http://www.mcduke.net/blog If I knew what it was I'm going to write about, it wouldn't be called a blog, would it? Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:33:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A couple of must-see movies which also sport a must-have soundtrack: Juno Once Almost Famous Harold and Maude Magnolia Those are just a few that come to mind. After recently watching Juno and Once, I was ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2008/03/29/movic-musies/ Gordon Brown calls in to a radio show. http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2008/01/22/oh-my-i-need-some-cake/ Last week, Valve announced the immediate availability of id games on Steam. This is great news. Growing up on the Mac side of the first-person shooter saga, I've immensely enjoyed Bungie's Marathon Trilogy, but missed out on everything id. Yes, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and the rest were available on the Mac ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/08/06/a-history-of-id/ Rough translation: the file no movie file is (Yes, this grammar is screwed up in German, too.) Maybe I shouldn't have watched the deliciously deliberately low budget styled "Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot" miniseries (watch online), a German adaptation of the late Stanislaw Lem's Star Diaries. The mangled language seems to have gotten ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/05/18/did-a-drunken-polish-space-cowboy-translate-quicktime/ This echoes much of what I believe to be the best way to educating one's children about Life, the Universe and Everything. From the section What I do intend to indoctrinate my children with as early as possible: Wisdom Doubt the stories people tell ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/04/07/children-and-religion/ This is worth your time. http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/03/29/physics-for-future-presidents/ It's that time of the year again: http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/02/14/happy-wednesday/ I've always been fascinated with self-referentialism in all its forms, so when I stumbled upon a mathematical formula that can plot itself, I was pretty intrigued. You take this formula: [tex]\displaystyle\frac12 < \left\lfloor \mathrm{mod} \left( \left\lfloor \frac{y}{17}\right\rfloor 2^{-17\lfloor x\rfloor -\mathrm{mod}(\lfloor y\rfloor , 17)},2\right)\right\rfloor[/tex] Which you then run over certain values of x and ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2007/01/27/jeff-tuppers-self-referential-formula/ I just stumbled across the very interesting STEP study: Intercessory prayer is widely believed to influence recovery from illness, but claims of benefits are not supported by well-controlled clinical trials. Prior studies have not addressed whether prayer itself or knowledge/certainty that prayer is being provided may influence outcome. We evaluated whether (1) receiving intercessory ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2006/11/05/dont-pray-for-me-for-gods-sake/ ...is that they don't take themselves too seriously, but focus on getting the essence of the subject across in a simple, straight-forward, maybe at times even humorous manner. That's how Calculus Made Easy by Silvanus P. Thompson (in an updated edition with some additional preliminary chapters and footnotes by Martin Gardner) ... http://www.mcduke.net/blog/2006/10/23/a-hallmark-of-quality-textbooks/