There is a great list of problem solving techniques at the Seeing into the True Nature. They are all hilarious. Here are a few of my favorite.

• Have you tried becoming the problem?
• Have you tried not having been born?
• Have you tried making the problem worse?
• Have you tried dropping boxes of Modafinil all over the place?
• Have you tried hiring the problem to afflict your enemies?
• Have you tried making the problem into a brand?
• Have you tried abolishing the concept of property so no one “has” any problems?
• Have you tried praying for the courage to change the things you can?
• Have you tried writing bitter letters to the editor explaining that you have solved the problem but academy politics torpedoed your career?
• Have you tried renaming the problem a conjecture and moving on?

Many more great techniques at the link.

Kottke has a beautiful map of literal country names.

I recently helped my mom set up a Facebook page for her paintings. If you like colorful artwork check it out: https://www.facebook.com/cynthiagroganart/

Here are a few examples:

 

 

The collapse of the lighthouse [at Alexandria] must have been astonishing, like watching the World Trade Center fall over.

Foreboding words from Neal Stephenson written in 1996 in his famous piece Mother Earth Mother Board. He was right.

I was recently made aware of the Redeemed Christian Church of God pavilion in Nigeria. It is the size of 87 football fields and designed to seat 1 million people!!!

Scott Alexander has a wonderful piece on the Effective Altruism Movement based on his attendance at the 2017 EA conference. Though he starts the piece with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson it reads much more like David Foster Wallace (especially this and this).

The EA movement has a surprisingly strange set of research agendas that are best summed up in Scott’s comment about the salad he ate for lunch, “Born too late to eat meat guilt-free, born too early to get the technology that hacks directly into my brain and adds artificial positive valence to unpleasant experiences.”

I was also happy to see there was an organization responding to the arguments in this Journal of Practical Ethics article, “Consistent Vegetarianism and the Suffering of Wild Animals.”

WASR [Wild Animal Suffering Research] researches ways we can alleviate wild animal suffering, from euthanizing elderly elephants (probably not high-impact) to using more humane insecticides (recommended as an ‘interim solution’) to neutralizing predator species in order to relieve the suffering of prey (still has some thorny issues that need to be resolved).

Are electric cars as clean as we think? And what would happen if Americans all ate beans instead of beef?

I’m learning Ruby and one small exercise was meant to calculate the sum for simple sentences like this: “eight plus 5 plus five minus three plus 1 minus 4” and output an answer. Numbers can be either numeric or written out. Every set of numbers is separated by either “plus” or “minus.” I’m sure there are many ways to complete this problem. I came up with the cute little solution below.

NUMBERS = {
  "zero"  => 0,
  "one"   => 1,
  "two"   => 2,
  "thrid" => 3,
  "four"  => 4,
  "five"  => 5,
  "six"   => 6,
  "seven" => 7,
  "eight" => 8,
  "nine"  => 9
}

OPERATIONS = ['plus', 'minus']

def is_int?(int)
  int.to_i.to_s == int
end

def translate_number(number)
  return number.to_i if is_int?(number)
  NUMBERS[number]
end

def compute(operation, number)
  case operation
  when 'plus' then number
  when 'minus' then -number
  end
end

def computer(expression)
  express_array = expression.split
  total = translate_number(express_array.shift)
  operation = nil
  express_array.each do |element|
    if OPERATIONS.include?(element)
      operation = element
      next
    end
    number = translate_number(element)
    total += compute(operation, number)
  end
  total
end

p computer("two plus two minus one plus 8 plus five minus 3")

LA Weekly has an important piece this week on rape in film and TV titled, “Rape Choreography Makes Films Safer, But Still Takes a Toll on Cast and Crew.” It discusses the difficulties in filming rape scenes, abuses that have taken place in the past (especially during the 1970s), and the lack of dialogue about how much rape there should be in film and TV.

Here is one bit:

Working on Brian De Palma’s heart-wrenching war drama Casualties of War(1989), editor Bill Pankow and the postproduction crew edited one of the most emotionally charged rape scenes committed to film, in which Sean Penn’s character and three others assault a Vietnamese girl over the objections of Michael J. Fox’s character. As the editor, Pankow’s required to watch and rewatch footage, knowing it intimately, thereby getting a feel for which shots have the desired emotional appeal. After the film’s release, Pankow, in an interview that appeared in Gabriella Oldham’s First Cut: Conversations With Film Editors, revealed, “For the first few days, we couldn’t help crying just looking at the dailies.”