It’s that time of year again! Latest discovery: How to prepare a Kiwi. (Via xkcd, which comes recommended. Buggered if I know where it comes from originally — if you know, give me a shout.)
On the subject, there’s a fantastic animation on YouTube: Kiwi!.
Previous editions:
Animals Have Problems Too White Ninja gets a Kiwi kiwi en kiwi gaan nergens [...]
I just got my official one-year evaluation from my supervisor, which ensures that my contract will indeed be ratified and that I get paid for another year. Actually I got the damn thing back to proofread (I’m getting a name for it…). I was particularly tickled with the summary: “The supervisors are content with the [...]
Today’s weather, as of yesterday’s forecast: “Unknown.”
(Funnily enough, they did know that tomorrow would have a “Chance of rain.” But then, I could have told them that this time last year. Bloody August in bloody Amsterdam.)
A double-bass player (Sven, the dude from cafe Alto Tuesdays) cycling somewhere with his bass on his handlebars.
Those with delicate stomachs might want to leave it at that. For the rest, I also saw…
Tui beer has a long-running advertising campaign (since before I left New Zealand), under the slogan “Yeah right.” (”I’ve been studying all summer.” — “Yeah right.”) A mate of mine just snapped a wonderfully altered version of one of these storeside ads. Kudos to the originator, and hopefully Robin will keep us updated if any more [...]
From a talk I attended recently (slightly paraphrased, I was slow off the mark writing the quote down):
> Orson Welles, > Brave New World, anybody read that > book? They have a ministry redefining language so that people can’t talk about political > concepts like going to war.
I was slow off the mark because I was having difficulty [...]
A wee insight into what I and my colleagues in the Philosophy department actually do for our livings.
It seems that penguins have been around for more than 60 million years. Here’s Waimanu, courtesy of the geology department of my old university. Here’s the computer science department where I did my undergraduate degree, with their penguin mascot. But even after 60 million years of trying, they still can’t do syllogisms.
Programmers are supposed to possess the virtue of laziness: rather than doing something by hand, if they see a way to automate the process they’ll invest the time in doing that, so that the work itself can be done more quickly. This is supposed to save time in the long run, like an initial investment [...]
I had the rather surreal experience this afternoon of being woken up by the warning cries of (if I remember correctly) a putty nose monkey. No, I haven’t been travelling in Cameroon. Nor was I at the zoo. I was at a workshop on language evolution.