In California. Lawrence Lessig rocks.

This is generally not a blog. I'm only posting this because I promised neveryou.

1. Go (nowhere. link broken for your convenience).
2. Pass it on.
( my answers )

Speeding tickets assign larger-than-"just" penalties to individual instances of speeding at least partially in order to serve as deterrence. So I say we should privatize the highways and then institute a system where speeding is allowed but results in payment of a risk premium. Or perhaps something finer-grained and less heuristic would be

If all speech were in some sense executable and wouldn't "compile" otherwise, would lying become impossible? One might think not, because programs can certainly print statements which are false, but what if the same "speech" restriction applied to them? It does seem that it would play havoc with the future tense, though. Or perhaps it would only ( Read more... )

Berlin is preparing a giant brothel for the 2006 World Cup. Ijou da.

Cake, Short Skirt, Long Jacket
"Uninterrupted prosperity" is a sufficiently unusual phrase that I'm wondering if they nabbed it from Kant, who also used it. Yes, I know Kant wrote in German. Also he was talking about scoundrels. So maybe not.

In many ways it's just a little thing (selling your soul to the NY Times required), but it makes me FURIOUS. I can't live in this culture.

Update: the White House has issued a statement. Do they backpedal or apologize? Of course not.

Second Life, a really nifty "game" (quotes used extremely advisedly) I dabbled with briefly is planning to include Firefox web browsing within its world. That's both really awesome and sorta disturbing at the same time. I'm used to thinking of us existing in the real world and looking into virtual spaces. Now people can sit inside and look back ( Read more... )

I think it's a good idea. Basically, at some point in the not too distant past I was musing over whether anyone I knew was going to be somewhere I was taking a trip to (a particular instance, not generalized; I just can't remember where it was I was going. Let's say Budapest). It'd be rather inconvenient to call up or email everyone I know and ( Read more... )

If you've heard of the 'Oxyrhynchus Papyri' you already know a lot more about the classics world than I do. Apparently (courtesy of /.) they've figured out how to decode them. Material includes stuff from people like Sophocles, Euripides, and Hesiod. Last one to perform the new plays on Broadway is a sucker!