The basic idea is this: It is impossible (in most programming languages) for a program to manipulate itself (i.e. its textual representation — or a representation from which its textual representation can be easily derived) directly.

So to make this possible anyway, we write the build the program from two parts, one which call the code and one which we call the data. The data represents (the textual form of) the code, and it is derived in an algorithmic way from it (mostly, by putting quotation marks around it, but sometimes in a slightly more complicated way). The code uses the data to print the code (which is easy because the data represents the code); then it uses the data to print the data (which is possible because the data is obtained by an algorithmic transformation from the code).

This idea is summarized by the sentence “quine ‘quine’”. Here, the verb to quine (invented by Douglas R. Hofstadter) means “to write (a sentence fragment) a first time, and then to write it a second time, but with quotation marks around it” (for example, if we quine “say”, we get “say ‘say’”). Thus, if we quine “quine”, we get “quine ‘quine’”, so that the sentence “quine ‘quine’” is a quine… In this linguistic analogy, the verb “to quine”, plays the role of the code, and “quine” in quotation marks plays the role of the data.

We will henceforth use the words “code” and “data” a lot, to designate the code and data parts of the quine as just explained.

If we are to take an analogy with cellular biology (thanks to Douglas Hofstadter again), what I have called the “code” would be the cell, and the “data” would be the cell's DNA: the cell is able to create a new cell using the DNA, and this involves, among other things, replicating the DNA itself. So the DNA (the data) contains all the necessary information for the replication, but without the cell (the code), or at least some other code to make the data live, it is a useless, inert, piece of data.

Note how the data may contain (depending on how it's interpreted) bits that aren't used to write the code, but are still copied when the data is written on the output. Such bits are called introns, in analogy with the parts of the genetic code which aren't used to produce proteins. The example we gave above had an intro (the string sx), clearly marked as such. Quite obviously an intron can be modified with great ease; it is a kind of subliminal information that is reproduced with the quine, although it is not necessary to the quine. The possible existence of introns will be the key feature making multi-quines (something we will talk about later) possible.

via madore.org.

Anthropologie has developed a new way to destroy trees by offering a US$98 iPhone dock created from a round of hickory wood with branches attached ... and that's pretty much it. No speakers. No clock. It's enough to make you want to go out, scavenge a couple of dead tree limbs and make one for yourself.

via TUAW.

That's just silly.

In 2007, C. Martin Gaskell, an astronomer at the University of Nebraska, was a leading candidate for a job running an observatory at the University of Kentucky. But then somebody did what one does nowadays: an Internet search. That search turned up evidence of Dr. Gaskell’s evangelical Christian faith.

The University of Kentucky hired someone else. And Dr. Gaskell sued the institution.

Whether his faith cost him the job and whether certain religious beliefs may legally render people unfit for certain jobs are among the questions raised by the case, Gaskell v. University of Kentucky.

In late November, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the case could go forward, and a trial is scheduled for February. The case represents a rare example, experts say, of a lawsuit by a scientist who alleges academic persecution for his religious faith.

Both sides agree that Dr. Gaskell, 57, was invited to the university, in Lexington, for a job interview. In his lawsuit, he says that at the end of the interview, Michael Cavagnero, the chairman of the physics and astronomy department, asked about his religious beliefs.

“Cavagnero stated that he had personally researched Gaskell’s religious beliefs,” the lawsuit says. According to Dr. Gaskell, the chairman said Dr. Gaskell’s religious beliefs and his “expression of them would be a matter of concern” to the dean.

Federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, so interviewers typically do not ask about an applicant’s faith. Depositions and e-mails submitted as evidence suggest why Dr. Cavagnero may have raised the issue with Dr. Gaskell.

For the plaintiff, the smoking gun is an e-mail dated Sept. 21, 2007, from a department staff member, Sally A. Shafer, to Dr. Cavagnero and another colleague. Ms. Shafer wrote that she did an Internet search on Dr. Gaskell and found links to his notes for a lecture that explores, among other topics, how the Bible could relate to contemporary astronomy.

