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 routine government activity is not worth the cost, and therefore local governments should for the most part be out of business; or b) the justices are incapable of employing enough elementary logic and economic analysis to understand the implications of their own opinion.

New Scientist: Spy planes feed satellite, unencrypted. Think of it as a new field for those who like to play with police scanners. (Link from Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram.)

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 (29 days and a fraction) is a ‘measure’ and each Sunday is a ‘beat’; the first Sunday after a new moon is the first beat of a measure, so some measures have four beats and some have five.

In particular, what about a rhythm built on the golden ratio? It should sound like a syncopated 2-beat, or rather a 3-beat, or rather a 5-beat . . . for every Fibonacci number. You couldn’t dance to it; it would be a challenge even to hum along. But I have the perfect title for such a composition.

My occasional shooting-buddy Tim Starr calls my attention to No Treason – a journal of liberty.

Update 2004: Tim has since been ‘fired’ as a contributor to No Treason, apparently for turning into a neocon supporting Bush’s war policy.

Tolkien meets Vinge

The Well-Tempered Plot Device

But actually, it’s not always necessary for the author to put in an appearance himself, if only he can smuggle the Plot itself into the story disguised as one of the characters. Naturally, it tends not to look like most of the other characters, chiefly on account of its omnipresence and lack of physical body. It’ll call itself something like the Visualization of the Cosmic All, or Seldon’s Plan, or The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or the Law, or the Light, or the Will of the Gods; or, in perhaps its most famous avatar, the Force. Credit for this justly celebrated interpretation of Star Wars belongs to Phil Palmer; I’d only like to point out the way it makes sudden and perfect sense of everything that happens in the film. “The time has come, young man, for you to learn about the Plot.” “Darth Vader is a servant of the dark side of the Plot.” When Ben Kenobi gets written out, he becomes one with the Plot and can speak inside the hero’s head. When a whole planet of good guys gets blown up, Ben senses “a great disturbance in the Plot.”

One thing I haven’t managed to find with Google is the source of a cliché.