Anyways, I’ve finally implemented the new, extremely minimalist design everywhere. The plugin Theme Switch helped a bunch, because it allowed me to preview what I was working on without the general public seeing it. WordPress itself was a pain though, because I’m used to coding by hand and not using any kind of framework to generate HTML. I ended up doing some pretty silly things. For example, I first started by trying to get WordPress to simply call my custom templating files for the rest of the site. Following the logic of my system I did things like:

$title = wp_title();
//...
require('head.php'); //My custom templating system


Whenever I loaded the page there was a mysterious “Nomulous Blog” at the very top of my HTML source. This confused me at first, but I soon realized that (not having been designed to be processed, only displayed) the wp_title() function printed a value instead of returning one.

In the end I just went to my home page, copied most of the source, and modified the default WordPress theme to use that instead. Aha!

<pwnage>

This is ridiculous.

First of all, to say that global warming has yet to be proven is to say the same thing about evolution, the atomic model, or the idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around. Sure, by definition all science is theoretical, however things are as “proven” as they are going to get. Outside of theoretical mathematics all we have to go on is empirical evidence and these “theories” are what we can extrapolate from this information.

So when the overwhelming majority of scientists say we have to do something about the state of our planet, and you say “Hi, I’m a skeptic without any credentials or relevant education, and your theories are unproven!”, you are the Catholic Church to Copernicus’ Heliocentrism. You are leftovers from the Dark Ages.

But this skepticism, however unrealistic and denialist, is still not completely absurd. There are at least a handful of intelligent people, actual accredited scientists, who refute the idea that global warming is our fault.

However, your third sentence shows your true colours. To refer to the poorer nations of the world as “people that we do not need” is a despicable and monstrous thing. I would have you know that Britain itself would be nothing compared to what it is today had it not exploited its third world colonies, such as in India and parts of Africa. Not that all the other major powers of the world haven’t done the same, but as you seem to be so hard on these poorer human beings you should probably know that you are the reason for their suffering, and their suffering is the reason for your wealth. I suppose you thought it was just because you were better than them.

And although it’s crazy to say that the entire third world hates British people (it’s more likely that they look up to you and the U.S. Americans culturally, especially among the younger generations), if they did they’d have every reason to.

Then you go on to say that there are “billions of humans who would actually benefit from climate change”. First of all, as a resident of Montreal, Canada, I can tell you that even here winters are pretty okay. Even living in one of the coldest major cities in the world, I would say this “terrible cold” and “sparse sustenance” is a load of crap. You’ll find that as you move north, the population density decreases drastically, and where it’s too cold to live comfortably there is almost nobody at all. Sure, it would be nice to have a longer growing season around here, but we’re doing just fine as it is.

Now here’s why even a slight increase in global temperature is so dangerous. As I’m sure you’re aware, most of the world’s population lives near an ocean or another large body of water, because every civilization needs an abundant source of water. Now imagine the chaos that would ensue if the glaciers melted. Even a little bit. It would be the New Orleans disaster, but for the rest of the world’s coastal cities. And you naively say, “Hmm, it gets a little chilly around here some times, I could do with some of this Global Warming they’re talking about.” Fuck your heating bill.

“Why should we have to care about what is happenning to countries on the other side of the world who generally breed like rabbits. It is abundantly clear that all their social and food problems is because there are too many of them and they just cannot support themselves.”

Just listen to yourself. Like the rest of this post, it seems to be written by an 14 year old kid: please learn how use question marks, and plural verbs when talking about more than one of a kind (“problems are”, not ” problems is”). Either learn to spell or use a spell checker, I won’t even bother to point out the sheer number of spelling mistakes here (“The big debete”, etc. etc. etc.). Problems are “due to” or “caused by” something, not “because of”. You know nothing of the world’s problems, and you know even less about what causes suffering in developing countries. Of course it’s just because they’re having too many children. So why should we care about them? Idiot.

You really think nature is going to simply look after itself? Wouldn’t that be nice. There are stupid people everywhere, but I find it sad that someone from such a developed country could be so misinformed.

</pwnage>

He’s a good talker though — he kneads the audience nicely and references quotes that don’t even have to be relevant to sound pretty deep (some Shakespeare in this case) — but he doesn’t really make any good points. All he says is “it’s inevitable, therefore we should do it”. Equivalently, “let’s not kid ourselves, we’re going to destroy this planet anyways, so don’t bother trying to stop it”. Well, no, sorry Mr. Stock but nothing is inevitable, nothing is written. No, not even choosing our babies through a Sims 3-like interface. But I suppose as a biotech entrepreneur you’ve got the right to be a little biased about this.

I’m surprised he didn’t mention is what I think is actually an extremely good argument for embracing this technology with open arms: there hasn’t been a major release of the human genome for a good 200,000 years. That makes us the biological equivalent of, I dunno, Internet Explorer 2. And to think that there’s all this fuss about IE 6 nowadays! My point is that we humans weren’t built for this new world, and that’s why I think everything is so royally fucked up. Honestly, imagine trying to browse the modern internet on an ancient browser that may or may not have been a piece of shit to begin with.

