You Can Always Adopt

‘ You Can Always Look It up ’ . . . or Can You ?

Auntie Mame with its Park Avenue version of my progressive experience, you will know that progressive theories in the 1940s were mainly confined to private schools; they hadn't seeped very far into the public school domain. At Metairie Park, my entire ninth-grade curriculum consisted of two " integrated, " " multidisciplinary " projects, as they would now be called. They were: participating in ...

Speed Reading: You Can't Always Get What You Want, but Can You Sometimes Get What You Need?

You Aren't Always What You Eat

The maxim ‘‘you are what you eat’’ goes only so far. The bacteria inhabiting our guts, which outnumber our own cells by perhaps 10 to 1, are commonly thought to reflect our diets. But other factors from geography to host physiology can also affect gut microbes, and sorting out their provenance is critical because they can affect our health for good or ill, from enhancing immune function to incr...

Can we always adopt the longest-match rule in a scanner?

The lexical analyzer of a compiler usually adopts the longest-match rule to resolve ambiguities when deciding the next token in the input stream. However, that rule may not be applicable in all situations. Because the longest-match rule is widely used, a language designer or a compiler implementor frequently overlooks the subtle implications of the rule. The consequence is either a flawed langu...

Do You Always Know What You Are Spraying?

Life happens and things can go wrong. Accidents and spills can occur. Winds can shift, and the pesticide application can blow back onto the applicator’s skin. Equipment can break down, and hoses can rupture. Eyes can be splashed into. If the label is readily available, first-aid information can be obtained in a matter of minutes if not seconds. But if the applicator has to first determine what ...