Category: Other Weird Stuff
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How I set up my standing desk
And now for something completely different. After my wife told me I sat too much, and reading various scary things about the evils of sitting too much and the benefits of standing desks, I decided to try out a standing desk. At first I was going to order one or buy one locally, and then I…
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On the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting
I think the most relevant cause of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting has relatively little do with guns or mental health. I think it’s because our society is seriously ill–not mentally, but morally–and many of us are in denial about it. We rarely talk unironically about honor, morality, or shame, or otherwise give signs that…
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Who might you find in the lowest circles of hell?
I liked my answer to this Quora question so much that I had to put it here on my blog as well. I also used it to answer the question, “Why is murder a crime?” N.B. I do not believe in hell. Murderers, particularly mass murderers, must occupy the very lowest circle. This sounds like…
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Let’s try out “Golden Filter Premium” on Wikipedia, shall we?
I encountered a journalist-activist on Twitter, a writer for (among others) Al Jazeera in English, who is nevertheless a free speech activist. We discussed the recent FoxNews.com article that reported, among other things, that the Wikimedia Foundation entirely failed to respond to a “more or less free” offer of filtering software. They need such software, of…
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On the moral bankruptcy of Wikipedia’s anonymous administration
I announced, named, and launched Wikipedia way back in January of 2001. My originating role in the project was acknowledged by Jimmy Wales later on in 2001, when he wrote, “Larry had the idea to use wiki software…” Virtually all of the news articles about the project before 2005 identified me as one of the two founders of…
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The Saga of Wikimedia UK and its Chair
The following story is very instructive about the sort of people in the Wikipedia universe, and what sort of people actually run things on the sixth most popular website online. In case you didn’t know, there is an organization, Wikimedia UK, that is legally independent of the Wikimedia Foundation headquartered in San Francisco. Wikimedia UK has a separate…
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Wikimedia Foundation Board Officially Rejects Porn Filter
Last Wednesday, the Wikimedia Foundation board quietly voted, in person, 10-0 in favor of repealing the “personal image hiding feature”–in other words, a very weak, opt-in porn filter. “Quietly,” I say, because the resolution was not posted publicly until the middle of the weekend. Note that the page mistakenly states that Jimmy Wales voted against…
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Your Baby Can Read closes up shop
The companies behind Your Baby Can Read have, faced with daunting legal costs, gone out of business, according to this Facebook post and, now, the text on YourBabyCanRead.com: FROM ALL OF US AT YOUR BABY CAN READ!THANK YOU FOR YOUR LOYAL SUPPORT AND BEING SUCH GREAT CUSTOMERS! For more than 6 years, Your Baby Can Read!…
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An assortment of things that should exist
Occasionally I wish I had time to write a book to explain these ideas in detail. (Some of these are actually book ideas. Some of them are project ideas.) 1. A tutorial system, independent of any university, managed via a neutral online database; and an expanded system of degrees by examination. 2. Textop! I love…
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Why is spaced repetition not better known?
Suppose a method let you remember things with a 95% success rate–in other words, whatever information you’ve put into a system, you’d have a 95% chance of recalling it–and this effect is permanent, as long you continue to use the method. That would be quite remarkable, wouldn’t it? Well, there is such a method, called…