Tuesday, March 25, 2025

Deleted my 23 and Me data

Not that they knew my real name. But my relatives ratted me out.

Thursday, March 13, 2025

TZ

For over 20 years I've been ssh'ing into a server in Washington (I paid for a life membership, but didn't really expect it to last this long.) It runs BSD, and it always displayed the date in UTC.

I just learned today that if I sent TZ in my environment, I can use any time zone I want.

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

The head of John the Baptist



I remember seeing this sculpture in the Rodin room at the Palace of the Legion of Honor, decades ago when I went there pretty regularly. I thought it was a little gruesome, and I didn't understand the story behind it -- I recall that the card describing the piece seemed to assume that everyone knew the story of John the Baptist. I didn't even know who he was.

Fast forward thirty years, and I visit the museum again. I see the sculpture, but this time I know the story. In fact, I've seen many pieces of art over the years depicting some part of the story.

I just noticed the other day that the name of Herodias's daughter -- the one who asked for John the Baptist's head -- is not named in the Bible. But I've seen so many depictions in art, and I've heard the story. How did we know her name? It turns out she is named in the Jewish Antiquities, but not in the New Testament.