The perfect metaphor for the current state of the human race.

Why is everybody so fat? Because we weren’t built with the capability to limit our sugar and fat intakes. While we went through our major stages of evolution, we could barely find enough calories to survive, and anything extra was more than welcome. And nowadays? You can get off your ass, right now, and go to the nearest corner store to buy a three pound bag of white sugar for about $2. Then you can sit there and eat the whole damn thing, there just isn’t anything to stop you from doing it.

What about racism? Unfortunately, interacting with people who look different than you didn’t make it into Human 1.0. Indifference to climate change? We only used to have to deal with things on a very local level. Back then, it made sense for everyone to do what was best for themselves, or their family, or at most their tribe. But now, the actions of powerful individuals can contribute to the destruction of our entire world, something we were never really built to understand. The thought of cavemen worrying about something on such a large scale is positively ridiculous. And, that’s the problem — we’re still cavemen. Cavemen living on a globalized and industrialized earth.

So the way I see it, there’s only so much we can accomplish with these bodies and minds from another age. Maybe we have to change ourselves first, and then we can start work on the world? Here we are, cavemen, trying to be civilized together, when all we were really meant to do was club each other over the head. Sure, there are dangers, but as long as we know what we’re doing, we don’t rush things, we do it right, and for the right reasons, couldn’t changing our genetic makeup be the only answer to human kind’s biggest problems?

Not having had any previous knowledge of number theory nor of formal systems, I am most definitely a novice when it comes to the type of mathematical problems found in the book. So far, however, I have been able to solve each of the presented puzzles, albeit with some difficulty. The one which I have just come across has the most difficult thus far, and after solving it I found myself compelled to share my success with the rest of the world.

In chapter VIII, entitled Typographical Number Theory, Hofstadter presents a few statements (above), asking the reader to translate them into his simple (yet somewhat difficult to understand) system of variables and logic, TNT. He also teases with an “almost impossible” puzzle, “b is a power of 10″, saying even the most experienced of mathematicians would need hours and hours to figure it out. The first four were easy, and my solutions to them are as follows.

1. ∀a: a = SSSS0 [For all a, a is equal to four.]
2. ~∃a: a = (a⋅a) [There does not exist a such that a is equal to a times a.]
3. ∀a:∀b: <~a = b ⊂ ~Sa = Sb> [For all a and for all b, if a is not equal to b then the successor of a is not equal to the successor of b.]
4. <S0 = 0 ⊂ ∀a:~∃b: a = (SS0⋅b)> [If one is equal to zero, then for all a there does not exist b such that a is equal to two times b.]

Number five, the subject and this post and the cause of all my troubles during the last hour or so, was not quite so easy. I expect for that anyone with any previous experience with similar systems it would not have presented such a challenge, but for such an inexperienced person as myself it was quite difficult indeed.

First, I tried prying it apart mathematically, rewriting it ways like b = 2ⁿ or b = 2₁ × 2₂ × 2₃ … × 2_n, etc. This didn’t help me at all, because my math skills aren’t that strong and there was nowhere I could take it from there. So I looked at its possible English translations next.

It seemed to me that there were a few simple things that can be done in TNT with relative ease, but as you move up the line of complexity it becomes exponentially harder to express something in such a simple language. I knew for sure I could express a few basic things in TNT, such as “a is a factor of b” or “if something then something else”.

I eventually figured that if all factors of b are multiples of two then b is most certainly a power of two. This is because this power’s only prime factor would be two, with a multiplicity of the given exponent. Think about it, its powers will have no other factors than itself and other powers of 2. You can only divide 32 by 16, 8, 4, and 2. Hence, the stubborn statement can be written in English as “all factors of b are multiples of 2″. In TNT, that would be the following.

5. ∀a: <∃c: (SSa⋅c) = b ⊂ ∃d: (SS0⋅d) = SSa> [For all a > 1, if there exists c such that a times c is equal to b, then there exists d such that d times 2 is equal to a.]

Edit: Because this confused people, I’d like to clear a few things up. Basically, all this says is the following. For all a, if a is a factor of b then it is also a multiple of 2. If this statement is true for each and every single value of a, then b is a power of two. If there are any exceptions, such as b = 12 and a = 3, then b is not a power of 2. If there is one true case, such as b = 12 and a = 4, then it does not necessarily mean that b is a power of 2.

Edit #2: The difference is that every case of a is necessary for b to be a power of 2, but not sufficient. The overall statement, however, with the “for all a” included, is both necessary AND sufficient.

And there we go. I’m not quite sure whether this is too dissimilar to be considered a translation, but I do believe that the set of all powers of two is equal to the set of numbers for which this TNT statement comes out true. At first I thought the exact same technique would work for powers of 10 just as well. But how could it be that easy? Of course, it wasn’t. I was actually quite bewildered, until I realized my error.

