numbers

Apparently, the current federal debt in dollars is orders of magnitude greater than the age of the universe in years.

I find this deeply disturbing.

more alex jones

"pitch perfect performance"

Who first coined this phrase? This metaphor is now officially dead.

hanatarash

patrick mcgoohan, r.i.p.

war machine

The idea of non-human devices of great power and great ability to carry through a policy, and of their dangers, is nothing new. All that is new is that now we possess effective devices of this kind.

In the past, similar possibilities were postulated for the techniques of magic, which forms the theme for so many legends and folk tales. These tales have thoroughly explored the moral situation of the magician.

In all these stories the point is that the agencies of magic are literal-minded; and that if we ask for a boon from them, we must ask for what we really want and not for what we think we want.

The new and real agencies of the learning machine are also literal-minded. . . . We cannot expect the machine to follow us in those prejudices and emotional compromises by which we enable ourselves to call destruction by the name of victory. If we ask for victory and do not know what we mean by it, we shall find the ghost knocking at our door

Norbert Wiener (1961) Cybernetics, 2nd ed.

leslie marenchin, r.i.p.

My most vivid memory of Marenchin was a joke he once told about his own future. Now, this is a man who had been working as a professional adjunct professor for years. It was not uncommon for him to be teaching eight (8!!!) simultaneous "intro to philosophy" courses (with no TAs) in a single semester. His every word seemed suffused with bitterness over lost opportunities (both academically and romantically). But he had the capacity to laugh at himself, and this joke involved imagining himself in the future as old and wheelchair bound, ranting and raving to his intro students about Plato's cave. The image of him slumped in his bar chair, miming the posture of a decrepit and senile old man, desperately trying to control the joystick of his motorized wheelchair and mumbling "the cave, the cave" over and over again is indelibly etched on my brain.

Ironically, by all accounts from those who knew him more recently than I, his life was turning around and prospects for his future had changed for the better. Not the first, nor, I'll warrant in sadness, the last such untimely death I'll witness.