bunsen_h

I'm slightly surprised that the only references I can find to "hackward compatibility" appear to be due to scanning errors and typos.

It seems to me to be the perfect term to describe the need for or practise of maintaining all of the kludges and work-arounds that have accumulated over several software generations.
 

Recent events hereabouts have reminded me of an old comedy sketch by Ronnie Barker, of the Two Ronnies:



The Two Ronnies was not exactly known for highbrow humour — they leaned more towards vaudevillian, variety-show stuff with a certain amount of satire.  But there's a line there: "Diagnosis is very like diarrhoea only you get it in your gnosis instead of in your rhoea."  And the pronunciation is precise; there's no question that he's saying "gnosis".

And too often, lately, we've been finding that a diagnosis does indeed involve "knowledge" coming out as an uncontrolled spew of feculent sludge.
 

Miscellaneous thoughts from Farthing Party (which was wonderful, as usual)...

A ukulele is just like a guitar... if you're missing two fingers.

A dyskulele would be kind of the opposite of a ukulele — it would look and sound terrible.  (Ukukeke haters need not comment here.  As with any other instrument, it may be played well or badly.)

Triggered by a comment by elisem... is it "lurèd"?  Or "lurid"?

This afternoon, while I was walking down a sidewalk in Montreal with a couple of others, an unkempt guy accosted us, asking for money.  We told him "no, sorry"; he kept talking at us.  We told him "no"; he pulled up his shirt to show us a (nasty) vertical scar on his abdomen (he used to have a Trill?).  We told him "No!" and walked away.  A few minutes later, as we walked back along that street, he accosted us again.  We told him "no", he kept talking at us; we told him "NO!" and he reached for his shirt.  At that point, I turned my back on him and pulled up my shirt and said "Moi aussi."  I think it's the first time I've ever shown my scar with intent, so to speak.  (See also: Miles Vorkosigan in Memory.)
 

Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was Zhuangzi. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a distinction. The transition is called the transformation of material things.

But now we might not assume that there is necessarily a distinction: we might consider the possibility of a man/butterfly duality.  A single entity that under some conditions manifests as — or has the properties of — a butterfly, and under other conditions as a man.  To quote another great philosopher, "I yam what I yam."

I'm sleeping oddly these days.
 

"In a media-saturated age, you can really start to resent the amount of information you absorb, despite your steadfast disinterest, about certain utterly unworthy subjects.  It's like the data equivalent of secondary smoke inhalation."

-- Christopher Brookmyre, Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks