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November 2
The second of November is a big day in computer security; it’s the anniversary of the first significant computer worm distributed over the Internet in 1988. It was the Morris Worm, created by Robert Morris, a graduate student at Cornell. His intentions weren’t malicious, and the worm wasn’t intended to cause any harm. During his… Continue reading
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Who was that?
In 1624, William Bedell published a book with the riveting title Copies Certaine Letters. In it he posed a question, which has echoed down the centuries ever since: “Who were these quidams that laid hands on Scory?” A couple of hundred years later, in 1832, the London Times pointed out that “If the doctrine of our English quidams be… Continue reading
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Edward Said
The situation in the Middle East seems like it’s going from bad to worse, and it’s seemed that way for a long time. Maybe public intellectuals like Edward Said could help — but unfortunately Said, who was born November 1, 1935, passed away in 2003. Said was a Palestinian-American academic, critic, and activist. He was… Continue reading
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Leaves
Humans put leavesIn big crunchy piles.They do it for me,And it gives me a smile. There’s always a somethingIn a pile to find.And the sniffs are a bonusOaked, mapled, and pined. When I see a leaf pileThen a run’s what I makeAnd a jump and a roll —Then the humans must rake. But I think… Continue reading
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November 1
The moon is nearly invisible at the moment (it’s a “new moon”) — it’s a nice contrast to Ansel Adams’ most famous photo, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, which he made on November 1, 1941. At the time, Adams said “I think of it as a rather normal photograph of a typical New Mexican landscape.” The… Continue reading
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October 31
As everybody in the US, at least, knows, today is Halloween. But that’s not the whole story. If you live in Cornwall, England, it’s Allantide. Allantide continues into the next day, and locally they quite reasonably identify the difference as Allan Night and Allan Day. Cornish mothers don’t raise any dopes, evidently. The Allan in… Continue reading
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Robert Stirling
An exercise in some high-shool physics classes is assembling and operating a Stirling engine. It’s a fairly simple device and can be surprising because it’s a “hot air engine.” All you need is a source of heat (a candle will do for a small engine) and the engine will operate. The Stirling engine was designed… Continue reading
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Arthur Scherbius
In World War II, Germany used a mechanical encryption system called an Enigma machine. The Allies mounted a huge effort to figure out how to decrypt messages encoded by the Enigma, and one offshoot from that effort was, in part, electronic digital computers. As for the Enigma itself, the Allies may not have realized that… Continue reading
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Flutter by, butterfly
At least in the Northern Hemisphere, the time of year when you can see butterflies is past. But what’s with the “butter” in “butterfly”? Butterflies aren’t drawn to butter; they alight on flowers. It’s regular non-butter flies that would prefer butter. It could be that “butterfly” is “flutter by” slightly mixed up, like a young… Continue reading
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October 30
Angelo Siciliano was born on October 30, 1892 in Acri, Italy. When he was 11, his family emigrated to the US and settled in Brooklyn, where, not to be too blunt about it, Angelo got beat up a lot. He was a scrawny little kid and easy for the bullies to pick on. In his… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my newsletter, Artisanal Scribbles, where I’m grappling with writing, authentic human authorship, integrity, and the craft of beauty in the AI age. You can also find some of my old software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly wrote tiny utilities in Python and shell scripts. I’m mostly retired from coding nowadays.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
Recent Posts
- The Cycles within the Arc
- I’d rather have a taco
- 20-something Hubris
- You can’t be a leader without followers
- Candy Trees and Handkerchiefs
Categories
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Chocolatiana
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Immorality
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com