neat trick

Posted on Friday, 2002 March 01 by Anton

William Sulik seems to say that we ought to act not on our own mores but on those of our more enlightened descendants. Neat trick if you can manage it: like predicting an innovation.

Posted in history, politics | Leave a comment

√(-1) am not a number!

Posted on Friday, 2002 March 01 by Anton

For an introvert who hates confrontation, being a crank is hard on the nerves.

Recently unemployed, I’m shopping around for medical insurance. I prefer not to continue with Aetna, because they put my So-called Social Security Number right on the card, which is an invitation to fraud if I should ever lose my wallet. People have had their bank accounts cleaned out by someone who got their SSN.
Continue reading →

Posted in medicine, tax+privacy | Leave a comment

I don’t drink coffee . . .

Posted on Friday, 2002 March 01 by Anton

. . . or need another computer, but the Cappuccino is too cute to ignore!

Posted in neep-neep | Leave a comment

saving the world

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 28 by Anton

David Weinberger (JOHO) reports on the Technology Entertainment & Design conference.
Here’s something personally interesting:

Steven Petranik, editor of Discover magazine, ticked off his Top Ten list of ways the world could end suddenly:

10. Failure to address the worldwide epidemic of depression . . .

Hm. Epidemic, eh? That implies that, for a change, I’m part of a significant market demographic or whatever the appropriate buzzwords are. Maybe there’s hope after all.

Speaking of depression, is the Youth Suicide by Firearms Task Force respectable? It cites that slob Kellerman[n] a couple of times, and the group’s name makes me suspicious (why not youth suicide in general?); on the other hand, they seem to emphasize safe storage and the like rather than abolition.

Er, but enough about me. Go read that TED report instead.

Posted in psychology | Leave a comment

physics games

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 28 by Anton

Greg Egan’s moving story “Border Guards” mentions the game of Quantum Soccer, which he demonstrates with an applet. See also Ruth Chabay‘s game Electric Field Hockey.

Posted in prose, sciences | 3 Comments

those who suppress the past . . .

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 28 by Anton

French Criminal Court to Try Yahoo Over Nazi Sites — an unfortunate headline, as it seems to hand over to the prosecution the premise that if you sell Nazi relics you must be a Nazi.

(I collect foreign coins that show coats of arms. Some of my coins were minted by Communist regimes. Does that mean I condone Communism?)

I wonder whether the French courts have gone after churches that proudly display relics of persecution of Christians, such as reputed fragments of history’s most famous instrument of torture.

Posted in politics | Leave a comment

Hobbes was fond of his dram

Posted on Thursday, 2002 February 28 by Anton

I’ll bet your mother asked you, when you were about eight years old: “If all the other blogs posted their philosopher scores, would you?” (Warning: popups.)

  • 1.00 Mill
  • .82 Bentham (?!)
  • .76 Epicureans
  • .65 Kant
  • .63 Sartre
  • .55 Aquinas
  • .51 Aristotle
  • .44 Prescriptivism / Rand / Noddings
  • .41 Spinoza
  • .34 Hobbes
  • .31 Augustine
  • .30 Cynics
  • .26 Ockham
  • .25 Hume
  • .22 Nietzsche / Stoics
  • .16 Plato

Heh. [This blog was originally titled Sightseeing in Plato’s Cave.] Yes, I disagree with most of what I know of Plato, but I still like the metaphor of the Cave. (Beats calling my blog Fat Loser or something.)

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