-
Marmite
·
1–2 minutes·
No comments on MarmiteThere’s no doubt that there are many who love Marmite, but personally speaking, I can’t stand the thing. Clearly MetaFilterites don’t agree with me though: “The marmite is not too strong for us. It is we who are too weak for the marmite,” and “Bow before the Gods of Yeast Extract! Bow damn you!”
-
Timeshare
Seen on Usenet, about spacecraft yachts for the rich: “Larry Ellison would probably go for it — but even he isn’t rich enough. Here’s an idea, though: An orbital timeshare. Ellison can use it six months of the year; Bill Gates gets it the rest of the time.”
-
Metafiltrate
I’m getting quite annoyed with MetaFilter, again. It’s not that the posts aren’t good – they are, I’ve seen some moderately good ones recently. It’s that I cannot sum up the enthusiasm to take part in discussions any longer. A thread about the link between autism and vaccines caught my eye today, and I was…
-
Community Effect
Learned about an interesting thing in a developmental biology seminar today called the ‘Community Effect’. If you transplant a very small group of cells into a foreign, non-self environment, the cells will lose their identity and assume one identical to that of the surrounding cells. However, if the group of cells that you transplant is…
-
A humbling experience
A humbling experience – one man’s amusing tale of how he made a fool of himself in front of SF writer Greg Benford.
-
Mars beckons
It’s now just over a week until I go to Mars – or more accurately, to the Mars Society’s Mars Desert Research Station. Things are looking up – the Station took delivery of three new Kawasaki ATVs recently, and when I get there, the hab will have been in use for a month, meaning that…
-
Old British Actors
Who will play wise, old men in 5-10 years? It’s an interesting question which deserves some attention ever since they’ve been looking for a replacement for Richard Harris as Dumbledore in Harry Potter. “Old British Actors, a non-renewable resource?”
-
Ragging
Is ragging – making new initiates/players/students perform pointless tasks – the key to forming a strong community?
-
Benevolent
Take a look at the LambdaMOO constitution (about halfway down the page). It confirms my belief that the most efficient and often best form of governance for an online community is essentially a benevolent dictatorship. LambdaMOO is basically an virtual online world. In their constitution, the LambdaMOO administrators (‘Wizards’) explicitly state that they will sometimes…
-
Milestones
A few days ago, the world (for me) passed another technological milestone – I now had full and unmetered Internet access for 99% of the time*. I’d just bought the Orange SPV Smartphone. This phone is quite a nice piece of kit; it has a decent sized colour screen with a reasonably fast processor. Importantly,…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
mssv 