Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years (Rick Perlstein)
10 weeks ago by arsyed
"Here's the problem: To this way of thinking, the triumph of enlightenment liberalism is always inevitable. Now it’s demographics that's the inexorable force (I debunk that argument here); in the 1960s, it was the certainty that Americans would never consent to give up their big-government perks. And yet, somehow, alongside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That's because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it's because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they've been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).
Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it's not going away, either. It's just getting more powerful. That's a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight."
conservatism
history
Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it's not going away, either. It's just getting more powerful. That's a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight."
10 weeks ago by arsyed
Atlanta: Where the Streets Have Many Names (Sara Cheshire)
february 2012 by arsyed
"Traditionally the name changes occurred to separate white and black neighborhoods. So when the street you're on decides to change names, there is a good chance it is also related to Atlanta's segregation history."
atlanta
street
segregation
history
february 2012 by arsyed
Letters of Note: Dear Son
january 2012 by arsyed
"In May of 1962, 37-year-old Malcolm Scott Carpenter became just the second American to orbit the Earth, as he piloted the Aurora 7 into space. On the eve of this historic journey, his father, Marion, proudly wrote him the following wonderful letter."
letters
history
space
january 2012 by arsyed
balupton/history.js - GitHub
january 2012 by arsyed
"History.js gracefully supports the HTML5 History/State APIs (pushState, replaceState, onPopState) in all browsers. Including continued support for data, titles, replaceState. Supports jQuery, MooTools and Prototype. For HTML5 browsers this means that you can modify the URL directly, without needing to use hashes anymore. For HTML4 browsers it will revert back to using the old onhashchange functionality."
javascript
history
html5
libs
january 2012 by arsyed
NYRB: The World on a String (Freeman Dyson)
january 2012 by arsyed
"The old revolutionaries were Albert Einstein, Dirac, Heisenberg, Max Born, and Erwin Schrödinger. Every one of them had a crazy theory that he thought would be the key to understanding everything. Einstein had his unified field theory, Heisenberg had his fundamental length theory, Born had a new version of quantum theory that he called reciprocity, Schrödinger had a new version of Einstein's unified field theory that he called the Final Affine Field Laws, and Dirac had a weird version of quantum theory in which every state had probability either plus two or minus two. Probability, as common sense defines it, is a number between zero and one expressing our degree of confidence that an event will happen. Probability one means that the event always happens; probability zero means that it never happens. In Dirac's Alice-in-Wonderland world, every state happens either more often than always or less often than never."
science
physics
history
string-theory
freeman-dyson
january 2012 by arsyed
How the poor debtors still sell their daughters, How in the drought men still grow fat (Gabriel Rossman)
december 2011 by arsyed
"Graeber’s Debt: The First Five Thousand Years [...] Large parts of the book could better be called Commerce: The First 5,000 Years or Exchange: The First 5,000 Years."
books
reviews
commerce
debt
history
via:cshalizi
december 2011 by arsyed
What I’ve been reading (Tyler Cowen)
december 2011 by arsyed
"1. Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov, Part 1: 1973-1985, by Garry Kasparov. Self-recommending! His chess books are full of history, drama, and suspense, in addition to the chess, he is simply a great mind."
chess
books
history
gary-kasparov
december 2011 by arsyed
[math/9903160] The surprise examination or unexpected hanging paradox (Timothy Y. Chow)
december 2011 by arsyed
"The apparently trifling unexpected hanging paradox has generated an enormous philosophical literature. We introduce the mathematician to this literature, paying special attention to aspects that involve nontrivial mathematics. This xxx version of the paper contains an exhaustive bibliography that the editors of the Monthly deemed too lengthy to publish. The bibliography will be continually updated and readers are encouraged to inform the author of any omissions that they discover."
math
logic
paradox
history
game-theory
backward-induction
december 2011 by arsyed
Ricardo's Principles A Mini-Tutorial Part Three (Robert Paul Wolff)
november 2011 by arsyed
"Smith calls these natural prices "values," and he sets himself to offer an explanation for, or a theory of, the natural prices that rule in the marketplace. Thus, Smith seeks a Theory of Natural Price, or, what is for him the same thing, a Theory of Value. His answer, in a phrase, is that natural prices or values of commodities are regulated by the quantity of labor required to produce them. Thus, he offers, in a very crude and preliminary form, a Labor Theory of Value.
Before getting into the fascinating and perplexing details of the Labor Theory of Value, let us just pause for a moment to reflect on the real significance of what Smith proposes. Economists, by and large, are so eager to get to the fun stuff, the equations, that they do not give as much thought as they ought to the conception of the world that underlies those equations."
economics
history
adam-smith
labor
value
david-ricardo
Before getting into the fascinating and perplexing details of the Labor Theory of Value, let us just pause for a moment to reflect on the real significance of what Smith proposes. Economists, by and large, are so eager to get to the fun stuff, the equations, that they do not give as much thought as they ought to the conception of the world that underlies those equations."
november 2011 by arsyed
Ricardo's Principles A Mini-Tutorial Part Two (Robert Paul Wolff)
november 2011 by arsyed
"Why do we want to know how prices are determined in a capitalist economy? Not because we care how much it costs to buy a yard of cloth or a bushel of wheat or a peck of potatoes. No, those are not the prices we really care about as Political Economists. We want to know the price of land, labour, and capital, which is to say rents, wages, and profits, because it is through the intermediation of those prices that the annual social product is divided up among the "three classes of the community," landowners, workers, and entrepreneurs.
