A conversation I had with a friend some days back still nags at me and haunts me with its implications ( Read more... )

.. of watching thislaw sail through both houses of Congress with these provisions attached to it makes me question my own sanity and challenges my notions of what the USA even stands for anymore. It's not the first such law to be considered, but the fact that this is even being considered seriously by anyone borders on what really should, by all ( Read more... )

"..but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when.."..a governor in Texas can put on an "outdoorsy" looking jacket and pretend to open up to "regular folks" just to hitch his wagon to the "Christian persecution" meme that's so much the fashion in right-wing politics these days ( Read more... )

If you remember this post, and this one, you know some of the history of my ongoing battle with a particularly aggressive spammer that has proven very difficult to filter for or track with any degree of reliability. (If you haven't, go read those two posts first, because they cover most of the basics of what I've been able to dig up so far ( Read more... )

I've put some thought into it, and decided that it's most likely that any population of humans not connected with those on earth, as in panspermia/lost-colony genre stories, would, if they have reasonably human-like ears, probably settle on some kind of 12-tone equal tempered scale. There are other possibilities, but 12 tone equal temperament has ( Read more... )

One of the significant aspects of the culture of the American Revolution and the early first-generation period of the history of the United States was that its basic philosophy was formed under the influence of the Age of Enlightenment, which, whatever its shortcomings or blindnesses, did plant the seeds of a society whose first motivations were ( Read more... )

Some conversations at work got me thinking again about this post, and future developments ( Read more... )

.. if you're animating at a low frame rate, but you're using a stock element that's computer generated, possibly with frame interpolation, make sure you down-render it to the same frame rate as the other elements in the scene. If you don't, it makes the main elements look so jumpy that it's almost impossible to concentrate on the main action ( Read more... )

I keep coming back to this article, which explores in some detail how the path that led a lot of modern day programmers into their skill set has been mostly ripped up and paved over for kids today.

I wasn't directly exposed to computer technology at all until I got to high school in the early 80's. I had been exposed to the idea of digital logic ( Read more... )

"..innit?"

I can't remember where I first heard this, but I think it might have been one of the more blue-collar characters in The Thin Blue Line. It definitely seems to follow working-class dialects, and seems to have evolved from the tag question "..isn't it?", but it's now applied in grammatical situations where that question makes no ( Read more... )