For many years, a war has been waged between those who publish software and those who don’t want to pay for it (or want to profit by selling illegal copies). In recent years the war has expanded to video tapes, … Read more
An early version of Covid-19 that appears to have been grown in a laboratory has been discovered in samples from a Chinese biotechnology firm. The finding lends weight to claims that the virus may have started life as a lab … Read more
Early Retirement This article addresses the joys, challenges, and some practical aspects of retiring young. The author retired in 2001, at the age of 37 (same age as Rossini when he retired). The Depressing Truth Ask a wage slave what … Read more
Talking to Jeremy DeSilva about human evolution was so fun. As was reading his recent book, First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human. I learned something new and fascinating on every page. Do you picture our hominin ancestors as … Read more
The left three images show close-ups of the newly discovered bookmark by Van Gogh, shown in full on the right Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (bought with support from BankGiro Loterij) One of Van Gogh’s most unusual artworks … Read more
Introduction It is often assumed that early alphabetic writing was developed by members of a Semitic-speaking, Western Asiatic population (‘Canaanites’) who were involved in Egyptian mining operations around Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula (Sass Reference Sass1988; Goldwasser Reference Goldwasser2006; … Read more
By April of 1959, issues with using subst to implement β-reduction became apparent. In the April 1959 Quarterly Progress Report of the Research Laboratory of Electronics, McCarthy gives an updated definition of the universal S-function apply: apply[f;args]=eval[cons[f;appq[args]];NIL] where appq[m]=[null[m]→NIL;T→cons[list[QUOTE;car[m]];appq[cdr[m]]]] and … Read more