Monthly Archives: November 2009

Viva Honduras

Sometimes, the good guys win. Today, simply because this election was held, it looks like Honduran democrats won, and the Chavez proxies lost. Good deal.

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Natural Language Mathematics

I recently saw this story on Slashdot about “Revolution 4.0“, which claims to make programmers more productive by providing an “easy English-like language” in which to write code. This sort of thing strikes me as profoundly wrong-headed, and I’d like … Continue reading

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The Prince: Chapter 4

Today we look at the fourth chapter of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince“. This chapter explains “Why the Kingdom of Darius, Occupied by Alexander, Did Not Rebel Against the Successors of the Latter After His Death”, and seems directly relevant to … Continue reading

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New Sections

A quick warning about the insertSections:withRowAnimation: method of UITableView. If you insert a section with this function inside a beginUpdates/endUpdates block, you should not insert rows into that section (with insertRowsAtIndexPaths:withRowAnimation:) inside the same begin/end block. Somewhat confusingly, the first … Continue reading

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Mezzo Cammin

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, … Continue reading

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The Prince: Chapter 3

Today we look at the third chapter of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince“. This chapter is “Of Mixed Monarchies”, and discusses some of the questions which arise when a prince annexes a new territory to his possessions. It is the first … Continue reading

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The Prince: Chapter 2

The second chapter of Niccolo Machiavelli’s “The Prince” is “Of Hereditary Monarchies”. N.M. really has only one point to make in this chapter: Once a people becomes accustomed to the idea of rule by a particular family, inertia will help … Continue reading

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P.G. vs. AAPL

Paul Graham discusses Apple’s iPhone App Store approval process in his latest essay. I think it’s fair to summarize the core of his piece as: The App Store approval process is opaque and frustrating Its bad design is driven by … Continue reading

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0x5f375a86

Okay, so, yeah: XKCD. The mouseover text for that one reads: Some engineer out there has solved P=NP and it’s locked up in an electric eggbeater calibration routine. For every 0x5f375a86 we learn about, there are thousands we never see. … Continue reading

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The Prince: Chapter 1

Today we look at the first chapter of Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince. This is an extremely short chapter (even by the standards of “The Prince”) that simply lays out “The Various Kinds of Government and the Ways by Which They … Continue reading

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