Email uncovered from anti-terrorism surveillance

Be it noted that the following message was intercepted in the name of his majesty King Louis, as part of the ongoing war on Bonapartist sympathisers and other Terrorists.

To: barondanglars@danglarsbank.fr
From: the.count.of.montecristo@montecristo.net.it 

Hey "Baron" Danglars, what's this I hear about you dissing me on Facebook? You know you got off lightly last year. Maybe you should check the status on your friends' pages? Last I looked, Fernand's status was "mort" and de Villefort's was "fou". Also, been a while since Caderousse updated his myspace, if you get my drift. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, man. 

Also, leave Albert alone. Kid turned out OK even though his parents were cousins. 

In answer to your question "How did Edmond get to be such a Count?", the answer is: like you, I bought my title. But I carry it off with a lot more style. 

And you spelled "Count" wrong. Moron.

Qurt

Today I got to try some Khazakh Qurt (құрт). Looks like shortbread, breaks and crunches like shortbread. Tastes like Cheshire cheese.

I reckon it would be good with pickles and beer.

Why we need more female computer programmers

Because we need more computer programmers.

Let me put it another way:

Widespread illiteracy is a problem regardless of how it is distributed among different sections of the population.

And the same applies to engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, and educators (with considerable overlap).

Speaking in London today

I'm off to London today to speak at a game developer event organised by TIGA. It's a bit last-minute; I have a presentation ready, but am slightly under-prepared. For example, I don't know what TIGA is.

Update: totally got away wi' it - totally got away wi' the whole thing.

Not my cup of, er, *probably* milk

I almost want to believe this is a joke:

"Lait d'homme". Man milk? SRSLY?

OK, "the manly chocolate milk for men with added man"? I'm trying really hard to construe this innocently.  Wait, what's on the label of that bottle?

Sadly (or fortunately) you can't really make that out.  It says - I kid you not - "40% Higher Protein". I think they are going for a rather specialised market, to which I do not belong.

This does not prove what you think it proves...

I get these e-mails occasionally:

Hello, Patrick (if that is your real name). That I am only seeing your e-mail in my spam folder proves that Bayesian spam filtering works better than e-mail marketing.

It seems to me this is because one is grounded in mathematics, and the other is grounded in wishful thinking and bullshit.