Judicial Humor
Read this document and see what happens when the judge thinks of the sides bickering. Some of the choice quotes in the document are:
The Court is sympathetic with the Defendant's argument. Surely Defendant's corporate representative, a resident of Arkansas, would feel great humiliation by being forced to enter the home state of the University of Texas, where legendary Texas Longhorns have wrought havoc on the Arkansas Razorbacks with an impressive 55-21 all-time series record.
On the other hand, the Court is sympathetic with Plaintiff's position. Plantiffs might enter Arkansas with a bit of trepidation as many residents of Arkansas are still seeking retribution for the "Game of the Century" in which James Street and Darrell Royal stunned the Razorbacks by winning the 1969 National Championship.
Of course, the judge has the best way to solve this little issue of people not wanting to enter each other's state:
Accordingly, it is ordered that unless the parties agree otherwise, the deposition of Defendant's corporate representative shall occur ... on the steps of the Texarkana Federal Building ....
It is further ordered that each party is to remain on his or her respective side of the state line.
And of course, if you're thinking about it, the "Game of the Century" the judge references isn't really right, since the true game of the century according to the judge in his footnotes: '...occurred on January 4, 2006 when Vince Young and Mack Brown led the Longhorns in a 41-38 win over the USC Trojans...'
I just wonder how many judges and lawyers write funny orders or motions either because they find the case absolutely ludicrous or just plain don't like the other people?
FORA.tv, it’s like TED but not.
FORA.tv has videos much like TED and in fact, it seems to be like TED with the exception of the name. Anyway, the videos seem to be varied more than at TED. For instance, FORA has an interview with John Turturro where he talks about playing Jesus in the Big Lebowski and how he'd like to see a sequel with his character playing a school bus driver since all pederasts end up being school bus drivers. There was also this interesting talk by Jonah Lehrer speaking about epiphanies and how they occur (which I recommend watching).
What is programming?
"Programming is planning how to solve a problem. No matter what method is used -- pencil and paper, slide rule, adding machine, or computer -problem solving requires programming. Of course, how one programs depends on the device one uses in problem solving." - from the ROYAL PRECISION, Electronic Computer PROGRAMMING MANUAL for the LGP-30.
I saw this quote on an article linked from digg, but I like it and what it says (maybe i should have read the entire article and see if I liked it; but i didn't). It all depends on your problem solving skills. You can't just program a computer to give you an answer to a problem unless you yourself have an idea on how to solve it.
Which is why I find it funny people always talk about having experience programming in some language X or Y for Z years. What you should really be trumpeting is how many years solving complex problems - knowing the algorithms and the hows and whys to solve problems is more important than the language the solution is written in. Once you understand and internalize algorithms, implementing them in a programming language or implementing them in a programming language you have to learn is a simple task (or should be a simple task) since the underlying concepts are the same.
All this is a round-about way of saying: programming is the art of solving problems efficiently given a set of tools.