The Morals of Chess
by Benjamin Franklin
originally appeared in The Columbian Magazine in December 1786​

The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions, for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess, then, we may learn:

1^st: Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action, for it is continually occurring to the player, “If I move this Piece, what will be the advantage or disadvantage of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks?”

2^nd: Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action, the relation of the several Pieces, their situations, and the dangers they are repeatedly exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or that Piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.

The very first website ever was created at CERN in 1989. Here is their official recreation of that original site:

http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

and, for the record, a CNN article about the website

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/30/tech/web/first-website-cern

Everyone talks about Bigfoot, but nobody ever does anything about them. Until now.

The Olympia Beer, the brewing company is offering a very generous $1,000,000 for "irrefutable evidence" for the existence of Bigfoot. They've set the bar pretty high. You need DNA and visual proof of a live physical body. Basically hair and a photo.

I'll post again if I hear about an award being made. Here's the full story:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/10/olympia-beer-bigfoot-idUSnPnS…

By Randall Munroe, http://xkcd.com/171/

On his blog, Sam Harris has posted a powerful commentary on guns. His position is not readily pigeon-holed as pro or anti gun, but rather he concedes certain realities and necessities with his customary rationality, logic and clarity. I find myself not always comfortable with his conclusions and positions, but I am nevertheless in essentially complete agreement.

I've chosen one paragraph from his commentary which seems to me right to the point:

"We could do many things to ensure that only fully vetted people could get a licensed firearm. The fact that 40 percent of all guns in the U.S. are legally purchased from private sellers without background checks on the buyers (the so-called “gun show loophole”) is terrifying. Getting a gun license could be made as difficult as getting a license to fly an airplane, requiring dozens of hours of training. I would certainly be happy to see policy changes like this. In that respect, I support much stricter gun laws. But I am under no illusions that such restrictions would make it difficult for bad people to acquire guns illegally.  Given the level of violence in our society, the ubiquity of guns, and the fact that our penitentiaries function like graduate schools for violent criminals, I think sane, law-abiding people should have access to guns. In that respect, I support the rights of gun owners."

Better screening, background checks and training. But many perfectly decent sane people will still feel a need to own guns. I think I can live with that.

This is the actual lead sentence from a USAToday story today:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/15/texas-train-crash/…

origins diverse
from throughout the universe
there is no better verse
than 'nature is perverse'

Joel Pett, a cartoonist with the Lexington-Herald Leader, has brilliantly captured the silliness of opposition to climate friendly policies with the caption:

"What if it's all a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"

The cartoon itself is widely reproduced on the internet, but I haven't paid the fees to reproduce it here. Still, you should be able to find it at one of these links:

• The Hoyden's blog
• or Joel Pett's own Facebook page.

OK, I do mostly like Netflix. Even though they often won't stream the film I'd really like to watch, usually I can find something I haven't seen. But their "Suggestions For You" are, often as not, just silly.

Here are two examples Netflix thought I'd like, and why:

1. Rackspace, 512M RAM, quad-core, Debian 6 (Squeeze), 64-bit, stock php.ini memory_limit =128MB
2. Amazon EC2,612M RAM, single-core,Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, 64-bit, micro-instance:ubuntu/images/ebs/ubuntu-lucid-10.04-amd64-server-20120110 (ami-8eb33ebe), stock php.ini memory_limit = 128MB.
   1. Added a 3GB swap volume, as no swap was included in the AMI
   2. The single core seems to easily become overloaded.  During installs, for example, the CPU load (via top) often reaches large (>5) values and progress slows to a stall.
   3. Also stalls under drupal authenticated loads.
3. Linode, 512M RAM, Debian 6, 32-bit, stock php.ini memory_limit = 128MB
4. Hotdrupal, "Plus v2" account (no longer available), stock php.ini memory_limit =160MB.
5. Hostgator, "Baby Plan" account, stock php.ini memory_limit = 256MB

Initial website:

• install standard profile, drupal-7.12-prod
• install devel & devel generate modules
• turn on devel block
• turn on devel 'page timer' and 'memory usage'

Content generation

• 2,000 users
• 5,000 nodes
• 5,000 path aliases
• 250 terms
• 15 vocabularies

anonymous, ​ab test

1. ​ab -n1000 -c1 http://server/
2. ab -n1000 -c5 http://server/

admin, ab test

1. ab -n100 -c5 -C 'SESSxxx=yyyy' http://server/admin/modules/

Benchmark Protocol