yhac

Amit Varma on Death and Atheism

..or atleast the least inelegant one. Here.

My dream come true! The best of both worlds

This guy is awesome
See this nytimes article, if you need background.

"Moreover, to prevent a favour from being seen as an entitlement, it is necessary sometimes not to do the favour".
Nitin Pai
 

" I went to see a fistfight, but a hockey match broke out."

Update: Original Quote attributed to Rodney Dangerfield and reads "I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out."

The ever hilarious sidin on preparing for a deadline (of a different kind).  

I'm predicting Barack Obama. Hillary seems to have managed to alienate the African-American vote, and the females seem to be voting for Barack.

It feels a bit bizzare to read about Microsoft's bid for Yahoo, on Yahoo and MSN.

"It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of all the intoxicating existence we've been endowed with. But what's life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don't. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship, endure any insult, for a moment's additional existence. Life, in short, just wants to be. But-and here's an interesting point- for the most part it doesn't want to be much."

Bill Bryson in A Short History of Nearly Everything

Nature's guide for mentors. Link, thanks to
what_007

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where-" said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
"As long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
(Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

Why is it Merry Christmas and not, say, Happy Christmas? Is Merry > Happy in the grand scheme of things? Why not a Merry New Year then?

Is it a historical artifact, specific to English, or is this the same in other languages too?

p.s.
A Merry and Happy, Christmas and New Year to you all :)

Find out for yourself
http://www.epa.gov/solar/powerprofiler.htm

    In Kirkuk, a United States soldier, left, and and an interpreter asked a girl and her mother about the attack on the police convoy.
From today's NYTimes

I was going to rant about it, but then I came across this. Why repeat myself, what others before me have said it so much better than I ever can?

What is it? That almost begs the question: What is "I"?

Consider a Turing machine. Let us say the tape begins to wear out and somebody replaces it with a new tape(which is a copy). Is it a new TM? It still has the same behaviour, so it is an equivalent TM. Any modification that doesn't change the transition rules of the TM and its state, doesn't change the TM either. In the case of the TM, "I" would therefore be the set of rules and current state.

Is there any reason for not extending the rule to humans? If not, all causes of death that don't directly affect the brain are completely avoidable. For example, there is no reason why a person without a heart or even the rest of the body can't live. He just can't live with that physical body.

"Attempting suicide is very risky."
You could fail and seriously get hurt in the process(and impair your chances of trying again). Worse still, you could get jailed!

You get a new toy, but you aren't sure of its value. What do you do? You go around, show it to a few people and see what their reaction is. Or rather, see how their reaction towards you has changed. Iran is doing the same thing. They have a new toy(nuclear weapons). They are  testing the waters (literally!) to see how the has affected their international status. If they didn't have nuclear weapons, the reaction from Britain might have been swifter/harsher.

Historically known due to this, more memorable for this and perhaps best described here