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We are now ready to resume our review of Anarchy, State, and Utopia. The fourth subsection of Chapter 4 (pp. 59-63) contains an extended digression into retributive and deterrence theories of punishment. Nozick takes a probabilistic approach to punishment (pp. … Continue reading →

Time out! We need to attend to some other time-consuming (and time-sensitive) matters this weekend, so before we proceed with our review of Chapter 4 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia, we wish to pose some additional questions regarding Nozick’s major … Continue reading →

Below is a small sample of everyday objects arranged into beautiful patterns. You can check out the rest of artist Adam Hillman’s work here (hat tip: kottke.)

Before we press on with our review of Nozick’s masterpiece Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU), we want to say a few words on why Nozick is worth reading and why we are so excited about Nozick’s ideas, especially Chapter 4 … Continue reading →

The third subsection of Chapter 4 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (pp. 58-59) narrows down and reformulates the problem of enforcing moral boundaries in terms of two hard questions (p. 59): (i) why not allow or permit boundary crossings so … Continue reading →

The second subsection of Chapter 4 is only two pages long (pp. 57-58), but it deserves our careful attention for several reasons: (i) One reason is Nozick’s geometric visualization of morality. As Nozick puts it (p. 57): “an area in … Continue reading →

Nozick (pictured below) presents an important theoretical problem in the first subsection of Chapter 4: the problem of independents, or how should a private protection racket deal with non-members? Additionally, Nozick raises a further theoretical problem in a footnote (p. … Continue reading →

Before we begin our review of Chapter 4 of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (ASU), let’s take a closer look at the overall structure and organization of this chapter. In summary, Chapter 4 is titled “Prohibition, Compensation, and Risk” and is … Continue reading →

      These beautiful book pins, and many more, are made by Ms. Jane Mount and are available for purchase here (hat tip: kottke).

Via The Amazing Cliff Pickover, we discovered a website that sells quilts of the periodic table, such as the one pictured below. These beautiful quilts are made by robots, measure 8 feet wide by 4 feet high (2.4m x 1.2m), and … Continue reading →