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Meta
Category Archives: humanities
exporting transcendence
In the film and TV series Limitless, a drug makes the protagonist temporarily super-intelligent. In the episodes I’ve seen, it’s not established whether any skills learned with the drug remain when it wears off. I imagine that you’d want to … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, psychology
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uncanny tedium
A month or two ago, the load of junkmail intercepted for me by Pobox suddenly jumped from about one hundred pieces a day to well over two hundred. (The difference, to judge by titles, consists of repeated pleadings from alleged … Continue reading
Posted in psychology, spam
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next time you hear someone blame Hitler on Darwin or atheism
Nazi racial ideology was religious, creationist and opposed to Darwinism — long and thoroughly documented
steam and circuitry
One of my favorite games is Ticket to Ride (despite its silly name), in which a strategic element is choosing tickets: pairs of cities to be joined. The value of a ticket is the length of the shortest path that … Continue reading
Posted in games
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pseudohistorical linguistics
I can’t remember how much I knew of Elvish languages before The Silmarillion, with a glossary, appeared in 1978. Can you tell from the text of The Lord of the Rings (not counting the Appendices) that Quenya and Sindarin are … Continue reading
Posted in fandom, language, prose
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alternate poker
Suppose your deck has more than four suits, or some number other than thirteen cards per suit. What happens to the ranks of poker hands? 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 … Continue reading
Posted in games, mathematics
3 Comments
place-names and personal-names
In my county there’s a village named Van —–. I think that if my name had a Van or equivalent, and someone proposed to name a town for me, I’d prefer they drop the particle. On another hand, Jan van … Continue reading
Posted in language
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