Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, August 9, 2004

Simple things which even the fastest supercomputers can't compute -- Comment()
Think about standing on a shore and watching a wave approach from the sea, breaking against the shore. This is an example of a phenomenon (turbulent flow) which even the fastest supercomputers are not able to simulate.

How many diapers have you changed? -- Comment()
Last year I wrote about changing diapers, and estimated that I have changed diapers about 3200 times. Now the count is at about 4000, and still rising.

-- Comment()
PN commented copying files from an existing Mac to a new system: 'I'm currently compiling a list of things that the "Setup Assistant" fails to copy over from your existing Mac. If you don't use the unix underpinnings at all, odds are that it won't miss anything. However, if you've at all customized under the covers, beware!'

Being personal: opinions vs. knowledge -- Comment()
This year I have published about 40 short pieces, of which about 20 were columns, 9 book reviews, and the other longer articles. So it seems that nowadays I mainly write opinion pieces.

A dozen years ago I would have thought that writing about opinions is not writing at all, but now I'm a bit more flexible. I think there are a great many topics where there are several possible directions to take, at it is important to write about personal views on the matter. Otherwise there is no discussion about the future of society, information technology, and such things. The development of new technology is too impersonal already.

By the way, here are explanations of the words 'essay' and 'column' from EB 2004:

essay: an analytic or interpretative literary composition usually dealing with its subject from a limited or personal point of view
column: one in a usually regular series of newspaper or magazine articles

Here is a quote from EB 2004 on the decline of polemical nonfictional prose in recent times:

Polemical prose significantly declined in the modern era. Few moderns express the rage for invective seen in the verse of satirists such as the ancient Roman Juvenal or Alexander Pope in 17th-century England or even in the writings of Christian disputants such as Martin Luther.