Comments

  6. Paguroidea says

    Which “blank” would anyone like to discuss?

    According to Wikipedia:
    There are a number of uses for the word blank:

    Blank (cartridge) a type of gun cartridge that contains gunpowder but no bullet or shot.
    Key blank, an uncut key
    Blank (solution), a solution containing no analyte, typically used to zero an analytical instrument and ensure that any reagents used do not contribute to overall measurements
    Blank (archeology) a thick, shaped stone biface of suitable size and configuration for refining into a stone tool
    Blank (Scrabble) a Scrabble tile that does not have a letter on it and can be substituted for any letter the player desires
    Blank (computer science) a visible typographical character used to represent a Space character, which would normally be invisible
    Tailored blank, a steel product

  11. Lettuce says

    PZ, to be fair, you should teach the controversy.

    Blank posts are a prodduct of the liberals, the ACLU and the academy.

    In fact, this was an empty post, and any attempt to say otherwise is a violation of free speech and academic freedom.

  12. quork says

    I can’t believe PZ hasn’t seen and blogged about THIS yet:

    Live Giant squid on film, captured:

    I can’t believe it either, maybe because I read this.

  17. quork says

    The Blank Club

    The Blank Club has hosted every band that matters that has traipsed through San Jose…with more bargin’ our silvery-glittery stage every week. If you haven’t been to The Blank to see a live show, you’re missing what we’re all about. Any bar or club can play great music all night, (though not even half as good as we do!), but let’s see ’em host the groups the Blank has, consistently. Riiiiight…
    The only folks NOT WELCOME at our fine club are racist scum.

  18. Scott Hatfield says

    The best way to savor this thread is with a recording of John Cage’s 4’33″……SH

  25. says


    ” As I went walking, I saw a sign there;
    And on the sign there, It said, ‘NO TRESPASSING.’
    But on the other side, It didn’t say nothing.
    That side was made for you and me. ”

  27. bPer says

    The best way to savor this thread is with a recording of John Cage’s 4’33”.

    Thanks, Scott, for a double giggle. I mis-read what you wrote as 4″33″, which in Unisys ALGOL represents a byte with value hexadecimal 33 (51 decimal). That’s a “3” in ASCII but an unused value in EBCDIC, the character encoding natively used on Unisys MCP machines (which I support). So I thought you were cleverly pointing out that if you printed out 4″33″, you’d get a blank.

    But I’m virtually certain that I’m the only person around here that would know this. Then I noticed the single-quote. Then I recognized the music reference. Then I realized my cold remedy had really kicked in.

  31. llewelly says

    bPer:
    When I was in college (CS major) )in the late 1990s, we were taught the last ALGOL programmers died in End-Permian extinction. What gives?

  32. bPer says

    When I was in college (CS major) )in the late 1990s, we were taught the last ALGOL programmers died in End-Permian extinction. What gives?

    You were obviously taught wrong. The operating system, DBMS and system software of the Unisys MCP architecture are written in variants of ALGOL. The platform is not well known, being mainly used in government, banking and the health industry, but that’s no excuse for your instructor’s error.

  35. Carlie says

    Well, most of the pictures associated with the squid story certainly weren’t of a LIVE giant squid. Not anymore, at least.

  38. bPer says

    llewelly exclaimed:

    Next you’ll tell me Fortran isn’t dead!

    I just checked my documentation CD, and apparently Unisys still offers a Fortran 77 compiler. We stopped using it in our shop decades ago. I guess there are still pockets of Fortran use somewhere. I seem to recall reading recently on a tech blog someone expressing the opinion that Fortran was still the best tool for some kind of work (can’t remember what).

    And no, we don’t use punch cards anymore, in case that’s your next question. ;-)

  39. says

    Once again with the inflammatory rhetoric, PZ.. While I agree with the sentiment, and I know it’s your blog, I think your blank post could have been a bit more respectful in its ‘tone’.

  41. quork says

    I seem to recall reading recently on a tech blog someone expressing the opinion that Fortran was still the best tool for some kind of work (can’t remember what).