Obviously, this translation is only valid when b is a power of a prime number. If it is a power of a composite number, like 10 in the final challenge, then it will have many factors that do not comply with the above theorem of TNT. For example, 100 has factors 2, 5, 20, and 50 (as well as 10), where both 2 and 5 are not divisible by 10. On the other hand, 32 is only divisible by 16, 8, 4, and 2; all divisible by 2.

Since I’m dealing with things I don’t know much about here, I probably screwed up pretty badly at least once. Please let me know if I’m an idiot and this is totally wrong. Thanks! Anyways, back to being totally bewildered and awed by GEB and its amazingness.

The gradually less amazing xkcd.com has been “redesigned” in order to commemorate the shutting down of Yahoo’s free webhosting, GeoCities. It’s so perfectly ugly, even the HTML tags in the raw source are all capitalized! Genius. As for GeoCities, so long, farewell, and good riddance.

Just a great piece of independent electronic music I find rather addictive, enjoy. More at drpeterjones.com.

Disqus because it looks awesome and has a trillion more features than regular old WordPress comments, like signing in through Twitter/Facebook/OpenID, great comment approval and flagging, and Gravatar icons. At first the admin page was giving me a blank grey screen, but I looked at my error logs and it turned out that for some reason disqus.php couldn’t find the admin-header.php file when it require()’d it. I just edited the plugin and replaced line 370 with the actual path to the file on my server.

ShareThis was added because Reddit is the best and I want to be a part of it. And I’m an internet whore and I want to be paid attention to. I might eventually write my own version of this, because it’s a bit clunky and not customizable enough.

I added the AdSense block just as an experiment, I don’t actually plan on monetizing anything. I really just want to see how the system works and all that. It looks like I’ve already made about $0.47!

In all seriousness, one of the two words “fishes” and “wordism” is made up, and the other is not. If you asked people, I would say most of them would single out “fishes” as the impostor. And most of them they would be wrong. To be perfectly clear, “fishes” is a word . However, it doesn’t mean exactly what you’d expect. Hell is only slightly cooler than usual, and the plural of “fish” is still “fish”. However, in case you would like to specify that the particular group of fish you are talking about consists of more than one species, you may use the word “fishes” instead. The examples on the Wikipedia entry do a good job of explaining the difference.

The North Atlantic stock of Gadus morhua is estimated to contain several million fish.

My aquarium contains three different fishes: guppies, platies, and swordtails.

The former is a regular old plural; there is more than one fish. The latter is a metaplural, if you will, and its plural-ness refers to the types of fish, not the fish themselves. Another metaplural that is in much more common usage is “peoples”. This word refers to different types (ethnicity, race, etc.) of people, a word that, like “fish”, is already plural. My favourite example is “The Peoples of Middle-earth”.

Update: This might be easy to understand, but harder to believe. Perhaps the Australian Museum has more credibility that an unknown blog and a piece of user-generated content.

font-family: "HelveticaNeue-Light", "Helvetica Neue Light", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
font-weight: 300;


Some browsers (IE + the older ones) use fonts based on their family name and their style, that is “Helvetica Neue Light”. Others use the PostScript name, under the Adobe spec, e.g. “HelveticaNeue-Light”. Others still, such as the latest versions of Safari, Firefox, and Chrome, conform to the W3C specification when it comes to fonts and their styles, and take only the Family Name. The W3C dictates that you must use other CSS directives to get “light” or “bold” fonts. In this case the “Helvetica Neue”, along with the “font-weight: 300;”, will display Helvetica Neue Light to the user.

Arial is included for the sake of the poor Windows users out there, who have to use the font Microsoft put on their computer because they were to cheap to pay for Helvetica, despite it being one of the oldest and most widely used fonts in the world. As any typography nerd would know, Arial was a total rip off of Helvetica and should never be used.

There you have it. Mac users get to look at Helvetica Neue Light, while Windows users still get crappy old Arial.

Most big hosting companies and domain registrars will not only tell you a domain any less than three letters is invalid, but they probably won’t support whichever obscure ccTLD (Country Code Top Level Domain, e.g. .ca for Canada) you feel like owning. There’s no real reason for this, other than that most companies are stupid and don’t know what the hell they’re doing. Especially when it comes to technological stuff like this; the CEO of GoDaddy probably doesn’t have more than a vague idea about how the internet really works. Oh well, more power to the people.

And by “the people” I mean the people at iwantmyname.com. Not only is their service great, with a nice clean interface and a whole six pages of TLDs to choose from, but they accept ANY valid domain, including those with only two characters at the second level.

It’s a great service, and I’ve used them to buy all two of my two letter domains. I even started a little URL shortening service of my own, called zi.gs, just for fun. I took it down a while ago after it became boring and tiresome to provide support for.

Anyways, there you have it. Easy two character domains, supporting lots and lots of TLDs.