In 1974, the prestigious scholarly journal TV Guide published my original research that suggested that the inspector in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was modeled on Socrates. I’m still pretty sure that’s right, and an actual scholarly article came out a few years later making the same case, by people who actually read Russian ‘n’ stuff.

Around the time that I came up with this hypothesis, the creators of the show Columbo had acknowledged that their main character was also modeled on Socrates. I put one and one together and …

Click on the image to go to a scan of that 1974 article.

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Clinton policy page home page
https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/

Clinton Tech and Innovation policy

https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/technology-and-innovation/

Trump policy home page

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions

Trump’s Tech and Innovation policy

I did a Google search on “site:donaldjtrump.com technology” and likewise for innovation and couldn’t find a tech policy on his site, although he does support the GOP platform which mentions innovation:
https://action.donaldjtrump.com/issue/economy/canonical/

Libertarian Party

I couldn’t find a tech policy per se, but their platform mentions supporting uncensored and unregulated media and tech, privacy, and the use of innovative tech to protect the environment.
https://www.lp.org/platform

Green Party

The party platform doesn’t have a top-level tech policy, but there’s a subsection of the” Advanced Technology and Defense Conversion” section that talks about telecommunications, and one about Open Source Software.
http://www.gp.org/economic_justice_and_sustainability_2016/#ejAdvancedTech

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What I find most remarkable about this exchange: So few conversations begin with the request for help changing one’s own mind.

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What’s wrong with English? So many of the words for things in a baby’s environment start with B so when she says “buh,” ― or, as our grandchild prefers, “bep” ― you don’t know if she is talking about a banana, bunny, boat, bread, bath, bubble, ball, bum, burp, bird, belly, or bathysphere.

This is not how you design a language for easy learning. You don’t hear soldiers speaking into their walkie talkies about being at position “Buh buh buh buh.” No, they say something like, “Bravo Victor Mike November.” Those words were picked precisely because they are so hard to mistake for one another. Now that’s how you design a language! (It’s also possible that research at Harvard during WWII that led to the development of the NATO phonetic alphabet influenced the development of Information Theory what with that theory’s differentiating of signal from noise.)

This problem in English probably helps explain why we spend so much time teaching our children how to say animal sounds: animals have the common sense not to sound like one another. That may also be why some of the sounds we teach our children have little to do with the noises animals actually make: Dogs don’t actually say “Woof,” but that sound is hard to confused with the threadbare imitation we can manage of the sound a tiger makes.

Being a baby is tough. You’ve got little flabby fingers that can’t do anything you want except hold onto a measly Cheerio and even then they can’t tell the difference between your mouth and your nose. Plus you can’t get anywhere except by hitching a ride with an adult whose path is as senseless as a three-legged drunk’s. Then when you want nothing more than a bite of buttery brie, the stupid freaking adult brings you a big blue blanket and then gets annoyed when you kick it off.

The least we could do for our babies is give them some words that don’t sound like every other word they care about.

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Here’s some info about the 2,200 TED Talks based largely on the tags that TED supplies on its Web site; the data are a few months old. Keep in mind that I am grossly incompetent at this, so I’ve included the SQL queries I used to derive this information so you can see how wrong I’ve gone and can laugh and laugh.

Number of unique tags

378 of ’em

SELECT count( DISTINCT(tag) ) FROM tags

Most popular tags

SELECT count(tag),tag
FROM tags GROUP BY tag ORDER BY count(tag) desc;

Tags used only once or twice

SELECT COUNT( tag ) , tag
FROM tags
GROUP BY tag
ORDER BY COUNT( tag ) ASC

Most viewed talks

Quite possibly wrong.

select times_seen,title from talks
order by times_seen desc;

Tags of the most popular talks

.

There’s a very good chance I got the sql wrong on this.

SELECT DISTINCT tags.tag , sum(talks.times_seen) FROM tags
INNER JOIN talks ON tags.talkid = talks.talkid
GROUP BY tags.tag
ORDER BY SUM( talks.times_seen ) DESC
LIMIT 3,53;

Tags of least popular talks

same as above, but ascending

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Coinstar makes vending machines into which you drop coins and from which you get bills or gift cards. Its list of unacceptable items is quite odd, presumably intentionally.

I’d think that this is based on things people have actually tried to shove into Coinstar slots, except I don’t see “fishing line with gum at its end” or “your dick”on the list.

(Tip o’ the hat to my brother Andy who definitely was not trying to “redeem” 70,000 #6 steel washers.)

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Crowd chants : Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!…

Hillary Clinton: Thank you. Thank you all so much. It’s wonderful to be here. And before I speak, I want to let you know that this is a very special day. Before I talk, I’m going to bring out a guest you’re not expecting, who will make history. And how you greet him will help shape that history So, I ask you to greet this guest with open hearts and open minds, and embrace him for the courage and true patriotism he’s going to show you this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please warmly welcome … Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan enters to shocked applause. Shakes Clinton’s hand and goes to lectern

Paul Ryan: I bet you did not see that coming. Tell you the truth, neither did I.

Good morning. Madam Secretary,…

For the rest, click here

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(Prepare for the most first worldly of all problems.)

The New York Times Puns and Anagrams puzzles are a national embarrassment. Pardon my bluntness, but I’m a truth teller.

The clues in the British version provide a definition and a clever, hidden way of constructing the word. The NYT version sometimes does but sometimes just has the cleverness.

For example, in yesterday’s NYT Puns and Anagrams puzzle [SPOILERS AHEAD], the clue for 48 Down is “Fill time on stage again.” The answer is “revamp” because to fill time on stage is to vamp, and to do it again is to add “re” to it. But there’s no definition of “revamp” in the clue. In the British style, it might have been “Do over once again to fill time on stage.”

Another example: 57A “Fire starter” is “bon.” For the Brits it could have been something like “Good French fire starter.”

Adding the definition usually makes the clues harder, and thus more satisfying to solve. Sure, the definition is in them, which should make them easier, but that information becomes noise because with a good clue, you can’t tell which is the definition and which is the hint. When you can tell ― e.g., when words in the clue seem oddly chosen, they may be there as an anagram ― the clue gets easier, but that’s just fun getting even a little more meta.

And while I have your attention, let’s work to slow global climate change. Or, as the Brits might put it, “Climate activist may ogle sun god.” Answer: ogle + ra = Al Gore. See, wasn’t that fun? No. Ok, good point.

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