The classical Political Economists were concerned, above all else, about two things: Distribution and Growth. [...] The classical Political economists were quite capable of considering the efficient allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses, but that was not what they were interested in. And modern economists can discuss growth and distribution, but their treatment of those problems tends to be clumsy and ad hoc because that is not the principal focus of their attention. [...] The real methodological difference between the two schools is in the nature of the simplifications they posit in order to bring their analytical tools to bear on the analysis of a capitalist economy."
economics
history
political-economy
david-ricardo
The classical Political Economists were concerned, above all else, about two things: Distribution and Growth. [...] The classical Political economists were quite capable of considering the efficient allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses, but that was not what they were interested in. And modern economists can discuss growth and distribution, but their treatment of those problems tends to be clumsy and ad hoc because that is not the principal focus of their attention. [...] The real methodological difference between the two schools is in the nature of the simplifications they posit in order to bring their analytical tools to bear on the analysis of a capitalist economy."
november 2011 by arsyed
Ricardo's Principles -- A Mini-Tutorial Part One (Robert Paul Wolff)
november 2011 by arsyed
"It is perhaps over simple, but still essentially correct, to say that the story of classical Political Economy from Smith through Ricardo to Marx is the story of inevitable class conflict, with the focus of that conflict shifting from the opposition between landlords and entrepreneurs in Smith and Ricardo to the opposition between entrepreneurs and workers in Marx, the change being in part a result of the decline and defeat of the landed interests and the ascendancy of capital.
Let me say that again, because it is so important. It was not Karl Marx who introduced into classical Political Economy the idea of class warfare. That idea comes straight out of Smith and Ricardo. Marx simply took it over and offered a new and different analysis of it."
economics
history
political-economy
adam-smith
david-ricardo
class
Let me say that again, because it is so important. It was not Karl Marx who introduced into classical Political Economy the idea of class warfare. That idea comes straight out of Smith and Ricardo. Marx simply took it over and offered a new and different analysis of it."
november 2011 by arsyed
Morgan Meis and S. Abbas Raza: Violence and Human Progress (Boston Review)
november 2011 by arsyed
"You are correct—and characteristically observant—to note that being alive is a prerequisite for being in love." :)
books
reviews
steven-pinker
violence
war
history
november 2011 by arsyed
Lovelace's Leap (John Graham-Cumming)
september 2011 by arsyed
"Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies, imagine that because the business of the engine is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly. [...] But it would be a mistake to suppose that because its results are given in the notation of a more restricted science, its processes are therefore restricted to those of that science." [lovelace]
computing
history
ada-lovelace
babbage
symbolic
september 2011 by arsyed
Telehack
september 2011 by arsyed
"Telehack is a simulation of a stylized arpanet/usenet, circa 1985-1990. It is a full multi-user simulation, including 25,000 hosts and BBS's the early net, thousands of files from the era, a collection of adventure and IF games, a working BASIC interpreter with a library of programs to run, simulated historical users, and more."
arpanet
internet
history
simulation
september 2011 by arsyed
Performance and Recording: “Everyone sing the chorus—including intellectuals!” (John Holbo)
july 2011 by arsyed
"I just read two books back to back to good effect: Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy and Elijah Wald’s How the Beatles Destroyed Rock n Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music"
books
music
writing
history
culture
july 2011 by arsyed
Immovable Ladder on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre located in Jerusalem, Israel (Atlas Obscura)
june 2011 by arsyed
"Today, the current situation is an uneasy status quo, a kind of an fragile compromise reached in several stages, through the mediation of the Ottoman empire and several European powers. [...] The primary custodians are the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman catholic church, with lesser duties shared by Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac Orthodox churches. [...]
Arguments and violent clashes are not uncommon. In November 2008 the internet was flooded with videos of a fistfight between Armenian and Greek monks in one such dispute. A small section of the roof of the church is disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians. At least one Coptic monk at any given time sits there on a chair placed on a particular spot to express this claim. On a hot summer day he moved his chair some 20cm more into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile act and violation of status quo. Eleven were hospitalized after a fight resulting from this provocation."
church
jerusalem
holy-sepulchre
history
religion
Arguments and violent clashes are not uncommon. In November 2008 the internet was flooded with videos of a fistfight between Armenian and Greek monks in one such dispute. A small section of the roof of the church is disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians. At least one Coptic monk at any given time sits there on a chair placed on a particular spot to express this claim. On a hot summer day he moved his chair some 20cm more into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile act and violation of status quo. Eleven were hospitalized after a fight resulting from this provocation."
june 2011 by arsyed
The Church and the Ladder: Frozen in Time (James Lancaster)
june 2011 by arsyed
"There seems to be a consensus on a couple of facts: (1) the ladder is there because of the Status Quo, and (2) the window belongs to the Armenians.
However, there seemed to be some disagreement about who controls the balcony - Greeks or Armenians - and why the ladder is there, i.e., to clean the windows or give the Armenians access to the balcony? Or is there another, yet-to-be-discovered, totally different explanation?"
holy-sepulchre
jerusalem
history
church
ladder
However, there seemed to be some disagreement about who controls the balcony - Greeks or Armenians - and why the ladder is there, i.e., to clean the windows or give the Armenians access to the balcony? Or is there another, yet-to-be-discovered, totally different explanation?"
june 2011 by arsyed
Guido van Rossum: 21 Years of Python (James Hamilton)
june 2011 by arsyed
"Guido van Rossum was at Amazon a week back doing a talk. Guido presented 21 Years of Python: From Pet Project to Programming Language of the Year. The slides are linked below and my rough notes follow:"
python
history
design
proglang
gvr
june 2011 by arsyed
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
june 2011 by arsyed
"For example, a June 1918 article from the trade publication Earnshaw's Infants' Department said, “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” Other sources said blue was flattering for blonds, pink for brunettes; or blue was for blue-eyed babies, pink for brown-eyed babies, according to Paoletti.
In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.
Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says."
culture
gender
history
fashion
color
pink
blue
In 1927, Time magazine printed a chart showing sex-appropriate colors for girls and boys according to leading U.S. stores. In Boston, Filene’s told parents to dress boys in pink. So did Best & Co. in New York City, Halle’s in Cleveland and Marshall Field in Chicago.
Today’s color dictate wasn’t established until the 1940s, as a result of Americans’ preferences as interpreted by manufacturers and retailers. “It could have gone the other way,” Paoletti says."
june 2011 by arsyed
In 1493, Columbus reunited the biological family tree (Jason Kottke)
may 2011 by arsyed
"Tyler Cowen says that Charles Mann's 1491 (a taste of which can be read here) is "one of my favorite books ever, in any field", to which I add a hearty "me too". Mann's been hard at work at a sequel, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, which is due out in August, just in time for some seriously awesome beach reading."
books
rec
history
new-world
columbus
may 2011 by arsyed
The Truth About the Confederacy (Tony Wikrent)
may 2011 by arsyed
"A number of myths about have been developed about the “Lost Cause ” of the Confederacy for over a century, and those myths and lies are probably going to be repeated so often the coming days and weeks that you’re going to want to puke. My intent for this diary is to help shatter those myths and lies."
history
civil-war
lost-cause
ideology
may 2011 by arsyed
The Awesome Potential of Shepherds in War (boscoh)
may 2011 by arsyed
"In terms of pre-industrial warfare, sheep-herding armies are the most lethal. Unlike hunter/gatherer societies, sheepherding societies have the capacity to form war-making juggernauts that easily over-run agricultural civilizations ... But most importantly, as logistics is the heart of warfare, sheepherding armies have a decided mobilization advantage as they do not have to worry about maintaining a supply-line because their food source – sheep – carry themselves along on the journey .
Smith argues that sheepherding societies are also economically incentivized to form even more strongly hierarchal societies than agricultural societies. The reason is that the limited diversity in production for sheepherding societies means the only outlet for a sheepherding king to accrue wealth can only be expressed in terms of more sheep or more soldiers. There are no pretty trinkets, golden treasures and magnificent buildings that he can spend his wealth on. ... the perfect ingredients for building an army. Although sheepherding societies are naturally primed for warfare, most of the time, they fritter away their strength in an unending cycle of internal wars."
economics
history
sheepherding
society
organization
adam-smith
Smith argues that sheepherding societies are also economically incentivized to form even more strongly hierarchal societies than agricultural societies. The reason is that the limited diversity in production for sheepherding societies means the only outlet for a sheepherding king to accrue wealth can only be expressed in terms of more sheep or more soldiers. There are no pretty trinkets, golden treasures and magnificent buildings that he can spend his wealth on. ... the perfect ingredients for building an army. Although sheepherding societies are naturally primed for warfare, most of the time, they fritter away their strength in an unending cycle of internal wars."
may 2011 by arsyed
Re-reading An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances (Christian Robert)
may 2011 by arsyed
"I note that Price also derives [409-410] as a consequence of Bayes’ calculations what is now know as Laplace’s succession rule…! Besides the derivation of the posterior distribution itself, which must be a considerable feat for the time, the attention to computational issues is highly commendable, as it would become a constant theme of Bayesian studies for centuries!!!"
papers
bayes
probability
history
may 2011 by arsyed
The History of Science Fiction, ver. 1 (Ward Shelley)
april 2011 by arsyed
"The movement of years is from left to right, tracing the figure of a tentacled beast, derived from H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds Martians. Science Fiction is seen as the offspring of the collision of the Enlightenment (providing science) and Romanticism, which birthed gothic fiction, source of not only SciFi, but crime novels, horror, westerns, and fantasy (all of which can be seen exiting through wormholes to their own diagrams, elsewhere)"
scifi
history
art
infographics
via:boxofbox
april 2011 by arsyed
What kind of law is this? (Anne Orford)
april 2011 by arsyed
"the Suez intervention marked the emergence of a form of international rule premised on new distinctions, a response to the revolutions that swept the Arab world during the 1950s and 1960s.
