Posts by English Bob 25 publicly visible posts • joined 4 Jun 2007
To what degree are the following used in an 'official' and 'unofficial' manner *across your workforce?* (my asterisks)
I was answering the survey quite happily, but had to bail out when I reached this one. Do you really expect me to poll everyone in my company and present a median?
Forgive me if I wasn't expected to take the question literally. I'm an engineer and can't help myself.
To paraphrase: at launch it carried five ISPRs, including the European Physiology Modules Facility, European Drawer Rack and European Transport Carrier. If those three things with "European" in their names weren't a European foothold in space, why is this fourth thing with "European" in its name being hailed as such?
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [some versions have 'Schopenhauer and Hegel']
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'Bout the raising of the wrist.
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away--
Half a crate of whisky every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle.
Hobbes was fond of his dram,
And René Descartes was a drunken fart.
'I drink, therefore I am.'
Yes, Socrates, himself, is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.
(Yes, I know New Zealand isn't Australia, but when national stereotyping is involved accuracy goes out the window)
It's all very well completing this back-up drive over the crater rim to prove they can do it, but the only way to do that is to drive into the crater in the first place, Shirley? What if they *hadn't* succeeded? NASA could hardly find some Martian farmer and offer to buy him a beer if he brings his tractor over for a quick tow, could they?
"...it's a wonder we haven't already picked up some kind of eternal synthetic version of Big Brother already, pumped out from relic production machinery left running by a far-off, long extinct alien race..."
Do you have any tips on how to tell the difference?
David Gelernter, the polymath and computer scientist whose book "The Muse in the Machine" dealt with the practicalities of machine intelligence in compelling detail, was a victim of the bombing campaign mounted by Theodore Kaczynski, later known as the Unabomber.
I'm not sure where this comment can go from here, except to say that Phil Laak could conceivably have picked a better nickname. I felt the coincidence should not go undocumented.
This is probably unfair comment for a number of reasons, but it's amusing so it's justified. During a visit to the book's website (http://www.whysoftwaresucks.com/) I wanted to leave a comment; but when I attempted to follow the comments link, I got a page full of incomprehensible error report which is clearly aimed at the site's developers, and is no use to the visitor.
http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wsserrorlw2.png
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