October 2001

If you don't want to go through all the test pages, the most recent archive page with actual content is here. _
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02:51:16 PM, Friday 12 October 2001

Looks like an unqualified success. I think I can now say that the nasty permissions problems will be gone. Archive pages should work as soon as they're created. _
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02:50:13 PM, Friday 12 October 2001

now! _
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02:49:00 PM, Friday 12 October 2001

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