twbell

David Foster Wallace: Consider the Lobster

Originally Published August 2004 in Gourmet magazine.

For 56 years, the Maine Lobster Festival has been drawing crowds with the promise of sun, fun, and fine food. One visitor would argue that the celebration involves a whole lot more.

The enormous, pungent, and extremely well marketed Maine Lobster Festival is held every late July in the state’s midcoast region, meaning the western side of Penobscot Bay, the nerve stem of Maine’s lobster industry. What’s called the midcoast runs from Owl’s Head and Thomaston in the south to Belfast in the north. (Actually, it might extend all the way up to Bucksport, but we were never able to get farther north than Belfast on Route 1, whose summer traffic is, as you can imagine, unimaginable.) The region’s two main communities are Camden, with its very old money and yachty harbor and five-star restaurants and phenomenal B&Bs, and Rockland, a serious old f

twbell

Transcription of the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address -May 21, 2005

Written and Delivered by David Foster Wallace

(If anybody feels like perspiring [cough], I'd advise you to go ahead,because I'm sure going to. In fact I'm gonna [mumbles while pulling uphis gown and taking out a handkerchief from his pocket].) Greetings["parents"?] and congratulations to Kenyon's graduating class of 2005.There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meetan older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says"Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for abit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes"What the hell is water?"

This is a standard requirement of US commencement speeches, thedeployment of didactic little parable-ish stories. The story ["thing"] turnsout to be one of the better, less bullshitty conventions of the genre, but ifyou're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise, older fishexplaining what water is to you younger fish

twbell

1. Rule of Modularity: Write simple parts connected by clean interfaces.
2. Rule of Clarity: Clarity is better than cleverness.
3. Rule of Composition: Design programs to be connected to other programs.
4. Rule of Separation: Separate policy from mechanism; separate interfaces from engines.
5. Rule of Simplicity: Design for simplicity; add complexity only where you must.
6. Rule of Parsimony: Write a big program only when it is clear by demonstration that nothing else will do.
7. Rule of Transparency: Design for visibility to make inspection and debugging easier.
8. Rule of Robustness: Robustness is the child of transparency and simplicity.
9. Rule of Representation: Fold knowledge into data so program logic can be stupid and robust.
10. Rule of Least Surprise: In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.

twbell

{
    "ad": {
        "country_name": "Andorra",
        "default_langs": [
            "ca"
        ]
    },
    "ae": {
        "country_name": "United Arab Emirates",
        "default_langs": [

twbell

        $entity = array(
		'factual_id' => "930edc75-4547-4e4f-acfd-f9ebfc8ac122", //will redirect
		'name' => "Denver County Traffic Div",
		'address' => "3280 Downing St",
		'region' => "CO",
		'locality' => "Denver"
		);

	$tableName = "places-us"; 

twbell

CREATE TABLE  `ar` (
	`factual_id` VARCHAR(36) NOT NULL  COMMENT 'Factual ID',
	`name` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Name',
	`address` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Address',
	`locality` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'City',
	`region` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Province',
	`postcode` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Postcode',
	`tel` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Telephone',
	`fax` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Fax',
	`category` VARCHAR(255) DEFAULT NULL COMMENT 'Category',

twbell

{
    "countries": {
	"ar": {
            "country": "Argentina",
            "table": "PfldJg",
            "attributes": {
                "factual_id": {
                    "supported": true,
                    "mapping": "Factual ID"
                },