Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than:

Turbo Pascal 3 for MS-DOS was released in September 1986. [...]

The entire Turbo Pascal 3.02 executable–the compiler and IDE–was 39,731 bytes. How does that stack up in 2011 terms? Here are some things that Turbo Pascal is smaller than, as of October 30, 2011:

The minified version of jquery 1.6 (90,518 bytes).

[...]

The image of the white iPhone 4S at apple.com (190,157 bytes).

[...]

The Wikipedia page for C++ (214,251 bytes).

Not yet having made the switch to PCs at that point, I was probably still using HiSoft Pascal 4 on my ZX Spectrum, which was similarly minimalist by modern standards. But then, my Spectrum had 48 Kilobytes of RAM, so everything had to be distinctly minimalist.¹

[Insert standard "I feel so old!" lament here.]

[Via The Tao of Mac]

1. By 1986 I was also using my Sinclair QL, but I don't think I did any Pascal programming on it. SuperBASIC was quite nifty, as I recall – not BBC BASIC good, but still pretty nice. ↩

From the BBC News Magazine's obituaries page:

If it had not been for Annie Penrose, RAF pilots might have found themselves piloting Shrews rather than Spitfires in the Battle of Britain. Her father, Sir Robert McLean, was chairman of Vickers between the wars and worked closely with R J Mitchell who was designing a new single-seater fighter. Mitchell had wanted to call the new plane the Shrew but McLean insisted it was called the Spitfire, the nickname he had bestowed on his somewhat headstrong daughter. After opposition from the Air Ministry he finally got his way. Annie, who was born in India, went on to marry the actor Robert Newton before his drinking and womanising led to divorce. She later married Beakus Penrose and became the chatelaine of the Killiow Estate in Cornwall which she ran well into her 80s.

The Supermarine Shrew just doesn't feel right, somehow.

The best explanation I've seen¹ of the absurd humans-as-batteries idea from The Matrix:

WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD

[...]

MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn't believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living -

NEO (politely): Excuse me, please.

MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?

NEO: I've kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?

MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?

NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!

MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?

(Pause.)

NEO: …in the Matrix.

MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.

(Pause.)

NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?

MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.

[Via MK, commenting at Mightygodking.com]

1. Setting aside the real world explanation, i.e. that studio executives imposed the notion of humans-as-power-sources because they thought audiences wouldn't get the Wachowskis' original explanation that the Machines were using the brain power of humanity as part of a neural network. ↩

Best statistics question ever?

Anne Helen Petersen's post describing the making of Marilyn Monroe includes a nice anecdote illustrating how Monroe defused a potential scandal, capping her explanation with a nice line in self-deprecating wit:

Monroe had posed for art photographer Tom Kelley all the way back in 1948, and the photos had been reprinted in numerous calendars, of which "Golden Dreams" was the most famous. [...]

When Monroe's star rose in the early '50s, she was identified as the model in the photos. But her response to the revelation became as fundamental to her image as the photos themselves. Instead of attempting to avoid or deny the rumors, Monroe answered them head-on: She had been "hungry," was "three weeks behind with rent," and had insisted that Kelley's wife be present. "I'm not ashamed of it," she averred. "I've done nothing wrong."

Once the potential for scandal had dissipated, she promised "I'm saving a copy of that calendar for my grandchildren," admitting "I've only autographed a few copies of it, mostly for sick people. On one I wrote 'This may not be my best angle.'"

Jack Donaghy demonstrates one good reason why Apple won't be adding Siri to the Apple TV any time soon.

