Author Archives: Anton

a modest condition

When we are called upon to pay the debts of a corporation because it is “too big to fail”, shouldn’t the beneficiary at least be required to break up into pieces small enough to fail?

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Hilbert’s palette

A space-filling path through this square is matched to an analogous path through the color-cube. I had this idea in mind for years but the algorithm for Hilbert’s curve defeated me; then I stumbled on Steve Witham’s Python code, and … Continue reading

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | 4 Comments

Incandescence

In Greg Egan’s latest novel, as is not uncommon in first contact novels, the chapters alternate between the viewpoints of a human explorer and a member of the newly discovered species. In defiance of convention, Rakesh never finds Roi’s world. … Continue reading

Posted in prose | 1 Comment

chaos and health

In a private forum, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote: I remember that one of my early epiphanies on the road to libertarianism came when I was reading about chaotic, scale-independent oscillations in heartbeat frequency. One might naively think that the healthier the … Continue reading

Posted in economics, medicine | Leave a comment

how about them links, eh?

I laughed aloud. Stefan Molyneux on voting No one could have predicted the housing bubble pop, right?

Posted in cartoons, politics | Leave a comment

a futile protest

Charlie Stross, interviewed in H+ magazine, mentions in passing . . . the more socially dysfunctional libertarians (who are convinced that if the brakes on capitalism were off, they’d somehow be teleported to the apex of the food chain in place of … Continue reading

Posted in bitterness, futures, politics | 5 Comments

because you asked for it, or because you didn’t

retro MacOS theme for WordPress. I’m pretty sure this is before it was called MacOS, that’s how old it is. (Hat tip to Bill Detty.)

Posted in blogdom, neep-neep | 1 Comment