Useless tips for computer programmers # 121

Choose variable names in your program that can be touch typed one-handed, like "reader", "axes", "lollipop", "phylum", "minimum".

That way you can increase productivity by continuing to work while sipping your coffee.

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Large Hadron Collider Rap

Just LOVED this, physics geek that I am. "Alpinekat" (Kate McAlpine) is a science writer at the CERN experiment in Europe, which will turn on the largest particle accelerator in the world, the Large Hadron Collider, on Sept 10th. There are some who say it will cause the end of the world, because of the potential to create "mini-black holes". Black holes are normally formed by the gravitational collapse of a massive star, but it is possible that the conditions at the time of the Big Bang could have created extremely small black holes. Steven Hawking postulated that such holes would evaporate by the emission of radiation, called "Hawking Radiation", a result of a virtual particle-anti particle pair being produced at the black hole's event horizon. Some physicists now believe that Hawking radiation may be a flawed concept and that a mini black hole created by the LHC would not evaporate, but could cause a cataclysmic disaster and swallow up the earth.

Archbishop of Canterbury on Gay relationships

From a letter from 2001 between the present Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams and Dr. Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian: "By the end of the 1980s I had definitely come to the conclusion that scripture was not dealing with the predicament of persons whom we should recognise as homosexual by nature. I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness." Good for him!! I agree with the above 100%. Apparently the Church of England is going to split on this issue, and some Conservative Christians say Williams's position is now "untenable". Some Conservative Christians need to go back to the Bible and read Matthew 7:1-2 . Some Conservative Christians need to understand the truly horrific abominations that are perpetrated on innocent children, not by h

The barbecue conundrum - a (partial) response to Stephen Fry

It's now notorious and has "gone viral". I'm referring to Stephen Fry's response on being asked by a television interviewer what he'd say if he found God actually existed and was confronted by Him at the Pearly Gates. Stephen replied that he'd say (something like) "Bone cancer in children - what's that about? How dare you deliberately create something that can cause so much misery and it's not our fault?" Such a God would be evil, malicious, and he would want nothing to do with such a being. I sympathise, I really do. Some years ago, I used to go to a poetry group. The founder was a lovely lady called Sally. Sally was one of the most honest people I'd ever met - if she liked your poem she'd say so, but wouldn't pretend if she didn't like it. Everyone valued her. She died at the age of 36, in Indonesia, when her plane crashed into the side of a mountain - she was one of the two Brits on board. I searched the sho

Iain Strachan

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