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Meta
Category Archives: sciences
immortality for pessimists
Larry Niven wrote, somewhere or other, that if you live long enough you’re bound to get rich at least once. It occurs to me just now that, if you live long enough under an immortal dictatorship, sooner or later you’re … Continue reading
Posted in economics, futures, politics
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unions piss me off
Saw a union picket today with a sign saying Catbert Corporation is Enron II. If you thought your employer was a house of cards, would you spend your time agitating to increase its labor costs, or look for a new … Continue reading
Posted in California, economics
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never say impossible?
Milton Mintz has struggled since 1963 to do the impossible: to trisect the angle, square the circle and double the cube using “only” a compass and straightedge. He shows procedures for the first two, which I have not attempted to … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics
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don’t invest in Picasso
New Book Uses Statistical Methods to Analyze Avant-Garde Art The patterns emerging from Mr. Galenson’s crunched numbers suggested that the careers of avant-garde artists tended to fall into two categories, embodying distinct kinds of innovation. Some painters developed new techniques … Continue reading
Posted in arts, economics
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Tranquility
Today is of course the 33d anniversary of Apollo XI. Have there been any soft landings on the Moon since Apollo? Update: One Russian landing in 1976. I’ve misplaced the link to the list where I found it.
Posted in sciences, technology
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the government we pay for
Steven E. Landsburg writes in Slate of all places: Either a) the justices – having concluded that paying compensation would transform routine government activity into “a luxury few governments could afford” – are prepared to draw the logical conclusion that … Continue reading
Posted in economics, politics
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Take Phi
I wonder whether it’s possible to write decent music with a fractional number of beats to a measure; by which I mean not that each measure should end with a fractional beat, but rather — imagine that a lunar month … Continue reading
Posted in mathematics, music+verse
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