The Universality of Play

Gutsmuths.—Many of the ideas in PHome are better expressed, though independently arrived at, in the remarkable volume on play, published by Gutsmuths, ‘the father of play in Germany,’ towards the end of the eighteenth century. Gutsmuths recognised the universality of play among all ages and all peoples, the infinite number of games and the skill exhibited by the race in their invention and manipulation, the health-giving quality of play and its ultimate origin (though fatigue and ennui ...

 What's Good for a Business Can be Bad for Society

Every bit in a computer is a wannabe Maxwell’s Demon, separating the state of “one” from the state of “zero” for a while, at a cost. A computer on a network can also act like a wannabe demon if it tries to sort data from networked people into one or the other side of some imaginary door, while pretending there is no cost or risk involved. For instance, a Siren Server might allow only those who would be cheap to insure through a doorway (to become insured) in order to make a supernat...

 Verbosity is Like a Cuttlefish

A multitude of words doth rather obscure than illustrate, they being a burden to the memory, and the first apt to be forgotten, before we come to the last. So that he that uses many words for the explaining of any subject, doth, like the cuttle-fish, hide himself, for the most part, in his own ink.

 The Sad Evolutionary History of Humans

I know no study which is so unutterably saddening as that of the evolution of humanity, as it is set forth in the annals of history. Out of the darkness of prehistoric ages man emerges with the marks of his lowly origin strong upon him. He is a brute, only more intelligent than the other brutes, a blind prey to impulses, which as often as not led him to destruction; a victim to endless illusions, which make his mental existence a terror and a burden, and fill his physical life with barren toi...