Delicious LiveJournal Links for 9-4-2009

• American Vice: Mapping the 7 Deadly Sins
  Maps of the USA broken down by sinfulness (well, kinda)
  (tags: maps visualization funny usa culture)
• Shelfari: Neil Gaiman's Bookshelves
  It's not bad. Could be bigger
  (tags: gaiman reading sf books library)
• Attractive Women Make Men Temporarily Stupid
  The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.
  (tags: psychology science brain men sex women research)
• The Unknown Russian Comics Books
  Fascinating look at some comics from behind the Iron Curtain
  (tags: comics Russia)
• NetBase Thinks You Can Get Rid Of Jews With Alcohol And Salt
  Also - they cause AIDS.
  
  This is what you get when computers try to parse English...
  (tags: search web2.0 wtf funny EpicFail)
• Preemptive Rebuttal
  When the right-wingers go nuts because President Obama hosting a Ramadan dinner, do point out that President Bush did every year too...
  (tags: politics funny)
• I have been abducted by aliens, says Japan's first lady
  Let's hear it for barking people all over the world!
  (tags: japan aliens bizarre)

...is a joy forever

(thanks to cavalorn)

What being a programmer is like

The basic one I like to use when describing programming in general is that programs are kind of like player pianos (self-playing pianos).

Someone comes to the programmer and says "Hey, I want a piano that plays a song that sounds like this" and the programmer goes and gets the paper that the player pianos use and he starts punching holes in it.

When he wants to hear how it sounds, he has to play it through his piano a few times. If he's done it a bunch, he probably can get a lot of it done without listening to it once.

Then when he's done programming the song and it sounds exactly like what the user described, he takes it back to the user and the user says he actually wanted a hamburger, not a player piano song.

From this discussion of how to explain programming to non-techies.