function composition

Jon Bentley walks through three implementations of Hoare's Quicksort, from a dozen-line C function to a series of systematic code transformations that make the program ever simpler and more powerful. It is a Google Tech Talk on code elegance and program derivation.

Peter Seibel's 2006 Google TechTalk on Practical Common Lisp, framed by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Paul Graham's Blub paradox. It shows Lisp features such as condition restarts and its generic-function object system.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes watching her own brain functions shut down during a massive stroke. She gives a first-person account of losing speech, motion and self-awareness.

A short Supernova 2007 provocation in which Clay Shirky uses a 1300-year-old Japanese shrine, rebuilt periodically, as a metaphor for how networks change business and collective creativity.