You'll be as excited to learn as I was that the UN has declared 2013 to be the International Year of the Quinoa.
Sigh.
Via: the Economist
Sigh.
Via: the Economist
Thursday, December 27, 2012
... with its review of God's Doodle by Tom Hickman.
From an email list of the Economist's most read articles for 2012. Changes your opinion of Economist readers, doesn't it?
From an email list of the Economist's most read articles for 2012. Changes your opinion of Economist readers, doesn't it?
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Hat tip: James Brian Paul Nance, writer of logic textbooks, and one of my best friends in 10th grade.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Live long, and prosper.
Hat tip: a facebook friend. And really, how could I resist once I saw it?
Sadly, I could not resist this from John Palmer either, though surely I should have.
2012 is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Thomas Kuhn's book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions".
Longtime readers may recall that Kuhn's book made it onto my list of books that had the largest intellectual influence on me. For me, recasting the history of science in terms of paradigm shifts mattered less than recasting science itself as a social enterpirse.
Some related thoughts from the Guardian and from David Warsh at Economic Principals.
If you have not read the book, it remains well worth reading.
Longtime readers may recall that Kuhn's book made it onto my list of books that had the largest intellectual influence on me. For me, recasting the history of science in terms of paradigm shifts mattered less than recasting science itself as a social enterpirse.
Some related thoughts from the Guardian and from David Warsh at Economic Principals.
If you have not read the book, it remains well worth reading.
This article on vote fraud from the New Yorker got passed around a lot before the election but, having read it, I think oddly so. The main point seems not to be about whether or not there is vote fraud, but that some red team activists use vote fraud as a wedge issue and sometimes don't get the facts right. Is it really news that activists of any flavor make stuff up in pursuit of thier political objectives?
More broadly, this, like voting rights for felons, seems like an amazingly bad issue for the blue team to push on. First, it is transparently self-interested. Second, it is quite clearly not in the broader interest, as an electoral system viewed as honest and fair is a public good.
I should note that I tend to discount claims that vote fraud is empirically unimportant, as I personally knew an admitted fraudulent voter, an unlikely event if they are really, really rare. She wsa the proprietress of "Hair Ph.D." in Hyde Park when I was in gradual school and proudly admitted to me that, though she now lived in the suburbs, she still voted in her old Chicago neighborhood for the Daley team whenever the opportunity arose.
More broadly, this, like voting rights for felons, seems like an amazingly bad issue for the blue team to push on. First, it is transparently self-interested. Second, it is quite clearly not in the broader interest, as an electoral system viewed as honest and fair is a public good.
I should note that I tend to discount claims that vote fraud is empirically unimportant, as I personally knew an admitted fraudulent voter, an unlikely event if they are really, really rare. She wsa the proprietress of "Hair Ph.D." in Hyde Park when I was in gradual school and proudly admitted to me that, though she now lived in the suburbs, she still voted in her old Chicago neighborhood for the Daley team whenever the opportunity arose.
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