A few months ago I bought a book called "Making Money in Second Life" (or something like that) -- this is basically part of my general interest in economics combined with a particular interest in how to destroy/disrupt economies (view full entry for contents)
Today, there was noodle soup at "Lu Lu's" with Scheiny - food was quite good and accompanied by a melonfruit smoothie. My search to identify the vietnamese noodle soup I've been looking for continues though. Walking by the CMU/Pitt area, it was kind of neat randomly bumping into a few people I knew from my CMU times. Weird to think that's over... I kind of wonder how many lasting friendships/acquaintences I've made at CMU - far fewer than I'd've liked, due to some mix of shyness and unlikability. Oh well, maybe the next stage of life will work out better in that regard. I hope. Nice weather has made today's outdoor portions pretty nice.
"He told me (view full entry for contents)"
I'm amused at some light parallels between the Stanford Prison Experiment and efforts in some MMORPGs to encourage people to start "gangs" of various types/sizes that take sides in conflicts and fight each other. Is this a kind of "rolling a ball downhill" thing? Is it an easy path to success in games to understand human nature and find/enable ways to let people express their basic human nature in the game? Could careful introspection have ties to the design of mmorpgs? Also, is it unhealthy to express some of these things if we consider some of them to be unhealthy? To what extent is such expression "working out tensions that otherwise may be expressed IRL", and to what extent is it more "encouraging patterns of thought that will carry over to RL"?
The idea of taking 20 people in isolation and asking them to store all their knowledge, on a wiki, of the world, is again a tempting thought experiment. (view full entry for contents)but the chance to intellectually procreate is certainly attractive (certainly the majority of the source of why I would *like* to have kids).
Currently rereading: Hobbes' A Dialogue between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England.
Remembered advice to pregnant mums: speak often to the fœtus, as it is believed that it will begin to adapt to phonemes of its native tongue even before birth.(view full entry for contents)
In political philosophy: (view full entry for contents)
On a personal note, I repeat that I have computer and other stuff that I don't need that's free for the taking, and also that I have a wonderful, large, friendly male cat that I would like to hand off in the very near future to someone I know. Please volunteer, someone.
I recently read, courtesy of a post by Mohammad Ali Abtahi, that BushJr gave public support to reformist parties in Iran, which is believed to have invoked the standard (and well-justified, imo) anger of the Iranian public against America in order to hurt the cause of reform politics in that countries. *cringe* ... but at the same time, it is an unfortunate situation when one cannot speak of change one (relatively speaking) approves of without one's approval hurting them. It is very unfortunate that the United States and Britain have not done much towards apology for their abuse of that nation.
Recently I realised that a lot of the musical motifs used by Debussy and Gershwin are the same, (view full entry for contents)
I've been playing a bit with "programming" notions for music - (view full entry for contents)
I wish I had an 8-track (in theory, I should be able to do this on a computer, but sound drivers generally suck too much to make this practical). Also, I'm happy to hear that the second album by the Persian-American group Niyaz will be released soon - I loved their first album but was worried that, like with a fair amount of good indie music I have, they wouldn't make it to a second album. I particularly like how they put Rumi to sound - I'm thinking about picking up some books to learn classic Persian so I can better link the basic flow of the words (sentence structure, at least) to the music.
Recently was disappointed that a job application was rejected. It's hard to apply for jobs where one doesn't live though.
Nana tea is quite excellent.
Maggie's Mercantile (a restaurant serving vegan and veggie meals) is back in Oakland, sort of. When I first moved to Pittsburgh, they were a block down the street from India Garden, and were a reasonably fancy/nice traditional restaurant, the sort one would dress up a bit for. The new location, across the street from EatUnique (formerly Craig Street Coffee), is not very visible and very different from the old place - it has more the feel of a vegan/vegetarian "community centre", and the waitstaff are clueless but friendy, the food being closer to buffet style than anything else. It was tasty, but in a much more hardcore vegan way than their old place - I would probably not bring a meat-eater to the new place. If you think you might like it, check them out. (I suspect that if they had Vaad supervision, they could get the place certified kosher with everything being Pareve).
Virtue of solidarity: identification of the good of others with whom one has substantial solidarity as a secondary good of one's own. (view full entry for contents)
Desire to share: rife with challenge(view full entry for contents)
Completely unrelated, I think that Asimov's three laws of robotics are disturbingly like slave laws, and I have difficulty imagining a roboticist proud of their creation would implement such things in it. Any creature capable of obeying laws at such a level, it seems, is sentient enough that their imposition would be an undue burden.
Returning to an old question in political philosophy: Does the world need idealists? (view full entry for contents)
Lightly related, sometimes it's really interesting to see heated debates between various groups or perspectives one dislikes - one has the interesting sensation for feeling empathy for positions one might not initially be inclined to like when one is only comparing them to one's own position. This sensation is one of my favourite in philosophy - it is one of the things that leads, I think, most directly to a broader perspective (brief aside: Illinois' State Representative Monique Davis appears to dislike broad exposure to different perspectives). In this case, Bill O'Reilly squares off against Ron Paul.(view full entry for contents)
Perhaps also interesting: (view full entry for contents)
The weather is really nice. I had a late sushi lunch and then walked around Squirrel Hill for a bit. People seem really happy to be outside, as am I. Smells: Mordechai's nice cigars as I pass the Coffee Tree, bread and other foods from bakeries and restaurants, pizzas of many kinds. Sights: twisted cherry trees, incredible variation in flora. Frum kids dragging their books in luggage instead of backpacks, people in various garbs. Sounds: happy birds and crickets, smattering of many languages, skateboards and rollerblades. The band across the street practicing. Fading tastes of sushi, soy sauce, green tea ice cream in the mouth. Hesitant tickle from Beefalo inspecting my hands.
I normally don't publish email corrispondence, but I put enough time into this, and the content might be interesting enough to others, that I thought I would in this case. Basic scenario: I recently got back into contact with someone I knew a very long time ago, and he's come to accept a number of ideas that are considered deeply "fringe" by mainstream society and science. (view full entry for contents)
A question to the reader: Would you respond differently? Do you hold the broad categorisation of "Mainstream" versus "Academic" versus "Conspiracy Theory" type thinking? Which do you think you are, and would you like to be different?
Another question to the reader: Do you hold the distinction I draw between "is" and "should" in my foreword? Do you think there are right answers in the stronger sense for what "should be" (in which case you might be prepared to say I'm objectively wrong in what I want for society)? Do you percieve groups of people differently if they seem to have a poor notion of "what is" versus those who have a notion of "what should be" that is very different from yours?
A final question: Do you think these types of dialogues are worth having? Do you normally have the energy/time to do so? Has it often come up in your life?
