Fugato

Thermal bewilderment

n.

The inability, after bathing in icy water, to distinguish hot and cold.

Try it, it’s cool!

(The terms ‘thermal confusion‘ and ‘thermal conflation‘ were both taken.)

A brief feature comparison: in mid-flight I am impertinent enough to want to diff my checked-out code to see the changes I have made.

Under (the free-of-charge and open-source) Subversion, that would have been “Sure, here you go.”

Under (the $3,000 proprietary) Team Foundation Server, it is “be thankful I’m letting you work at all. And when you get online, go download a separate utility and ask it politely to sort out which files you have changed.”

And here I was trying to break the rant habit. Dagnabbit!

There are two rules of paramount importance in engineering innovation.

1. never reinvent the wheel.
2. always break the rules.

So I guess this was only a matter of time. Presenting: TheWheel™.

Me:	Do you have the MacBook mid-size in stock?
Apple store:	No, sorry.
Me:	When do you expect it?
Apple store:	Well, it was dispatched a week ago.
Me:	Okay, so it’s sitting in a ship somewhere?
Apple store:	(half-insulted) No no, not a ship. They come by airplane.
[a moment's pause]
Me:	That’s one slow airplane.
Apple store:	Well, it is coming all the way from China.

It better run faster than it flies.

Thus the erectile organ comes to symbolize the place of jouissance [ecstasy], not in itself, or even in the form of an image, but as a part lacking in the desired image: that is why it is equivalent to the of the signification produced above, of the jouissance that it restores by the coefficient of its statement to the function of lack of signifier (-1).

— Jacques Lacan (via Alan Sokal)

I’m sure that totally made sense in context.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

<sarcasm>

Founding the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa is just one of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s many charitable efforts to the furtherance of human prosperity.

The mathematics course descriptions at this institution hint at major breakthroughs in the interpretation of mathematics. A few examples:

• Infinity: From the Empty Set to the Boundless Universe of All Sets — Exploring the Full Range of Mathematics and Seeing its Source in Your Self
• Maharishi Vedic Mathematics: Mathematical Structure and the Transcendental Source of Natural Law
• Calculus 1: Derivatives as the Mathematics of Transcending, Used to Handle Changing Quantities
• Calculus 2: Integrals as the Mathematics of Unification, Used to Handle Wholeness
• Calculus 3: Unified Management of Change in All Possible Directions
• Calculus 4: Locating Silence within Dynamism

This guru revolutionized the field of national defence last February with his website, “Invincible Defence”. It prescribes no less than the complete eradication of terrorism for good, by measures such as a significant increase in the practice of yogic flying. This makes perfect sense: yogic flyers induce harmony around them which produces the Maharishi effect, much like the harmony of superconductance produces the Meissner effect. Just as a superconductor offers “invincible defence” against magnetic fields, flying yogas erect an impenetrable wall defending their nation from the scourge of terrorism.

Hopefully we will all internalize the yogi’s teachings with an open mind, unimpeded by the notorious arrogance of science.

</sarcasm>