Monday, December 21, 2009

Your privileged place in the universe

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Once upon a time, humanity thought the earth was the center of the universe. But as it later turned out, earth was a tiny speck orbiting a...
Sunday, July 02, 2006

Speed and intelligence

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This is a video of someone beating the game Pokemon Yellow in slightly over two minutes. It's incomprehensible. If you play it in ...
Sunday, April 03, 2005

Reason

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Remember THE ENEMIES OF REASON? With richard dawkins? He talks about how astrologers and psychics are full of crap, and they're destro...
Thursday, March 31, 2005

The sun

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What would happen if the sun winked out of existence? The earth, released from its orbit, would go flying out into the icy blackness of spac...
Saturday, March 19, 2005

Buildings falling down

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You may have seen this picture before. It's building 7 of the world trade center. What does it mean to be skeptical, in the good sen...
Friday, March 11, 2005

A funny feeling

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Sometimes, rarely, I feel like there's a substantially better world just inches away, but inaccessable and nameless. I experience it onl...
Monday, March 07, 2005

What if people started talking to themselves all the time?

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What if it turned out they already do? [T]he muscles of the face make constant tiny movements [...] much like the tiny movements the ey...
Saturday, February 26, 2005

Chess vs. Go

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Adam Cadre, host of the Lyttle Lytton contest , has this to say on chess and go: "I prefer go to chess for two reasons. One is that...
Thursday, February 10, 2005

Gender neutral pronouns

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The singular "they" is obviously the most practical solution, yet the grammar people bitch about arbitrary rules and the gender pe...
Monday, January 24, 2005

Ethics: Threat or menace?

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When most people talk about ethics, they mean general guidelines like "avoid nepotism" and "don't steal office supplies...
Saturday, January 15, 2005

I don't think I've met a single person whose system of ethics regarding "intellectual property" was internally consistent

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Why is it that no one seems to understand how share ratios work on bittorrent? When yours goes up, mine goes down. When yours goes down, m...
Saturday, January 08, 2005

Two clever observations that would make good material for a stand up comedy routine

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Whenever you call tech support, it resembles a computer game. It's so oppositional! There's very little actual supporting, and a g...
Thursday, January 06, 2005

The Theater of the New Ear

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I was just listening to a radio play by charlie kaufman. It's mainly the inner monolog of a woman at a play, who's very self-absor...
Monday, December 27, 2004

What is art?

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"Art" refers to two categories, one more specific than the other. 1. Things made with creative skill and imagination 2. Thin...
Wednesday, December 22, 2004

The Big Empty

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"Stuff" is both a placeholder name for mass nouns and the mass noun form of the plural noun "things", a placeholder na...