Diary (December 29, 2020)

Online diary of Karl Jones for Monday December 29, 2020.

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Diary

Gallery

• 

  All I am saying is give Rand a chance.

• 

  Trump remains silent on Nashville suicide bombing.

Paramedic Blues

Friend of mine trained as a paramedic. Top of his class, extra certifications, total commitment.

But he's a gentle leftie at heart, and the paramedic industry is staffed by ex-police specifically and right-wingers generally.

No way could he advance in the profession — his own instructor, who acknowledged his my friend's skill, also made things difficult. So my friend dropped out of the profession at the cusp of beginning.

Damned shame — he would have saved lives, *and* shown some humanity.

Pemdas

PEMDAS is an acronym used primarily in the United States as a mechanism to pedagogically enforce the order rules of computational precedence. PEMDAS is explained as follows:

• P parenthesis
• E exponentiation
• M multiplication
• D division
• A addition
• S subtraction

There are several obvious deficiencies with this model. For example, the fact that instances of the factorial operator are executed immediately after operations in parentheses and immediately before instances of exponentiation isn't indicated by this model. In addition, the ordering M-D (respectively, A-S) may appear to indicate that multiplication (respectively, addition) happens before division (respectively, subtraction), though multiplication (respectively, addition) receives the same precedence as division (respectively, subtraction).

It is not uncommon for American students to remember PEMDAS by way of any of a number of mnemonics, among the most common of which is, "Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally." Note, too, that there are analogues of PEMDAS in other countries as well, e.g., BODMAS (where B denotes brackets and O denotes orders) in the UK and BEDMAS in Canada (Pierce 2013).

—PEMDAS @ Wolfram MathWorld

See also:

• Order of Operations @ Wikipedia
• Ambiguous PEMDAS

Pemdas the Barbarian

Pemdas the Barbarian.

Inspiration:

• Post @ Twitter

Compare Conan the Barbarian (nonfiction):

Conan the Barbarian (also known as Conan the Cimmerian) is a fictional sword and sorcery hero who originated in pulp magazines and has since been adapted to books, comics, several films (including Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer), television programs (animated and live-action), video games, role-playing games, and other media. The character was created by the writer Robert E. Howard in 1932 for a series of fantasy stories published in Weird Tales magazine. Conan is "one of the towering figures in fantasy and literature", being a thief, a savage, a warrior and a king at different parts of his life. Since his debut in December of 1932, Conan of Cimmeria has been the pre-eminent hero of sword and sorcery and the image of the genre. Redefining the hero archetype through the high adventure tales written by his creator Robert E. Howard, and altering the landscape of American literature in the process, the barbarian's mythos has attracted new readers with every successive generation. Bolstered through his early years by Howard's rip-roaring tales of glory on the battlefield, immortalized by the incomparable artwork of Frank Frazetta in the 1960s, and reinvented in a media explosion of the 1970s and 80s, the noble savage is a vivid and iconic fantasy character, the likes of which stirred the imaginations of audiences the world over for more than seventy years.

• Conan the Barbarian @ Wikipedia

Don't Run Aground Much Any More

Don't Run Aground Much Any More.

Compare Don't Get Around Much Any More.

Songs and Other Abuses by Feral Butler

Songs and Other Abuses (often simply Abuses) - album by Feral Butler

Tracks

• Microwave Urinal - allegedly co-authored by Fell Swoop
• Prosthetic Bidet
• Sumptuous Plumbing

Cromagnolin

Several tracks on Abuses feature the Cromagnolin, a hand-cranked pre-pleistocene device of wood, antler, and sinew which issues a quavering wail or moan approximating the vocables of Cromagnon-era hominids. Paleontologist-musician Frondo Ediacar was responsible for designing and constructing the Cromagnolin.

For extreme authenticity, Feral Butler formed an unlicensed transdimensional corporation which reverted the band members to proto-hominids for the duration of the recording session (and, by some accounts, beyond [citation needed]).

Influences

Compare Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence (nonfiction):

• Don't Whiz on the Electric Fence @ YouTube

Beyond Fungible

Beyond Fungible - biography of Fell Swoop. TO_DO - identify author, related to Alice Beta biographies.

Bygone Zygote

Bygone Zygote is a song by Neon Diatom.

Compare Ocean Soup by Frondo Ediacar.

Chairman of the Definite Article

Frank Sinatra: Chairman of the Definite Article

My loathing for the film The Big Chill

My loathing for the film The Big Chill is prodigious and multifacted."

Debug in Hell

"Better debug in Hell than crash in Heaven."

—Fell Swoop

Qualified inanimacy

"... and so the defendant pleads no-motion death-secondary inanimacy, your Honor."

Glass ocarina

Glass ocarina

Song mashup

"Owner of a Lonely Heart" + "Babylon Sisters"

Every thing you little do is magic

"Every thing you little do is magic."

—Niles Cartouchian

Compare "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" by The Police.

The Practical Solipsist

The Practical Solipsist

"A guide for the unperplexed."

May That as it Be

• May That as it Be

Preludinary

Preludinary mood management algorithms

Spoonerisms

• Home is where the heart is - Harm is Where the Hate Is
• The Gnomon Chronicles - The Chrome on Monocles
• Reduce my cost — Recost my deuce
• Table rapping — Rabble taping
• Going for the One — Woeing for the Gun

Footling Gesture to Boot

"... and a footling gesture, to boot."

—Wallace War-Heels

Footling Gesture to Boot

Spineless Chicken Vertebrae

Spineless Chicken Vertebrae

Half (1/2) off, U pick the 1/2

Compare -

• Chipigen
• Fugu squash

Dirk-Drivin Man

Sejanus: There goes a dirk-drivin' man ...

Dirk-Drivin Man

Houston, We Have a Pilgrim

Houston, We Have a Pilgrim

Shruggie Bear

Shruggie Bear = Sugar Bear + Huggie Bear

Feculent Nethers

Feculent Nethers

Compare Feculent blather (nonfiction) - "Do you understand me Denny? I would sooner leap from the window than see your lips move, the sight of which is the visual cue that feculent blather is about to spew forth." (Boston Legal)

Strange Days

I liked "Strange Days" quite a lot. Conventional Hollywood tech-thriller fare, with violence and sex in abundance, but also with plenty of fresh tech ideas, a lavish visual style, and a downbeat remorse attitude which passes for conscience.

• Comment @ Facebook

Russell's teapot

Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others.

Russell specifically applied his analogy in the context of religion. He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot, too small to be seen by telescopes, orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong.

Russell's teapot is still invoked in discussions concerning the existence of God, and has had influence in various fields and media.

• Russell's teapot @ Wikipedia

• Russell Steepot
• Russell Steep-Hat
• Russ T. Pot

Believe what you must

"While you're busy being an ignorant idiot, believe what you must."

—Fell Swoop

All I am saying is give Rand a chance

All I am saying is give Rand a chance

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles