Author Archives: jcs

Scientific Illiteracy

Posted on 2014-02-15 by jcs

A little while ago I wrote about mathematical literacy and disturbing indications of a lack of it in American life. Now there’s evidence of American’s scientific illiteracy as well. The National Science Foundation recently polled 2,200 people on some basic … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Git Bisect Tutorial

Posted on 2014-02-14 by jcs

Back in December, I wrote about Randy Fay’s screencast on Git bisect. Now Matt Honeycutt has posted his own tutorial. It’s in the form of a blog post so if Fay’s video moved too quickly for you to follow, you … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Nanopass Compilers

Posted on 2014-02-13 by jcs

For the 2013 Clojure Conj, Andy Keep gave a great talk on nanopass compilers. The idea is that rather than having the normal 2, 3, or 4 passes in a compiler, you have several passes each of which does one … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Lisp Debugging with Slime

Posted on 2014-02-12 by jcs

Rainer Joswig has a nice video up demonstrating how to debug Lisp with Slime. In a sense there’s nothing new here: most Slime users are pretty much aware of the facilities that he uses. Nevertheless, it’s very useful to see … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Hypocrisy of Governments

Posted on 2014-02-11 by jcs

Governments all over the world are sparing no effort to discover and prosecute members of Anonymous. It only makes sense. After all they do patently illegal things like launching DOS attacks against sites they don’t like or have a grievance … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

State of the Irreal Site

Posted on 2014-02-10 by jcs

I think I have finally ironed out all the problems with Irreal. Ironically, the latest snafu held the key to resolving all the other problems. WordPress now automatically updates minor versions and although they notify me with an email, it … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 4 Comments

Final Ruling on the TSA’s Infamous No-Fly Case

Posted on 2014-02-09 by jcs

I’ve written before, here and here, about the U.S. Government’s scandalous behavior in the case of a woman, Rahinah Ibrahim, placed on the no-fly list. The government did everything they could to make the case disappear, including refusing to grant … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Thinking Outside the Box

Posted on 2014-02-08 by jcs

Here’s a delightful tale that illustrates the power of non-linear thinking. I don’t know if the story is true or not but it hardly matters. The point is being able to see the value in an undertaking that all the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Comments Reenabled

Posted on 2014-02-07 by jcs

I’ve updated everything and turned comments back on. As far as I can tell, everything is working correctly. If you have any problems and can’t leave a comment, email me at jcs at the domain of the blog. While the … Continue reading →

Posted in Administrivia | Leave a comment

Comment Problems

Posted on 2014-02-07 by jcs

Yesterday, a couple of readers emailed me that they were unable to post comments. When I tried to comment as someone other than me I had the same problem. After a little investigation I discovered that the problem involved the … Continue reading →

Posted in Administrivia | Leave a comment