From chris at chrisgrau.com Fri Sep 5 16:07:39 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 16:07:39 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] [support@cosmicnetworks.com: Perl Certified Hosting] Message-ID: <20080905230739.GD24974@chrisgrau.com> ----- Forwarded message from support at cosmicnetworks.com ----- From: support at cosmicnetworks.com Reply-To: "London.pm Perl M[ou]ngers" To: london.pm at london.pm.org Subject: Perl Certified Hosting Date: Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:50:38 -0400 (EDT) Perl Certified Hosting The idea for this project was put forth by Amias of Bristol & Bath Perl Mongers. We are creating a Perl Certified Hosting scheme that will be open for all hosting companies to join. Requirements will include a set list of web related Perl Modules and proper webserver configuration. Please visit the site:- http://www.perlcertifiedhosting.com For more details and to get involved with helping this scheme become a reality. ----- End forwarded message ----- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From chris at chrisgrau.com Sun Sep 14 11:15:29 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:15:29 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Help release the next version of Perl 5.8! Message-ID: <20080914181529.GI24974@chrisgrau.com> I know we've talked on occasion about volunteering for the greater good of Perl. I attended three of Paul's sessions, and he is a very smart and very funny guy. ----- Forwarded message from Paul Fenwick ----- From: Paul Fenwick To: Portland Perl Mongers Subject: [Pdx-pm] Help release the next version of Perl 5.8! Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:16:23 +1000 G'day PDX.pm, Hi! I don't live in Portland, I live in Australia. I visited Portland for OSCON 2008, where I discovered that having an Australian accent made me extremely popular. I'm hoping it will do the same here. Perl pumpking Nicholas Clark is working like crazy to release Perl 5.8.9. Incorporating over two and a half years of bugfixes and improvements, it will be the best release of Perl 5.8 ever. Unfortunately, we have a problem; right now there's no easy way for the average developer to know what's changed. Every version of Perl ships with a perldelta file, which summarises all the important changes into a single document for anyone who wants to know what's new. This document needs to be written before 5.8.9 can ship, and it's a big task. Luckily, it's also a task that can be distributed, and we need your help. The work has been split into individual "chunks" of changelog that need to be summarised. You can volunteer for as little or as much work as you like. Even if you don't know much about Perl's internals, you can volunteer for a "light" approach where you summarise easy and obvious changes, like upgraded modules, or easily-understood bugfixes. Contributing the perl589delta directly helps with the release of Perl 5.8.9. However you'll also get a mention in the prestigious Perl authors file, kudos on ohloh, and enough material to write a "What's new in 5.8.9" lightning talk that will make you a star at conferences and user-groups. To get started, join the mailing list[1]. If you're happy to dive into work right away, and we hope that you are, then follow the instructions in the README at the bottom of our source control page[2]. Don't worry if you don't think you can handle a whole chunk of changes at once. Don't worry if you don't know your way around the Perl guts. If you want to start small, you can use the micro helpers HOWTO which describes how you can contribute with a minimum of fuss[3]. Even if you're not sure how to help, we'd still love to see you in the mailing list; there's plenty of things that need doing. With your help, we can make Perl 5.8.9 a reality! Many thanks, Paul [1] http://groups.google.com/group/perl589delta [2] http://github.com/pfenwick/perl589delta/ [3] http://github.com/pfenwick/perl589delta/tree/master/Micro-helpers-HOWTO.txt -- Paul Fenwick | http://perltraining.com.au/ Director of Training | Ph: +61 3 9354 6001 Perl Training Australia | Fax: +61 3 9354 2681 ----- End forwarded message ----- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rkleeman at energoncube.net Mon Sep 15 14:05:26 2008 From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:05:26 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! Message-ID: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> Perl Mongers, This is just your friendly reminder about the monthly meeting which will be taking place this Thursday, September 18 at 7PM at the Panera Bread on Mira Mesa Blvd next to I-15. Bring your thoughts, ideas, questions, and answers and we'll chat about them. Also, take a gander at the following list so we can chat about these: http://damian.conway.org/Seminars/ Yes, that's right, Damian Conway is coming back to San Diego, and is willing to give one of his famous talks. He is recommending "Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!" or "The Twilight Perl". Consider the options and we'll discuss them here and at the meeting. From elspicyjack at gmail.com Mon Sep 15 15:49:22 2008 From: elspicyjack at