“Clearly this man is complex and likely fascinating to talk with,” Ms. Shafer wrote, “but potentially evangelical. If we hire him, we should expect similar content to be posted on or directly linked from the department Web site.”

via NYTimes.com.

In the end, Adam Wheeler, a 24-year-old who conned his way into Harvard and benefited from more than $40,000 (£26,000) in grants and prizes, flew too close to the sun. Not content with having bragged his way into one of the world's most prestigious universities, he felt driven to apply – equally fraudulently – for Rhodes and Fulbright scholarships. The application was a deception too far, and led to the discovery of a string of lies that this week earned Wheeler 10 years on probation and the order to repay Harvard $45,806. He pleaded guilty to all 20 counts against him, including larceny, identity fraud and pretending to hold a degree.

"I'm ashamed and embarrassed by what I've done," he told a Massachusetts court in a voice so quiet it was barely above a whisper. "As much as possible, I want to put this behind me and move forward."

Wheeler's impressive record of deceit began in 2007 when he was expelled from Bowdoin College in Maine for plagiarism. Instead of reflecting on the wrong he had done, he went the other direction, developing a whole new persona and turning lying into an art form.

His successful Harvard application claimed that he had graduated from the elite Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts – in fact he had gone to a state high school in Delaware – and had an impeccable record of academic excellence at MIT. Once having fraudulently gained entry to America's most revered ivory tower, he pursued his fabrications with what prosecutors told the court was compulsive zeal.

As the Harvard Crimson newspaper identified, he created a resume that boasted the authorship of two books and co-authorship of four others, the delivery of lectures in Armenian studies and unblemished grades – all of it hogwash. He also won the $4,000 Hoopes Prize, $2,000 Sargent Prize and an $8,000 Rockefeller research grant, all through plagiarism.

via The Guardian.

When Apple opened a new store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in 2006 it received an unusual complaint. Not the usual New York variety—you’re blocking the view I paid good money for, or you’re gentrifying the neighbourhood I just discovered. No, this new flagship store was criticised by an Islamist website. The steel-and-glass cube, the zealots complained, was meant to invoke the obsidian cube at the Kaaba in Mecca, and insult Islam. The story was ridiculous—it was one extremist website (albeit a big one), and the clever fanatics running it had only seen the cube with a black tarp over it, while it was under construction. A number of New York Muslims stood up to say that they loved the new store. But it isn’t insane to call Apple’s stores Meccas. Beautiful inside and usually outside too, they are temples to devotees of Apple’s gorgeous products. Unlike most gadget-makers, Apple sells more than sleekly designed toys. It sells a way of life and a way of being. Call it Appleism.

Appleism isn’t quite a religion, but it features an almost godlike leader, Steve Jobs. And he even came back from the dead—fired by the board in 1985, he was rehired after a slump in 1997, and revived Apple’s fortunes. Many fans view Apple with devotion: Tony Curtis, who died in October, was buried with his iPhone, like a pharaoh anxious to update his Facebook status from the afterlife.

With any faith, it is fun to focus on the fanatics, but not very illuminating. On a recent trip to the Fifth Avenue store, not many faces fitted the stereotype of Apple partisans as hip, rich, Western youth. There was a man who looked like a diplomat with the United Arab Emirates’ flag on his lapel. A gaggle of teenage boys from Brazil horsed around in Portuguese. A red-haired youngster put down his Good News Bible to play an online game called “Combat Arms”. A middle-aged couple used the Bed, Bath & Beyond website. Apple’s success has transcended the asymmetrical-jeans-and-black-framed-glasses market. It is now a movement for the masses.

via More Intelligent Life.

Google began as a smarter way to find things on the internet; it is now a cloud of services that pervades every aspect of our lives. We google a good restaurant, google reviews of it on other websites, find it on Google Maps, google to check if the train is on time, and Gmail our friends to let them know we might be 15 minutes late.

