Knaap.com recent additions

Thu, 21 Oct 2004

Hurrah!

For the Baroque Cycle books I needed to convert my manuscripts, which were all TeX files,...

file under: nerd. One of my favorite writers uses my favorite type of word processing.

posted at: 06:07 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Sat, 05 Jun 2004

Procrastination

Procrastinators often follow exactly the wrong tack. They try to minimize their commitments, assuming that if they have only a few things to do, they will quit procrastinating and get them done. But this goes contrary to the basic nature of the procrastinator and destroys his most important source of motivation.

From this larger piece.

posted at: 11:04 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Fri, 13 Feb 2004

Theory, practice.

Few people succeed in applying economic theory to (budget-) practice as Brad DeLong; there's not a day I don't learn something new from this guy. Look at this gem:

By the power of the government budget's transversality condition, I summon you all to the op-ed pages of the nation's newspapers.

posted at: 01:10 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Wed, 11 Feb 2004

The Dutch

And you confront the Dutch with these stark facts of their astonishing existence and all they do is sort of mutter and grin. God bless 'em, sometimes I think they have the only real civilization on earth.

I'm starting to feel bad about missing Bruce Sterling this weekend.

posted at: 05:04 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Tue, 25 Feb 2003

Simulation

Fifty years ago, (or was it 49?) physicists Enrico Fermi, Stanislaw Ulam and John Pasta (link?) invented computer simulation as a scientific methodology. Motivated, mostly, by their desire to do something with the new machine.

Computers were brand new; in fact the Los Alamos Maniac was barely finished. [...] We discussed this at length and decided to formulate a problem simple to state, but such that a solution would require a lengthy computation which could not be done with pencil and paper or with existing mechanical computers.

Stan Ulam in his autobiography.

posted at: 12:00 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Thu, 13 Feb 2003

Space

While it is too early to know what exactly we will find there, we may hope that an extraterrestrial 'gold rush' may help push the frontiers of exploration to include asteroids.

Piet Hut on the use of manned spaceflight. Add another point for Jules Verne. posted at: 02:18 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link



Wed, 12 Feb 2003

One small step

We have met the Martians, and they are us.

Just why Chris Massaro didn't win the "first words to be said on Mars"-competition is beyond me.

posted at: 08:20 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link


Thu, 30 Jan 2003

How did I wind up here?

My daughter Lily, for an example close to home, who has just turned 20, finds herself--as does George W. Bush, himself a kid--an heir to a shockingly recent history of human slavery, to an AIDS epidemic and to nuclear submarines slumbering on the floors of fjords in Iceland and elsewhere, crews prepared at a moment’s notice to turn industrial quantities of men, women and children into radioactive soot and bone meal by means of rockets and H-bomb warheads.

Writer Kurt Vonnegut, after 80 years, still has the capacity to wonder about mundane matters. posted at: 01:48 | path: /en/quotations | permanent link



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