Monthly Archives: April 2012

Faux Tennyson

Posted on 2012-04-26 by TJ

It little profits that an idle man by this blank screen, amongst these barren disks, matched by an ageless vice I Tweet and roll unequal blogs unto a “Book of Face” that sorts and stores and feeds and knows not … Continue reading →

Posted in pastiche, poem, poetry | 2 Comments

Short Sonnet

Posted on 2012-04-07 by TJ

My two favoured forms of formal poetry are the Shakespearean sonnet and the haiku. I’ve also recently played around with Pushkin sonnents sufficiently to appreciate the form, but I doubt it’ll ever be what just falls out of my fingers … Continue reading →

Posted in cat, haiku, poem, poetry, sonnet | 2 Comments

Balanced (fragment)

Posted on 2012-04-06 by TJ

Balanced here upon two wobbly legs I stagger like a toddler through the world curious, uncertain, just an egg that hasn’t hatched; a flag that’s not unfurled. A life of equilibrium imperiled by curious temptations, doubts and calls: Amontillado in … Continue reading →

Posted in iambic pentameter, poem, poetry | 2 Comments

Conditional Probabilities and Surprise Exams

Posted on 2012-04-05 by TJ

Way back when I wrote some stuff about conditional probabilities and our difficulties in dealing with them. I mentioned that there was a “paradox” in which students incorrectly reason that the surprise exam their prof is going to give them … Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, probability | Leave a comment

Drug Laws and the Consequentialist Conversion

Posted on 2012-04-03 by TJ

Thinking about how we sometimes try to turn a deontological argument into a consequentitalist one, I am struck by the example of drug laws, which take a different and even more bizarre approach: they convert a deontological argument into a … Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, life, psychology | Leave a comment

The Consequentialist Conversion

Posted on 2012-04-02 by TJ

Most people are uncomfortable with deontology, the practice of making moral choices in accordance with fundamental principles and regardless of consequences. The people who are comfortable with it are usually pretty scary. We call some of them “fundamentalists”, for obvious … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, epistemology, life, psychology, religion | Leave a comment

Losing Religion

Posted on 2012-04-01 by TJ

Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes is an absolutely fascinating, compelling, humane and curious book. It is a mix of personal memoir and linguistic field study and theory by Dan Everett, who spent a good chunk of the past thirty years … Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, haiku, language, poetry, psychology, religion | Leave a comment