Thanks a thousand - 2

Когда мне было 3 года, папа получил двухкомнатную квартиру в военном городке. Дом был четырехэтажный, из белого кирпича, во дворе песочница, а за домом огромная поляна с соснами. Почти сразу за поляной - КПП и забор военной части.

Одно из первых воспоминаний детства: я играю в песочнице, а потом иду с мальчишками по поляне в сторону части, чтобы "смотреть, как солдаты играют в футбол." Пролезаем через дыру в заборе, но вдруг все куда-то исчезают, и я остаюсь один. Иду вперед и вижу огромные ревущие танки. Один танк останавливается прямо передо мной. Из него вылезает солдат в шлеме и спрашивает, как меня зовут. Он берет меня за руку, и мы идем по танковому тракту в сторону ворот КПП, оттуда через поляну к нашему дому, а навстречу нам бежит плачущая мама. Наверное, мне тогда здорово попало от родителей, потому что в часть через забор я больше не лазал.

Спасибо тебе неизвестный танкист в шлеме, что увидел меня и остановил свой танк.

(no subject)

It's quite a challenge to remember a thousand people who did something good for you, especially, if it happened many years ago. For some reason, remembering unpleasant episodes is much easier - sickness, conflict, anger, fights, pain, bad teachers, bad grades, bad weather, bad relationships, etc. Nevertheless, and maybe because of that, for the next 998 days I'm going to make an everyday effort to remember and post something about at least one good person.

Quote of the Day: philo-sophia – theory, ethics, wisdom

“Most historians agree that philosophy first saw the light of day in Greece, some time around the sixth century BC. So sudden and so astonishing was its manifestation, it has become known as ‘the Greek miracle’. ”
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The first task of philosophy is that of theory, an attempt to gain a sense of the world in which we live.
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Any philosophy therefore takes as its starting point the natural sciences which reveal the structure of the universe – physics, mathematics, biology, and so on – and the disciplines which enlighten us about the history of the planet as well as our own origins.
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But philosophy goes further and examines the means by which we acquire such knowledge.
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These two questions – the nature of the world, and the instruments for understanding it at our disposal as humans – constitute the essentials of the theoretical aspect of philosophy.
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For not only are we not alone, but we could not be born and survive without the help of others, starting with our parents. How do we co-exist with others,what rules of the game must we learn, and how should we conduct ourselves – to be helpful, dignified and ‘fair’ in our dealings with others? This question is addressed by the second part of philosophy; the part which is not theoretical but practical, and which broadly concerns ethics.”
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But why should we learn about the world and its history, why bother trying to live in harmony with others? What is the point of all this effort? And does it have to make sense? These questions, and some others of a similar nature, bring us to the third dimension of philosophy, which touches upon the ultimate question of salvation or wisdom.

-- Luc Ferry. “A Brief History of Thought.”

Cat of the Day

and the rest of the story...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html

During summer vacations, Dr. Knuth made more money than professors earned in a year by writing compilers. A compiler is like a translator, converting a high-level programming language (resembling algebra) to a lower-level one (sometimes arcane binary) and, ideally, improving it in the process. In computer science, “optimization” is truly an art, and this is articulated in another Knuthian proverb: “Premature optimization is the root of all evil.”