Building Turing machines

Two recent items of internews (internet+news = stories that are popular for a few hours) regarding Turing machines, my second-favorite type of machine.*

Massive in-game Turing machine built inside a mechanical game (via BoingBoing).

Actual real-life Turing machine built inside this universe (via BoingBoing, HackADay, Slashdot, Gizmodo).


This post's theme word: sedulous, "involving great care, effort, and persistence." Any Turing machine construction, whether engineering or mathematical, is of necessity quite sedulous.

*Printing presses. Nothing can beat 'em.

Taxes

I'm working on my Canadian taxes (I have an automatic extension on my US taxes, so I'll do them second).

I was amused by this sarcastic art commentary (NYTimes) on tax forms and the idea of "self-employment." Or whatever it's a commentary on. I like the redesign, anyway. And I love the footnote.


This post's theme word: quango, "a semipublic administrative body outside the civil service but with financial support from and senior appointments made by the government," originally from QUasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organization.