Dave's Archives

AI-generated (stable diffusion) ge of "cyclon writing with a pen".

The sporadic blog of David J A Cooper. I write sci-fi, teach software engineering, and occasionally say related (or not related) things.

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  • Reality fails to sway Fielding

    From our adorably naïve Family First Senator, via the ABC: When I put forward the question ‘isn’t it true that carbon emissions have been going up and global temperature hasn’t?’, they wanted to rephrase my question and not answer it. Of course they did you fool – it’s a loaded question. Technically the answer is…

  • Eddies in the spacetime continuum

    …behind that sofa. Either that, or it’s the evolutionary process at work in the Swan River.

  • From a campus

    I found this somewhat random piece of work (sung to the tune of Bette Midler’s From A Distance) while digging through my hard drive. I did have to change “John” to “Rudd” though. From a distance the campus looks green and orange, and the concrete buildings grey. From a distance OASIS meets the screen, and…

  • Marvelous spam

    Normally unseen by the small number of real live humans who visit this blog, I get a steady stream of comment spam. None of it makes it through, most being caught by a set of fairly simple filter rules, and the rest being swiftly cut down by a heartless moderator (i.e. me). Recent comment spammers…

  • The flu scoreboard

    According to the WHO, Australia is now coming fifth in diagnosed H1N1 cases, behind the US, Mexico, Canada and Japan. We started off slow, but I reckon we can take ’em. Come on! *cough* Update (June 5th): we’ve knocked off Japan to take fourth place! As of update 43, the WHO has us at 501…

  • Abbott’s nightmare world

    Tony Abbott – Mr People Skills himself – is on-message, describing the Rudd government’s use of the phrase “temporary deficit” as “Orwellian”, on Insiders this morning and elsewhere. One may surmise that Abbott, being entirely honest and reasonable, fears the rise of absolute tyranny and the end of all forms of freedom, with human dignity…

  • Science fail

    Apparently one of the world’s foremost experts on global warming – as far as the denialist camp is concerned – is Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. The sum total of his qualifications appear to be his propensity to comment on the subject. A google search turned up the Heartland Institute’s take on Monckton. Observe the ad…

  • Artificial intelligence

    A thought occurs, spurred on by my use of Bayesian networks. They’re used in AI (so I’m led to believe), though I’m using them to model the comprehension process in humans. However, I do also work in a building filled with other people applying AI techniques. My question is this: how long until Sarah Connor…

  • Yes and no

    I came home from a dinner with the rellies to find that the daylight savings referendum had been defeated, which was mildly disappointing but hardly surprising. There’ll be another referendum in a while. At least I remembered to vote this time. However, I am surprised and intrigued that the Greens candidate Adele Carles managed to…

  • Horrible Java

    Apologies to non-geeks. The following Java code determines whether infinity is even or odd. It compiles, runs, finishes immediately, and outputs “false” (meaning that infinity is odd). class Infinity \u007b static \u0062\u006f\u006f\u006c\u0065\u0061\u006e\u0020\u0065\u0076\u0065\u006e\u003b static { // Configure infinite speed System.nanoTime(\u002f\u002a); boolean even = true; double i = 0.0; while(i