Lisp

One more reason to love lisp: it's a language where every function call is actually a funcall.

Mice suspected in deadly cat fire

BBC is reporting on a fire in a Humane Society building in Oshawa:

"It's unfortunate and ironic that mice caused the fire that killed the cats," Toronto Humane Society spokesman Ian McConachie told the BBC News website.
"Unfortunately, the mice probably perished in the fire as well," he added.

Unfortunately? We think the little bastards got what they deserved.

Definitions

• Immaculate consumption -- period of the shopping calendar between Nov 1 and Dec 25 when stores see profits
• Codless communists -- left-inclined inhabitants of Newfoundland

Daily tips for good karma

Tip #1: When you're having people work for you on the weekend to meet a "critical deadline", go ahead and completely haul over the app code to work with a version of database that you branched from the head three weeks ago. Without actually doing any branching in the app code. In fact, forget about branching altogether! Oh, and that new database is missing all the testing data and dictionaries. And the changes to the app code are untested. Your developers will thank you for that. Because they don't feel challenged enough on the weekend without a pretty little surprise like that.

The Age of Virtue is here, people!

Richard Handler has a great article discussing whether we should intervene in places like Sudan or Zimbabwe . First camp: Gareth Evans & Mia Farrow: human rights, basic human decency, we're on the verge of a breakthrough, age of virtue is about to begin, gotta intervene. Second camp, John Bolton, a former UN ambassador under George W. Bush, and Rick Hillier: interventions are complicated and have a huge financial and human cost, public is hypocritical about support for interventions and chickens out after the first 100 zinc coffins coming back home, look at Iraq & Afghanistan, are you personally prepared to sacrifice your/your family's life and standard of living.

I personally think we can reach a compromise on this. How about we just keep approving human rights, basic human decency and need for intervention, thus fulfilling our deep emotional need for feel-good rhethoric, and at the same time keep doing what we're doing right now: get the hell out of Afghanistan and never make the same mistake again. Works like a charm.

Update: Thomas Rose reporting on the same debate.

Lolita in Ukrainian

Just spotted this right now on Alya Berlina's blog : Nabokov's "Lolita" in Ukrainian translation. Uber-cool.

Лолiта, свiтло мого життя, вогонь моїх чересел. Грiх мiй, душа моя. Ло-лi-та: кiнчик язика долає шлях у три стiбки з пiднебiння вниз, щоб на третьому тюкнути в зуби. Ло. Лi. Та. Вона була Ло, просто Ло, вранцi, п'ять футiв на зрiст (без двох вершкiвта в однiй шкарпетцi). Вона була Лола в довгих штанях. Вона була Доллi в школi. Вона була Долорес на пунктирах бланкiв. Але в моїх обiймах воназавжди: Лолiта.

Forbes