Once there was a little boy who worked and worked every weekday in his little cubicle at work. One day he had so many windows open after working and working so very hard that he could no longer see the icons of the windows on the bottom panel! So he wished, and he wished, and after pressing the R button one more time it happened: one of his coworkers obtained a new monitor, and so the little boy received the coworker's old one. Finally, the little boy had a second monitor!
However the second monitor was actually kind of bad and emitted a faint high-frequency buzzing noise which greatly annoyed the little boy not to mention that connecting it in the first place would be a rather tedious process since the desktop he was using only had one VGA port and one DVI port with an Nvidia graphics card and had Ubuntu installed so he would have to have one monitor hooked up as VGA and the other as DVI and somehow have everything working perfectly on the software side as well but we all know how well Nvidia and Linux get along so the second monitor took its rightful place beside the first one never to be powered on for all eternity and so the moral of the story is
never buy the NEC MultiSync LCD 1960NXi. It will be a decision you regret forever.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
hey do you guys know how to contact donald knuth i need to collect a cheque and i don't know how to reach him and i could use that money to buy some things right now
Logic is inconsistent. I have derived this from the existence of chillies. And no, I did not spell it wrong: I have consulted the Internet, and I am backed by approximately 7,630,000 search results for "chillies" (as of 2012-09-11).
But first things first. When I discussed this proof with a friend, he seemed a little uncomfortable with the claim that I had at first taken for granted. To match the mathematical rigor contained in the remainder of this proof, I shall start by stating, and fully justifying, this claim: Chillies are hot.
I know many of you are used to formulating hand-waving arguments to justify the claims in your fields that deserve a precise, infallible proof. I was going to write "a precise, foolproof proof", but that seemed like a horrible thing to do and I am a good person. In fact, I am so nice as to present to you the most rigorous proving technique currently acknowledged: Proof by Experimental Data and/or Citations from Select Sources. I will demonstrate this technique with the following lemma:
Lemma 1: Chillies are hot [1].
Proof:
[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1456995.stm ∎
Now let's proceed with the remainder of the proof:
Proposition 1: Chillies are hot.
Proposition 2: When something is hot, it is not chilly.
Proposition 3: Chilly sounds like, and therefore must be equivalent to, chillie.
This is a corollary to the famous quote "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." (As an aside, by the law of transitivity, chillie is also equivalent to Chile).
Now then, we have the following:
Proposition 4: Chillies are not chillie,
or equivalently,
Proposition 4*: Chillies iff not chillie.
A perceptive logician may immediately see a problem with this statement. Note that this is a statement of the form "P iff not P". Since there is clearly no way of assigning a truth value to "chillie" without allowing the universe to blow up (along with any remaining logical consistency) by the principle of explosion, this conclusively shows the inconsistency, and therefore the invalidity, of logic itself. ∎
Unless, of course, there is a truth value that has been excluded all along. If such truth value is discovered through more extensive experimental data, I will call it Middle.
But first things first. When I discussed this proof with a friend, he seemed a little uncomfortable with the claim that I had at first taken for granted. To match the mathematical rigor contained in the remainder of this proof, I shall start by stating, and fully justifying, this claim: Chillies are hot.
I know many of you are used to formulating hand-waving arguments to justify the claims in your fields that deserve a precise, infallible proof. I was going to write "a precise, foolproof proof", but that seemed like a horrible thing to do and I am a good person. In fact, I am so nice as to present to you the most rigorous proving technique currently acknowledged: Proof by Experimental Data and/or Citations from Select Sources. I will demonstrate this technique with the following lemma:
Lemma 1: Chillies are hot [1].
Proof:
[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1456995.stm ∎
Now let's proceed with the remainder of the proof:
Proposition 1: Chillies are hot.
Proposition 2: When something is hot, it is not chilly.
Proposition 3: Chilly sounds like, and therefore must be equivalent to, chillie.
This is a corollary to the famous quote "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck." (As an aside, by the law of transitivity, chillie is also equivalent to Chile).
Now then, we have the following:
Proposition 4: Chillies are not chillie,
or equivalently,
Proposition 4*: Chillies iff not chillie.
