Embedded in Academia : A Quiz About Integers in C "The C language's rules for integer operations have some quirks that can make even small programs behave in confusing ways. This post is a review of these rules in the form of a quiz containing 20 questions." I did OK except on the ones about shifts.
(tags: arithmetic integer C programming)
Sword ( Read more... )

Mattghg and Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, both linked to Matthew Parris's article As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs GodParris is an atheist who writes admiringly not just of the work done by Christians in Africa, but of the changes conversion brings about in people, supplanting a tribal mindset he regards as unhealthy ( Read more... )

Some of you already read Overcoming Bias, the blog of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute (I've seen gjm11 commenting there, and wildeabandon mentioned it, I think). I've been reading quite a bit of the archives recently, as evidence by the number of comments I've made referring to old postings there.

The bias of the title is cognitive bias, the psychological ( Read more... )

Anathem is Neal Stephenson's latest novel. Told in the first person, it's the story of Erasmus, a young member of a monastic order dedicated to philosophy and science. Erasmus lives on Arbre, a world rather like our own. The monks aren't religious (quite the reverse, for the most part), but their monasteries use many of the trappings of religious ( Read more... )

There's a discussion about that question attached to a posting from the toothycats. One of the toothycats (who are a couple with a shared blog) posted an entry about their Christian beliefs, which promptly exploded into religion_wank (why does that community not exist already?) after lark_ascending turned up, and, angered by a toothcat's oppressive action of posting about an interest of ( Read more... )

lisekit has a discussion on novels, religion and relativism in religion. She says that, where religion is concerned, she doesn't like to say that anyone's views are more or less valuable than anyone else's. This set me thinking about the idea of relativism in general (which lisekit isn't advocating, lest I accuse her of it, as she mentions respect and tolerance ( Read more... )