Car Crash: A Story
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(cdr)
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You should have said what he predicted you were going to say. Now you broke the space-time continuum.
Anyone read that Terry Pratchett story where there's a fortune teller and the dialogue lines are in a funny order because she always replies to the question that comes next? And she becomes pissed off if the other character does not ask the question she foresaw.
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from the parenting thread..
In the mid-term near future I'll be shopping for DrivingSchool++ -
that is - one level up from "enough tooling around to pass the exam"So my kids can avoid: "Turn into the skid??? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!!!... aaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Nearby recommendations?
Filed under: Yes, I have crossed the streams
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Not sure where you are, but if you can swing "drive into the wilderness of West Virginia where cell phones don't work", this: http://www.accidentavoidance.com
Its about an hour from Washington DC at a fantastic little race track and run by the training school that owns the place. They do tons of government, law enforcement and military training there, and are well respected and resourced as a result. I haven't done that particular course, but I know people who have and it comes well recommended.
In particular the way they teach 'turn into the skid' on the skidpad is awesome. They break this out over lunch at regular track days, too, so I've actually done it. They have a Crown Vic that they've taken away the driver's pedals and given them to the passenger. You therefore just straight up don't have the ability to pucker up and chicken out, because the psycho next to you has the only way to actually make it stop. The only thing left to you is steering, so you can concentrate on the actual skills you're trying to learn (whether it's recovery or 'hold the skid forever like a badass drifer')
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perfect!!
Summit Point - that's what kept Bonderant in the forefront of my thinking on this... I've been substituting Sears Point (where Bonderant was) with Summit Point.
I'm within about 20 miles of you... :stalk.mp4: ...
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I'd be willing to bet secret service Suburbans are not exactly stock. There's no way the president is being protected by something that can almost be run down by every random Joe on the street
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I'd be willing to bet secret service Suburbans are not exactly stock. There's no way the president is being protected by something that can almost be run down by every random Joe on the street
That's what the AH-64E's are for. get too close and the Suburbans don't have to outrun you, they just have to wait for the hellfire missiles to make you go boom.
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A formidable chopper
indeed it is
but by Chaos is it ugly!
i've seen uglier.
[spoiler] [/spoiler]
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That paintjob looks like a cross between Cthulhu, the Joker, and a giant squid, and for some reason has Dark Side Yoda on the flank
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The camo hair-bow isn't standard issue? There's a red-head version, too.
木更津茜ちゃん&痛ヘリコプター・痛コブラ萌キャラ登場木更津駐屯地航空祭AH-1 – 04:47
— RUNWAY FUN
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Anyone read that Terry Pratchett story where there's a fortune teller and the dialogue lines are in a funny order because she always replies to the question that comes next? And she becomes pissed off if the other character does not ask the question she foresaw.
Which one? Mrs. Cake appears in more than one book, although the one you're probably referring to is:
although, from memory, she also does this same sort of routine in
and possibly in
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It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
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It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
No one should be expected to understand a Lisp joke, the USA defines such things as cruel and unusual punishment.
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dystopian suspension of disbelief at that point
Starting with the agents shooting up the passengers in a car that could be automatic, not even considering the thought that the car could be stopped, autonomous or not, by disabling the engine.
Quite possibly through EMP.
And we already have ways to do this right now.
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The first of those was my introduction to the series, and still remains one of my favorites... Any with Death or Susan as main characters were instant favorites, though.
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No one should be expected to understand a Lisp joke, the USA defines such things as cruel and unusual punishment.
What's interesting is that most people who make or repeat Lisp jokes don't actually use Lisp.
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What's interesting is that most people who make or repeat Lisp jokes don't actually use Lisp.
Why, whatever do you mean?
Do you know what LISP stands for?
Let's insert some parentheses.
Filed under: I don't use LISP
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That's because if you use Lisp, you're too far gone to have any humor left
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That's because if you use Lisp, you're too far gone to have any humor left
Paging @ScholRLEA...