Increasingly, we may do all of these things on a smartphone powered by Google’s Android operating system. Google makes no actual phones itself. But as it has licensed Android to more and more phonemakers, it is, for a company that makes no gadgets, the biggest competitor to the world’s most successful gadget-maker. Google has taken a big bet on making Googleism something we walk around with too.

It wasn’t always so. Only a year or two ago, Apple and Google were so comfortably different that Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, was able to sit on Apple’s board (from 2006 until 2009). “Steve [Jobs] and I are very close personal friends,” Schmidt said this summer. “I believe he’s the best CEO in the world by any measure.” Their companies could have been a match made in heaven: Apple’s gorgeous devices running Google’s miraculous services. But smartphones proved too attractive for Google to leave the field to others. Android is now the bestselling smartphone system, after passing sales of the iPhone late in 2010. Jobs implied that Google had violated a tacit division of turf, pointing out at a conference in June, “we didn’t go into search” and “we’re not going into search”. Radiating self-belief as usual, he told the same audience that he would not be removing Google searchboxes from Apple’s devices, saying “right now, we have the better product”.

The two companies have taken entirely different approaches to the mobile war. Apple’s Apple-made devices allow only Apple-approved applications (apps) on the handset. By contrast, now that it has moved into the phone business, Google gives Android away—it does not sell it—to be installed on dozens of phone models made by a host of phonemakers, including Sony, Motorola, Samsung, LG, HTC and others. Android’s code is open, and the phonemakers can tinker with it to suit their needs (though Google tries to maintain a basic set of standards, so that an app built for one Android phone will work on another). And anyone who can create an Android app can get it into Google’s Android Market, the equivalent of the App Store. Apple is gorgeous but far more sealed and controlled. Eric Schmidt talked about the difference in July when he visited The Economist in London. “Google has a completely different world model,” he said. “The Apple view is coherently closed. Ours is the inverse model: the web, openness, all the choices, all the voices. And that experiment is running.”

Zoom from the edge of the universe to the quantum foam of spacetime and learn the scale of things along the way!

via HTwins.net.

It's not everyday that ‘Britain's best cooking family' award goes to three passionate foodies from Chennai. Meet Priya, Geetha and Rajee who have showcased South Indian vegetarian cuisine on the global stage.

It's hard to believe this is happening on BBC 2. A largely British population has tuned in to watch Priya rustle up a batch of crispy, golden-brown masala vadais and deftly chop a raw mango for a thunda maanga oorgai; her aunt Geetha is working on the fragrant tomato and onion rice, and a gorgeously fluffy beans paruppu usili; meanwhile her grand-aunt Rajee is carefully deep frying nendaranga chips, having just tweaked a time honoured carrot halwa recipe with vanilla pods and whipped cream to suit the British palate. Not surprisingly, the charismatic celebrity chefs Simon King and Dave Myers, (aka Hairy Bikers), are, by the Grand Finals, smitten by the ‘cleverly aromatic' South Indian cuisine, impressed by the flair and finesse displayed by the trio and happily award ‘Britain's best cooking family' title to the delighted women!

Hailing from Chennai, and now long-time residents of the U.K., the Raman family — Priya Raman and Geetha Varadhan from York and Rajee Rajagopal from Kent — were short-listed from hundreds of hopeful applicants across the country, to take part in the highly popular TV series (‘The Hairy Bikers' Cook Off') to find the most accomplished cooking family in Britain. “Initially, we weren't sure of lasting beyond a couple of rounds,” admits Priya. “The Bikers really love their meat, and there we were, going for a pure-vegetarian South Indian cuisine!” Besides, while ‘curry' is remarkably well known in Britain, not many had heard of ‘creamy-yoghurty stew' (morkozhambu) and ‘carrot and lentil salad' (kosmalli) until the Ramans introduced them to these delicacies.

via The Hindu.