Please note, dear reader and esteemed member of the choir: this hortatory fragment was written some time ago. Since then, the climate has changed just slightly. This means it is already out of date. However, it remains less out of date than most hymnals, so the choir may still find it of modest interest. How […]
There is a lot of talk in the small, curious world of theoretical physicists, and in the swarm of admiring hand-wavers, paper-skimmers, and buzzword-retailers that surrounds them, myself included, about the arrow of time. This arrow, which is no doubt fletched with the remnants of scores of papers debating its existence, speeds in only one […]
Democracy means “rule by the people.” We call our system of government democracy, but we are not ruled by the people. We are ruled by politicians. Every few years there is an election campaign, and we attempt to select the best of a small number of choices, and — if we’re not too jaded to […]
Planets, in the basic sense of the word, do not need saving. Their trajectories through the heavens are wholly indifferent to the squabbles and errors of microbial-scale life upon their skins. Even in a more inclusive meaning of “planet,” that of a home for life, a garden of diversity and even, perhaps, a living being, […]
This is it, my friends. After some years of incubation, ideas begat words, which begat documents, which begat schemes, which begat domain names, which begat doubts, which begat delays, which begat panics, which begat more delays, which begat reflection, which begat inspiration, which begat more domain names, which begat a WordPress installation, which begat a […]
One year ago today I began a dietary experiment: I decided that for the month of May, I would eat only food grown or harvested on or around Cortes Island. This article is a lab report from that experiment. A Hair-brained Scheme When telling people about this experiment, the response was generally: “Cool!…Why?” There were […]
Originally appeared on The Autodidacts. Psychology has measured many things, most of them unpleasant. But in the past few decades some psychologists have started to measure pleasant things — such as happiness — and this new academic trend is wobbling the foundations of a half-century worth of economic dogma. Let’s begin with my favourite quote […]