So there's a bad habit people have gotten into. It's nothing new, but it's become more and more common. It goes like this: Critic: Hello. This is Folding Ideas. I recently watched the anime Women Getting Ripped Apart by Orcs and was, you know, disturbed by the seeming perverse glee the way the show takes the frequent…
作戰: 故不盡知用兵之害者,則不能盡知用兵之利也。善用兵者,役不再籍,糧不三載,取用于國,因糧于敵,故軍食可足也。國之貧于師者遠輸,遠輸則百姓貧,近于師者貴賣,貴賣則百姓財竭,財竭則急于丘役,力屈財殫,中原內虛于家,百姓之費,十去其七,公家之費,破車罷馬,甲冑矢弩,戟楯蔽櫓,丘牛大車,十去其六。 Waging War: It is only one who is thoroughly acquainted with the evils of war that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of carrying it on. The skillful soldier…
Now that the presidency of George W. Bush is over, the theory that we are better off with unintellectual leaders is just embarrassing, and the reasons for the embarrassment may be quantified. Measuring the psychological traits of public figures, to be sure, has a sketchy history, but the psychologist Dean Simonton has…
The first condition of rational progress in spelling reform is that persons who know, or who think they know, how words should be speld, should recover some- thing of their former freedom to spel in accordance with individual judgment. Only in that way can there be a wholesome rivalry of forms with ultimate survival…
Our findings, especially those that examine household decision-making, emphasize that while the return to higher education is high, it is not a safe investment for many households. The deterrent effect of risk survives the ability of agents to feasibly debt finance college with student loans. The main force here is…
“I don’t know your names,” Von Neumann said, tapping the shoulders of two of the soldiers. “The two of you will be responsible for signal input, so I’ll call you ‘Input 1’ and ‘Input 2.’” He pointed to the last soldier. “You will be responsible for signal output, so I’ll call you ‘Output.’” He shoved the soldiers to…
A roleplaying game is, in may ways, a sophisticated version of the childhood game of make-believe. If you ever played cops-and-robbers (or cowboys and indians, or army), you remember the arguments about who shot whom, or how quickly you could reach cover before you got blasted by some bad guy, or how much damage a…
Mayor-Elect Walsh, and distinguished and honored guests of all backgrounds and beliefs: it is my great honor, on behalf of the Humanist, secular, and nontheistic community, to share this poem, “To Be of Use,” by contemporary Massachusetts poet Marge Piercy, in honor of the important work you and all of us will soon be…
There is an ancient Chinese fable called "The Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains". It tells of an old man who lived in northern China long, long ago and was known as the Foolish Old Man of North Mountain. His house faced south and beyond his doorway stood the two great peaks, Taihang and Wangwu, obstructing the…
Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but must be. The specific content of patriotism is determined by historical conditions. There is the "patriotism" of the Japanese aggressors and of Hitler, and there is our patriotism. Communists must resolutely…
Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice. Only in this way can we really extend democracy within the…
Prior experimental investigation of the cognitive consequences of video gaming provides evidence that cognitive and perceptual changes occur in those who transition from non-gamers to gamers. Specifically, training on action games (e.g., first-person, fast paced, kill-or-be-killed situations) has been linked to…
Conceding that the battle to stop documentation of people’s private details and lives was a lost one, the Decepticons have taken a different approach: make this data unreliable. Decepticon hackers work hard to penetrate mesh databases and seed false information. They have released numerous worms and trojans into the…
For some people, the car becomes a protective cocoon in which they can hide from the outside world. As they drive slowly beside the kerb, almost in the gutter, they can be as big a hazard on the road as the driver with the expanded personal space. These attitudes are transmitted unconsciously and, with practice and…
To build software that is deemed intelligent, it’s helpful to begin with a definition of intelligence. Intelligence can be simply defined as a set of properties of the mind. These properties include the ability to plan, solve problems, and in general, reason. A simpler definition could be that intelligence is the…
The mighty steam-engine has its germ in the simple boiler in which the peasant prepares his food. The huge ship is but the expansion of the floating leaf freighted with its cargo of atmospheric dust; and the flying balloon is but the infant's soap-bubble lightly laden and overgrown. But the Telescope, even in its most…
Man has generally been preoccupied with obtaining as much 'production' from the landscape as possible, by developing and maintaining early successional types of ecosystems, usually monocultures. But, of course, man does not live by food and fiber alone; he also needs a balanced CO2-O2 atmosphere, the climactic buffer…
It seems to me that every phenomenon, every fact, itself is the really interesting object. Whoever explains it, or connects it with other events, usually only amuses himself or makes sport of us, as, for instance, the naturalist or historian. But a single action or event is interesting, not because it is explainable…