Category Archives: sciences

the asynchronous world

Posted on Monday, 2005 June 20 by Anton

WiReD summarizes the work of Kiwi maverick philosopher Peter Lynds: His answers make the mathematics of space and time look strange. If instants don’t exist, then calculus – in which equations depend on fixed before-and-after positions in space – doesn’t … Continue reading →

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fun with topology

Posted on Friday, 2005 June 17 by Anton

It’s surprising that I had not heard before of the mathematical sculptor Rinus Roelofs. His Möbius-double could be seen as a metaphor for half-spin particles.

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | Leave a comment

distributed knowledge wins

Posted on Tuesday, 2005 June 07 by Anton

I’ve heard that Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) started thinking about spontaneous order because of an incident in the Great War. Austrian forces were routed in a battle in Italy, and fled leaderless through the mountains; and far more of them … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, security theater | 1 Comment

Almost Invented Here — again

Posted on Saturday, 2005 June 04 by Anton

Once upon a time, probably 1983, I had an idea to maximize diversity in a representative assembly. You vote for more than one candidate. The ballots are counted once for each seat. On each count one winner is chosen, and … Continue reading →

Posted in constitution, economics | 7 Comments

go read somewhere else

Posted on Monday, 2005 April 25 by Anton

Tom Knapp on the land problem (inter alia) (cited by Mutualist). (2006: that site has been reorganized; I think this is the same piece, and as a bonus here are two followups.) why drink beer a Martian dust-devil, close up … Continue reading →

Posted in astronomy, economics, humanities | Leave a comment

fun with refraction

Posted on Friday, 2005 April 22 by Anton
Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | 1 Comment

QotD

Posted on Monday, 2005 April 18 by Anton

Will Wilkinson: It is especially incoherent when welfare liberals accuse markets of involving BOTH radical cooperative interdependence, such that much of a society’s wealth is a “social product” to which individuals have no moral claim independent of some rule of … Continue reading →

Posted in economics | Leave a comment