[Via Daring Fireball]

MightyGodKing reminds me that it's been far too long since I last watched Kayhryn Bigelow's Strange Days:

[...] Strange Days is great for reasons other than its often impressive precognitive abilities. It's got Angela Bassett in what I would argue is her definitive movie role and one of the baddest-ass female action hero roles ever, which by itself makes the entire catalogue of Angelina Jolie look wussy. It teaches us the secret of making Juliette Lewis tolerable, which is to have her sing rather than speak (seriously: the movie's major flaw is that Lewis' appeal to Ralph Fiennes is only evident when she's singing). It has a killer supporting cast: Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'onofrio, William Fichtner, Glenn Plummer. It has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack that sounded in 1993 like what the future of music would sound like, and to an extent still does. It has one of the most beautiful and heartfelt endings I've ever seen in a movie, and begins with what I still hold up to be one of the greatest cold opens in film history (which, lest we forget, was filmed long before lightweight digital cameras were available, and thus had to be filmed entirely on full-sized Steadicams)

I'd have said that Tina Turner was Angela Bassett's definitive role, but would add that¹ I reckon that her definitive role should have been Storm. I've nothing against Halle Berry, but failing to cast Angela Bassett was a horrible missed opportunity for all concerned IMHO.

1. In common with 90% of geekdom. ↩

Assange versus Zuckerberg.

[Via Ghost in the Machine]

Muppet Doctor Who. And why not?

[Via The Medium is Not Enough]

Scott Eric Kaufman confirms that Frank Miller's Holy Terror is every bit as dreadful as the whole BatmanCostumed vigilante-versus-Osama bin Laden concept sounded back when he announced the project in 2006:

If you thought his sexism was shameless, you should see his xenophobia [...]

Chris Sims gathers the views of The (Fictional) 1% on #OccupyWallStreet:

Instead of paying taxes to support a corrupt system, I put my money where it does the most good: A utility belt full of sharp pieces of metal that I throw at the mentally ill. I am the 1%.

Bruce Wayne
(Alias) Batman

[Via Crooked Timber]

Tom Morris, on behalf of Wikimedia Commons: Ladies and gentleman, we got him.

Walt Disney's Sin City: the best trailer mashup I've seen in ages.

[Via Alyssa Rosenberg]

A Philosophy of the SUPER Wealthy (or the 1%).

[Via The Edge of the American West]

The Human Slingshot.

Three thoughts:

1. You couldn't pay me enough money to ride that thing!
2. Is it wrong to be mildly disappointed that the passenger remains attached to the slingshot throughout?¹
3. Throwing footballs at the slingshot's passenger is just not on.

[Via MetaFilter]

1. As opposed to continuing forwards and landing in a suitably padded receptacle a few fields over… ↩

John Jeremiah Sullivan and his wife had just moved into a rather nice house in Wilmington, North Carolina that they couldn't really afford when they received an invitation to share their new house with the cast of One Tree Hill:

Often I think of Greg. What an amazing guy. Truly amazing, as in he brought us into a maze. We only ever saw him once. I've never seen him since. And this is a small town – you see people. It was like they flew him in for this meeting. He was a big guy in a loose Hawaiian shirt. Goatee, sunglasses. Did he tell me he played rugby, or did he look exactly like someone I knew who played rugby? He sat across from us at our kitchen table, a thirteen-foot dark wood table that purportedly came in pieces from a Norwegian farmhouse, relic of nesting panic (long table, order). Greg sat across from us. He explained that they'd mostly be using only the front two rooms of the house. This was the place they mainly shot. The rest of our character's house had been re-created on a set, and the transitions would be made seamless in editing.

He laid out the deal they'd struck with the previous owners. We move you into a Hilton. Meals and per diem. We put everything back the way it was. We take Polaroids of your bookshelves to make sure we've put the books in order. That's how thorough we are. We even pay people to come in afterward and clean up. The house looks better than you left it.

We'll pay you $—— for an exterior shoot, $—— for interiors. The combined amount equaled our mortgage.

Yes, I think we can work something out.

"The front two rooms" – that phrase, in particular, we heard repeated: It has a poetic density to it, like "cellar door," so I remember. The front two rooms.

Michael Winslow performs Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love on a Norwegian talk show.

Be sure to listen out for the guitar solo starting at the 1 minute 27 second mark…

[Via kottke.org]

When lightning strikes …

Be sure to take a look at picture #19: that's not something you see every day.

[Via Gary Farber]

Perhaps the most succinct, incisive critical evaluation of Torchwood yet, courtesy of Penny Arcade:

I'm not down on Torchwood in absolute terms. But it must be consumed with careful precision, like blowfish.

How to make sure your stolen iPhone gets returned. Heh…