The Gold-Bug

English Spelling

2009-06-10T08:06:00.001-05:00

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling by Mark Twain

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all. Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli. Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Your Lucky Number

2008-09-11T16:07:00.000-05:00

Your lucky number is 3552664958674928. Watch for it everywhere.

Taken from fortune.

Who's Peter Heidenstam?

2008-08-10T10:49:00.000-05:00

Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering Minds

2008-08-10T10:37:00.002-05:00

The MIT OpenCourseWare Project

MIT OCW is a large-scale, Web-based publication of the educational materials from virtually all of the MIT faculty’s courses. This unique initiative enables the open sharing of MIT teaching materials with educators, enrolled students, and self-learners around the world.

MIT OCW provides open access to the syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, and even a selection of video lectures from MIT courses representing 33 academic disciplines and all five of MIT’s schools. By the year 2008, the initiative will include materials from 1,800 courses.

Educators around the globe are encouraged to utilize the materials for curriculum development, and selflearners and students may draw upon the materials for self-study or supplementary use. Course materials contained on the MIT OCW Web site may be freely used, copied, distributed, translated, and modified by anyone, anywhere in the world for non-commercial purposes.

Truly a global initiative, MIT OCW has received users from more than 215 countries, territories, and city-states around the globe—including every member of the United Nations—and materials already have been translated into at least ten different languages.

Free Online Course Materials | MIT OpenCourseWare

Carnival of Rust

2008-08-10T10:21:00.003-05:00

Poets of the Fall - Carnival of Rust

D' you breath the name of your saviour in your hour of need,
n' taste the blame if the flavor should remind you of greed,
Of implication, insinuation and ill will, till' you cannot lie still,
In all this turmoil, before red cape and foil come closing in for a kill

Come feed the rain
Cos I'm thirsty for your love dancing underneath the skies of lust

Yeah feed the rain
Cos without your love my life ain't nothing but this carnival of rust

It's all a game, avoiding failure, when true colors will bleed
All in the name of misbehavior and the things we don't need
I lust for after no disaster can touch us anymore
And more than ever, I hope to never fall, where enough is not the same it was before

Come feed the rain...

Don't walk away, don't walk away, oh, when the world is burning
Don't walk away, don't walk away, oh, when the heart is yearning

POTF - Poets of the Fall

The RS 10 Greatest Songs of All Time

2008-08-10T09:52:00.003-05:00

The RS 10 Greatest Songs of All Time (Taken from The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time : Rolling Stones)

Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan

Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones

Imagine, John Lennon

What's Going On, Marvin Gaye

Respect, Aretha Franklin

Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys

Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry

Hey Jude, The Beatles

Smells Like Teen Spirit, Nirvana

What'd I Say, Ray Charles

The RS 500 Greatest Songs of All Time
The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

Grow Old or Die Trying

2008-07-03T09:15:00.003-05:00

The Orange Box - Portal

Portal is a single player game from Valve. Set in the mysterious Aperture Science Laboratories, Portal has been called one of the most innovative new games on the horizon and will offer gamers hours of unique gameplay.

The game is designed to change the way players approach, manipulate, and surmise the possibilities in a given environment; similar to how Half-Life 2’s Gravity Gun innovated new ways to leverage an object in any given situation.

Players must solve physical puzzles and challenges by opening portals to maneuvering objects, and themselves, through space.

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?

2008-05-14T13:53:00.001-05:00

What Is Intelligence, Anyway? (Isaac Asimov)

What is intelligence, anyway? When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big fuss over me. (It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think so too. Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was. Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it, watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an intelligence test. Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron, and I'd be a moron, too. In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my hands, I would do poorly. My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again. He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me. One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc, a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with the other hand. The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my first two fingers. Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb jerk, He used his voice and asked for them." Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today." "Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for sure I'd catch you." "Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

Don't Download This Song

2008-05-13T13:19:00.003-05:00

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Don't Download This Song

Startled

2008-05-12T23:03:00.004-05:00