Then, as now, young leaders were fired by dreams of pan-Arabic solidarity, by the desire to end oppressive and exploitative rule, and by hopes for a better future. Yet they were met with cynical disbelief, mockery and sullen hostility on the part of Western leaders."
united-nations
law
international
history
suez
libya
Then, as now, young leaders were fired by dreams of pan-Arabic solidarity, by the desire to end oppressive and exploitative rule, and by hopes for a better future. Yet they were met with cynical disbelief, mockery and sullen hostility on the part of Western leaders."
april 2011 by arsyed
The Ashtray: The Ultimatum (Part 1) (Errol Morris)
march 2011 by arsyed
"The end result was that Kuhn threw me out of Princeton. He had the power to do it, and he did it. God only knows what I might have said in my second or third year. At the time, I felt that he had destroyed my life. Now, I feel that he saved me from a career that I was probably not suited for."
errol-morris
thomas-kuhn
science
philosophy
history
march 2011 by arsyed
Mozilla Apologator (Michael Toy)
march 2011 by arsyed
"In order to write successful code in the Mozilla codebase, you need to: [...] So you are completely doomed. But we've been doomed inside Netscape for years and it hasn't stopped us from shipping some very cool software. Don't let the fact that it is impossible stop you from doing cool stuff."
mozilla
history
swdev
march 2011 by arsyed
URL Hunter!
march 2011 by arsyed
"An experimental game using the URL bar as the game screen."
html5
history
hacks
march 2011 by arsyed
A Seminar With Gadhafi (Robert Putnam)
march 2011 by arsyed
"In reflecting today on the future of democracy in Libya and the rest of North Africa, I'm drawn to the work of two influential sociologists, Moisey Ostrogorsky and Robert Michels. They taught generations of political scientists that power in the modern world rests on the underlying social order, so to ask "who will rule?" is to ask "who is best organized?" In Russia in 1917 the answer was the Bolsheviks, in Iran in 1979 the answer was Khomeini's Islamic militants, and in Egypt in 2011 the answer appears to be the military.
The saddest legacy of Moammar Gadhafi and his brutal revolutionary philosophy may be that, in Libya in 2011, the answer seems to be "no one at all.""
sociology
politics
organization
history
libya
The saddest legacy of Moammar Gadhafi and his brutal revolutionary philosophy may be that, in Libya in 2011, the answer seems to be "no one at all.""
march 2011 by arsyed
History Swallowed Whole (Timothy Burke)
february 2011 by arsyed
"This is a pretty classic example of the use of historical analogy as sleight-of-hand, rather than as an investigative tool." [on turow/aiken/shapiro op-ed]
copyright
history
writing
february 2011 by arsyed
Answers to the Asian History Quiz (James Fallows)
february 2011 by arsyed
"What is beyond question is that even many China specialists at U.S. universities have never heard of the Huang He massacre, for instance. Yet it was truly an enormous atrocity. On Encyclopedia Britannica's numbers, between 500,000 and 900,000 people died after Chinese Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai Shek destroyed the Yellow River's dikes near Kaifeng. The move was undertaken to try to slow the advance of Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese War. [...] American amnesia probably stems in part from the fact of the Cold War alliance with Chiang Kai Shek's Taiwan."
"More generally a lack of understanding of East Asia has contributed significantly to some of the greatest American foreign policy disasters of the post-World War II era. Remember, for instance, that few American opinion makers offered prescient warnings of what America was getting into with the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964. Yet a better understanding of the facts would surely have suggested that the Domino Theory made no sense."
asia
history
intlrel
journalism
media
"More generally a lack of understanding of East Asia has contributed significantly to some of the greatest American foreign policy disasters of the post-World War II era. Remember, for instance, that few American opinion makers offered prescient warnings of what America was getting into with the passing of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964. Yet a better understanding of the facts would surely have suggested that the Domino Theory made no sense."
february 2011 by arsyed
Historical GDP estimates for early modern China (Daniel Little)
january 2011 by arsyed
"[Li Bozhong]'s current book is a massive effort (over 600 pages), but it is itself only a pilot project for a more ambitious study to come in future years. Li has selected one limited district within his previous area of study in the lower Yangzi Delta (Huating-Lou), and attempts to apply the method of historical GDP to this limited region for a single period of time (1823-29). His goal is to determine whether the discipline and method of historical GDP can shed new light on the scattered economic statistics and materials that more traditional economic histories have assembled."
china
economics
history
books
january 2011 by arsyed
Variant Press: Commodore (Brian Bagnall)
january 2011 by arsyed
"Jack Tramiel. Engineers and managers share their experiences between 1976 and 1984 of the groundbreaking moments, soaring highs, and stunning employee turnover that came with being on top of the world in the early computer business."
books
computer
history
business
commodore
january 2011 by arsyed
The MOS 6502 and the Best Layout Guy in the World (Russ Cox)
january 2011 by arsyed
"A team of three people—Greg James, Barry Silverman, and Brian Silverman—accumulated a bunch of 6502 chips, applied sulfuric acid to them to strip the casing and expose the actual chips, used a high-resolution photomicroscope to scan the chips, applied computer graphics techniques to build a vector representation of the chip, and finally derived from the vector form what amounts to the circuit diagram of the chip [...] they created an animated 6502 web page that lets you watch the voltages race around the chip as it executes. For more, see their web site visual6502.org.
