August 2012
15 posts
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Who wants to live for ever? Futurology and its... →
“I hate to break it to Natasha Vita-More. It doesn’t matter how enthusiastic she is about it, she’s going to die” – Dale Carrico
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burn upon reentry
dictionaryofobscuresorrows:
n. the bitter sadness of having no new messages after having been out of contact for a while, which indicates that although society often receives you in massive sustained doses, its withdrawal symptoms are relatively mild, or even kinda refreshing.
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The Silicon Vatican and the root of technology... →
Thus there are not just Dominicans, Jesuits, Norbertines, Benedictines, Poor Clares, [of technology] etc., but there are the tiniest gradations in between some of these orders (not the first two though, who put a premium on coherence before differences of conscience). Thus there are the positively po-monumber of Benedictines (extra po-mo given that many of the difference are to be found in...
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Being able to hear music for the first time ever →
I sat in the doctor’s office frozen as a cacophony of sounds attacked me. The whir of the computer, the hum of the AC, the clacking of the keyboard, and when my best friend walked in I couldn’t believe that he had a slight rasp to his voice. He joked that it was time to cut back on the cigarettes.
That night, a group of close friends jump-started my musical education by playing Mozart, Rolling...
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A Cultural Thought Experiment →
“This isn’t going to be a world that feels rich, any more than today’s middle class EU or USA feels wealthy, until you compare the average standard of living to that of previous centuries. We evaluate our status by referring to our neighbours; if none of our neighbours are starving and homeless, starvation and homelessness drop out of the attributes we measure ourselves against....
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1. Philosophical controversies are more fuzzy than controversies in the natural...
– “Some metaphilosophical lessons” (Adapted from Kusch 1995: 276–278)
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Having flattened so many laws (and a good many innocents) in pursuit of the...
– Conor Friedersdorf, on why the public reaction is different when a terrorist is white. (via theatlantic)
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Remember that, unlike any other Party, we embrace men and women of every color,...
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Mario Cuomo, keynote address at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
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9 eyes - strange/arty/gonzo pictures from Google... →
http://9-eyes.com/