gmail.com (spicy jack) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:49:22 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> Message-ID: On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Bob Kleemann wrote: > Yes, that's right, Damian Conway is coming back to San Diego, and is willing > to give one of his famous talks. He is recommending "Temporally > Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically > Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!" or "The > Twilight Perl". Consider the options and we'll discuss them here and at the > meeting. I would like to see the first one with the huge name. It would be fun to see him do '6 degrees of Kevin Bacon' on all of that stuff. From chris at chrisgrau.com Mon Sep 15 15:56:07 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:56:07 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> Message-ID: <20080915225607.GJ24974@chrisgrau.com> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 02:05:26PM -0700, Bob Kleemann wrote: > This is just your friendly reminder about the monthly meeting which will be > taking place this Thursday, September 18 at 7PM at the Panera Bread on Mira > Mesa Blvd next to I-15. Bring your thoughts, ideas, questions, and answers > and we'll chat about them. Hopefully I can make it. > Also, take a gander at the following list so we > can chat about these: > > http://damian.conway.org/Seminars/ > > Yes, that's right, Damian Conway is coming back to San Diego, and is willing > to give one of his famous talks. He is recommending "Temporally > Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically > Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!" or "The > Twilight Perl". Consider the options and we'll discuss them here and at the > meeting. The "...Made Easy" talk was his keynote at OSCON this year. It's good, but is more of a humorous talk for general geek audiences. Of course, he demonstrates two bits of crazy Perl in the process of entertaining. I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it. "The Twilight Perl" is excellent. It contains a lot of crazy Perl tricks that could only come from the evil mind of Damian. However, it's really just one Perl trick after another, which are fun, but there's no story, as it were. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From xrz1138 at gmail.com Tue Sep 16 13:16:53 2008 From: xrz1138 at gmail.com (Christopher Hahn) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:16:53 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <20080915225607.GJ24974@chrisgrau.com> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> <20080915225607.GJ24974@chrisgrau.com> Message-ID: Hey, This is great news, and will likely draw me out of the shadows once more. ;0) I would vote for the SelfGOL talk. It has all the mind bending aspects I expect from The Mighty. Take care all, Chris Hahn On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 3:56 PM, Chris Grau wrote: > On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 02:05:26PM -0700, Bob Kleemann wrote: >> This is just your friendly reminder about the monthly meeting which will be >> taking place this Thursday, September 18 at 7PM at the Panera Bread on Mira >> Mesa Blvd next to I-15. Bring your thoughts, ideas, questions, and answers >> and we'll chat about them. > > Hopefully I can make it. > >> Also, take a gander at the following list so we >> can chat about these: >> >> http://damian.conway.org/Seminars/ >> >> Yes, that's right, Damian Conway is coming back to San Diego, and is willing >> to give one of his famous talks. He is recommending "Temporally >> Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine Programming In Multiple Topologically >> Connected Quantum-Relativistic Parallel Timespaces...Made Easy!" or "The >> Twilight Perl". Consider the options and we'll discuss them here and at the >> meeting. > > The "...Made Easy" talk was his keynote at OSCON this year. It's good, > but is more of a humorous talk for general geek audiences. Of course, > he demonstrates two bits of crazy Perl in the process of entertaining. > I won't spoil it for those who haven't seen it. > > "The Twilight Perl" is excellent. It contains a lot of crazy Perl > tricks that could only come from the evil mind of Damian. However, it's > really just one Perl trick after another, which are fun, but there's no > story, as it were. > > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > -- Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire. Christopher Hahn == xrz1138 at gmail.com From chris at chrisgrau.com Tue Sep 16 14:19:12 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2008 14:19:12 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> <20080915225607.GJ24974@chrisgrau.com> Message-ID: <20080916211912.GK24974@chrisgrau.com> On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 01:16:53PM -0700, Christopher Hahn wrote: > I would vote for the SelfGOL talk. It has all the mind bending > aspects I expect from The Mighty. This was the foundation of the "Perl Worst Practices" tutorial he gave at OSCON this year. Mind bending is definitely a good description. Just about every vile Perl trick that can be done is done. It was quite educational, and I learned a lot of new tricks to use in my own code. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From emileaben at gmail.com Wed Sep 17 02:34:16 2008 From: emileaben at gmail.com (Emile Aben) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:34:16 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <20080916211912.GK24974@chrisgrau.com> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> <20080915225607.GJ24974@chrisgrau.com> <20080916211912.GK24974@chrisgrau.com> Message-ID: <28e00a750809170234h59a02b84u5df9f32e7af8d1ce@mail.gmail.com> Won't make it to next thursday's meeting (looking out over the mediterranean sea from a hotel room currently :) ), but would definately like to see Damian talk again in San Diego. Anything heavy in Perl, Perl tricks and Perl6 will do for me. best, Emile On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 2:19 PM, Chris Grau wrote: > On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 01:16:53PM -0700, Christopher Hahn wrote: >> I would vote for the SelfGOL talk. It has all the mind bending >> aspects I expect from The Mighty. > > This was the foundation of the "Perl Worst Practices" tutorial he gave > at OSCON this year. Mind bending is definitely a good description. > Just about every vile Perl trick that can be done is done. > > It was quite educational, and I learned a lot of new tricks to use in my > own code. > > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > From bbeyenhof at gmail.com Wed Sep 17 09:42:50 2008 From: bbeyenhof at gmail.com (Brad Beyenhof) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:42:50 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> Message-ID: <347d3df30809170942i3cbfd99ax63c3d6010fdde3df@mail.gmail.com> On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 2:05 PM, Bob Kleemann wrote: > Also, take a gander at the following list so we > can chat about these: > > http://damian.conway.org/Seminars/ > > Yes, that's right, Damian Conway is coming back to San Diego, and is willing > to give one of his famous talks. Any of those look good to me... I'm not experienced enough in Perl to know exactly what I need to know. Plus, I've never heard Damian speak except in that O'Reilly video from OSCON, so just seeing him in person will be cool no matter what he's talking about. -- Brad Beyenhof . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . http://augmentedfourth.com Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ~ Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, US (Hungarian-born) biochemist (1893 - 1986) From chris at chrisgrau.com Wed Sep 17 09:50:47 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:50:47 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting this week and more! In-Reply-To: <347d3df30809170942i3cbfd99ax63c3d6010fdde3df@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080915210526.GA1688@energoncube.net> <347d3df30809170942i3cbfd99ax63c3d6010fdde3df@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20080917165047.GN24974@chrisgrau.com> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 09:42:50AM -0700, Brad Beyenhof wrote: > so just seeing [Damian] in person > will be cool no matter what he's talking about. That sentiment is shared by many OSCON-goers. Many times I've heard a conversation that goes a bit like, Person 1: "What's the topic of Damian's session?" Person 2: "Does it matter? It's Damian!" -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rkleeman at energoncube.net Thu Sep 18 10:46:52 2008 From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:46:52 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting tonight! Message-ID: <20080918174652.GB9276@energoncube.net> Good day Perl Mongers, Just a quick note to remind everyone that we're meeting tonight at Panera Bread on Mira Mesa Blvd at 7PM . Bring your questions, answers, and thoughts about the upcoming talk from Damian. I look forward to seeing you all then! From saaib at ciberlinux.net Thu Sep 18 11:08:06 2008 From: saaib at ciberlinux.net (Urivan Saaib) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:08:06 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting tonight! Message-ID: <20080918180807.218C62311AF@vs2.c-ber.net> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available URL: From chris at chrisgrau.com Thu Sep 18 11:33:03 2008 From: chris at chrisgrau.com (Chris Grau) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2008 11:33:03 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Meeting tonight! In-Reply-To: <20080918174652.GB9276@energoncube.net> References: <20080918174652.GB9276@energoncube.net> Message-ID: <20080918183303.GP24974@chrisgrau.com> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 10:46:52AM -0700, Bob Kleemann wrote: > Just a quick note to remind everyone that we're meeting tonight at > Panera Bread on Mira Mesa Blvd at 7PM . Bring your questions, > answers, and thoughts about the upcoming talk from Damian. > > I look forward to seeing you all then! Sadly, I won't be able to make it tonight. Maybe next month. Hope you all have fun. