Are you ready for the 2014 World Chess Championship between Magnus Carlsen and Viswanathan Anand? In preparation for the upcoming WCC, we are linking to this beautiful diagram describing the evolution of chess openings over time. It was prepared by Randal S. Olson. See also Raymond Keene’s classic book below.
The Tunisian protestor in this picture is holding a sign that reads “Grow the beard before the brain.” This is the best critique of ethical fundamentalism that we have seen in a long time. Hat tip to Strum-Me for the pointer.
The magnificent Tyler Cowen — over at Marginal Revolution — poses the following question: Is it legal to build a diversion barrier against Hawaiian lava flow? The ancient doctrine Necessitas non habet legem provides the most likely answer.
Let us count the ways … It is slow and laborious to open. Outlook Calendar is fundamentally flawed. Attaching a document requires a cumbersome five(!)-step procedure. It doesn’t let you cut-and-paste content from a Word file directly into the message of your email. Etc., etc. By any measure, Microsoft Outlook has to be one of the crappiest and most outdated email systems on the planet, especially when compared to Gmail. Accessing Outlook away from one’s office computer is an especially agonizing and sucky experience. And yet, many private businesses and universities still rely on this horrendous and crappy email system. Explain. Are switching costs to Gmail really that high?
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From Giorgio Agamben, “State of Exception,” translated by Kevin Attell, (University of Chicago Press, 2005), pp. 71-72:
Folklorists and anthropologists have long been familiar with those periodic feasts (such as the Anthesteria and Saturnalia of the classical world and the charivari and Carnival of the medieval and modern world) that are characterized by unbridled license and the suspension and overturning of normal legal and social hierarchies … Scholars have always had difficulty explaining these sudden anomic explosions within well-ordered societies and, above all, why they would be tolerated by both the religious and civil authorities. * * * The same can be said for the acts of harassment committed during masked feasts and children’s begging rituals in which children punished whoever denied their obligations to give a gift with acts of violence that Halloween only distantly recalls.
You can check out this interactive costume popularity chart here.
Legal trials resemble the Turing Test in many ways. First, let’s restate the original version of the Turing Test and then compare this test to the process of adjudication. Continue reading
Are we living in the best of all possible worlds? Check out this amazing visualization of two-hundred years’ worth of data in four minutes! Hat tip to WretchesandKings for the pointer.
“Probably more inhibiting than anything else is a feeling of responsibility. The great ideas of the ages have come from people who weren’t paid to have great ideas, but were paid to be teachers or patent clerks or petty officials, or were not paid at all. The great ideas came as side issues.” But what makes an idea “great”? Read Asimov’s entire essay here, via The MIT Technology Review.
Frank Bourassa, the world’s most prolific counterfeiter, shows you how.
Hopefully It’s Interesting.
In Conversation with Legal and Moral Philosophers
PhD, Jagiellonian University
Books, papers, and other jurisprudential things
Ramblings of a retiree in France
BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH
Natalia's space
hoping we know we're living the dream
Lover of math. Bad at drawing.
We hike, bike, and discover Central Florida and beyond
Making it big in business after age 40
Reasoning about reasoning, mathematically.
I don't mean to sound critical, but I am; so that's how it comes across
remember the good old days...
"Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences." - Sylvia Plath
a personal view of the theory of computation
Submitted For Your Perusal is a weblog wherein Matt Thomas shares and writes about things he thinks are interesting.
Logic at Columbia University
Just like the Thesis Whisperer - but with more money
the sky is no longer the limit
Technology, Culture, and Ethics
Just like the horse whisperer - but with more pages
Poetry, Other Words, and Cats
prior probability 