Archive for June, 2008
Monday, June 30th, 2008
This might not be worth a post, but anyway:
Arnold Zwicky has a post at Language Log on "home" vs. "house" in (American) English, citing (among other things) the commentators in the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage saying:
A final note on home ownership: MWDEU reports that "a number of commentators have ...
Posted in Language | Comments Off
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
A response to Mark's tagging me.
Seven factz about me:
Will Fitzgerald didn't use a computer until he was 23. It had cards.
It is difficult for Will Fitzgerald to refer to himself in the third person.
Despite his descriptivist linguistic training, Will Fitzgerald tries to distinguish 'between' and 'among'.
Will Fitzgerald was known ...
Posted in Personal and family, Whim | 6 Comments »
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Posted in Religion, Whim | Comments Off
Saturday, June 14th, 2008
It's all (well, mostly) about representation. Peter Turney:
[F]iguring out how to represent the problem is 95% of the work. By the time you have the representation right, the tool that you use to finish the remaining 5% is not terribly important.
Posted in Artificial Intelligence | Comments Off
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Over at FiveThirtyEight, the following 'homework assignment' was given:
How many unique ways are there to acquire at least 270 electoral votes without any excess?
I figured it would be a 'large' number, but I was surprised at the actual total: 51,199,463,116,367 (or, fifty-one trillion and change). about 2.3% of all possible ...
Posted in Politics and News, Science and Tech | Comments Off
Monday, June 9th, 2008
I was wrong. And I've very glad.
Posted in Politics and News | Comments Off
Thursday, June 5th, 2008
# The evolution of a Ruby programmer
def sum(list)
total = 0
for i in 0..list.size-1
total = total + list[i]
end
total
end
def sum(list)
total = 0
list.each do |item|
total += item
end
...
Posted in Science and Tech, Whim | 6 Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Many of us are familiar with the commercial in which the question is asked, "How do you spell 'relief'?" And the answer is "R-O-L-A-I-D-S." According to Wikipedia, this commercial has been around since the 1970's.
I came across an earlier example from 1793, in Elder John Leland's "The ...
Posted in Language, Whim | Comments Off
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
(Ireny isn't a word, but it should be)
I've been lurking on a discussion list, which will go unnamed. Mr ALLCAPS said that everyone in group X is either a Y or a Z. Mr. Irenic suggested that there might be a third category. Mr. ALLCAPS accused Mr. Irenic of being ...
Posted in Language | Comments Off
Monday, June 2nd, 2008
From:
Sheby County, Ky:
SHELBYVILLE, KY. Local law enforcement along with Shelby County Emergency Management are asking if anyone has any information leading to the whereabouts of Maxine Ethington. Maxine is an elderly citizen of Shelby County suffering from Alzheimer's. She was last seen on May 25, 2008 at ...
Posted in Politics and News | 7 Comments »