A real head-scratching conundrum about the universe is explaining why it's not already overrun with self-replicating robots. Because if it's possible to send self-replicating interstellar probes, all it takes is one launch, plus a few million years, to get the galaxy overrun with them. So are they not possible? nobody's launched one yet? here, but not detected? The implications boggle the mind.

I've been hearing and reading this one more and more. It's "tenets", people.

And yes, it matters.

Sixty minutes from now, I'm going to be an expert in Haskell comonads. This is awesome.

To answer your question, it's "who", not "whom" here, since the pronoun is a subject.

"Be careful next time when you exercise your first amendment rights."

Are we sure that the First Amendment guarantees a right to complain about a cable company without reprisal?

You may not get to use much Haskell on the job at Google, but I guarantee you that really knowing Haskell is one of the best ways to *get* the job.

Goddamn AT&T assembler syntax with its reversed operands. Quick, you want to compare two registers, and jump if %rdi %rax. Which order do you place the operands to the comparison, and what's the predicate to use on the jump? Drives me nuts.

Religious superstition fills in the gaps of our knowledge, like plaster filling holes in a wall. But when knowledge expands, the spackle isn't needed any more.

If evolution had done as little for me as it has for Texans, I'd hate it too.

If you know your algorithms and data structures, and have a firm grasp of the architecture of modern computer systems, you'll be way ahead of a depressingly large proportion of people with degrees in CS that come past me in interviews.

The most informative and entertaining book I can recommend on algorithms is Bentley's "Programming Pearls".

A wonderful deleted scene in "The Life of Brian" has shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem wondering "is it AD yet?"

I love being lectured in logic by a person who ritually cannibalizes a god's zombified offspring because a talking snake tricked a mud-man's rib-wife with magic fruit.

... we're supposed to treat these clowns with respect and allow their weird Sunday-morning social clubs to have tax-exempt status in the US?

And the Catholics are supposed to be the *smart* ones, too!

Did you really just spell "ceased" like that?

I explicitly said that they have at least one child named Mary. They could have two; it still works out.

Yes, I assume that not every girl is named Mary.