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Death is such a great character in the series. It's a shame he had to collect Sir Pratchett. For that matter, it's a shame that his daughter, Rhianna, has decided to end the series.
I'm not sure that people are even aware that Rhianna Pratchett is an author. Granted, she writes more stuff for games than actual books. For instance, she writes the plot for the Overlord game series, including Overlord: Fellowship of Evil, the Diablo clone set to come out soon.
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For that matter, it's a shame that his daughter, Rhianna, has decided to end the series.
Look, it's that or have another Dune.
I didn't know she was an author either, but if she takes after her father at all, she can only be at the very least rather good at it. Even so, changing authors is enough to ruin anythingExcept the Wheel of Time.
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Only if I continue to not receive an explanation :) and I may still require one after that / then if it is not a very good joke
Open Question: Are there enough people who are familiar enough with Lisp to properly understand the joke to form a quorum to award the badge? And should they get it if there isn't?
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Only if I continue to not receive an explanation
car
andcdr
are two very basic Lisp functions which return the first item in a list and the rest of the list respectively.if it is not a very good joke
It isn't. Do you still want the ?
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No. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror of a morning, and say that it was badge well earned.
And that is the issue with subtle sarcasm....
Seriously though, thank you for the explanation, I can move on now.
It is a shame that
(car)
is not the last list item, because then it would have been a very good jokeCompulsive "After Edit": In many languages an array index of -1 is an alias to the last item in the array. Is there something like
(car -1)
?
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Compulsive "After Edit": In many languages an array index of -1 is an alias to the last item in the array. Is there something like (car -1)?
Are you crazy? Lisp is the list processing language, not the array processing language.
Filed under: but I bet there's a macro for that
Also, I thought car was for getting the value at the head of the list, and cdr just got you the tail of the list, ie the next linked-list item. Seems strange to call ‘the rest of the list’ ‘the last item in the list’, but that's using a value of the word strange that is synonymous with the word lisp, making this addendum mostly pointless.
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Lisp is the list processing language, not the array processing language.
I think I get that: list, array; tomato, tomato. Meh!
Also, I thought car was for getting the value at the head of the list, and cdr just got you the tail of the list, ie the next linked-list item. Seems strange to call ‘the rest of the list’ ‘the last item in the list’, but that's using a value of the word strange that is synonymous with the word lisp, making this addendum mostly pointless.
Not too sure if this means that you are with me or against me, but I am not worried about that. To help, here's my thinking:
Desktop Icons are in an Array "somewhere" with (if nothing else) a "time last used attribute". The List is sorted, most recent first, as it is easier to truncated the end of the Array. Some arbitrary (time) calculation is made and the List snipped at that point.
The act of removal of a "unused" control on a dashboard because it is the
(car)
control - remember this all started with the hypothetical removal of the Start Button, would then be very funny.
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@riking said:
The SUV strained to get away, but the Accord was dumping all its fuel into the injectors. It couldn't last. But it didn't need to.
This upsets me, they obviously know nothing about cars. This would simply make the mixture too rich and reduce power output. Despite what any ricer teenager will tell you, there is no way to make an unmodded, 4cyl honda engine make more than roughly 180 HP. Meanwhile, SUVs like that used for VIPs often have massive engines with turbochargers and aggressive tuning to prevent exactly this situation.
Technically, couldn't the quote be understood to mean that the engine was operating well above its expected RPM? It would be burning more fuel and have more power.
I was going to mention that any car that doesn't cut its engine when the key is removed must be considered broken in a deep sense. Nevermind.
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Not too sure if this means that you are with me or against
I'm a free spirit. I just say whatever pops into my head.
I don't actually speak lisp[1], but here's how understand it. Lists are built by consing items onto an existing list, so your desktop might look like
(cons start (cons indicator (cons etc etc))
. Calling cdr on that would return(cons indicator (cons etc etc))
, making the joke.
