Easter
Was Easter originally a pagan holiday?
Holy Week timeline
Mark Tarver essays
Hackers and fighters
Why I am not a professor
Interview
Humor
Douglas Adams’ cookie story
How to fix any computer
Math
The Euler Archive
Leonardo da Vinci’s Mathematical Slip-Up
Zome geometry and silver ratio
Government spending
National debt exceeds money supply
Per capita federal spending over the years
Business
Failure lets you move on, mediocrity doesn’t
The management myth
I hate to be That Guy, but the two links to the Tarver essays don’t work. Copies seem to be available at http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/decline.htm and http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/hackers.htm .
Michael: Thanks for better URLs. I updated the post with them.
This one is rather interesting too, though depressing.
http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/interview.htm
The “Hackers and fighters” essay brings three thoughts to mind:
1- I was very lucky to be a “street programmer” well before entering EECS, for the reasons that Tarver mentions, aggravated by the fact that most of my professors in college had little interest in programming or research (in the european periphery in the early 80s, and being civil servants…).
2- The street fighter analogy is much better than the painter analogy, and I say this as someone who actually bought Paul Graham’s book after reading his online columns (which are the book).
3- His description of the CS faculty issues is multiplied 1000-fold in technical business material (say analytics or strategic analysis), with the aggravating factor that many top B-schools now seem to want to become schools of regulation and government.
SteveBrooklineMA: Thanks. I added the interview to the list.
Relevant webcomic about failure vs. mediocrity:
http://www.viruscomix.com/page477.html
Thanks for the Easter post. I hope you had a great Easter.