About

I'm Mike Pope. I live in the Seattle area. I've been a technical writer and editor for over 35 years. I'm interested in software, language, music, movies, books, motorcycles, travel, and ... well, lots of stuff.

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There are two kinds of geniuses, the “ordinary” and the “magicians.” An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. They are, to use mathematical jargon, in the orthogonal complement of where we are and the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark. They seldom, if ever, have students because they cannot be emulated and it must be terribly frustrating for a brilliant young mind to cope with the mysterious ways in which the magician’s mind works. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest caliber.

Mark Kac (quoted by James Gleick)



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Blog Statistics

Dates
First entry - 6/27/2003
Most recent entry - 4/17/2025

Totals
Posts - 2657
Comments - 2678
Hits - 2,737,759

Averages
Entries/day - 0.33
Comments/entry - 1.01
Hits/day - 344

Updated every 30 minutes. Last: 7:38 PM Pacific


  08:49 AM

I realized belatedly that as of last Thursday, I've officially been an editor for three years. Unofficially, of course, it's more like 40 years.

How to read the New Yorker in 10 Easy Steps. Much-needed advice on how to keep up. [via grow-a-brain]

(Some) Computer Technicians Are Creepy. Leon Bambrick, author of TimeSnapper, a logging program, discovers what's been happening on his computer while it's in the shop. Yikes.

On the crossword. Michael Covarrubias on linguistic tactics for solving crosswords.

Algebra, Geometry, Functions: At 38, Taking the SAT Is Tough. How do you think you'd score on the SAT today, 20 (or 30, or 35) years later? This is sort of topical for us at home, coz we've been looking at GRE study materials. The math stuff has long since evaporated, and a surprising amount of the English seems more ambiguous and open to interpretation than it did in (ahem) 1978.

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