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: From rkleeman at energoncube.net Tue Sep 23 23:36:53 2008 From: rkleeman at energoncube.net (Bob Kleemann) Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:36:53 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian Conway is coming... Message-ID: <20080924063653.GA13169@energoncube.net> Ladies and Gentlemen, Techies and Programmers, The San Diego Perl Mongers are happy to announce, for one night only, the one and only Damian Conway! He will be appearing Monday night, September 29 at the Qualcomm Building Q Auditorium. Please arrive by 7 PM to hear him muse on a myriad of topics, including, but not limited to (in his own words): modern archaeological techniques, bidirectional cross- dressing, Ancient Greeks hackers, improbable romances, the real Club Med, why programmers shouldn't frequent casinos, the language of moisture vaporators, C++ mysticism, conversational Latin, state machines on steroids, feeding the dog the old-fashioned way, the shocking truth about anime, programming without variables or subroutines, the Four Voids of the Apocalypse, Microsoft's new advertising campaign, what the Romans used instead of braces, drunken stonemasons, the ancient probabilistic wisdom of bodkins, how to kill a language with a single byte, and the price of fish. Note: Topics are subject to change without notice, reason, or warning, so please pay attention! So please come on by and learn something new. Bring some friends if you like, and have fun in the process. Please let me know if there are any questions. From elspicyjack at gmail.com Mon Sep 29 11:36:33 2008 From: elspicyjack at gmail.com (spicy jack) Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:36:33 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian Conway... TONIGHT! Message-ID: Hi all, My name is Brian, and I'm the person who is responsible for the facilities for Damian's talk tonight. We'll be starting the festivities at 7-ish, so please try to arrive early. The building will be secured by the time the meeting starts, which means that someone will have to badge you in. If you don't think you'll make it by 7pm but still want to attend, please RSVP to me and I will give you my cell phone number so you can call me when you arrive. You can also RSVP to 'bmanning at qualcomm dot com'. Please try to arrive early/ontime however, as I don't want to miss any of Damian's talk :) Address for Building Q: Qualcomm Incorporated 6455 Lusk Blvd San Diego, CA 92121-2779 The Google Maps shows the center of the lobby, with the big light green pyramid looking thing in the imagery: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&q=6455+Lusk+Blvd.+San+Diego+CA+92121 The building is basically at the north-west corner of Pacific Center Drive and Lusk Blvd. Parking is free, park where you find a space. Please feel free to contact me offlist if you have any other questions. Thanks, Brian From xrz1138 at gmail.com Tue Sep 30 10:47:40 2008 From: xrz1138 at gmail.com (Christopher Hahn) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:47:40 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian Conway... TONIGHT! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hello all, I had to be with my son yesterday.....I almost brough him with me to see Damian speak, but thought of the potential distraction and did not. So bummed.....perhaps someone could write a comment summary to the group? Just thought I'd ask. Take care all. Chris (Chris Hahn - xrz1138 at gmail.com) On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 11:36 AM, spicy jack wrote: > Hi all, > > My name is Brian, and I'm the person who is responsible for the > facilities for Damian's talk tonight. > > We'll be starting the festivities at 7-ish, so please try to arrive > early. The building will be secured by the time the meeting starts, > which means that someone will have to badge you in. If you don't think > you'll make it by 7pm but still want to attend, please RSVP to me and > I will give you my cell phone number so you can call me when you > arrive. You can also RSVP to 'bmanning at qualcomm dot com'. Please > try to arrive early/ontime however, as I don't want to miss any of > Damian's talk :) > > Address for Building Q: > > Qualcomm Incorporated > 6455 Lusk Blvd > San Diego, CA 92121-2779 > > The Google Maps shows the center of the lobby, with the big light > green pyramid looking thing in the imagery: > > http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&q=6455+Lusk+Blvd.