Feb 27
Tomorrow… tomorrow…
Tomorrow is my catch-up day - for running, reading, knitting, RSS feeds, and blogging.
I’m woefully behind in all things of this nature. But I will share this comic from xkcd. I sent it to my expectant friends and they enjoyed it.
The rollover caption reads: We are sexy, sexy Von Neumann machines.
I’ll admit - despite my geek status, I didn’t know exactly what a Von Neumann machine was/is. I extrapolated/inferred from the context that it had something to do with a machine for making things. Well, I was sort of right; a von Neumann machine is also known as a self-replicating machine. According to your friend and mine, Wikipedia, a self-replicating machine is:
… an artificial construct that is capable of autonomously manufacturing a copy of itself using simpler components or raw materials taken from its environment. The concept of self-replicating machines has been most notably advanced and examined by, Homer Jacobsen, Edward F. Moore, Freeman Dyson, John von Neumann and in more recent times by K. Eric Drexler.
That struck me as pretty cool. So, I think one thing I’ll have to do is go over to spreadshirt.com and create a t-shirt that proclaims the wearer (who will be a pregnant woman) a “sexy sexy von neumann machine” and get a copy made up for my friend. I think that would be geeky and awesome.
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