When suddenly, at midnight, you hear
an invisible procession going by
with exquisite music, voices,
don’t mourn your luck that’s failing now,
work gone wrong, your plans
all proving deceptive – don’t mourn them uselessly.
As one long prepared, and graced with courage,
say goodbye to her, the Alexandria that is leaving.
Above all, don’t fool yourself, don’t say
it was a dream, your ears deceived you:
don’t degrade yourself with empty hopes like these.
As one long prepared, and graced with …

The main concept discussed in A New Kind of Science by Stephen Wolfram is the complexity that results from very simple Cellular Automata. I looked at that in an earlier post Cellular Automata with F#. Chapter four of A New Kind of Science looks at systems based on numbers:

The underlying rules for systems like cellular automata are however usually different from those for systems based on numbers. The main point is that the rules for cellular automata are always local: the new color of any …

Accelerate: The Science of DevOps - Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations (2018) had a huge impact in the technology industry. The book describes models of DevOps capabilities and culture, and how organisations can drive improvement in software delivery and reliability. What most people remember from the book, and the largest impact it’s had on the industry, are what are colloquially referred to as the DORA metrics. Four key indicators which strongly correlate with …

Buried Alive, from the book Livia (1978) in The Avignon Quintet.

A poem filling with water,
A woman swimming across it
Believing it a lake,
The words avail so little,
The water has carried them away
Frail as a drypoint the one kiss,
Renovation of a swimmer’s loving.

Attach a penny calendar to the moon
And cycle down the highways of the need,
The doll will have nothing under her dress;
With an indolence close to godhead
You remain watching, he remains watching.

When she smiles the wrinkles …