Ancient Memetic Replicators?

"I'm migrating to Carter-Zimmerman. What they're doing makes sense, and I want to be part of it."

Inoshiro nodded blithely. "Then I wish you well."

"That's it? Good luck and bon voyage?" Yatima tried to read vis face, but Inoshiro just gazed back with a psychohlast's innocence. "What's happened to you? What have you done to yourself?"

Inoshiro smiled beatifically and held out vis hands. A white lotus flower blossomed from the center of each palm, both emitting identical reference tags. Yatima hesitated, then followed their scent. It was an old outlook, buried in the Ashton-Laval library, copied nine centuries before from one of the ancient memetic replicators that had infested the fleshers. It imposed a hermetically sealed package of beliefs about the nature of the self, and the futility of striving ... including explicit renunciations of every mode of reasoning able to illuminate the core beliefs' failings.

Analysis with a standard tool confirmed that the outlook was universally self-affirming. Once you ran it you could not change your mind. Once you ran it, you could not be talked out of it.

Yatima said numbly, "You were smarter than that. Stronger than that." But when Inoshiro was wounded by Lacerta, what hadn't ve done that might have made a difference? That might have spared ver the need for the kind of anesthetic that dissolved everything ve'd once been?

Inoshiro laughed. "So what am I now? Wise enough to be weak? Or strong enough to be foolish?"

- Diaspora, Greg Egan

Reverting to Orignal Icons in OS X

If you ever change the default icons of your OS X folders [with, say, these ;)] or programs, and want to revert to the original icons, all you have to do is -

• Select folder
• ctrl + click > Get Info (Or just  + i)
• Click on the icon in the info window
• Press the 'delete' key
• et voila!
  

I want one!

The Indian Subcontinent

23% of the world's population.

3% of the world's land.

7.5X the world's population density.

Country	Land Area (sq. km.)	Population (Millions)	Density (people/sq. km.)
India	3,287,240	1147.99	349
Pakistan	803,940	172.80	206
Nepal	147,181	29.51	184
Bangladesh	144,000	150.45	1045
Sri Lanka	65,610	19.67	319
Bhutan	47,000	0.67	14
Maldive	298	0.35	1105
Total	4,495,269	1521.45	338
The World	148,940,000	6750	45
Fraction	3.02%	22.54%	751.11%

The Letter

....
Improved “transparency” – a favorite remedy of politicians, commentators and financial regulators for averting future train wrecks – won’t cure the problems that derivatives pose. I know of no reporting mechanism that would come close to describing and measuring the risks in a huge and complex portfolio of derivatives. Auditors can’t audit these contracts, and regulators can’t regulate them. When I read the pages of “disclosure” in 10-Ks of companies that are entangled with these instruments, all I end up knowing is that I don’t know what is going on in their portfolios (and then I reach for some aspirin).
....

- Warren Buffett
Letter to Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders
February 27, 2009

Wow!

"NGC 5257/8 (Arp 240) is an astonishing galaxy pair, composed of spiral galaxies of similar mass and size, NGC 5257 and NGC 5258. The galaxies are visibly interacting with each other via a bridge of dim stars connecting the two galaxies, almost like two dancers holding hands while performing a pirouette. Both galaxies harbor supermassive black holes in their centers and are actively forming new stars in their disks. Arp 240 is located in the constellation Virgo, approximately 300 million light-years away, and is the 240th galaxy in Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. With the exception of a few foreground stars from our own Milky Way all the objects in this image are galaxies."

the sandbox

This is my playground!