Author Archives: Anton

utopia, population one in many

So here is the current version of my upload/resurrection fantasy, as if anyone cares.

Posted in fantasies | 4 Comments

coming in the side door

Spam comments on this blog have always been concentrated on a few old posts, so I tried disabling comments on some that look unlikely to ever attract legitimate comments. Didn’t work. I guess all that happens when I unclick “Allow … Continue reading

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how to enact a balanced budget

(Moving here from a separate file for greater visibility.) A MECHANISM TO BALANCE THE BUDGET Suppose each member of Congress were to name a budget amount, and the median number is made law. Why the median? Because this is a … Continue reading

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phase-packing

I just thought of a new kind of packing problem, a mutant extension of the Thomson problem. In this version, each particle has coordinates in two independent spaces; in each it is confined to a sphere (of some dimension). In … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 1 Comment

O fairest of randomizers

On most numbered dice, opposite sides are complementary; on a cube, for example, they add to 7. As a result, if you have the skill to throw a die so that the {1,2,3} corner lands on the table, the upward … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 4 Comments

shining eyes

Could an animal have eyes like a reflecting telescope, rather than with a lens? The back of the eyeball is a paraboloid mirror, and the retina is a small body on its focal plane. Because the retina must be small, … Continue reading

Posted in sciences | 1 Comment

witness on Whidbey

I watched Behind the Curve (2018), a documentary about the Flat Earth movement. In the beginning, Mark Sargent says (I paraphrase), “I know the Earth is not round because I can see Seattle from here [Whidbey Island].” If I knew … Continue reading

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