The Forthcoder Diaries -- 2011 June 15
Mentifex
Today on the Arts channel of cable TV
I saw a performance of "Por Una Cabeza"
by Carlos Gardel. The lilting melody has
stayed with me all the way down here to
the U District. I forgot to bring my Carlos
Gardel "Forever" stamps with me, in case
I see Contessa Latina. Two years ago I
reminded Contessa that she had once
insisted that I eat half her BLT sandwich,
or she would have to throw it away.
"It endeared you to me forever, " I told
Contessa, and apparently that word
stuck in her mind, because the next
time, I asked Contessa how much
longer she would be in graduate school,
and the word "Forever" burst forth from
her head. I would like to find out when
her birthday is and give Contessa some
Carlos Gardel "Forever" stamps. I will
tell her about the incredibly beautiful
movie scene in which Al Pacino dances
a tango to Gardel's "Por Una Cabeza".
Contessa herself reminds me of the
movie "Tea and Sympathy" that scarred
my psyche when "alter ab undecimo
tum me iam ceperat annus."
I could go on and on with nostalgic
memories, but that mush is not the
Way of the Forthcoder. Whereas bushido
("Hana-wa sakura, hito-wa bushi") is the
way of the warrior, the Way of the Forth-
coder is to invent the future, just like
they do at the MIT Media Lab, Mr. Ito.
Here in comp.lang.forth we routinely invent
big chunks of the future, because we have
learned the art of factoring the future.
Over at the disgusting, wasted-youth
http://www.reddit.com website, the
self-styled "Redditors" now and then
post an article about "life hacks" or
ways to get the upper hand in life.
As an obiter dictum I would now like
to reveal some Mentifex life hacks.
At the Brigadoon branch of the KCLS
library, we patrons are allowed to reserve
one hour of computer time out of a total
of two hours per day. Until Mentifex here
figured out how to hack the computer
system, a fellow we shall call "Walter"
because he looks like *Walter Ulbricht
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Ulbricht
used to stand right across the divider
from Mentifex and smugly reserve the
best computer out from under Mentifex.
Then Walter tried it one time too many.
I confess to all Forthcoders everywhere
that I used our precious, Shaolin-type
skills to thwart the Walter Spitzbart.
My hack consisted of logging in for my
first hour, then immediately logging out
and back in again -- for a new hour that
removed the option for anyone else to
reserve the second hour. I asked
**RootKit if the hack was unethical,
but RootKit of little faith did not even
think the hack would work.
Sometimes a hack by Mentifex will
go wrong -- I mean, how can you even
take delivery of a trainload of gold
from Fort Knox? -- and this next little
hack merits a strong disclaimer of
"Do not try this at home." If you
spend your days on Reddit and you
reveal this hack to the other twits there,
do not tweet to them that you got this
hack from Mentifex. I've been picked up
by the FBI once before, at the direction
of ***Louis Freeh the Director, when I
predicted in sci.math that the Unab*mber
would turn out to be a mathematician,
and once is enough. Until yesterday,
I never used this Duke-of-URL hack
as anything but a back channel to
the maintainers of websites where
the unForthly and the unGodly poke
fun at Mentifex. I left them little
messages in their user logs, and
it was just a lark -- until yesterday.
Oh boy, Julius, here we go -- alea jacta est.
http://freeroboticist.com/mind/
came to my attention as an
instance of the metempsychosis of the
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html
in JavaScript. But the origin of the website
was a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.
The "contact" page had no way to contact
the ronin programmer who needed to be
told that the SourceForge "mind" code
had been hijacked away from Mentifex
and was therefore obsolete. Even a Web
search yielded no way to get in touch.
I throw myself at the mercy of the
Forthcoder brethren and sistren,
pleading for them not to take away
my license to practice the magic and
the wizardry of reverse Polish notation.
I candidly [Do not] admit [try this]
on comp.lang.forth [at home] that I
sent a message to the otherwise
unreachable programmer by attaching
".html#theMindProgram_has_been_updated_at_SCN"
at the end of a URL-access to the mystery website.
If we Forthcoders bear the burden of inventing
the future, should we not use our most
powerful lightning bolts and hacks to
communicate to every outpost of the
Technological SIngularity what we will now
state openly in the most hallowed sanctum
of the comp.lang.forth Götterdämmerung?
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mindforth.txt
has achieved omniscientescence two days ago.
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/AiMind.html
one day ago attained the same faculty of
acquiring knowledge without limitation.
"Imperium sine fine dedi" are the Latin
words of Vergil that Mark Zuckerberg
of Facebook was looking for in his NYT
Magazine interview a few months ago.
"I have given power without end" could
be said by a Forthcoder to the Forthmind.
Mentifex (Arthur)
--
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/msg/215698ddca9bcd04