Yesterday's post as gotten me into one of my rare stern-logician frames of mind, so I think I'll stick with that today. I wonder if I've ever discussed Cantor's "diagonal" proof in my blogging. If not, I'll make good on that now. Cantor refuted the common idea that "infinity" is a single all-inclusive category. Once we get beyond enumeration we've gotten to "infinity" and there is nothing more to be said. Or, at least, so we're inclined to think. Yes there is, though, Cantor replies, much more to be said. Because for example not every infinity is equal to every other. Some "trans-finite" numbers are bigger than others. The number of real numbers is a larger transfinite number than the number of integers. Why? Well, diagonals! The question is -- could we in principle create a one-to-one correspondence between every real number and every integer that would allow room for every one of each to show up, eventually, ...
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This movie got terrible reviews. Indeed, it got at least one non-review review that turned into a discussion of why some movies should never get sequels, but Hollywood obliviously makes sequels anyway, and ... etc., the writer was off the the races then, writing about everything except this movie. But the theater was packed when I was there, and I enjoyed the show. Most people around me (admittedly not all) seemed caught up in it. This must have included at least some who weren't familiar with the original. I'll avoid any spoilers, which seriously limits how much I can say about a movie of this sort. But I'll plow on anyway. There is a Big Reveal moment that takes place on a barge in the middle of the Thames. So if you find London scenery inherently fascinating, that'll be a plus for you. The ending, the very ending, didn't work for me though. Perhaps the five minutes or so after the Big Reveal on the aforementioned barge might charitably be see as wind-d...
Until quite recently, Robert Litan was a nonresident senior fellow in the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution, a bipartisan Washington think tank with a sterling reputation. The Institution’s website describes him thus: ”a widely recognized expert in regulation, antitrust, finance, among other policy subjects.” But he is no longer a fellow there, because he had the misfortune to disagree with Senator Elizabeth Warren. No Proper Risk Assessment The subject of the criticism, as it happens, was financial regulation, specifically new rules proposed by the Department of Labor (and supported by Senator Warren) that would impose fiduciary obligations on brokers and financial advisors who provide advice for IRAs. A fiduciary obligation, of course, would be a big step up from the present level of obligation under SEC authority. The latter holds merely that those recommendations must be “suitable” for investors, judging suitability by income, ass...
Going through my head today for no good reason is a two-sentence passage of Dorothy Sayers', in an essay explaining some of the basic concepts of medieval scholastic philosophy, including "matter" and "form." The sentence, which I'm quoting from memory, went something like this: "A cat is not simply a bunch of cat-stuff arranged in the form of a cat. Such a being exists, but its a dead cat." She goes on to say that the difference between the dead and live cat is the latter's possession of certain faculties (of perception and nutrition): a living cat recognizes the world around it and feeds itself. All of this reminds me, too, of a line in one of the Harry Potter books. One character has been killed through dark magic. The muggle police have found the body, and the coroners report that the body seems perfectly normal and healthy, excerpt for the fact that it is dead. There is some sort of fallacy in the original Sayers passage that the...
I mentioned Friedman rather tangentially in yesterday's post, so I thought that before writing this one I should check up on what David F. has been up to lately. Not much, it turns out. The last writing of his that I would describe as a contribution to the public intellectual's case for liberty was a contribution to an anthology edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman, Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics . That came out in 2005 -- eight years ago. Since then, Friedman seems to have been trying to turn himself into a novelist. His second novel, Salamander, a bit of medievalist fantasy, appeared in March 2011. If you look at that Amazon page to which I just linked you, you'll find the book description. But in case you're feeling lazy, I'll reproduce it here: Magister Coelus, the College’s young and brilliant theorist, finally has a student capable of learning theoretical magery at the level at which he can teach it. He invites her to help...