I mentioned that modern physics actually demonstrates the importance of context. This is a total aside, which is why I’m putting it in a separate post (think of this as a long DFW-esque footnote), but while I was contrasting the “objective physical reality” with the contextual social world, I realized that the objective physical reality […]
Category: thoughts
The Ultimatum Game
I mentioned that there would be cases when people would answer the question “Do you want $2 or $0?” with “$0”. This is what actually happens in the Ultimatum Game, described here, with references. The basic idea is that there are two players, asked to split up a pot of money, say $10. The first […]
Conservative postmodernism
I was struck while reading Travels in Hyperreality a few months ago by the realization that the conservatives had appropriated the techniques of the Academic Left such as postmodernism and deconstructionism, and put them into the service of the conservative movement. I find this supremely ironic, given the utter disdain with which conservatives view postmodernism, […]
Interesting discussion
Dave Policar has been having some interesting discussions over on his journal about religion and politics, thinking about some of the same issues I’ve been struggling with. The comments and discussion on yesterday’s post were particularly interesting. Several people including myself got involved with a variety of viewpoints. There are some really tangled issues here […]
New directions
This post is to give people a heads up on the sorts of things I’m planning to write about here for the next little bit. And to give people the opportunity to provide feedback, if they so desire. This is pretty much the result of a long conversation I had with Brad and Jill before […]
HP sucks
After poking around for a while, I finally settled on the HP DV1000 laptop. It was cheaper, but still had all the functionality I was looking for. And although the Powerbooks are lustworthy, given that all of my current jobs involve Windows programming, I couldn’t do it. So I put in the order at hp.com […]
The Incredibles as a commentary on gifted education
I liked this New York Times article, deconstructing the Incredibles as a commentary on the debate within education on how to handle gifted children. Read it soon before it becomes for pay (or email me because I downloaded a copy). The article also refers to the short story Harrison Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut, which danah […]
Whither social software
There’s a new group blog out there, started by Stowe Boyd, devoted to figuring out the Operating Manual for Social Tools. Since I’m always interested in this stuff, I’m going to be following along closely to see what ideas they have. danah boyd asks a really good set of questions in one of her first […]
Conservatives vs. liberals
I’ve been forwarded or seen a bunch of different websites from liberals bemoaning the results of the election, from JesusLand, to Fuck the South, to Sorry Everybody. I particularly liked the rant at Urban Archipelago, because it tied in with some ideas that had been percolating through my head. And even though those ideas are […]
Coping
I’ve been meaning to write this post for several months (I referred to it two months ago over on Livejournal, so it’s older than that). It’s basically an exploration of how to deal with the situation where one’s personal values do not correspond to the values of an organization to which one belongs. I started […]
