luser droog

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I've written a postscript interpreter and a postscript debugger as well as some pretty pictures, available at http://code.google.com/p/xpost/downloads/list. Xpost has fewer features than ghostscript (most notably, no definefont, no <</dictionary/syntax>>, no garbage collection, output devices limited to PNG, PDF(rather bloated, by default), and X11 windows); but for certain tasks, this proves to make xpost faster than ghostscript (computation-heavy, memory-light programs mostly).

The profession of scribe was considered to be most honourable, and its rewards were great, for no rank and no dignity were too high for the educated scribe.

E.A. Wallis Budge, The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians

Positive philosophy stands in a very ambiguous relation to Kant's views. It accepts them and does not accept them: it accepts and considers them correct in their relation to the direct experience of the organs of sense -- what we see, hear, touch. That is, positive philosophy recognizes the subjectivity of our receptivity, and recognizes everything that we perceive in objects as imposed upon them by ourselves -- but this in relation to the direct experiences of the senses only.

When it concerns itself with "scientific experience" however, in which precise instruments and calculations are used, positive philosophy evidently considers Kant's view in relation to that invalid, assuming tht "scientific experience" makes known to us the very substance of things, the true causes of our sensations -- or if it does not do so now, it brings us closer to the truth of things, and can inform us later.

... Of course it is possible not to know Kant, but it is impossible to controvert him.

Pyotr Dem'anovich Ouspensky, Tertium Organum

It is impossible to disassociate language from science or science from language, because every natural science always involves three things: the sequence of phenomena on which the science is based, the abstract concepts which call these phenomena to mind, and the words in which the concepts are expressed. To call forth a concept, a word is needed; to portray a phenomenon, a concept is needed. All three mirror one and the same reality.

Antoine Lavoisier, 1789

[L]ogic, in so far as it exhibits the universal and necessary laws of the understanding, must in these very laws present us with criteria of truth. Whatever contradicts these rules is false, because thereby the understanding is made to contradict its own universal laws of thought; that is, to contradict itself.

Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, I, 2nd Part, II. Of Transcendental Logic

He who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect.

Leonardo Da Vinci, Thoughts on Art and Life