The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Art is built on metaphor, which is an underlying connection between multiple meanings.

In semantic space, meanings are points while metaphors are vectors.

The brain generates a characteristic signal (from a sub-region of Broca’s area) when it detects grammatical errors—but it generates an identical signal when you’re listening to a grammatical sentence and need to re-parse it partway through. I think this latter case is actually the real purpose of the signal: every time it triggers, your brain is warning you that you need to stop and check the sentence again even if the meaning seems unambiguous. So the “pretending they can’t understand you” reaction could just be a reflexive response to that signal (i.e., the brain is telling them it’s confused even if there’s no logical reason it should be).

My kingdom for the lord of all horses!

Since 1995, I’ve always associated Ian McKellan with his iconic portrayal of Richard III.

Which colored my impression of Lord of the Rings a bit.

“Happy birthday to the ground!”

Or The Game?

My Dinner With André

I think it’s because music enhances the ability to remember accompanying songs, which helped human groups preserve fitness-enhancing oral information.

Retailers order more plastic bags when their inventories fall below a certain level. If you reuse a bag, their inventories will last longer and they will order bags less frequently; and manufacturers will reduce production due to the decreased demand.

In the limit, all data is either destroyed or made public—privacy is always temporary.

How does that compare to the growth in size of the overall code base?

1 877 Kars 4 Kids

Why are you assuming that the fundamental goal is a stable society, rather than (say) a society that promotes the welfare of its members?

Even if you don’t believe them, they obviously won’t be able to enjoy the vacation unless you avoid the circumstances they’re afraid of—so you might as well humor them.

A Timex-Sinclair 1000 in ’82.

I assume it’s because it reduces the possibility of other processes outside of the linked containers accessing the files (so security and stability).

• You’re effectively making the given name part of the surname and adding a number to act as the given name. I don’t see any advantage to that over normal naming practice.

• You’re suggesting that the child who shares the parent’s given name is somehow preferred over their siblings, inasmuch as they’re inheriting a tradition their siblings are excluded from.

Yeah—I was basing that claim on Joseph Henrich’s survey of expeditions in The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter.

The world is littered with the unmarked graves of explorers from the Age of Exploration who had: D) every piece of equipment that money could buy and experience could suggest.

The ones who survived being stranded in remote environments did so not by virtue of their possessions or preparations, but by throwing themselves on the mercy of the local inhabitants.