Monthly Archives: August 2012

Identity

Posted on 2012-08-24 by TJ

I am made of rusty steel and old sun-hardened leather; flagellating ligaments of gut and binder twine. Behold the man: an awkward compilation of inadequate exigencies unversed in protocol. Analogue approximations rule my sovereign deviations while digital domains complete halting … Continue reading →

Posted in life, poem, poetry, song | 1 Comment

Reification

Posted on 2012-08-22 by TJ

Re’-if-y(v): the act of making something real. I’ve long argued that the primary purpose of abstraction is to lie, both to ourselves and others, and reification is one of the main ways we do this. I happened across an example … Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, life, psychology | Leave a comment

Time and Chance

Posted on 2012-08-19 by TJ

There has been some discussion of late as to the role of chance in “mega-success”: super-stardom, best-sellerdom, etc. The argument is simple, and goes like this: given a population of individuals all of whom are about the same quality, the … Continue reading →

Posted in life, poetry, probability, psychology | Leave a comment

What Does “Climate Change” Mean?

Posted on 2012-08-18 by TJ

I argued in the previous entry that while it is uncontroversial that human activity has added 1 – 2 W/m***2 to the Earth’s heat budget (say 0.1 – 0.2 % of the total, equivalent to shifting Earth’s orbit by a … Continue reading →

Posted in economics, life, physics, prediction, science, thermodynamics | 2 Comments

Climate Change

Posted on 2012-08-15 by TJ

I’ve been on both sides of the climate change debate over the course of the past twenty years, and am currently more of a commentator on it than a participant, as both sides have left the realm of science far … Continue reading →

Posted in physics, prediction, science | Leave a comment

Paul Ryan is not a “Randian”

Posted on 2012-08-12 by TJ

Presumably a “Randian” is a person who shares a substantial range of agreement with the fundamental principles espoused by Ayn Rand, which were: 1) ethically: egoism based on a false set of empirical claims about the kind of beings humans … Continue reading →

Posted in epistemology, politics | Leave a comment

stress

Posted on 2012-08-10 by TJ

Watch me as I almost pass through the neck of an hour-glass ground by the sands of time … [Edit: I’m less under stress now and this poem was really, excruciatingly dreadful, so I’ve cut it past the first few … Continue reading →

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Pride

Posted on 2012-08-03 by TJ

There are some major Pride events going on in Canada this weekend, and it struck me as interesting to contrast that with this meditation on the state of manhood in America. The United States is famously unfriendly to gays compared … Continue reading →

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Stress and the Art of Living

Posted on 2012-08-02 by TJ

We’re more elastic than we think. This is not the veldt of ancient Africa. This is not Europe in the time of cave bears and cave people and dangerous things like sabre-toothed furry creatures and babes with flawless complexions and … Continue reading →

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