Today's list -- the most important philosophers. Not divided (as my previous lists have been) by nationality or language but with a broad cultural and chronological restraint. That is, we're looking for western and post-Renaissance philosophers. I'm not going to offer a list here, I'm just going to open the floor. Because I'm really lazy. If you need greater precision on the date: stick to thinkers born on or since 1500. If you need greater precision on "most important," I can't help with that. Simply understand it however your choose to understand it. The comment section is open. Namaste.
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I'm feeling lazy, in a Christmas-holiday sort of way, so today I'll just observe that Physics World has named its 2016 Book of the Year. It's a book with a philosophical dimension, about which I will say something if I'm feeling more ambitious next week at this time. The winner: Why String Theory? by Joseph Conlon. For now, I'll just insert a cartoon about hinting gently at the sort of skepticism against which string theory requires a defense.
I tweeted my reactions throughout the recent Rio Olympics. Today, in stead of getting at all creative in making a new blog post, I'll simply compile those tweets. What fun! We'll go from last to first, again because that's the lazy thing to do in compiling. (Sorry, there will be nothing here about the infamous 4 AM gas-station trashing. Well ... one brief mention.) I'm not going to provide the links that originally went with the tweets, so in a couple of cases I've added a sentence of explanation. Also, I've left typos in place. Let's pretend that's authenticity, not indolence. Chris Faille @ ccfaille (Aug. 21) # Rio2016 , this is my last # olympics related tweet for two years. Next time I have anything to say on the subj, it'll involve # snow and # ice . Chris Faille ...
"Students like to say that they stage no confrontations because people avoid confrontations in modern life. “Modern life is so lonely,” they say. This is laziness. It’s the writer’s job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all. If a writer can’t or won’t do that, he should withdraw from the trade." - Kurt Vonnegut One of my Facebook friends posted this quote recently. I like it, and that will have to be my complete excuse for including it here.
Hmmmm. Swiss voters, by referendum resoundingly rejected a minimum wage proposal. They rejected a proposal, specifically, that would have set the minimum wage at 22 Swiss francs per hour, which is roughly US$25. If I understand this rightly, that would have been the highest minimum wage anywhere. So some Swiss, at any rate, wanted to go from the back to the front of the pack in terms of the minimum wage, in one big bound. (They have no such minimum now, this would have created such an institution, not merely increased an existing number.) It was so soundly defeated that none of Switzerland's cantons voted in its favor. This raises a lot of questions. Unfortunately, I'm feeling too indolent these days to do my own research. Maybe one of my readers will oblige by addressing these questions. Such as: how easy or difficult is it to get such a proposal on the ballot in Switzerland? Also, who were the intended beneficiaries of the passage...
The human mind likes its data visually presented. Thus, the demand for Interactive Data Language, a computer language used to create high-quality graphics. It began life as the product of Research Systems Inc., and that company's founder, David Stern. In 1981 the company released a variant for VAX/VMS, the architecture that Digital Equipment Corporation was using. Although IDL's earliest use was in astronomy and the space sciences, it soon proved adaptable to such fields as medicine and nuclear physics. According to Liam E. Gumley of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the language is used in "monitoring and controlling the plasma field of a nuclear fusion tokamak." I wrote about this (including the above paragraph verbatim) for eHow back in September 2010. Some Q-and-A operation called Brothersoft picked up on my explanation a year later: Brothersoft. It was a neat challe...