Category Archives: Arts

Another person leaving Austin

Posted on by
Reply

Amelia Gray is an interesting writer. She lives in Austin, but is leaving town at the end of the month. Why?

“Austin is like the oasis in zombie movies.”

There’s more to it, of course. The overall unreality of life in Austin (and also the heat) over time wears on smarter people, it seems. I know it wears on me. I’ve seen a lot of very capable programmers leave town in the three years we’ve been here and I don’t expect the outward flow to stop. Austin is a small town and has a lot to offer, especially if you like to have mindless fun. Over time, though, ambition is a liability here and the ambitious seem to recognize that.

Learn the rules and then forget them

Posted on by
1

When it came to the notorious split infinitive (e.g., “to boldly go where no man . . .”), [Fowler] observed that those English speakers who neither know nor care about them “are to be envied” by the unhappy few who do.

- H. W. Fowler, the King of English

Certainly, any grammatical advice that goes up against Star Trek deserves what it gets. Somehow Fowler understood that, decades before anyone met Captain Pike, never mind Kirk.

The Friend of My Enemy is My Xbox

Posted on by
Reply

AT&T plus Xbox 360 = Whatever that is at the bottom

I have an iPhone, and I hate AT&T… but I repeat myself. I use a Mac, and I hate Microsoft… but I repeat myself again. And now I learn that AT&T and Microsoft are going to team up to bring me television? Well, It’s really lucky that television is such a stable and uncomplicated business these days. Otherwise, I might worry that AT&T and Microsoft would be the worst possible team to make a consumer-friendly combination of hardware and TV. Oh, wait…

Principles and Stories

Posted on by
Reply

I think there are at least two ways of learning morality, from principles and from stories. That’s probably obvious to most folks, but I’ve been very much a ‘principles’ kind of guy for most of my life and I’ve really ignored how much I can learn from stories. Probably my biggest objection to learning from stories is that stories, for good reason, almost always skip the justification of their lessons. Mostly, they stick to just being illustrative. Now that I’m getting to be comfortable with my own justifications, I’m becoming much more satisfied with illustrations of virtue.