A Statistical Analysis of the Work of Bob Ross

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-statistical-analysis-of-the-work-of-bob-ross/?2

Bowie Bond

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bowie-bond.asp

An asset-backed security;which uses the current and future revenue from albums recorded by musician David Bowie as collateral. The 25 albums a Bowie bond uses as their underlying assets were recorded prior to 1990. David Bowie used the proceeds from the bond sale to purchase old recordings of his music. In creating the bonds, he ultimately forfeited royalties for the life of the bond (10 years).

Shakespeare Programming Language

http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/47433/1972

Actual code:

The Marvelously Insane FizzBuzzJazz Program.

Lady Capulet, an old bossy woman that loves to count.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, an old fart who adores to spit out letters.


          Act I: The only one of them.

          Scene I: The Archbishop of Canterbury is a bastard.

[Enter The Archbishop of Canterbury and Lady Capulet]

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 You are nothing!

          Scene II: Count, Lady Capulet, count.

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 You are as beautiful as the sum of yourself and a cat!

Lady Capulet:
 Am I worse than the square of the product of the sum of a warm gentle flower and a rose
 and my pretty angel?

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 If not, let us proceed to Scene VIII.

          Scene III: Fizzing to no end!

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 Is the remainder of the quotient between yourself and the sum of a happy cow and a
 chihuahua as good as nothing?

Lady Capulet:
 If not, let us proceed to Scene IV. Thou art as handsome as the sum of the sum of
 the sweetest reddest prettiest warm gentle peaceful fair rose and a happy proud kindgom
 and a big roman. Speak thy mind!

 Thou art as fair as the sum of thyself and a honest delicious cute blossoming peaceful
 hamster. Thou art as cunning as the sum of the sum of an embroidered King and a horse
 and thyself. Speak thy mind!

 Thou art as amazing as the sum of the sum of a good happy proud rich hero and a hair and
 thyself! Speak thy mind.

 Speak your mind!

          Scene IV: Buzz me up, Scotty!

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 Is the remainder of the quotient between yourself and the sum of a gentle happy cow and a
 chihuahua as good as nothing?

Lady Capulet:
 If not, let us proceed to Scene V. Thou art as handsome as the sum of the sweetest reddest
 prettiest warm gentle peaceful fair rose and a small town. Speak your mind!

 You are as prompt as the sum of yourself and a big healthy peaceful fair rich kingdom. You
 are as loving as the sum of the sum of an embroidered King and a horse and thyself. You are
 as amazing as the sum of yourself and a cute fine smooth sweet hamster. Speak your mind!

 You are as prompt as the sum of the sum of yourself and an amazing cunning Lord and a hair.
 Speak your mind.

 Speak your mind!

          Scene V: Milady, there is jazz in my pants.

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 Is the remainder of the quotient between yourself and a proud noble kingdom as good as
 nothing?

Lady Capulet:
 If not, let us proceed to Scene VI. You are as charming as the sum of the sum of a noble
 cunning gentle embroidered brave mighty King and a big warm chihuahua and an amazing pony!
 Speak your mind!

 You are as prompt as the sum of yourself and a big black sweet animal. You are as noble as
 the sum of the sum of a gentle trustworthy lantern and yourself and a hog. Speak your
 mind!

 You are as bold as the sum of the sum of yourself and a good delicious healthy sweet horse
 and my smooth cute embroidered purse. You are as peaceful as the sum of a flower and
 yourself. Speak your mind.

 Speak your mind!

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 Let us proceed to Scene VII.

          Scene VI: Output or die!

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 Open your heart!

          Scene VII: Oh, to jump the line.

Lady Capulet:
 You are as handsome as the sum of a proud noble rich kingdom and a rural town. Speak your
 mind! You are as gentle as the sum of the sum of yourself and a green mistletoe and my
 father. Speak your mind!

The Archbishop of Canterbury:
 We must return to Scene II.

          Scene VIII: Goodbye, cruel world!

[Exeunt]

What ISIS Really Wants

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

It’s hard to overstate how hamstrung the Islamic State will be by its radicalism. The modern international system, born of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, relies on each state’s willingness to recognize borders, however grudgingly. For the Islamic State, that recognition is ideological suicide. Other Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, have succumbed to the blandishments of democracy and the potential for an invitation to the community of nations, complete with a UN seat. Negotiation and accommodation have worked, at times, for the Taliban as well. (Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan exchanged ambassadors with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates, an act that invalidated the Taliban’s authority in the Islamic State’s eyes.) To the Islamic State these are not options, but acts of apostasy.

Spiral

http://xkcd.com/spiral/

Why the Euro will ultimately fail

http://www.maximise.dk/why-the-euro-will-ultimately-fail/

This disaster was entirely avoidable if the Euro bureaucrats had bothered to read Robert Mundall and Marcus Flemming’s seminal paper from 1962 which stated that according to well established macro economic models it was impossible to have domestic fiscal autonomy, fixed exchange rates, and free capital flows: no more than two of those objectives could be met. They won the nobel prize in economics for this in 1992, so it’s not exactly an obscure crackpot theory.

Since the euro is, by definition, the currency used in the eurozone the exchange rates must be fixed. One euro in Greece is the same as one euro in Germany. The same goes for free capital flows, if you have one euro in Spain and can’t spend it in Germany the eurozone doesn’t make much sense. So if it has to work the Euro zone members must give up their fiscal autonomy. What does this mean?

A Tale of Two Zippers

http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364

This is an interesting blog post about how zippers are made, and the tiny difference between automated and non automated zippers.  He has some other good stuff on the blog too.

dtrx: Intelligent archive extraction

http://brettcsmith.org/2007/dtrx/

dtrx stands for “Do The Right Extraction.” It's a tool for Unix-like systems that takes all the hassle out of extracting archives.

This works really well for just extracting every kind of archive on Linux.  It has good options for things like creating a folder if the files inside are all at the top level (so you don't end up with 100 files in whatever folder you are working in).  Works well as a shortcut in whatever file manager you are using.

Showcase your language one vote at a time

http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/44680/showcase-your-language-one-vote-at-a-time-experimental-challenge

If you hang out on Stack Overflow at all you've probably seen this, as it's been near the top of hot questions for weeks, but I figured I'd post it as I've found it very interesting.

The way it works is people posted a language along with an interesting fact.  Then as people upvote those languages people could edit them with examples of interesting code snippets of a length equal to the upvotes.  In other words, if a language had 4 upvotes there would be 4 examples of interesting code snippets, of lengths 1, 2, 3, or 4 characters.

Horror Hotel

Jeff pointed out that the song Horror Hotel sounds like Orajel.  So, I made this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW0EUePqY6w

There's also the full speed version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEzk3yKCHqc