Gambling Lives

Came across this from a link on twitter:
Right now, your company could have a life insurance policy on you that you know nothing about. When you die — perhaps years after you leave your employer — the tax-free proceeds from this policy wouldnt go to your family. The money would go to the company.
…Hundreds of [...]

Quote of the Week: Be Careful What you Wish For

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take everything you have”
–Barry Popik, apparently.

Ouch

As a young teenager in proudly peaceable Canada during the romantic 1960s, I was a true believer in Bakunin’s anarchism. I laughed off my parents’ argument that if the government ever laid down its arms all hell would break loose. Our competing predictions were put to the test at 8:00 A.M. on October 17, 1969, [...]

Online Discourse Part 2: Pareto Ideologies.

Julian Sanchez comes to the same conclusions that I came to, in an interesting post:

Given that my current idée fixe seems to be the depressing rarity with which people actually understand the views of people with different ideologies, I was pleased to see Tyler Cowen’s attempt at a sympathetic summary of what he sees as [...]

I am Conflict-Free

When it comes to libertarianism, that is. Scott Aaronson’s Worldview Manager is now live:
Worldview Manager is a prototype for a framework and website that help users uncover hidden inconsistencies in their personal beliefs (“worldviews”).
The website does not actually understand the belief systems nor consider one to be more correct than the other. Instead, it has [...]

The hostile web

I was just reading through a post on Marginal Revolution when I had something of an epiphany which is, in retrospect, completely obvious.
We talk of the internet as some sort of large global community, but I find it very interesting how there’s so little true interaction or assimiliation of viewpoints on the web. Ideally, when [...]

An Observation

I have been trying to think of some short, descriptive phrases for myself, and this is what I came up with.
Moderate Nerd:I can code, I can talk basic (and possibly college-level) science*, can understand the general idea behind most technology, and I am interested in a lot of things that other self-confessed geeks are interested [...]

Going Green

I don’t usually do all that much political activism for any specific causes, but I think this is worth supporting.
Also, I needed a theme where my twitter feed was more prominent .
On an unrelated note, people seem to have NO idea what I’m talking about when I say libertarian. Or rather, they get [...]

Home;Random Musings

Meanwhile, I skipped 60% of the questions on a quiz I was supposed to do really well for because I never looked at the back side of the paper, and I cracked the bottom right corner of my laptop screen and it might take an obscene amount to repair. Also missed the events treat in [...]

Quote of the Week: Statutory Warning:Smoking is…

“This broken wreck of a man’s failure to win any more than a pathetic fourteen Olympic gold medals (so far) is a terrifying warning of the horrific damage that cannabis can do to someone’s health—and a powerful reminder of just how sensible the drug laws really are.”
–Andrew Stuttaford at The Corner