http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog As honest as a gambling man can be Fri, 16 May 2008 01:50:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I spent some time last week at a professional conference. For the most part it was a relatively valuable use of my time, but there were significant portions of time where I was stuck sitting in a room with lots of people while a particularly boring speaker was presenting. I ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/15/explanation/ Answer, and explanatory story, to follow. On the off chance that someone comments with the plaintext before I get around to telling the story, I will send them a $20 Amazon gift certificate or something like that. http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/14/a-small-challenge/ I have been insanely busy and travelling all week. This will continue tomorrow, hopefully reaching a peak so that things will mellow out a bit into the weekend. The remainder of this post is for the gentleman who, when challenged by me today asked me with a straight face "You don't ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/09/what-you-need-to-know/ Remember Nick Bostrom? And remember the Drake Equation? Well, the two have met, as illustrated in MIT's Technology Review this month, in Bostrom's article, Where Are They. Bostrom suggests, although he doesn't put it in these terms, that the reason we haven't met the aliens yet is that Drake's equation is missing ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/08/yes-i-just-made-up-the-term-doom-constant/ Tired of paying through the nose, Americans try praying at the pump "Lord, the prices at this pump have gone up since last week. We know that you are able, that you have all the power in the world," he prayed, before former beauty queen Rashida Jolley led the group in ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/07/crazy-religious-people-have-their-priorities-in-order/ The point is that (little-t) truth is a matter of definition relative to the grid one is using at the moment, and that (capital-T) Truth, metaphysical reality, is irrelevant to grids entirely. Pick a grid, and through it some chaos appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/07/still-true-after-more-than-40-years/ One of those concepts that most North Americans don't run into everyday is that of microfinance. You can read about it at the link, but in a nutshell it's the idea that even "poor" people need access to financial services. One particular area where this is true is financing for the ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/05/microfinance-aggregation-kiva/ Let us suppose that an ichthyologist is exploring the life of the ocean. He casts a net into the water and brings up a fishy assortment. Surveying his catch, he proceeds in the usual manner of a scientist to systematise what it reveals. He arrives at two generalisations: (1) No ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/05/eddington-and-the-meta-paradigm/ I had one of those shocking epiphanies today. I realized, seriously, completely, viscerally, that I am going to die someday. There was no hair-raising event, no near death experience, nothing dramatic. Just a realization that hit me during a very long drive, when I had some time to think about what ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/05/memento-mori/ I passed a lovely bit of time today reading The American Hobo by Colin Beesley, a British academic paper about a quintessentially American phenomenonThe paper is hosted by northbankfred.com, a site dedicated to trains and the hobo experience. Be sure to browse around and check out some of the other ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/03/a-moment-of-hobo-appreciation/ And, time to close a few more tabs... It's lovely that the Internet can bring me an interactive beer and food matching guide. Sadly, it uses a different algorithm than I do--resulting in far more matches with "see through" beer than my scheme would generate. Speaking of beer, I love the idea ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/03/early-saturday-morning-gallimaufry/ We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear—fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/03/hemmingway-said-some-true-things-too/ (This entire post pinched from Andrew Wheeler's always entertaining blog. I don't normally do that, but it's too good, and a link won't do.) A great power sets its sights on a smaller, strange, and faraway land -- an easy target, or so it would seem. Led first by a father ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/02/one-damned-thing-over-and-over/ That's the video for the World Party song Is It Like Today?. The reason it's here: it's explicitly inspired by, and intended to be a precis of, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Lyrics after the jump: Is It Like Today? - World Party Many years ago he Looked out through a glassless window All that ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/02/theres-not-a-lot-of-pop-music-with-this-inspiration/ I read a lot of news. I read magazines. I follow news blogs. I make a very concerted effort to keep up with what's going on in the world, and to get the information from several perspectives. And yet somehow I've found myself thinking, quite frequently, over the last month that ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/02/on-shortages-mostly-food/ During the heyday of what was billed as the Reagan Revolution, sometimes as the New American Dawn, or the "unfettered free market," I could discover no common cause among the several degrees of of rightist separation (conservative, neoconservative, libertarian, reactionary, and evangelical) other than the moral lesson invariably found in ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/02/a-late-thought-for-may-day/ Jonathan Carroll's never-emptying cornucopia of awesome brings us this quote today: I live near the abyss. I hope to stay. --Theodore Roethke Yes, I quite like that. A little bit Nietzsche, a little bit Billy Joel. It, at least to me, says something about an artistic way to live. Actually, and this is probably ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/01/sentences-to-meditate-on/ I am totally having a Grateful Dead day today, and I feel motivated to share with you all. Annotated Lyrics: Scarlet Begonias, Ripple, Uncle John's Band, and Tennessee Jed. The other track, Me & My Uncle, is a cover. So, why these songs? Scarlet Begonias is probably the Dead song I come back ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/05/01/grateful-thursday/ I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the ... http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/04/30/same-as-it-ever-was/ http://www.chrismclaren.com/blog/2008/04/30/how-i-feel-today/