One of my quests during the research project I did last summer was to find a way to simulate pointers in Python, or at the very least, get some sort of named reference-like behaviour from the language. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that this is quasi-impossible, because Python is a language that aims to abstract as many implementation details away from the user as possible, and gives programmers very limited ways in which to interact with the language.

While all NP-hard optimization problems are identical in terms of exact solvability, they may differ wildly from the approximative point of view. If the goal is to obtain an answer that is “good enough”, some problems become much easier (such as KNAPSACK), while others (such as CLIQUE) remain extremely hard.

In some ways, photography is to visual artists what piano is to musicians. I can get you to play a somewhat accurate rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb in about 2 minutes, and if it isn’t in tune, that’s the piano’s fault, not yours. Similarly, if you have a camera, you can create an image in about two seconds, and if the image quality sucks, it’s probably the camera’s fault, not yours.

When I was in high school, I attended a magnet school for the arts, which meant that around 70% of the students had auditioned for competitive admission to a specialized program in theatre, visual arts, dance, music, or creative writing. This meant that there were often two versions of each art course: there was the version of the course intended for (and restricted to) the students studying in that discipline, and there was the general version, intended for everyone.

If you were to meet glaive today, you might not guess he grew up in a sleepy North Carolina town. He’s thin boned, over six feet tall, and dresses like he’s trying on a type of angst that doesn’t suit him. Over the last two years, he’s constantly shifted his aesthetic. He’s flipped from shorter chestnut brown curls to longer platinum blonde to medium length but unhealthy dyed black hair.