Glenn Gould anecdote with sound clip. This is apropos of Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which also reminded me I want to have a Glenn Gould evening (where we’d just listen to Glenn Gould records).

One of these days I will be asked to perform on the fourth of July, I’m sure, and when I do I figured out that by leaving out the repeats in the Star Spangled Banner and starting your entry on the thirteenth bar of God Save The King and then playing God Save the King over again and altering the harmony in the second half of The King to modulate to the supertonic region, it has the most marvelous effect.

Macintosh Stories. Utterly engrossing (if you’re into that sort of thing) stories about the people and events behind the early days of Apple.

Kiss Hank’s Ass.

John: “Well, if I’d known you were one of those I wouldn’t have wasted my time. When Hank kicks the shit out of you I’ll be there, counting my money and laughing. I’ll kiss Hank’s ass for you, you bunless cut-wienered kraut-eater.”

The End of Wall Street’s Boom, a rather long article about the craziness in the finance markets for the past couple of decades.

To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, an article about the reality of expecting higher education of everyone.

My students take English 101 and English 102 not because they want to but because they must. Both colleges I teach at require that all students, no matter what their majors or career objectives, pass these two courses. For many of my students, this is difficult. Some of the young guys, the police-officers-to-be, have wonderfully open faces across which play their every passing emotion, and when we start reading “Araby” or “Barn Burning,” their boredom quickly becomes apparent. They fidget; they prop their heads on their arms; they yawn and sometimes appear to grimace in pain, as though they had been tasered. Their eyes implore: How could you do this to me?

(The New Yorker) John Cassidy: Anatomy of a Meltdown – an in-depth look at Ben Bernanke and the people behind the ongoing disaster in world finance

For programmers: some interesting ideas about readable code

The ad hominem fallacy fallacy. A guide to the ad hominem argument. Highlights:

A: “All rodents are mammals, but a weasel isn’t a rodent, so it can’t be a mammal.”
B: “This does not logically follow. And you’re an asshole.”

B is abusive, but his argument is still not ad hominem.

Lecture: Stephen Pinker on whether Jews really are smarter

For people who like computers: a perspective on what computers spend time on. Highlight: when you look something up from L1 cache, your processor has time for ~3 cycles. L2 cache, ~14 cycles. RAM, ~250 cycles. Reading from the disk, ~41 million cycles. Reading from the Internet, ~240 million cycles.

For people who have time on their hands: one of ye olde webcomic classics, the long defunct Sexy Losers. It has sex.

For those with less time on their hands, a digest:

#7 (Suicide prevention week)
#83 (highlight: Good God, she sucks some mean cock for a 72 year old transsexual.)
#22 (highlight: Your fuck is shit, dickass.)