Gimme Sugar

Dude! We got Smarties and Necco Wafers in the snack drawer! I love Necco Wafers.

Chrome or no Chrome

I was considering reinstallation of Google Chrome. I was using it for a while, and one day it stopped working. I think I'll wait until they tell me (via slashdot) a new release is out.

U.S. Spending Visualization

Read Discworld, Now

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and then you had the urge to pass it on.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Hogfather)

A recommendation to my friends: if you have not read Discworld books, run, don't walk and find some to read. For my exceptionally lazy friends, there is a charming movie adaptation of Hogfather to get you excited about the denizens of Discworld.

Book Art

Some of these are gorgeous, though it seriously pains me to see books "destroyed" that way. Maybe destroyed is too harsh, and if they are no longer useful as books, in the traditional sense that books are useful, are they really books anymore? Aren't they defined by their function? If they can no longer function according to their definition, what are they? Further, what are we? What function defines us and, if we don't really know (and is it ever possible to know?), how can we know what we are and what we should do in life? WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?

Um... these are pretty.

Back to work.

Ahem.

The Automachine!

Just silly music fun.

FTW?

Miss Zoot put together a post where she shows the electoral maps as given by several major news sources, listed from most favorable to Obama to least. It's incredible, to say the least.

Joe Biden is a Happy Car

I don't know why, but I find just about anything Joe Biden related to be hilarious.

Sarah Palin, Socialist

...we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.

-Governor Sarah Palin

Lovin' the earmarks too:

facebook

Yes facebook. It feels kinda wrong, but I can see how it could be addictive. It keeps grabbing attention, especially at the beginning when all of your friends are confirming you and sending you notes. These notes trigger alerts to your email inbox, compelling you to go read them.

Pro: Far more mature than MySpace *shudder*.

Con: facebook badly wants your attention. Deriving satisfaction from reasonably meaningless social contact seems like masturbation, something nobody should be doing at work.

The Reasoner 2(11) now available for download

Check-out the most recent issue of The Reasoner.

Issue 2(11) Table of Contents:

Editorial - Rolf Haenni
Interview with Arthur P. Dempster - Rolf Haenni
A note on tokenism and self-reference - Laureano Luna
A Sci-Fi Scenario Refuting Rast on Essential Indexicals? - Roger Harris
Non-Factivity About Knowledge: A Defensive Move - Daniel Nolan
Armchair versus Questionnaire Polled Intuitions: Intuitions nevertheless! - Renia Gasparatou
The Indispensability Argument and Set Theory - Karlis Podnieks
Amsterdam Graduate Philosophy Conference on Normativity, 29-30 August - Theodora Achourioti, Edgar Andrade & Marc Staudacher
European Conference on Machine Learning & Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, 15-19 September - Walter Daelemans, Bart Goethals & Katharina Morik
European Workshop on Probabilistic Graphical Models, 17-19 September - Manfred Jaeger & Thomas D. Nielsen
New Directions in Philosophy of Mathematics, 4 October - David Corfield
Inference to the Best Explanation - Alan Baker
The Indiscernibility of Identicals - Andrew P. Mills

Barbara West Interview Mashup

Video here.
For his part of this, Biden's reactions are pretty hilarious.

Sweden!

/Wink

Via TPM

Some Flash work about conservative pundits on Governor Palin.