Monthly Archives: March 2012

Ethical Programming

Posted on March 30, 2012 by

Don’t let anyone tell you that as a programmer you don’t have to make moral or ethical decisions. Every time you decide that making users feel stupid is better than fixing your code, you’re making an ethical decision. – Joel … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Nerd Fun: The iPad of 1935

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

From Smithsonian.com: The April, 1935 issue of Everyday Science and Mechanics included this nifty invention which was to be the next logical step in the world of publishing. Basically a microfilm reader mounted on a large pole, the media device was supposed … Continue reading →

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Micro-Institutions Everywhere: Bike Paths

Posted on March 28, 2012 by

Some think, including many Dutch themselves, that bike paths have always been there…. Cycle paths weren’t really necessary [when] cyclists outnumbered auto traffic by far. After WWII, everything changed. Specifically, Dutch incomes went up dramatically in the post-war boom, more … Continue reading →

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PyCon 2012 Video Round-Up

Posted on March 23, 2012 by

The videos from PyCon 2012 are posted. Here are the ones I plan to watch, along with their summaries: Checking Mathematical Proofs Written in TeX ProofCheck is a set of Python scripts which parse and check mathematics written using TeX. Its … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Nerd Fun: Emojicons

Posted on March 21, 2012 by

Ever feel the need to express yourself with say, a bear flipping a table, and think ‘I wish there was an emoticon for that’? Well, look no further. Emojicons is a website dedicated to providing a repository of texto-graphical expressions … Continue reading →

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Illicit Trade and International Relations

Posted on March 19, 2012 by

The debate of whether bilateral (licit) trade increases or reduces the risk of conflict between two countries is ongoing, but the ‘yeas’ have it for now. But what about illicit trade? Sheena Chestnut Greitens, a doctoral candidate at Harvard, discussed … Continue reading →

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Sentences to Ponder, Egypt Edition

Posted on March 16, 2012 by

All from the same Washington Post article: There is no public data on crimes, and requests for interviews with security officials were not granted, but in Cairo the stories are enough to strike fear…. Since the revolt last winter he’s … Continue reading →

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Wednesday Nerd Fun: Every Plot, Ever

Posted on March 14, 2012 by

Is it possible to boil the plots of all great literature down to a few formulas? Whether you sympathize with the effort to reduce literature to a science or not, you have to admire the efforts. A brief history from … Continue reading →

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How to Count Words in LaTex Documents

Posted on March 13, 2012 by

One thing that can be hard to adjust to for new LaTeX users is not being able to easily get a word count relative to other programs. Now there is a solution, thanks to Matthias Orlowski and Alex Iliopoulos. I share … Continue reading →

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Micro-Institutions Everywhere: Pirates

Posted on March 12, 2012 by

Kokai: What’s the most important thing we should know about how pirates acted economically? Leeson: I think the most important takeaway from the economics of piracy is the idea of self-governance. It’s common to think about social rules, some system … Continue reading →

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