Esoterica

[contrasedative]

"One of the purposes of a liberal-arts education is to make the inside of your head a more interesting place to live for the rest of your life." -Scott Brophy, a professor of philosophy at Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Comments

[langoisse]

I tried to repeat the null pointer story to my roommate and she just stared at me :( But then again, you didn't get the "What do you get when you cross a banana and a mountain climber" joke. Sigh.

Do you how many times I have heard the tangent-to-your-curves line here?

[contrasedative]

I feel like I will never fully appreciate that joke.

Wait . . . I can't remember the punch line. Why is there a banana?

[langoisse]

...

The banana does not matter. The problem is that the mountain climber is a scalar.

You fail at life.

[contrasedative]

I knew mountain climber == scalar. I figured there was more to it that I'd forgotten.

[hairmorningwet]

if you cross an intersection diagonally, won't there pretty much be cars coming from one direction or the other?

[contrasedative]

That's what I thought, but then I looked closely, and that particular intersection had the WALK indicator on for both directions at the same time. I never figured out how it worked in terms of vehicle traffic, though.

[gregh1983]

There are several strange intersections here that do that if you press the WALK button on either side. I got really confused the first time it happened to me at Fifth and Craig.

And I don't think I necessarily need a liberal arts education to make the inside of my head interesting. Null pointers and irrational numbers can do a pretty good job too! :-) Null pointers especially, given a recent Halloween dress-up idea my friends and I had....

[contrasedative]

Haha! That's brilliant.

I posted the liberal arts quote because it bothers me. I disagree with it too. Actually, making my head "a more interesting place to live" is my justification of quiz bowl, but there are other people who have given it a lot more thought.

[ibneko]

Oh good heaven's... so geeky.... O.o

[contrasedative]

I know; isn't it great?

[miccie]

whoa, my cousin goes to H&WS! Small world?

[contrasedative]

I was about to tell you that I had no idea where I got the quote, and therefore had no idea who else went to H&WS, but then I got the great idea of Googling the quote.

So, um, I seem to have quoted from an article that Pattis linked. Yeah.

[miccie]

Ahahaha. Between this and my println pronounciation, we being WAY too influenced by him.

[contrasedative]

"The point of this class is to install a Pattis simulator in your head. When you're coding, I want you to ask yourself, What Would Pattis Do?"