OK, look.  I love logic.  I basically got a degree in it, and I was raised in a pro-intellectual household by a man whose bread and butter (and therefore mine) came from his skill at arguing - and I'm good at it; I won't even pretend to be modest there.

I know a LOT of people who also love logic, but who don't have my training in it - tech ( Read more... )

I love the few great ideas I've heard expressed equally well in a Western and an Eastern context; it gives me hope that any method of understanding has the potential to reveal truth, if applied correctly.

Here's one:  In Western Christian spiritual efforts, you "don't let the Devil know" what you're doing - mythically, because "he" will, ( Read more... )

(no no, not distrust of blankets. we like blankets. they’re like towels, but they mean business. the fully-automatic not-effing-around of douglasadamsian towels.)

(but I digress, before I’ve begun. BECAUSE THAT’S HOW I ROLL, obviously.)

It’s hard to know what thoughts to trust when your brain lies all the time. Even more so when you’re obsessed ( Read more... )

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In my stumblings today, I wound up watching this Nova episode on Richard Feynman:

Click to view

Now, this is partly notable because I'd been pretty sure there wasn't much on Feynman that I hadn't seen or read already. I'm a huge…well, not fan; I don't think there can be a Feynman "fan" since if you know anything about the man, you know he wouldn't have ( Read more... )

You know you're part of a subculture when you sometimes check the popular RSS feeds and want to run for your tinfoil hat:


( Read more... )

How efficient would a computer be that ran non-stop for decades, with no cleanup of any sort?  With almost every program it had ever started lingering in memory way longer than it was needed, and many of them never stopping at all, even if they were worse-than-useless, virus-infested, outdated crap you never wanted in the first place?  What if it ( Read more... )

Drones.  It's a huge topic, but this article by the ACLU does a great job with its major points and substantive links-for-more-info.  (That's also a real, researched article; and this is a blog post; so compare accordingly.)

My own take on drones - which are little remote-controlled (or even self-controlled, to various degrees) flying machines that ( Read more... )

Oooo, if you haven't messed with Google Ngram, you shooooould!  Instant pretty graphs of the occurrence of any words and phrases in tons of books over time?  YES PLEASE!

Here, for example, you can see that the phrase "in the beginning" was used a lot in 1800 and has been in steady decline ever since, while "in the end" has been on the rise during ( Read more... )

I love this passage from the Tao Te Ching (chapter 41):

The wise student hears of the Tao and practices it diligently.

The average student hears of the Tao and thinks about it now and then.

The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs out loud.

If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.

Hence it is said:

The bright path seems ( Read more... )