September 14, 2007 – 11:07 pm
It startles me how differently people can see things. We all like to flatter ourselves that our opinions are guided by naught but sweet reason, but we overlook that reasoning is in general terms simply a manufacturing process, and like all such processes its output depends sensitively upon its input. That input, however, depends in […]
September 14, 2007 – 10:11 pm
From my son Nick, a splendid young man, restless Internet spelunker, and the prop of my dotage, comes a link to what looks like an worthwhile website: The Worlds of David Darling. I’d never heard of the fellow, but according to Wikipedia he is a well-known British astronomer who has written scads of books. Anyway, […]
September 13, 2007 – 11:35 am
To do physical science, one needs uniform references for fundamental quantities: length, duration, mass, and so forth. Over time, as the need for accuracy has increased, attempts have been made to place the fundamental units on ever more precise footing. For example, the reference meter, which was declared in 1791 by the French Academy of […]
September 12, 2007 – 11:39 pm
Here is some interesting reading for you all, courtesy of Edge.org. First up is an essay called Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion, by Jonathan Haidt, in which he takes the “new atheists” to task for failing to develop a subtle enough appreciation of the adaptive underpinnings of religion, and of morality. He draws […]
September 11, 2007 – 11:53 pm
I was saddened to see in today’s news that the great Joe Zawinul has died, of cancer, at the age of 75.
September 10, 2007 – 10:27 am
As a software engineer, and a techie all my life, I don’t get all that excited about most of the products that come down the pipe. But this could really be the Next Big Thing: Windows RG. Have a look here.
September 9, 2007 – 10:45 pm
Well, enough already, for now at least, with the religious stuff. I’m sure that readers are running for the hills after all that swooning about “numinous beauty and harmony”, etc. I had to make what I think is an important point, and I will return to it, I’m sure, before long, but for now, back […]
September 8, 2007 – 10:17 pm
In last night’s post I tried to make clear that disbelief in God need not be correlated with the sort of spritual tone-deafness that Dr. William Vallicella argued for in a recent essay.
September 7, 2007 – 11:55 pm
We have just passed the 10th anniversary of the death of Mother Teresa, and much is being made of letters, recently publicized, that indicate that she had grave doubts about the existence of God, and was deeply tormented by her own lack of faith.
September 7, 2007 – 12:20 am
I am not, nor have I ever been, a “morning person”. I enjoy the peace and solitude of the nighttime; it’s my only opportunity to think long, slow thoughts without interruption.
September 5, 2007 – 1:45 pm
From Reuters, by way of our friend Jess Kaplan, comes a reassuring item about airline safety. Have a look here.
September 5, 2007 – 12:29 am
We note with grave concern that the legendary Shaolin Monks, the state-sponsored Chinese “wushu” outfit, have got their saffron-hued knickers in a knot over some incendiary remarks made by an anonymous commenter in an online forum of some sort.
September 2, 2007 – 10:52 pm
In Kevin Kim’s excellent book Water from a Skull (which I will be commenting on in greater detail as time permits — meanwhile, follow this link and buy a copy), he quotes Mark Salzman’s book Iron and Silk, in which kung fu master Pan Qingfu says “live each moment as if it were your last.” […]
September 1, 2007 – 10:02 pm
I realize, to use an apt metaphor, that when it comes to sports reporting lately here at waka waka waka, we’ve dropped the ball. Sure, we’ve covered some important events from time to time (see here, here, and even here), but when the deadline arrives each day, we usually find ourselves running other material: a […]
September 1, 2007 – 12:46 am
It’s been a long day of work and travel, so we won’t be going to press tonight. However, please join all of us here at waka waka waka in wishing our friend Kevin Kim a very happy 38th birthday!
