News You Can Bruise for 2000 May 7

That's me, sick as a dog. I communicate with Dan via email, even though he's just across the room, because it hurts too much to talk. Bleah. And I have a midterm tomorrow. I sincerely hope I will only be asked about regular expressions, DFAs, and emperical questions like "write a yacc grammar for language x". The portion of the exam in which I will be asked to trace the actions of ye Parser will be failed miserably by me.

I can't concentrate on my compiler book but I can work on Foucault's Pendulum. I'm over halfway done. It's good that I read it immediately after reading Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions, as I now recognize many of the historical personages (Cagliostro, Dr. Dee, &c.). In general, I'm understanding much more of what's going on (eg. I caught the Name of the Rose reference(s? are there more than one?)) than I did when I read it a year ago. A few things still puzzle me, though.

It's a shame that there's no bibliography for Foucault's Pendulum. I know that works of fiction don't generally have bibliographies. But Foucault's Pendulum definitely deserves one.

Oh, minor question. I reread Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and I finally understand everything in the book, except for one little detail: how did what they did actually save the human race? I don't see how the effects of Dirk's actions at the end prevented what originally happened from happening again. I know what happened, but I don't completely understand how it helped. I can't go into too much detail because I don't want to give the ending away.