Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

To me, all these stats prove is that language is more than symbolic logic, that poetry infuses language wherever we use it. I mean, if you really think about the terms used in this poll, especially 'belief', i think it becomes clear that people are indicating, 'yes, i believe these terms (the devil, hell, ghots, etc.) signify *something* ... the same way a poem can be full of meaning and use without adhering to logic. For instance, for many people, astrology is simply the world's largest, most highly patterned poem. Getting stuck on 'belief' as a binary property means you're skipping off down the road to enantiodromia.

This idea actually came from Derrick de Kerckhove, the Director of the McLuhan Program, but we're all Creative Commons over here anyway! Astrology and horoscopes are great non-techie examples of a form of hypertext. We read one of a dozen predictions in the newspaper - selecting the "link" that pertains to our birthdate - that is written by some arbitrary person. We then connect that prediction to some aspect of our life and again "hyperlink" to the situation or aspect, giving it a new context, new meaning or new action.

And it all happens faster than DSL...

Earlier I mentioned that variables can live in two different places. We're going to examine these two places one at a time, and we're going to start on the more familiar ground, which is called the Stack. Understanding the stack helps us understand the way programs run, and also helps us understand scope a little better.