Tag Archives: Life

Dennis Ritchie

I will quote this on the relative anonymity of Dennis Ritchie‘s death versus Steve Jobs‘ celebrity send off:

“If you do everything just right, it’ll look like you haven’t done anything at all.” ~ God, ‘Futurama‘

This guy, Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, did a lot of things right. Our task is to not screw it up too badly now.

Related articles:

  • Dennis Ritchie, Trailblazer in Digital Era, Dies at 70
  • Dennis Ritchie: the other man inside your iPhone
… --> continue reading →

Quote of the day

Deep understanding of politics from the author of The Chronicles of Narnia:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron‘s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.
— C. S. Lewis

… --> continue reading →

Olympics 2012

I wonder, is it only my personal impression or Olympics 2012 is really quite a bit understated and under-promoted? I have a feeling that all previous Olympics were going up the curve in terms of publicity, advertisements and public expectations.

This time… it feels like if the world has a lot on its mind and could not care much for a yet another Olympics. Weird.

Kinda related :)
  • Hottest Female Athletes in the Olympics 2012
  • The naughty 2012 Olympics logo
… --> continue reading →

Murders, rapes and walking in the dark

Bumped into some statistics today and found it interesting enough to share:

  • Murders (per capita) by country
  • Rapes (per capita) by country
  • Walking in the dark by country

Not obvious a priori, say?

I picked out some for you:

Country Safety Perception Murder rank Rape rank Sweden 85% #16 Canada 82% United States 82% Denmark 81% #14 Finland 81% #12 #7 Netherlands 81% #25 Japan 78% #45 Austria 78% #28 Switzerland 77% #20 France 77% #27 Belgium 77% #17 #3 United Kingdom 70% Italy 65% #21 Australia 64% #18 New Zealand 62% #29 #2… --> continue reading →

Татуировки – это надолго

В новостях: Никитину пришлось отказаться от участия в Bayreuth Festival в Германии из-за татуировки со свастикой. Он говорит, что это было ошибкой бурной молодости, но теперь это уже никак ему не поможет. Представляете, да? Теперь, когда немецкие газеты об этом узнали – всё, человеку доступ к немецкой сцене просто закрыт навсегда.

А я вам больше скажу. Во многих странах востока татуировки используются в том же смысле, что у нас – клеймение (ракаленным железом). И обычно используется для “записи” того, кому человек принадлежит. Ну, конечно, самое распространенное – принадлежность клану мафии. Поэтому кое-где вас просто не пустят, к примеру, в баню, если у вас есть татуировки.

Так что думать надо. Любые перманентные изменения своего тела – это надолго, и, может, оно того не стоит?… -->

continue reading →

Portugal: don’t jump to conclusions but…

I just noticed an interesting article over at Forbes about the “Owners of Portugal” documentary. The article pointed to a couple of extremely interesting charts. And, although it asks not to jump to conclusions I find that, not jumping to conclusions, extremely hard to do.

The charts in question are: the big family and 30 years, 115 members of the government.

Check for yourself, I bet you’ll start jumping to conclusions!… -->

continue reading →

McDonald’s sucks ever more

Well, that’s a good thing I do not go to McDonald’s to eat, it seems you are opening yourself to physical abuse by stepping over their threshold. Dr. Steve Mann, inventor and engineer of the Glass Eye technology that helps partially blind people to see gets thrown out of McDonald’s for wearing his own invention. I do hope you will heed the warning and stay away from that evil, evil place!… -->

continue reading →