    It’s still quite good for FORmula TRANslation; i.e. numerically intensive calculations. MarkCC mentioned this recently at Good Math, Bad Math.

  42. JJR says

    Can’t believe nobody referenced this yet….

    _Blank Generation_ is an early punk album by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, released in 1977 on Warner Brothers’ Sire Records imprint.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blank_Generation

    Lyrics to the title track:

    I was saying let me out of here before I was even born
    Its such a gamble when you get a face
    Its fascinatin to observe what the mirror does
    But when I dine its for the wall that I set a place

    I belong to the blank generation and
    I can take it or leave it each time
    I belong to the generation but
    I can take it or leave it each time

    Triangles were fallin at the window as the doctor cursed
    He was a cartoon long forsaken by the public eye
    The nurse adjusted her garters as I breathed my first
    The doctor grabbed my throat and yelled, gods consolation prize!

    I belong to the blank generation
    I can take it or leave it each time
    I belong to the generation but
    I can take it or leave it each time

    To hold the tv to my lips, the air so packed with cash
    Then carry it up flights of stairs and drop it in the vacant lot
    To lose my train of thought and fall into your arms tracks
    And watch beneath the eyelids every passing dot

    I belong to the blank generation and
    I can take it or leave it each time
    I belong to the generation but
    I can take it or leave it each time

    I belong to the blank generation and
    I can take it or leave it each time
    I belong to the generation but
    I can take it or leave it each time

  43. quork says

    Here’s someone who is remarkably naive about his textual scholarship. He holds a literal belief in the Christmas story. The prophecy of Micah 5:2, the bogus Herod baby-slaughter, the ‘star in the East’ (which was followed from East to West for unexplained reasons) – this guy buys it all! He seems willing to accept what is written in the Bible at face value, and is entirely oblivious to existing criticism of the points he tries to make, such as that published by Thomas Paine two centuries ago. And he was apparently able to convince a newspaper editor to publish his piece without criticism.

  44. llewelly says

    I just checked my documentation CD, and apparently Unisys still offers a Fortran 77 compiler. We stopped using it in our shop decades ago. I guess there are still pockets of Fortran use somewhere. I seem to recall reading recently on a tech blog someone expressing the opinion that Fortran was still the best tool for some kind of work (can’t remember what).

    Several modern AOGCMs (Atmosphere Ocean General Circulation Model), which are used to study climate (global warming!) are written in Fortran (including both NASA’s GISS Model-E and Uk met’s HadCM3). So are most modern weather forecasting models (like the GFDL’s hurricane forecasting model). Like ALGOL, Fortran fills a niche that is unlikely to go away anytime soon. Fortran’s niche is numerical operations on large arrays. I’m too lazy to explain why Fortran excels at this. I guess you could try googling for keywords like ‘fortran, matrix multiply, latency, aliasing’ .’

  47. Athiator says

    There’s a lot of old plasma physics code that run in Fortran as well.

    Most physics applications I’ve encountered run either in Fortran or C++, depending on whether there are differential equations to solve (in which case C++ is used) or not.

  48. David says

    Comment Submission Error
    Your comment submission failed for the following reasons:
    Comment text is required.

  50. Marc Buhler says

    My parents are still writing code in Fortran for their software package, P-Stat, and they would now have passed half a million lines of code in the last 40 years. When I completed my first college Biology degree in the 1970’s I told my mom how evolution was like a self-debugging computer program. (Recently she read Dawkin’s Ancestors Tale and liked it so much she bought it for me.) Keep The Blank Thread Alive! (signed) marc

  51. Owlmirror says

    The comments background alternates between #FFFFFF and #F2F2F2.

    If I’ve calculated correctly, this comment should be a blanc.

  52. speedwell says

    But why does “nothing” draw us like it does?
    Perhaps the nonexistent calls us like the “god”
    Of pious people with a void to fill;
    Invented, hoped-for, longed-for, brought to be.

  53. speedwell says

    Now I like “imagined” better than “invented” in the last line of that umm, blank verse… Gee, when are we going to get to edit our posts? :)

  54. 601 says

    I think this “Blank Post” is just another reference to god, nothing there, nothing to say about it.

