mahiwaga

I'm not really all that mysterious

Panspermia

Panspermia—the idea that the life started off-planet and managed to seed the Earth—is a recurrent trope in science fiction.

(Pseudopanspermia—the idea that the building blocks of life started off-planet—is still a widely entertained hypothesis in mainstream biology. It’s frequently noted that comets and meteors ejected from Mars contain amino acids.)

Star Trek: The Next Generation uses the panspermia hypothesis to explain why all the sapient species are humanoid. It turns out that an Ancient sapient species (who totally coincidentally look a lot like the Founders from the Dominion in Deep Space 9) colonized the entire galaxy and were the forerunners of the humans, the Vulcans, the Klingons, and the Cardassians.

…all M class planets have Terran flora…

And Ursula K. Le Guin in her Ekumen books similarly explains that all the sapient species in the galaxy were descendants of the inhabitants of the planet Hain.


Tangentially, a FriendFeed discussion about Darmok (ST:TNG S5E2) and the limitations of the Universal Translator.

See also: - Darmok (episode) • ST:TNG S5E2 • Memory Alpha - Shaka, When the Walls Fell • 2014 Jun 18 • Ian Bogost • The Atlantic

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga

Parsing HTML with Regexes

Back in the day when running a Perl script that used an XML parser was CPU-intensive and likely to get your shared hosting account suspended, I did spend time trying to parse pseudo-XML with regexes, which did make me feel kind of dirty.

My favorite response to people who insisted on parsing HTML or XML with regexes is from Stack Overflow:

You can’t parse [X]HTML with regex. Because HTML can’t be parsed by regex. Regex is not a tool that can be used to correctly parse HTML. As I have answered in HTML-and-regex questions here so many times before, the use of regex will not allow you to consume HTML. Regular expressions are a tool that is insufficiently sophisticated to understand the constructs employed by HTML. HTML is not a regular language and hence cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Regex queries are not equipped to break down HTML into its meaningful parts. so many times but it is not getting to me. Even enhanced irregular regular expressions as used by Perl are not up to the task of parsing HTML. You will never make me crack. HTML is a language of sufficient complexity that it cannot be parsed by regular expressions. Even Jon Skeet cannot parse HTML using regular expressions. Every time you attempt to parse HTML with regular expressions, the unholy child weeps the blood of virgins, and Russian hackers pwn your webapp. Parsing HTML with regex summons tainted souls into the realm of the living. HTML and regex go together like love, marriage, and ritual infanticide. The

cannot hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML together in the same conceptual space will destroy your mind like so much watery putty. If you parse HTML with regex you are giving in to Them and their blasphemous ways which doom us all to inhuman toil for the One whose Name cannot be expressed in the Basic Multilingual Plane, he comes. HTML-plus-regexp will liquify the n​erves of the sentient whilst you observe, your psyche withering in the onslaught of horror. Rege̿̔̉x-based HTML parsers are the cancer that is killing StackOverflow it is too late it is too late we cannot be saved the trangession of a chi͡ld ensures regex will consume all living tissue (except for HTML which it cannot, as previously prophesied) dear lord help us how can anyone survive this scourge using regex to parse HTML has doomed humanity to an eternity of dread torture and security holes using regex as a tool to process HTML establishes a breach between this world and the dread realm of c͒ͪo͛ͫrrupt entities (like SGML entities, but more corrupt) a mere glimpse of the world of reg​ex parsers for HTML will ins​tantly transport a programmer's consciousness into a world of ceaseless screaming, he comes, the pestilent slithy regex-infection wil​l devour your HT​ML parser, application and existence for all time like Visual Basic only worse he comes he comes do not fi​ght he com̡e̶s, ̕h̵i​s un̨ho͞ly radiańcé destro҉ying all enli̍̈́̂̈́ghtenment, HTML tags lea͠ki̧n͘g fr̶ǫm ̡yo​͟ur eye͢s̸ ̛l̕ik͏e liq​uid pain, the song of re̸gular exp​ression parsing will exti​nguish the voices of mor​tal man from the sp​here I can see it can you see ̲͚̖͔̙î̩́t̲͎̩̱͔́̋̀ it is beautiful t​he final snuffing of the lie​s of Man ALL IS LOŚ͖̩͇̗̪̏̈́T ALL I​S LOST the pon̷y he comes he c̶̮omes he comes the ich​or permeates all MY FACE MY FACE ᵒh god no NO NOO̼O​O NΘ stop the an​*̶͑̾̾​̅ͫ͏̙̤g͇̫͛͆̾ͫ̑͆l͖͉̗̩̳̟̍ͫͥͨe̠̅s ͎a̧͈͖r̽̾̈́͒͑e n​ot rè̑ͧ̌aͨl̘̝̙̃ͤ͂̾̆ ZA̡͊͠͝LGΌ ISͮ̂҉̯͈͕̹̘̱ TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚​N̐Y̡ H̸̡̪̯ͨ͊̽̅̾̎Ȩ̬̩̾͛ͪ̈́̀́͘ ̶̧̨̱̹̭̯ͧ̾ͬC̷̙̲̝͖ͭ̏ͥͮ͟Oͮ͏̮̪̝͍M̲̖͊̒ͪͩͬ̚̚͜Ȇ̴̟̟͙̞ͩ͌͝S̨̥̫͎̭ͯ̿̔̀ͅ

Have you tried using an XML parser instead?

You can’t parse [X]HTML with regex. • 2009 Nov 13 • Stack Overflow

Jeff Atwood is more concilliatory and I suppose you can totally parse HTML or XML with regexes if you know exactly what kind of output you’re getting (but then you still have to wonder why you’re parsing with regexes and/or bothering with HTML or XML) but it still really does give me the heebiejeebies.

Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way • 2009 Nov 15 • Jeff Atwood • Coding Horror

Anyway, using nokogiri is pretty easy now (although building libxml2 from source is apparently still a pain in the ass if you’re not using package management.)

posted by Author's profile picture mahiwaga