A perceptive logician may immediately see a problem with this statement. Note that this is a statement of the form "P iff not P". Since there is clearly no way of assigning a truth value to "chillie" without allowing the universe to blow up (along with any remaining logical consistency) by the principle of explosion, this conclusively shows the inconsistency, and therefore the invalidity, of logic itself. ∎
Unless, of course, there is a truth value that has been excluded all along. If such truth value is discovered through more extensive experimental data, I will call it Middle.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Tempus Repet
BEEEEEEP
I slowly open
my eyes. Beams of sunshine pierce through the window, penetrate my pupils, and blind
my eyes. I can hear a low, monotonous murmur from a distance. Turning towards
the deafening noise of my alarm clock, I can barely make out the blocky,
lime-coloured numbers displaying 09:37.
"Fucking
WHAT the FUCKing FUCK, who the FUCK, FUCK this FUCKing, how did this even
FUCKING Fuck's FUCK!"
I curse under
my breath as I pick up my glasses from the bedside table. I fucking hate
Mondays. I jump to my feet, perhaps a little too quickly. I instantly fall back
and grab my throbbing head, screaming in pain while my skull is being split
open by invisible Mjolnir. Really,
Monday can go eat a piece of shit, burn to a crisp char, and be pissed on. I reach
for a bottle of water I left on the bedside and take a gulp. I can taste the
bitter ash from the cigarette butt I threw into the bottle last night. Fucking shit. I guess I should be more
appreciative though. After all, these are the only butts I'm legally allowed to
put in my mouth. I stagger to my feet and make my way to the living room.
Something
feels a little off, though. The air seems a little thin. I stop on the way and
take a deep breath. I really need to get out and exercise.
"MEEE-"
I turn my
head towards the source of the noise, only to meet the orange furball I share
my apartment with.
"What's
wrong, Garfield?"
"-EEEOW,"
finishes the cat.
That's
right. I guess he wants to eat. I better feed this lazy, ungrateful ball of fat
before he scratches me for further delaying his breakfast. I check my watch. 9:37
AM.
I scoop
some catfood for Garfield and pour myself some orange juice. After feeding a
slice of bread into the filthy toaster I got from a garage sale the other day,
I start reading the paper. Of course, the front page is filled with the current
medal count and buzz about the new Olympic stars. I flip to the last page and
start doing the crosswords. I get stuck on 42 across: 6-lettered word for
drooping upper eyelid, starting with P and ending in IS. I write
"PEENIS" and move on to Sudoku.
I turn to
the toaster after finishing the Sudoku. The bread still hasn't been toasted.
Seriously? I'm late for work, AND I don't get to eat breakfast? I get up and
check my watch. 9:37 AM. That doesn't seem
right. I reach for my pocket and check my cell phone: 9:37 AM.
Oh, I know what's happening, I think to myself. I must be high. But all I remember from
yesterday is drinking beer while watching TV and going to bed after lighting a
cigarette. It's been weeks since I smoked weed, and I certainly don't feel high
right now. Somehow, time seems to be dilated, as if I'm travelling at a
relativistic speed. Relativistic. See? I'm capable of actually remembering this
shit right now. There's no way I'm high.
I plop down
on my couch and turn on the television. The television turns on instantly. Ha, that's funny, I think to myself.
Light travels at the speed of light regardless of the reference frame,
unaffected by time dilation. That's exactly the kind of explanation some
college kid would give while writing some shitty story about time dilation
after taking only one or two introductory physics courses at university.
They're
broadcasting a fencing match on the TV. Semifinal between South Korea and
Germany. Hey, I didn't know Koreans were good at something other than
Starcraft. The score says 5-5, with only 2 seconds to go. Man, this is intense.
I watch the match, frame by frame. It's like I'm watching this match in slow motion.
This is pretty neat, I think to myself.
With only
one second left on the clock, the German fencer moves in a blurring motion,
managing three thrusts before landing a point, all in one second. As the match
timer sets off, I feel dazed. There's
another one like me. I take a sip of orange juice.
The cold, refreshing mouthful
of citrus heaven trickles down my esophagus, cooling my entire existence. My
taste receptors fire off action potentials as they bathe in the sour taste of
lemons, mixed with the bittersweet aroma of grapefruit and tangy flavour of
tangerines.
Five Alive® is an excellent source of folate, vitamin C, and potassium.
Start off your long, tedious days by refreshing
yourself with Five Alive®, available at your local grocery store.
Five Alive, Feel Alive!
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