Many software developers, while making a tool to solve a specific problem, heed the siren call of generality. By making a few specific changes, they can turn the tool into a general framework for solving a larger class of problems. And then, with a few more changes, an even larger class of problems, and so […]
In research and academia, one of the fundamental activities is the invention and subsequent examination of new concepts. For concepts, we need names. One way of making a name is stringing words together until the meaning is sufficiently specific. E.g. “morphism averse co-dependent functor substitutions in virtual machine transmigration systems”. Thus the abstruse academic research […]
A cold, bright morning in Tokyo’s somewhat fashionable Azabu-Juuban district. I’m looking for a clinic, but I can’t find it. I’ve only visited it once before, more than a year earlier. I look for landmarks that I might remember, bring out the map on my phone, pay attention to every detail in the hope that […]
In his first amendment to Human, All Too Human (1886), entitled Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions, Friedrich Nietzsche states that 300. HOW FAR EVEN IN THE GOOD THE HALF MAY BE MORE THAN THE WHOLE. — In all things that are constructed to last and demand the service of many hands, much that is less good must […]
In the chilly yet sunny winter afternoon, I took a walk past the imperial palace in the centre of Tokyo. I find sunny winter days refreshing. The palace is interesting to behold. It is fronted by lots of that most precious of Tokyo commodities, open space. Supposedly, during the height of the land bubble, the […]