Monthly Archives: July 2003

adieu Straight Dope

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

Hm, it’s now three years since I dropped out of alt.fan.cecil-adams in a bit of a snit. I left because my writing there had been increasingly sour – whether because of my returning depression or because of the insidious influence … Continue reading →

Posted in me!me!me! | Leave a comment

fallibilism

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

I was recently tempted to buy a bumpersticker that said Don’t believe everything you think

Posted in general | 1 Comment

QotD

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

Daniel Webster: It is hardly too strong to say that the [US] Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions.

Posted in constitution, history | Leave a comment

abolish marriage

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

Michael Kinsley: We can add gay marriage to the short list of controversies – abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty – that are so frozen and ritualistic that debates about them are more like kabuki performances than intellectual exercises. Or … Continue reading →

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

why do these words sound so nasty?

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

I don’t agree on much with my old schoolmate Eric Rasmusen, a newcomer to the weblog craze; but we’re similarly disturbed over Lawrence v. Texas. Scalia . . . probably would vote against the Texas sodomy law as a citizen. But as … Continue reading →

Posted in constitution | Leave a comment

not so venerable

Posted on Wednesday, 2003 July 09 by Anton

The earliest known source of the “turtles all the way down” anecdote – variously told about William James, Bertrand Russell, T H Huxley and others – is a dissertation written in or about 1969, according to this page. (Cited by … Continue reading →

Posted in sciences | Leave a comment

life in n-space

Posted on Tuesday, 2003 July 08 by Anton

Ever since reading Greg Egan’s novel Diaspora (1998), part of which takes place in a five-dimensional universe, I’ve occasionally tried to imagine aspects of life in higher spaces (which is tricky, as I lack the knack of visualizing in such … Continue reading →

Posted in mathematics | 2 Comments