August 30, 2007 – 11:07 pm
Labor Day weekend is here, and while a lot of folks are moping about summer coming to an end, you won’t hear any griping from me. Just as the advancing weeks of May and June fill me with a gathering dread each year as the heat and fetor approach, when I get to the end […]
August 29, 2007 – 10:28 pm
As one who has taken, shall we say, a rather nonstandard path through life, I’m always gratified to see mavericks and autodidacts come through with the goods, and I’ve just run across a particularly noteworthy example. Inventor John Kanzius, of Erie, PA, who is battling leukemia, has developed a technique, using nanoparticles and radio waves, […]
August 28, 2007 – 1:18 pm
In a rather heated post a little while back, I railed against the notion that a merciful God would permit suffering such as that of little Abigail Taylor, the six-year-old girl who was recently disemboweled in a horrifying accident. The universal, reciprocal cruelty of the natural world also offers bountiful evidence that even if some […]
August 26, 2007 – 8:37 pm
With a hat tip to our friend the Big Hominid, we direct you to a remarkable video clip, of the apostate Muslim gadfly Wafa Sultan engaging in a heated debate on al-Jazeera television. Sultan characterizes the struggle between jihadis and the West: The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of […]
August 25, 2007 – 10:40 pm
We are still more occupied with sun and surf than the glowing screen, but will be back in town, with nose reapplied to grindstone, this week. Meanwhile, a rather odd item from the frontiers of astrophysical research: it appears that there is an enormous hole in the visible universe, a billion light-years across. Lately it […]
August 23, 2007 – 4:52 pm
The publication schedule here at waka waka waka may be a little gappy for the next few days: we are off on a family vacation (a rarity these days, with both kids entering early adulthood), and squinting at the computer for hours on end fits poorly into our activities schedule. We will, however, post up […]
August 21, 2007 – 4:13 pm
A few days ago we made passing mention of the Oxford philosopher of science Nick Bostrom’s Simulation Argument, which makes the claim that we are probably living in some sort of Matrix-like computer program. This dismal notion, which we looked at a bit more closely back in May, was also the subject of a brief […]
August 19, 2007 – 10:20 pm
Many, perhaps most, fans would, if asked, name Sgt. Pepper’s as the greatest Beatles album of them all — and it was, without question, a work of coruscating brilliance. But many of us who grew up during that extraordinary period in musical and cultural history feel that it was the album immediately preceding that was […]
August 18, 2007 – 10:46 pm
We note with sadness, if not surprise, recent reports that the vainglorious popinjay Hugo ChÁ¡vez is further consolidating his dictatorship of Venezuela by seeking to eliminate Constitutional term limits.
August 17, 2007 – 12:07 am
Yale’s David Gelernter, the well-known computer scientist, has written an article in Technology Review on the problems that bedevil AI research. He has some interesting things to say — not only about AI, but also about consciousness itself — and it’s well worth your while to read it.
August 15, 2007 – 10:42 pm
Longtime waka waka waka readers will recall that I used to work for an outfit called PubSub. It was an immensely promising idea, with truly revolutionary potential, but despite the fact that first-tier VCs were lining up around the block to give us money, the company perished in a spectacular (and wincingly public) implosion. I […]
August 14, 2007 – 10:56 pm
I’ve been working long hours this week, and have had scant leisure for thinking or writing. I hate to send you away empty-handed, though, after you’ve made the effort to check in, so here, courtesy of our friend The Stiletto, is an online test of your ability to remember names and faces. I actually did […]
August 13, 2007 – 10:39 am
A reader who calls himself William has left an extensive comment on our recent post about the Korean hostages, in which he left quite a list of relevant links, prefaced by the follwing remarks: Hi, I’m also trying to learn what on earth these Koreans have got themselves into. Without passing any judgment on the […]
August 11, 2007 – 5:49 pm
Here’s another interesting item about climate change, sent our way by Mike Zaharee. It appears that some of the data about which of the past hundred years or so have been the warmest may have been a bit off. See this post as well.
August 10, 2007 – 10:33 pm
Freeman Dyson, one of our greatest living scientists, has always been known for the originality and independence of his thinking. I’ve just read a remarkable essay by this formidable man, and hope you’ll read it too.
The revised and enhanced Barry Bonds, as some of you may know, broke Henry Aaron’s career home-run record yesterday by knocking the ball out of the park for the 756th time. His place in history is a controversial matter, however, due to his Bruce-Banner-like transformation from the wiry and slender athlete he was in the […]
In yesterday’s New York Times, the cultural critic and polymath Edward Rothstein discussed the central idea of Lee Harris’s book The Suicide of Reason: Radical Islam’s Threat to the West, namely that the Enlightenment faith in the progressive ascendancy of reason in human affairs is a false hope.
