The Atlantic Monthly magazine has a feature called “Word Court”, in which readers ask questions about grammar and words. In the curent issue, a reader asked whether there should be one or two spaces after a period and before the next word. Barbara Wallraff, the author, says to use only one: “put one space between [...]
I like to put random, quirkly facts on my web page every once in a while. In the past couple years, I’ve made pages about interesting ideas or facts that I couldn’t find easily elsewhere. Recently, however, I’ve realized that Wikipedia now has better information about these topics than my pages. Twice this month, I’ve [...]
I was thinking today about randomness and choice. Would it be possible for me to choose something that no one has ever chosen before? There are web sites like HotBits, which will give you a truly random number based on radioactive decay. If you ask for a large enough number, it’s likely that the result [...]