Everything2 is a collection of user-submitted writings about more or less everything. Spend some time looking around and reading, or learn how to contribute.

Cream of the Cool

The Lifecycle of Software Objects is a 2010 novella by Ted Chiang. It's about Anna, an animal trainer turned software tester, who is hired to train and/or create digients. A digient is a digital pet sort of thing; except that pets can't learn to talk while the digients can. They can also scamper about, pick up objects, and otherwise interact with their digital environment. They can also think; but not well. The digients Anna meets are like

Where to begin? Let me start with some reasoning, before proceeding on to the Ad Hominem part. Let me know which you are

There is a logical fallacy called the base rate fallacy, that says that when dealing with a specific case, you also have to look at the base rate. That involves lots of math, so I will just refer to it by another term: the waving a metal pole during a lightning storm fallacy or the I am going to smear myself with salmon and wander around in bear territory fallacy. Do

Hello Everything2.

When I checked in for my "once a decade" login about a month ago, I did not think I'd be noding again. Like it says in my homenode, ya'll intimidate the crap outta me. I've never been a writer. I've never even been much of a communicator. I'm more likely to give you a cool rock if I want to get to know you than walk up and say hello.

But that is

It turns out my laptop keyboard issues were just a harbinger of more to come. Unfortunately I had another small stroke yesterday which left me with slurred speech and a useless left hand. After my old doc took me to hospital for a checkup I'm back home for a couple of weeks of enforced rest, which is the last thing I wanted, what with Iron Noder coming up, and my planning a trip to Seattle to visit Tess…