+San+Diego+CA+92121 > > The building is basically at the north-west corner of Pacific Center > Drive and Lusk Blvd. Parking is free, park where you find a space. > > Please feel free to contact me offlist if you have any other questions. > > Thanks, > > Brian > _______________________________________________ > San-Diego-pm mailing list > San-Diego-pm at pm.org > http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/san-diego-pm > -- Realisant mon espoir, je me lance vers la gloire. Christopher Hahn == xrz1138 at gmail.com From rlssdpm at schnapp.org Tue Sep 30 11:35:30 2008 From: rlssdpm at schnapp.org (Russ Schnapp) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:35:30 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian Conway... LAST NIGHT! In-Reply-To: <48E26D0C.2050409@schnapp.org> References: <48E26D0C.2050409@schnapp.org> Message-ID: <48E27172.1000907@schnapp.org> Christopher Hahn wrote: > Hello all, > > I had to be with my son yesterday.....I almost brough him with me to > see Damian speak, > but thought of the potential distraction and did not. > > So bummed.....perhaps someone could write a comment summary to the group? > > Just thought I'd ask. Take care all. > > Chris (Chris Hahn - xrz1138 at gmail.com) In a nutshell, Damian covered the subject of Dead Languages, starting with... Latin -- each section was introduced with a latin description, wherein Damian managed to needle us Americans for our lack of classical education while stunning us with his ability to translate such names as Beowulf and Kenny, and terms like "gunslinger". There was an interlude on Lara Croft wannabe culture, including lots of photos Damian carefully researched for our benefit alone, and not at all for his... An example of his Lisp implementation of Conway's "Life" cellular automaton game -- though being the ancient fuddy duddy who learned my dialect from "The Little Lisper", I was disappointed in the lack of any usage of car or cdr -- although a couple of people seemed to know the origin of those terms, so I didn't feel entirely archaic. He then explained a Postscript example of the Buffon approximation of pi, which you, too could run on your postscript-based printer as an April Fool's joke on all the dead trees... C++ (Damian admitted that this fit the "dead language" classification only by wishful thinking on his part) was then introduced with some of his pet peeves about the language (is that a pointer to an function returning an integer? or a function that returns a pointer to an integer? or...) along with a very elegant implementation of a Petri net simulator (dataflow programming). SPECS -- a language nobody has heard of because it was Damian's improved syntax for C++, eliminating the pet peeves. He claims the only reason it died was because he tried to solve the "=" vs "==" problem by using ":=" for assignment -- and everyone knows that this is Wirth's kiss of death! (Anybody remember Damian's pun about Wirth? It bothers me that I've forgotten it, because I once had to give a presentation to the guy, and whatever you heard about him was indeed true!) And for the giant fireworks spectacular, Damian then ties everything together with an extremely clever and simple programming language based on a melding of Perl (of course) and -- Latin! It turns out that you can eliminate a lot of the positionality of most language by using Latin's declensions (word modifier suffixes that provide much of the meaning). He described the system, along with his clever parsing technique. And, of course, if you care to use it, there's a Perl module you can use via Filter::Simple to program in Latin. It's Lingua::Romana::Perligata (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html) That's it in a nutshell, without 99.9% of the laughs. THANK YOU DAMIAN!!!!!!! ...Russ From kst at mib.org Tue Sep 30 12:13:46 2008 From: kst at mib.org (Keith Thompson) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:13:46 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian Conway... LAST NIGHT! In-Reply-To: <48E27172.1000907@schnapp.org> References: <48E26D0C.2050409@schnapp.org> <48E27172.1000907@schnapp.org> Message-ID: <20080930191346.GA14395@nuthaus.mib.org> On Tue 08-09-30 11:35, Russ Schnapp wrote: [...] > SPECS -- a language nobody has heard of because it was Damian's improved > syntax for C++, eliminating the pet peeves. He claims the only reason > it died was because he tried to solve the "=" vs "==" problem by using > ":=" for assignment -- and everyone knows that this is Wirth's kiss of > death! (Anybody remember Damian's pun about Wirth? It bothers me > that I've forgotten it, because I once had to give a presentation to the > guy, and whatever you heard about him was indeed true!) [...] I wasn't able to make it to Damian's talk (*sigh*), but the canonical joke about Wirth is attributed to Wirth himself, and can be found in his Wikipedia article: Whereas Europeans generally pronounce my name the right way ('Nick-louse Veert'), Americans invariably mangle it into 'Nickel's Worth.' This is to say that Europeans call me by name, but Americans call me by value. -- Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) kst at mib.org Nokia "We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this." -- Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, "Yes Minister" From jonathan at lieberman.net Tue Sep 30 12:37:15 2008 From: jonathan at lieberman.net (Jonathan Lieberman) Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:37:15 -0700 Subject: [San-Diego-pm] Damian, math and how language shapes our thinking. Message-ID: Damain, As I mentioned last night the talk was a real pleasure, thank you. Here is the New Yorker article I mentioned about math and language, shared with the list at somebody's request. Numbers Guy Are our brains wired for math? by Jim Holt http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_holt?currentPage=all Warmly, Jonathan