I think everyone agrees that riding is always safer with a helmet. But here’s a (the?) argument for making helmets optional:
1. If helmets are optional, then more people will cycle.
2. And there will initially be more cycling casualties
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In 1962, a short philosophy paper caused a little flurry in philosophical circles. Two decades later David Foster Wallace, armed with further developments in analysis, created an elaborate system of notation to solve the problem raised in the paper. This book contains Richard Taylor’s original paper, the resultant flurry, and Wallace’s solution. It also contains a fair amount of background information about the whole exchange.
Continue readingThere was an interesting exchange in the NZ Herald recently. The NZ Initiative, a conservative “think tank”, published a report basically saying that it is bad for governments to fund deficits by printing money. (I told you they were conservative.) The NZ Social Credit Association responded with a full-page ad in the NZ Herald setting out their view of Modern Monetary Theory and how it could work in practice.
Bryce Wilkinson, one of the senior NZ Initiative fellows, then published an opinion piece in the newspaper trying to discredit the Social Credit article. Shortly after that, Chris Leitch of the Social Credit Association published another response.
Continue reading“Birds that are slow to develop”
What does that refer to? The obvious answer is “owls”. If that’s not obvious to you, then read on and all will be revealed.
Historian Ian Morris argues that in the evolution of human culture, changes in ethical values have been driven by energy. He thinks that in any given epoch, the dominant energy source sets limits on the kinds of societies that can succeed, and each society in turn rewards specific values.
As far as it goes, there may be some correlation, but he gets it backwards when he tries to base a grand theory on it. That’s my impression after listening to his talk at the RSA.
In the evolution of human culture from pre-history to the present, changes in ethical values have been driven by the most basic force of all: energy.Continue reading
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is a great song. I often find it running through my head. I love how the lyrics are evocative without being literal, and the way the verses all have the same feel but are pretty much independent. I find myself half-making up new verses all the time. So did Leonard: apparently he wrote 80 verses for the song, whittling them down to the four in the final version.
Continue readingWhen I relocated to (or was it from) the other side of the world 14 years ago, my chattels included 1000-odd CDs. (Some very odd). It took more than ten years for me to finally collate all of them and rip them onto hard disk. Unfortunately, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a small number of them fell by the wayside. I think I know where they ended up, and with whom. I have since replaced a few of them:
The Orb — Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld
I’ve replaced this already, with the super-extended version from iTunes featuring a heap of pointless remixes. It’s still a magnificent album.
Back in the 1980s four all-rounders dominated the world test cricket scene: Ian Botham from England, Kapil Dev from India, Imran Khan (now a very prominent politician) from Pakistan, and Richard Hadlee from New Zealand. Much ink was spilled in the debate on who was the best, and how they compared with great all-rounders from the past such as Australia’s Keith Miller and Garfield Sobers from the West Indies. Many years ago I came up with a good way of evaluating all-rounders based on their statistics, and finally I have been able to crunch the numbers and come up with the results.
I should clarify a few things. This whole article relates only to men’s test cricket, though it would also apply to any other format. More importantly, the whole idea of rating players based on statistics is obviously flawed, as stats don’t capture everything about a player. But as long as we allow for that and don’t try to be too precise, I think we can gain some useful and interesting insights.
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This useful book is a careful and spirited defence of the idea that children should be taught to think for themselves rather than uncritically accept the views of some authority, be it parental, religious or governmental. You’d think that this view would be completely uncontroversial. But surprisingly many people mistakenly think that this leads to anarchy, moral relativism, a rejection of traditional values, or all of these things.
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