Category Archives: Jack Handy

Things I Learned From Adventure Games: 90% of the time, you can solve the problem in front of you right away … and the solution is (almost) always obvious in hindsight … but there’s always another hill to climb … … Continue reading →

Today, a little nastiness: Without naming names, let me just say that when a man precedes his remarks on a topic with a (supposedly) awe-inspiring account of the reading he’s done on that topic, you can expect that his comments … Continue reading →

Here’s something to pass the time; 12 videos of Richard Feynman explaining things. Diverting, informative, and entertaining.

I mentioned Mark Webber before, after he won his first F1 race. Yesterday he had a far more dismal result, but I thought his post-race comments showed a lot of class, and are worthy of remark: The long and short … Continue reading →

From James Bowman’s Inglourious Basterds (sp?) review:

A rough transcription of an actual conversation: A: “The Hansel and Gretel story has never rung true for me.” B: “What do you mean?” A: “Well, that house had been out in the wood for years. It was probably covered … Continue reading →

Compared with the totality of knowledge which is continually utilized in the evolution of a dynamic civilization, the difference between the knowledge that the wisest and that which the most ignorant individual can deliberately employ is comparatively insignificant. More interesting … Continue reading →

One of the nice little features of fancier restaurants is the crumb scraper. This is a little metal bar/scoop that the waiter (or busser) uses to remove the crumbs from your tablecloth after the dishes have been cleared. I was … Continue reading →

What do you do if you’re in the middle of a build-out of your corporate campus, and a major recession hits? Obviously, you stop construction. What do you do if you’ve already paid for a building’s elements (foundation, structural steel, … Continue reading →

A nuclear (fission-fusion) bomb takes about 600ns to detonate. In that time, a 2Ghz Intel Core Duo can execute about 2400 instructions. (Crudely: 2 instructions per cycle x 2 billion cycles per second x .000000001 seconds per ns x 600ns … Continue reading →