Brown-water rafting

[Thanks to TCG]

Carlysle

Clever men are good, but they are not the best.

-- Thomas Carlyle

I like that one, I hadn't heard it before.

I *think* I know what he meant, but I’d like to know what he really meant (and what was the context), for it’s an interesting subject, what is “good”? Does it really exist, or merely in the human mind and social agreements?

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If we accept Goodness as-is for now, I might add that I would even say that cleverness is probably irrelevant to goodness, or value. Hitler, for example must have been damn clever in some areas to get a whole people to do his murdering for him. But few would call him Good. Though interestingly, some do, including some clever men, I know a very clever man who does. 

Ukraine's Got Talent - Duo Flame

It seems to be all over the known universe that televised dance contests are the new gold rush.
Gotta admit they are entertaining. (Though a bit too toe-curling when the judges hack down an unworthy competitor.)




It's particularly super-rich ore for those who came up with the concept first, because I believe every new company and country which wants to use the concept has to pay royalties.

Rewatching Subway

Lord bless Luc Besson. Subway.
In my view, it's a classic one must have seen. It's very funny and very off-beat, and original. I don't really know anything quite like it.

Ugly old graphics??

Why Retina Displays and 4K TVs May Not Be Worth the Trouble, article (David Pogue, Scientific American)

Low-resolution graphics look no better on a high-resolution screen. If you've programmed an iPhone app, you know that it doesn't look any sharper until you reprogram it for the sharper screen. Until then, the phone just applies pixel doubling (substitutes four pixels for every one on the lower-res screen), which doesn't improve sharpness.
[...]
In fact, they look worse. You may remember that when HDTV came out, standard-definition broadcasts actually looked worse than they did on standard TVs. (They still do.) Well, guess what? Same thing happens on other screens.
[...]
In any case, the problem is especially severe on the biggest app of all: the Web. Few Web sites have been rewritten to accommodate Retina-type screens, so their graphics usually look awful.

I keep hearing this. But I just don't see it! I don't have the Retina Macbook Pro, but I do have the iPad 3 with Retina display (264PPI), and to me, web sites look the same as always.

If you use a big, super-high-res screen, what do you think? Is it just my eyes which are mercifully middle-aged? (They are not that bad, with glasses I can read the phone book and so on.)