Oh, and it actually works. They applied the same technique to build the transistor map for an Atari 10444D TIA chip, which connected the 6502 to the television in the original Atari 2600, and then they simulated both chips together and were able to run actual Atari 2600 games."
history
computer
hardware
architecture
chips
6502
Oh, and it actually works. They applied the same technique to build the transistor map for an Atari 10444D TIA chip, which connected the 6502 to the television in the original Atari 2600, and then they simulated both chips together and were able to run actual Atari 2600 games."
january 2011 by arsyed
Pericles' Funeral Oration - Wikipedia
december 2010 by arsyed
"The Funeral Oration is significant because the speech departs from the typical formula of Athenian funeral speeches.[8] David Cartwright describes it as "a eulogy of Athens itself...".[9] The speech is a glorification of Athens' achievements, designed to stir the spirits of a state still at war."
greek
history
ancient
pericles
thucydides
speeches
athens
december 2010 by arsyed
Diagrams and economic thought (Daniel Little)
december 2010 by arsyed
"Famous Figures and Diagrams in Economics" ($191 on amazon!)
books
economics
diagrams
history
visualization
december 2010 by arsyed
Autism’s First Child (John Donvan and Caren Zucker, The Atlantic)
december 2010 by arsyed
"And to a remarkable degree, these symptoms still align with those of one “Donald T,” who was first examined at Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, in the 1930s, the same boy who would later amaze a mentalist and become renowned for counting bricks.
...
The question that haunts every parent of a child with autism is What will happen when I die? This reflects a chronological inevitability: children with autism will grow up to become adults with autism, in most cases ultimately outliving the parents who provided their primary support."
autism
history
...
The question that haunts every parent of a child with autism is What will happen when I die? This reflects a chronological inevitability: children with autism will grow up to become adults with autism, in most cases ultimately outliving the parents who provided their primary support."
december 2010 by arsyed
Google's decision to abandon Caps Lock. (Slate)
december 2010 by arsyed
oh come on, everybody knows that's supposed to get re-mapped to the CTRL key. stick the silly search thing in the corner.
google
chrome
capslock
keyboard
history
december 2010 by arsyed
"Glorious Contingency," 1999 (Michael Shermer)
december 2010 by arsyed
"Me thinks the gentleman doth protest too much. In my opinion, Dennett, and some others who adhere to a strict Darwinian adaptationist program, may be trying to find in nature a nonexisting pattern that shows us—Homo sapiens—as the nearly inevitable result of evolution. Dennett's crane of relentless natural selection is, for him, a skyhook—"a 'mind-first' force or power or process" that, run over and over, would produce us again and again."
evolution
adaptation
contingency
history
complexity
daniel-dennet
