Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the tulip fields, now we see that Dutch authorities are warning us of a venomous African green mamba that escaped from its owner in the town of Tilburg. //
The African green mamba has a nasty neurotoxin venom, and its bite can be extremely dangerous, but authorities--while urging caution--no doubt wish to avoid panic; it won't help for the Dutch populace to become hissterical. In the cold climate of the Dutch winter, the tropical snake is unlikely to be viperactive. In fact, it may well still be in the owner's house; it's not as though the snake could commandeer a vehicle and flee, not even an ana-Honda. And it's likewise certain that the snake won't be boarding an aircraft back to Africa, which would transform it from a Green Mamba to a Boeing Constrictor. //
Back to snakes. I could rattle off a few good snake stories myself; in the northeast Iowa hills where I grew up, venomous rattlesnakes were common, some growing up to 72 inches in length--you have to measure them in inches because they don't have feet--and while their skins made great hatbands, which one could show off at the local boa-ling alley, they weren't bad eating, either. You just had to be careful to stay away from the sharp end, and the residents of Dutch Tilburg would be well-advised to do the same.
Samuel L. Jackson was unavailable for comment. //
Anne in Rockwall Texas
6 hours ago
Dear Mr. Clark.
Thank you. I laughed so hard, I moved that d*** kidney stone. Greetings from Texas Presbyterian Hospital. I'm going to read it again and maybe I'll be out of here in the morning! You sure can write. //
Ward Clark Kenamy
7 hours ago
Are you saying I should scale it back some?
Domino Ward Clark
5 hours ago
On a sssliding ssscale, about two notchessss.
Chris Rose @ArchRose90
·
A satire show in Israel deservedly mocks the BBC again and the disingenuous calls for ceasefire. Wait until the end, it’s worth it. 😂
3:23 / 3:23
4:29 PM · Nov 14, 2023
Plus, the size of Wales in cubic furlongs
I am a software engineer, and have been for most of my life.
One afternoon I was thinking about my tendency to obsess over minor technical details. I'm not alone in this tendency, but I have no doubt that many others — even some in my profession — view it as a peculiar form of madness. What metaphor, I wondered, could possibly convey why it was so difficult to let go of seemingly-trivial issues?
As it happens, I'd recently been discussing Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach with a friend. It was that book which introduced me to Zen kōans.
Thoughts collided, and the first of these pseudo-kōans was born. Consider it an experiment: an attempt at merging vocation and avocation. //
Although the title of this collection is a rather obvious play on The Gateless Gate (a historically important collection of Zen kōans), please note that the offerings here are not Zen kōans, nor do I intend any disrespect to practicioners of Zen Buddhism.
The jingling of the door-bell announced four arrivals: a blast of cold December wind; a spray of fine snowflakes borne upon it; the sound of horses clopping up the cobbled street; and two gentlemen. They were good portly fellows, pleasant to behold. The younger of the pair doffed his top hat and shook fresh snow from the brim as the elder consulted a list.
“Cratchit,” read the old gentleman. “Ware-housing, Pawn-brokering, Business Loans.” He looked up to find the sole occupant of the establishment seated behind a large wooden desk: a slight, sandy-haired young man of twenty-odd years with a genial expression. The gentleman adjusted his spectacles. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. P. Cratchit?”
Here’s a very 1960s data visualization of just how much code they wrote—this is Margaret Hamilton, director of software engineering for the project, standing next to a stack of paper containing the software: //
As enormous and successful as Burkey’s project has been, however, the code itself remained somewhat obscure to many of today’s software developers. That was until last Thursday (July 7), when former NASA intern Chris Garry uploaded the software in its entirety to GitHub, //
But as the always-sharp joke detectives in Reddit’s r/ProgrammerHumor section found, many of the comments in the AGC code go beyond boring explanations of the software itself. They’re full of light-hearted jokes and messages, and very 1960s references.
One of the source code files, for example, is called
BURN_BABY_BURN--MASTER_IGNITION_ROUTINE
We report a retrospective case series of exposures to iocane powder, a deadly, odorless, tasteless, and absolutely fictional poison [1]. A 10-year review of an imaginary Sicilian Poison Center database revealed 32 exposures, coincidentally all ingestions from wine goblets. There were 29 (90.6 %) patients with no clinical effects, 2 (6.3 %) with minor effects, 1 (3.1 %) with a moderate effect and 0 with major effects. No deaths occurred and no patient suffered permanent sequelae. These data show that iocane exposure is not universally fatal, as previously thought. Given the apparent relative safety, with less than 10 % of patients experiencing clinical effects, poison centers may choose to allow asymptomatic exposed patients to be observed at home.
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