  55. John says

    I refuse to believe that this post was actually blank. There must be something there, I know it.

  57. Desert Donkey says

    OK. Y’all have only focused on one half of the subject. Blank Post contains TWO words. Why are you ignoring post? …

    Brings to mind how I learned to drive in a ’67 Ford pickup stretching barbed wire, while my dad hammered the nails into the posts. But I digress ….

  58. says

    Dropping things is stranger than it seems. Taking dropping test scores, for instance.

    See the following, if you aren’t too burnt-out from taking (or giving) exams.

    http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060610/mathtrek.asp

    Dropping Lowest Scores

    Ivars Peterson

    Science News Online
    Week of June 10, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 23

    As a school year draws to a close, grades are inevitably on the minds of both students and teachers.

    When computing final grades, teachers sometimes allow students to drop the lowest score–or even several of their lowest scores–from a sequence of quizzes, tests, homework assignments, or exams. Usually, it’s the teacher who makes the decision on which scores to drop in any individual case. If the goal is to maximize a student’s score, that’s sometimes easy to do. But, in certain situations, it can be quite tricky to tell which score or scores to drop from the total.

    In the June Mathematics Magazine, Daniel M. Kane of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Jonathan M. Kane of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater describe some of the intricacies of this problem and present a simple, efficient algorithm for finding the best set of grades to drop. Jonathan is a math professor, and his son Daniel is a student at MIT. Daniel was a member of the U.S.A. International Mathematical Olympiad team in 2002 and 2003….

  62. says

    Noooooo! PZ Myers actually stopped talking! Fast, before he starts again! Let everybody know that octopus (octopii?) are NOT sacred but tasty and no trans fat! Octopus are FOOD! Know that the Octopus God will not punish you for eating calamari fritti! There is NO Octopus God!

  68. Sonja says

    I understood what you were going for PZ, you just got the title wrong. It should have been: “The insightful quotes of George W. Bush”.

  72. Carlie says

    I saw a great post once, of the meta variety – it simply said “post”, then the comments began. “Comment”, “Reply to comment”, “Reply with obscure reference to Sartre to attempt to look smart”, “Troll!”, etc. Went at least two hundred comments, as I recall. Quite amusing, but entirely unsearchable for, given the content. Anyone know it and have a link?

  76. says

    Back in my 20 years of aerospace engineering/management, I wished I’d had a dime for every time I read: “This page Intentionally Left Blank.”

    It was sometimes there to keep from having to repaginate. Sometimes for the given level of classification. Less scary than the cover page which read: “unauthorized distribution punishable by death.”

    But it always seemed to me to be parallel to the signs reading: “This door always kept closed.” In which case:

    Is it a page?

    Is it a door?

    If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody blogs it, did it make a sound?

    What is the sound of one blog blanking?

  77. Doc Bill says

    Oh, Squid Breath, Carnac perceives the answer is “Blank Post.” What is the question?

    Name what PZ could post on Uncommon Descent and not get banned.

  79. quork says

    Taiwan singer’s ‘atheist’ song triggers protests

    Chinese-American hip-hop singer Stanley Huang’s new album has triggered strong protests from religious believers because the title song is about atheism, a newspaper said yesterday.
    .
    Since radio and TV played “Atheist Like Me,” the lead song in the album, Huang’s record company has been receiving more than 100 phone calls protesting the content of the song, the China Times daily reported.
    …

  81. Bob O'H says

    OK, John, let’s try our best.

    Oh, and a season’s greeting: Merry BLANK folks!

    (fill in as appropriate)

    Bob

  82. says

    (medieval): Nature abhors a blank post.

    (modern): Blank posts are spontaneously filled by virtual posts and antiposts.

    (postmodern): String Theory (strings of alphanumerics) has failed to make any useful predictions on a Blog Theory of Everything. Or, more properly, Character String Theory predicts a “landscape” of over 10^500 possible blogs in a blogmultiverse.

    See, for instance,
    Not Even Wrong
    http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

  83. Will Von Wizzlepig says

    Ping!

    Pong!

    We must endeavor to prolong the silliness.

    For without silliness, all we have is…