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[pjc50]

Some things which I've been musing about but not taken the time to write out properly. I'm quite slow when writing original thoughtful stuff, even though I can dash off comment replies on some subjects very quickly. Drop a comment if you're interested in reading any of these, that'll motivate me

Comments

[ewx]

I’ll fight to the death to keep comments highlighted a different color, the rest I think I could live without (sometimes it helps spot a mistake but that’s rare).

[cjwatson]

I'd be interested in hearing more about the cadet stuff; you've talked to me about it briefly in the past, but never at length that I can remember.

Syntax highlighting: maybe I'm a less accurate typist than ewx, since I love the first-line defence against silly mistakes, particularly things like the slight differences in highlighting you tend to get if you forget to close a parenthesis or something. This gets better the more aware the highlighter is of your language - pyflakes.vim is fantastic, for instance, and manages to catch really quite a lot of the mistakes a compiler for a statically-typed language would have caught.

[anonymous]

Cadet forces sound fun; my school didn't have one and I probably wouldn't have bothered if it had, but it's something I would have regretted not doing if I had have the chance. It sounds both fun and good for you.

Why is it always phrased as an either/or thing, like either the media is the only thing that has any effect on kids, or they can shrug off any amount of fantasy violence? Why does nobody seem to think that maybe it's more complicated and that kids soak up influences from everywhere, family, friends, fictional and non-fictional media alike

[pjc50]

"I mean, seriously, hasn't that argument been over since like the end of the gold standard?"

Indeed, but it keeps cropping up in comments on the internet relating to the banking crisis. Similarly with criticism of fractional reserve banking per se. At least there's no sign of anyone influential taking it seriously yet, it's a bit wacky even by Tea Party standards.

[sleeperwaking]

I think the only thing I wouldn't be interested in reading about is the syntax stuff. Since I no longer hang around with compscis 90% of the time I've given up any pretence at trying to understand/look interested in computers. I want a steam punk computer, the sort of thing you can fix by tweaking pressures, giving it more oil or in the last instance hitting it very hard with a heavy, metal object.