August 7, 2007 – 10:42 am
Kevin Kim, in today’s edition, outlines the typical career arc of a successful stand-up comic, from early aspirations at the microphone to washed-up Hollywood star. After spending many years doing freelance recording for the music-for-hire houses here in New York, I can offer a similar timeline, The Life of a Jingle Singer. Let’s say his […]
With a hat tip to my old pal and fellow Power Station alumnus, engineer extraordinaire Larry Alexander, comes a mesmerizing animation of this John Coltrane classic, one of the high-water marks of Western civilization. Tommy Flanagan, piano; Paul Chambers, bass, Art Taylor, drums, and of course John Coltrane on tenor. If there is anything more […]
August 5, 2007 – 11:54 pm
Here, from the journal Foreign Affairs, is Barack Obama’s obligatory term paper on foreign policy. (Thanks to my friend Jess Kaplan for sending the link our way.) Though the paper deals mostly in generalities, its tone is encouraging, and although I doubt Obama will get the Democratic nod next year, I was pleasantly surprised to […]
The Gypsy Scholar, Horace Jeffery Hodges, discussed the question of absolute national sovereignty in a recent post. It’s an important and difficult issue, and opinions vary greatly.
August 3, 2007 – 11:07 pm
During Republican administrations there tends to be a steady seepage, across our northern border, of sanctimonious and neurasthenic lefties quitting the littoral zones of the USA to make new lives in Canada, their delicate constitutions overwhelmed by the populist social fluctuations permitted by our nation’s vastly more robust one. The Bush administration, which is pretty […]
At least you aren’t a seven-legged, terminally constipated, hermaphroditic ruminant.
Readers will recall that the bloated Bible-beater Jerry Falwell died a little while back; here’s a related item I ran across earlier today. It’s a video clip of Christopher Hitchens offering, to CNN’s ubiquitous Anderson Cooper, a post-mortem opinion of the porcine preacher (whom Hitchens refers to, at one point, as a “Chaucerian fraud”). See […]
August 2, 2007 – 10:56 am
Elton John would like to do away with the Internet. He laments, as do I, that people no longer get together to make music, but do so now mostly alone, sequestered in their little digital studios. He’s quite right about that part; music has a strongly social component, and good things happen when people play […]
In the Op-Ed section of yesterday’s New York Times was an optimistic essay on the situation in Iraq by Michael O’Hanlon (of the Brookings Institution) and the well-known Mideast expert Kenneth Pollack (no relation to any of the waka waka waka staff). The article is getting a lot of play today from the government for […]
From my former PubSub colleague Mike Zaharee comes a delightful link: history’s greatest spacewalks.
We have learned today that Chief Justice John Roberts, while vacationing in Maine, was stricken by an “idiopathic” seizure, and taken to the hospital. This case is not without precedent, as apparently he suffered a similar episode some years ago, but at a robust 52, he seems the very picture of health. Or, to put […]
Should there be a bedrock principle, in international affairs, of unchallengeable sovereignty? Should the international community allow the rulers of nations to do whatsoever they wish within their own borders, without interference, and without exception? I think the answer is no. H. Jeffery Hodges takes up the question here.
A recent post on the cold-blooded murder of a Korean hostage by the Taliban drew a great deal of commentary. We’re on the road today, but having a free moment and online access, I thought I’d re-examine the original post in the light of some of the criticism it has received.
We will be away from the waka waka waka command center from Friday afternoon until Sunday or Monday, with no guarantees of having either Internet access or anything worthwhile to say. We’ll be back in harness as soon as possible, but meanwhile please do browse our richly diverting archives, and be sure to visit the […]
Here’s a good idea: to harvest the restless energy of crowds of people. Two MIT graduate students have a plan to do just that.
The Taliban have now begun slaughtering their South Korean hostages, according to recent news reports. Much has been made, not without good reason, of the monumental stupidity and arrogance of the hostages themselves. For these lunatics to imagine that their mission to convert fundamentalist Muslims to Christianity would accomplish anything other than to get themselves […]
I make no secret of my admiration for the philosopher Daniel Dennett. His intellectual interests coincide nearly exactly with my own: the puzzle of consciousness, the theory of evolution, the phenomenology of religion, and the question of human freedom in a world apparently ruled by a combination of deterministic and probabilistic laws. He has tilled […]