[1] Filed under: it's just parentheses, how hard can it be?
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Compulsive "After Edit": In many languages an array index of -1 is an alias to the last item in the array. Is there something like (car -1)?
Paging @ScholRLEA and @Magus ...
I think there is, but don't remember offhand and CBA to look it up.
Are you crazy? Lisp is the list processing language, not the array processing language.
Filed under: but I bet there's a macro for that
Common Lisp has arrays, but that would probably ruin your joke, so forget I said anything.
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I don't know enough lisp to know the answer to that, and in languages I use, that would be an ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException.
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Gives a whole new meaning to crashing
And a more literal one to "blue screen of death".
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On re-reading my post I may have stated a misleading non-truth. What I meant to say is "in many (some) languages, array manipulating functions accept an index of -1 as an alias for last element"
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Don't examine this too closely
Prolog says: no. And if I were looking for holes in the plot, I'd be wondering why they didn't target the tires first.
Anyway, I was wondering whether the maximum power of a commercial engine could be increased substantially by going overspeed. I guess you could, if only for short durations, but my knowledge of engines is very limited.
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Hey, I already liked the post with the joke in it. I know not many people here have used Lisp since their Programming Language Concepts course in college (or whatever it was called in the university you went to), but really, the CONS/CAR/CDR triad are second best known (and to many, second most perplexing) part of most Lisps, if only because the names are so odd (and the explanation usually just raises more questions than it answers).
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Seems strange to call ‘the rest of the list’ ‘the last item in the list’
In racket they use
first
andrest
, which is kind of nice.
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I don't know of any Lisp that would do that, no. There are list index functions in most Lisps (in CL it's
(nth index lst)
, in Scheme it's(list-ref lst index)
, and Clojure(nth lst index)
), though AFAIK none of them work with negative indices. Both CL and Clojure have(last)
specifically to get the last element of a list, and Scheme implementations usually do, too; a reverse(nth)
function is pretty common, and easily implemented when not already available using(reverse)
.
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It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
I believe it's @accalia who earns those for jokes she shouldn't be expected to have gotten.
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@antiquarian said:
It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
I believe it's @accalia who earns those for jokes she shouldn't be expected to have gotten.
And she is fucking pissed about that.
just for the record.
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Usually the exhausts of stock engines are just slightly restrictive, to provide slight backpressure and therefore boost torque at low RPMs, even if pushing the honda engine above its 8200 fuel cut didn't kill it nearly instantly (engine stress increases with the square of RPM, not linearly) there would be significant pumping losses from trying to force the exhaust gasses out the back. At most it might gain a few horsepower.
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@FrostCat said:
@antiquarian said:
It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
I believe it's @accalia who earns those for jokes she shouldn't be expected to have gotten.
And she is fucking pissed about that.
just for the record.
And you're not the only one
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@antiquarian said:
It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
I believe it's @accalia who earns those for jokes she shouldn't be expected to have gotten.
I thought she usually gets them for jokes she tries to build on in a way that appears to imply she didn't get the original joke.
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@accalia said:
@FrostCat said:
@antiquarian said:
It's a standard Lisp joke. Would you like a whoosh ?
I believe it's @accalia who earns those for jokes she shouldn't be expected to have gotten.
And she is fucking pissed about that.
just for the record.
And you're not the only oneAt least you aren't alone with the Volkswagen whoosh anymore.
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Do you know what LISP stands for?
Let's insert some parentheses.That's kinda lame. I learned it as Lots of Irritating, Stupid Parentheses.
Fortunately, I've only had to look at Lisp once since college.
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That's kinda lame. I learned it as Lots of Irritating, Stupid Parentheses.
Yeah, but here's the backstory:
I was trying to learn LISP and I kept missing a single paren here or there, so I would write something and then go back through and count left and right parens to verify. I ask a friend who knew LISP, but admittedly disliked it, for any tips and he told me that joke.
Since that day, I cannot hear LISP without thinking of that joke.