Hypotheses Part 3

The professional desk jockeys among my readers have probably all considered the toll that lifestyle takes on their bodies. Standing desks are growing as a solution to the slouching and inactivity. This often works great, but does introduce fatiguing stress to one's joints. Others take to sitting on exercise balls. Studies indicate that these ball chairs don't actually improve posture or provide extra exercise. My personal experience corroborates this. I think I've hit on a good compromise, and it's a pretty old idea.

Guido

Let me tell you about a great guy named Guido. He invented a language that greatly lowered the barrier for new students to enter into his art. It was very difficult to learn a script in the old languages either because the syntax was so arcane or because you really needed someone to fill in missing details every time. Guido's language was intuitive and readable, and it made it possible to reproduce results with minimal training. And now, around a millennium later, it's hard to imagine music without the ubiquitous staff that Guido d'Arezzo first invented.

Does Not Compute

Let's talk about language. How amazing is it that using sounds or symbols, we can implant in another person's mind an entirely new state? We can describe a place that person has never seen, we can construct a belief that person has never considered, we can convey an emotion that person has never felt.

But not without errors in transmission. Remember the game, "telephone"? Why can't language be more precise? Let me try to explain this in an unconventional way and see what it means for programming languages.

Nobels

You know what's cooler than winning a Nobel Prize? Winning two Nobel Prizes. How many people have done this since the first award in 1901? Four. Would you believe that the first was a woman?

Hypotheses Part 2

Fancy bars these days like to serve their cocktails with a single big chunk of ice. Less surface area means slower cooling means less dilution of your expensive elixir over time. I don't buy it.

Hypotheses Part 1

I'm going to try again to focus on short-form publishing here. I'm starting yet another series of posts called "Hypotheses". I am well known as having random ideas float through my head. Some of these are ideas about how some part of existence works. I'll share some with you in this series.

Preconceptions Part 2

It's over. Four trips to Lincoln Center over the space of a week, and more hours of serious drama and music than I can count with my fingers and toes. (My toes aren't very nimble, so for the purposes of counting, I effectively have four toes.) The live experience is definitely more rewarding than even the Live in HD shows where the connection is asymmetric. In the opera house, the performers give me their best, and I return my undivided attention and gratitude (in the form of applause). They certainly earned it these four evenings. After viewing it in person, I can say that this is a wonderful production. It is not perfect. No production of Wagner is ever close to perfect. But the embattled Lepage is actually the least of the production's problems.