stephen-jay-gould
december 2010 by arsyed
related tags
* ⊕ 50in50 ⊕ aaronSwartz ⊕ academic ⊕ accent ⊕ acoustic ⊕ ada-lovelace ⊕ adam-smith ⊕ adaptation ⊕ addiction ⊕ adobe ⊕ ads ⊕ adsense ⊕ aerospace ⊕ afghanistan ⊕ africa ⊕ agile ⊕ ai ⊕ ajax ⊕ al-gore ⊕ alan-greenspan ⊕ alan-kay ⊕ alexander ⊕ alexandria ⊕ algebra ⊕ algol ⊕ algol-w ⊕ alt ⊕ amazon ⊕ americas ⊕ amos-elon ⊕ ampersand ⊕ amusing ⊕ analog ⊕ anarchy ⊕ anatolia ⊕ ancient ⊕ angkor ⊕ animation ⊕ anlaysis ⊕ antarctica ⊕ apl ⊕ apple ⊕ applescript ⊕ arabia ⊕ archaeology ⊕ architecture ⊕ archive ⊕ argentina ⊕ arial ⊕ arpanet ⊕ arrays ⊕ art ⊕ articles ⊕ asia ⊕ athens ⊕ atlanta ⊕ atlas ⊕ auctions ⊕ audio ⊕ audiogalaxy ⊕ autism ⊕ autoregression ⊕ babbage ⊕ back-button ⊕ backward-induction ⊕ bacteria ⊕ bad-science ⊕ bailout ⊕ banking ⊕ bars ⊕ bash ⊕ batman ⊕ bayes ⊕ bayesian ⊕ beer ⊕ bees ⊕ bell-labs ⊕ best-of ⊕ bhutto ⊕ bibliography ⊕ biography ⊕ bioinformatics ⊕ biology ⊕ blogs ⊕ blue ⊕ blues ⊕ bonds ⊕ book ⊕ books ⊕ botswana ⊕ brad-delong ⊕ britain ⊕ brooklyn ⊕ brow ⊕ browser ⊕ browsers ⊕ buddhism ⊕ bush ⊕ business ⊕ bw ⊕ byzantine ⊕ byzantium ⊕ c ⊕ c# ⊕ c++ ⊕ calculus ⊕ cambodia ⊕ caml ⊕ campaign ⊕ capital ⊕ cappadocia ⊕ capslock ⊕ car ⊕ carnival ⊕ cas ⊕ castles ⊕ cdr ⊕ celebrities ⊕ censorship ⊕ centralDogma ⊕ charts ⊕ cheese ⊕ chemistry ⊕ chess ⊕ china ⊕ chips ⊕ chomsky ⊕ chrome ⊕ church ⊕ cities ⊕ civil ⊕ civil-war ⊕ civilWar ⊕ civilWars ⊕ claris ⊕ clarisWorks ⊕ clash ⊕ class ⊕ classical ⊕ classics ⊕ claudeShannon ⊕ clay-shirky ⊕ cli ⊕ climate ⊕ closures ⊕ clothing ⊕ clt ⊕ code ⊕ coffee ⊕ collections ⊕ color ⊕ columbus ⊕ combinatorics ⊕ comics ⊕ commerce ⊕ commodore ⊕ commons ⊕ communism ⊕ companies ⊕ company ⊕ comparison ⊕ compiler ⊕ complexity ⊕ compsci ⊕ computer ⊕ computers ⊕ computing ⊕ concept ⊕ confederacy ⊕ conflict ⊕ congress ⊕ conquest ⊕ conservatism ⊕ contingency ⊕ control ⊕ controlTheory ⊕ cookies ⊕ cool ⊕ coordination ⊕ copyright ⊕ corba ⊕ cordoba ⊕ corruption ⊕ cossacks ⊕ course ⊕ courses ⊕ credit ⊕ crime ⊕ crisis ⊕ critique ⊕ crlf ⊕ css ⊕ cuba ⊕ cubics ⊕ culture ⊕ culturomics ⊕ currency ⊕ cybernetics ⊕ cyoa ⊕ czar ⊕ damienKatz ⊕ danBricklin ⊕ daniel-dennet ⊕ dannyHillis ⊕ darpa ⊕ darwin ⊕ data ⊕ database ⊕ david-ricardo ⊕ davidHarel ⊕ dc ⊕ debt ⊕ decentralization ⊕ decline ⊕ deism ⊕ demographics ⊕ dennis-ritchie ⊕ design ⊕ development ⊕ diagram ⊕ diagrams ⊕ dialogue ⊕ diary ⊕ dickGabriel ⊕ dictionary ⊕ diff ⊕ dip ⊕ directory ⊕ discrete ⊕ discussion ⊕ dismal ⊕ disney ⊕ disraeli ⊕ disruption ⊕ distcomp ⊕ distobj ⊕ distributions ⊕ distutils ⊕ divergence ⊕ documentary ⊕ documents ⊕ dogfishHead ⊕ dos ⊕ drugs ⊕ drum ⊕ dsp ⊕ duff ⊕ e ⊕ earth ⊕ east ⊕ eclipse ⊕ economics ⊕ economy ⊕ education ⊕ eels ⊕ egypt ⊕ eisenstein ⊕ elections ⊕ electoralCollege ⊕ electricity ⊕ emacs ⊕ emForster ⊕ emh ⊕ empires ⊕ encoding ⊕ energy ⊕ engineering ⊕ england ⊕ english ⊕ environment ⊕ eol ⊕ equation ⊕ erlang ⊕ errol-morris ⊕ errolMorris ⊕ error ⊕ essays ⊕ estimation ⊕ ethinicity ⊕ etymology ⊕ euclid ⊕ euler ⊕ euro ⊕ europe ⊕ eurozone ⊕ evolution ⊕ experiments ⊕ expression ⊕ extension ⊕ extinction ⊕ fa ⊕ faraday ⊕ fashion ⊕ fed ⊕ feudalism ⊕ feynman ⊕ fifa ⊕ finance ⊕ firefox ⊕ fisher ⊕ flash ⊕ fonts ⊕ food ⊕ forecasting ⊕ forex ⊕ fortran ⊕ forums ⊕ fourier ⊕ fox ⊕ fractional ⊕ frameworks ⊕ francisCrick ⊕ franklin ⊕ freedom ⊕ freeman-dyson ⊕ freeWill ⊕ friedman ⊕ friendster ⊕ fun ⊕ functional ⊕ funny ⊕ galileo ⊕ game ⊕ game-theory ⊕ games ⊕ gary-kasparov ⊕ gauss ⊕ gender ⊕ gene ⊕ genetics ⊕ genghisKhan ⊕ genome ⊕ geo ⊕ geography ⊕ geology ⊕ geometry ⊕ geopolitics ⊕ georgia ⊕ german ⊕ germany ⊕ gg-kay ⊕ gin ⊕ gis ⊕ github ⊕ globalization ⊕ godel ⊕ google ⊕ google-books ⊕ gop ⊕ government ⊕ gpl ⊕ graph ⊕ graphics ⊕ greece ⊕ greek ⊕ grid ⊕ groups ⊕ growth ⊕ gui ⊕ gutenberg ⊕ guy-steele ⊕ gvr ⊕ gwas ⊕ hack ⊕ hacking ⊕ hacks ⊕ hanna-arendt ⊕ hardware ⊕ haskell ⊕ hci ⊕ heat ⊕ hedera ⊕ hedgehog ⊕ helvetica ⊕ highbrow ⊕ hinduism ⊕ history ⊖ hollywood ⊕ holy-sepulchre ⊕ hopl ⊕ hosni-mobarak ⊕ hotdog ⊕ html ⊕ html5 ⊕ http ⊕ human ⊕ hungary ⊕ huns ⊕ hypothesis-testing ⊕ i18n ⊕ ibm ⊕ ideas ⊕ identity ⊕ ideology ⊕ ie ⊕ illustration ⊕ imbalance ⊕ img ⊕ immigrants ⊕ immigration ⊕ imperialism ⊕ increasingReturns ⊕ india ⊕ industrialRevolution ⊕ influence ⊕ infographics ⊕ information ⊕ information-theory ⊕ innovation ⊕ innumeracy ⊕ institutions ⊕ interesting ⊕ interface ⊕ international ⊕ internet ⊕ interpretation ⊕ interviews ⊕ intlrel ⊕ invisibleHand ⊕ ip ⊕ iphone ⊕ ir ⊕ iran ⊕ iraq ⊕ islam ⊕ israel ⊕ italy ⊕ J ⊕ jamesGalbraith ⊕ japan ⊕ japanese ⊕ java ⊕ javascript ⊕ jerusalem ⊕ john-von-neumann ⊕ josephson ⊕ journalism ⊕ jquery ⊕ junichiroKoizumi ⊕ kalmanFilter ⊕ ketchup ⊕ keyboard ⊕ keynes ⊕ korea ⊕ labor ⊕ ladder ⊕ lambda ⊕ langauge ⊕ language ⊕ languages ⊕ latin ⊕ law ⊕ lawrence ⊕ least-squares ⊕ lecture ⊕ leibniz ⊕ letters ⊕ leverage ⊕ libertarianism ⊕ libraries ⊕ libs ⊕ libya ⊕ licklider ⊕ life-magazine ⊕ likelihood ⊕ limburger ⊕ lincoln ⊕ lincolnIndex ⊕ linearAlgebra ⊕ linearB ⊕ linguistics ⊕ links ⊕ linnaeus ⊕ linq ⊕ linusPauling ⊕ lisp ⊕ listen ⊕ lists ⊕ literature ⊕ logic ⊕ login ⊕ lost-cause ⊕ lostCause ⊕ lotusNotes ⊕ lowbrow ⊕ mahalanobis ⊕ mailingLists ⊕ malay ⊕ malaysia ⊕ malcolmGladwell ⊕ mallet ⊕ management ⊕ manhattan ⊕ manufacturing ⊕ maps ⊕ marginal ⊕ maritime ⊕ marketing ⊕ markTwain ⊕ martingales ⊕ math ⊕ matrices ⊕ mauve ⊕ mba ⊕ mcmc ⊕ measurement ⊕ media ⊕ medicine ⊕ medieval ⊕ messaging ⊕ michaelFaraday ⊕ microbes ⊕ microsoft ⊕ middleEast ⊕ migration ⊕ mirror ⊕ mistakes ⊕ mml ⊕ mobile ⊕ modeling ⊕ modern ⊕ monetarism ⊕ monetary ⊕ mongolia ⊕ mongols ⊕ moral ⊕ morphology ⊕ mortgage ⊕ movies ⊕ mozilla ⊕ mp3 ⊕ multitouch ⊕ multivariate ⊕ museum ⊕ music ⊕ myth ⊕ myths ⊕ nasa ⊕ nate-silver ⊕ nationalism ⊕ nature ⊕ navy ⊕ nehru ⊕ new-world ⊕ newspaper ⊕ newton ⊕ newYorker ⊕ ngram ⊕ nixon ⊕ nlp ⊕ nobelprize ⊕ nomogram ⊕ norbertWiener ⊕ normal ⊕ norvig ⊕ notation ⊕ null ⊕ numbers ⊕ nyc ⊕ obama ⊕ object ⊕ ocr ⊕ ocw ⊕ odeo ⊕ oodbms ⊕ oop ⊕ opensource ⊕ opera ⊕ opinion ⊕ optimalCurrencyArea ⊕ optimiaztion ⊕ optimization ⊕ organization ⊕ orwell ⊕ ottoman ⊕ overload ⊕ p2p ⊕ packaging ⊕ pakistan ⊕ palestine ⊕ papers ⊕ papyrus ⊕ paradox ⊕ partition ⊕ pascal ⊕ paulKrugman ⊕ paulMeehl ⊕ payments ⊕ pc ⊕ peacoat ⊕ pearson ⊕ penicillin ⊕ people ⊕ pericles ⊕ permian ⊕ persia ⊕ personalities ⊕ pharma ⊕ philosophy ⊕ photography ⊕ photon ⊕ photos ⊕ photoshop ⊕ physics ⊕ pilcrow ⊕ pink ⊕ pixar ⊕ pj-plauger ⊕ places ⊕ platforms ⊕ platonism ⊕ playlist ⊕ plc ⊕ plugins ⊕ plugs ⊕ podcast ⊕ poland ⊕ police ⊕ policy ⊕ political-economy ⊕ politics ⊕ polynomials ⊕ pop ⊕ population ⊕ positivism ⊕ poster ⊕ posters ⊕ postmodernism ⊕ pow ⊕ power ⊕ preposition ⊕ prescriptivist-poppycock ⊕ presentation ⊕ preview ⊕ pricing ⊕ printing ⊕ privacy ⊕ probability ⊕ proglang ⊕ programming ⊕ prolog ⊕ proof ⊕ proofs ⊕ propaganda ⊕ protocol ⊕ psychology ⊕ publicdata ⊕ publishing ⊕ python ⊕ qed ⊕ quantum ⊕ quotes ⊕ race ⊕ radar ⊕ rationality ⊕ razor-and-blade ⊕ read ⊕ reading-lists ⊕ readp ⊕ reagan ⊕ rebeccaGoldstein ⊕ rec ⊕ ref ⊕ reference ⊕ reforms ⊕ regulation ⊕ religion ⊕ renaissance ⊕ research ⊕ reserve ⊕ rest ⊕ restaurants ⊕ retro ⊕ retrospective ⊕ review ⊕ reviews ⊕ rhetoric ⊕ richardFeynman ⊕ richardFlorida ⊕ richardScott ⊕ rickPerlstein ⊕ roman ⊕ romanEmpire ⊕ rome ⊕ rpc ⊕ russia ⊕ rvedecon ⊕ sage ⊕ sanskrit ⊕ satellite ⊕ sausage ⊕ scala ⊕ scheme ⊕ schumpeter ⊕ science ⊕ scifi ⊕ search ⊕ seccession ⊕ secondLife ⊕ security ⊕ segregation ⊕ semantics ⊕ sensory ⊕ setuptools ⊕ sheepherding ⊕ shell ⊕ shia ⊕ shrinkage ⊕ shuttle ⊕ siliconValley ⊕ simulation ⊕ singapore ⊕ slavery ⊕ slides ⊕ smalltalk ⊕ sms ⊕ soa ⊕ soap ⊕ soccer ⊕ social-software ⊕ socialScience ⊕ society ⊕ sociology ⊕ software ⊕ sotu ⊕ sound ⊕ source ⊕ south ⊕ south-asia ⊕ space ⊕ spain ⊕ spectral ⊕ speech ⊕ speeches ⊕ spinoza ⊕ spreadsheet ⊕ sql ⊕ squeak ⊕ standardDeviation ⊕ standards ⊕ startup ⊕ startups ⊕ statcomp ⊕ state ⊕ state-charts ⊕ statistics ⊕ stats ⊕ stein ⊕ stephen-jay-gould ⊕ steven-pinker ⊕ storage ⊕ strange ⊕ street ⊕ string-theory ⊕ strings ⊕ subversion ⊕ suez ⊕ suits ⊕ sunni ⊕ surprises ⊕ survey ⊕ survival-analysis ⊕ swdev ⊕ symbolic ⊕ symbols ⊕ syntax ⊕ systems ⊕ ta-nehisi-coates ⊕ tabs ⊕ tagCloud ⊕ tags ⊕ taiwan ⊕ tamil ⊕ taNehisiCoates ⊕ taste ⊕ taxes ⊕ tech ⊕ technology ⊕ telecom ⊕ text ⊕ textMining ⊕ texts ⊕ theory ⊕ thinkingMachines ⊕ thomas-kuhn ⊕ thomas-schelling ⊕ thomasJefferson ⊕ thucydides ⊕ tibet ⊕ tigana ⊕ timBray ⊕ time ⊕ time-series ⊕ timeline ⊕ tips ⊕ tonyHoare ⊕ tools ⊕ topic ⊕ trade ⊕ transactions ⊕ travel ⊕ treasury ⊕ trivia ⊕ truth ⊕ turboPascal ⊕ turkey ⊕ twAnderson ⊕ twitter ⊕ types ⊕ typography ⊕ ui ⊕ uk ⊕ unemployment ⊕ unicode ⊕ united-nations ⊕ unix ⊕ urban ⊕ usa ⊕ usability ⊕ usenet ⊕ utf8 ⊕ value ⊕ variance ⊕ vcs ⊕ vector ⊕ via:arthegall ⊕ via:boxofbox ⊕ via:chl ⊕ via:cshalizi ⊕ via:ded_maxim ⊕ via:ded_maxim/blog ⊕ via:nelson ⊕ via:shivak ⊕ via:yaroslavb ⊕ video ⊕ videos ⊕ vintage ⊕ violence ⊕ visualAge ⊕ visualization ⊕ vitamins ⊕ waltWhitman ⊕ war ⊕ washington ⊕ watch ⊕ wavelets ⊕ web ⊕ webServices ⊕ websockets ⊕ welfare ⊕ west ⊕ wikipedia ⊕ windows ⊕ wingnuts ⊕ wittgenstein ⊕ women ⊕ world ⊕ writing ⊕ wwii ⊕ xml ⊕ xmlhttprequest ⊕ yoga ⊕ youtube ⊕ zen ⊕ zero ⊕Copy this bookmark: