The only true mirror is the funhouse one.
In the last 24 hours I’ve had the pleasure to experience two novel and fun works of art: The Exterior World, a sarcastic animation by David OReilly and St...
Category: ideas
epistemology, philosophy, theology, religion
Good cops, bad cops and the costly failures of the SEC
Matt Taibbi: Yet the case still somehow ended in acquittal — and the Justice Department hasn’t taken any of the big banks to court since. All of which rai...
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About a year of tweets, archived here for posterity.
I began this current journal, XSML, with the intent of reducing my own notes to extra small, XML-friendly updates. Increasingly, I have been drawn by the allure...
The Inner Child Family Policy: on pain and politics
From a recent New Yorker story on Freudian psychoanalysis in China: I asked what problems he sees most often among his patients. He answered, “If a grandfather,...
Blind spots. The funny and deeply scary movie “Happy Go Lucky”.
Imagine you are searching for your reading glasses only to find them sitting atop your head – or, perhaps worse, discovering that you are already wearing them. ...
Three obvious things I learned on the job.
If your product is becoming a commodity, don’t try to inflate its value by restricting supply. Create a better product and set new terms. If you want to a...
The place to hide something is right in the open, LOLXian edition.
LOLXians, indeed: “Some scholars believe that the Book of Revelation in the bible was not a prediction of the future of the world but actually encrypted m...
The possible versus the probable in Catholic philosophy.
Don’t let the title fool you, there’s some really nice, dry writing in the Paranormal Encylopedia. In an entry on bilocation, the final sentence is:...
“becomes more informed and demanding (thanks to the internet forums)”
While reading up on a ridiculously high-performance kitchen appliance, I found this quote from a manufacturer: Between the year 2000 – 2001 the market con...
A limited caribbean confederation flag
An obvious start. The flags of Cuba and Puerto Rico combined. previously: The British Isles became the United Kingdom. What might the Caribbean islands have bee...
Pop chopped and screwed.
I often wonder if a single song can inspire an entire genre. Certainly, there are combinations that are so influential they turn up again and again. Consider 10...
The brutal irony of the DREAM Act being spiked by conservatives, many Christians, a week before Christmas.
Three questions for the Christian constituents of the senators who voted against the DREAM Act yesterday: Was the Son of God born in a barn, among the animals a...
Civil rights victories are always win-win. The repeal of DADT is great news for all Americans.
There were well-publicized protests in select California cities after President Obama was elected and Prop 8 was passed. Some of that anger was fueled by the ru...
magic wands: new AR app allows for “enchanting translations”. casting better spells getting easier with every roll.
This year’s worthiest sequel to the Harry Potter series may be an app. Word Lens debuted on potentially millions of screens just in time for the final hol...
Funny at 6:35 am on what feels like the longest week of the longest month of the longest year.
The Wikipedia entry for eschatology begins: Eschatology Not to be confused with Scatology. oh really?
Of dependencies, complexity and what, if any, is our destiny.
The other day I was talking with colleagues about the way that we use tools to overcome our physiological limitations and, in particular, how we have begun to u...
We are bacteria all the way down.
From Burkhard Bilger’s savvy report on fermentation and underground food culture in the U.S., sadly available only as an abstract to non-subscribers: Mode...
Oh, to be a fly on the wall in the U.S. State Department for the next month.
When I first read about the process by which the New York Times sorted out what leaked documents they would publish and how, I thought: “Wow, it must have...
De-worming pills for $.50 or a laptop for $100?
Kentaro Tomaya on why high technology, in and of itself, doesn’t solve the problems that lead to poverty: Does a hundred dollars for a computer make sense...
Bleeding heart versus what, exactly?
Apparently, I’m a bleeding heart. Twice in two days I’ve sat through tear-jerkers; one about charter schools in New York City and a second about a U...