How do people go from the fact that a free market is the most efficient system for distributing goods at the present time, to the claim that it must never be questioned or criticized? When you have a good system, isn't it entirely appropriate to examine it, criticize it, see where it fails, and try to find ways to improve it?
(I'd ask a corresponding question about the American form of representative democracy.)
(And yes, I know I've talked about this at length before.)
(Does anyone have a good idea of how rigorous economics is?)
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(3)
02:59:29 PM,
Tuesday 30 October 2001
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Hmm... sounds about right to me.
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(2)
02:29:53 PM,
Tuesday 30 October 2001
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Meanwhile, Jeff Bridges gets to spend the entire movie staring at the back of Kevin's head thinking "I did this much better in Starman."
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(1)
12:15:47 PM,
Tuesday 30 October 2001
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Juli:
(1) Ask and ye shall receive.
(2) Oh, think nothing of it--I fear I didn't offer anything terribly helpful in the email anyway, beyond "go talk to Kerne". In any case, I'm delighted to see you blogging.
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(5)
07:40:58 PM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant to me that I be
made beautiful in my soul within, and that all external possessions be in
harmony with my inner man. May I consider the wise man rich; and may I have
such wealth as only the self-restrained man can bear or endure.
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(1)
07:01:27 PM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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Another blogledyte! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Juli!
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(7)
05:38:56 PM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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What could be better than a playlist of infinitely many Pixies songs set to random shuffle?
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(8)
05:01:02 PM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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What could be better than a playlist of 106 Pixies songs set to random shuffle?
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(3)
02:51:39 PM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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It's the happiest work day of the year: the first one after the end of Daylight Savings Time.
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11:43:59 AM,
Monday 29 October 2001
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Sometimes, God just doesn't want you to go to Berkeley. Fortunately, God's a decent fellow, and he'll see to it that you at least get a blender and a damned fine burrito for your troubles.
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(5)
12:02:21 AM,
Sunday 28 October 2001
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Instead of leaving, I read the rest of Ozy and Millie. It really is an exceedingly wonderful comic strip.
Now then, I wonder if I have time to do anything else today...
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(2)
07:20:27 PM,
Saturday 27 October 2001
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Well, entropy is still winning, no doubt about that, but I think I've narrowed the gap a bit.
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(3)
06:55:59 PM,
Saturday 27 October 2001
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Cod, haddock, flounder, tuna, trout, minnow, salmon, shark, eel, red snapper, prhana, halibut, sea horse, perch, alewife.
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(10)
12:37:55 AM,
Saturday 27 October 2001
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Tired: .com
Wired: alt.
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10:30:03 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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The toughest problem to deal with, when Googling people's names, is that if the name is too common, it will show up on genealogy sites, and there will be massive amounts of noise to sift through.
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(1)
09:03:20 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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"That's addiction? You mean all I have to do to get rid of those headaches is drink coffee? Wow..."
--Dan (my coworker, not any of the other Dans)
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(5)
08:02:59 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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I have corrected this behavior before. I can only add that underlining instead of italicizing is an especially bad idea on the World Wide Web, where there is already a convention of underlining hyperlinks.
(That said, the story about IT shops is a vivid reminder of the current state of the economy.)
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06:37:32 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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Oi!
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(9)
01:16:14 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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Sentence of the day: Pandi echti ploorang.
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01:15:08 PM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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Mr. Treuer and I have decided to put our conversation from earlier this evening to good use. We are having a contest to see who can come up with the best translation. I would urge you all to try.
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(2)
03:55:00 AM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a strange and wonderful thing.
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(2)
01:53:03 AM,
Friday 26 October 2001
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Finally got around to searching the web. Found something that quoted St. Thomas's "my soul is not me", and it cited it as being from:
Commentary on St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, 15: 17-19, found in Aquinas:
Selected Philosophical Writings, Edited by Timothy McDermott (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), pp. 192-193.
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(6)
08:16:42 PM,
Thursday 25 October 2001
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Kerne: is that the same Mercedes commercial that Mena of dollarshort.org is talking about here? Not having a tv, I've not seen it, but I must confess I found the stringified Kraftwerk rather delightful.
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03:41:42 PM,
Thursday 25 October 2001
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I've been looking around this site for about 10 minutes, and so far I haven't found anything that will answer the simple question: does Windows XP actually do anything at all?
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(2)
03:23:41 PM,
Thursday 25 October 2001
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Well fuck me, who could refuse a Google bombing request from someone who clearly has a decent appreciation for Garamond?
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01:25:11 PM,
Thursday 25 October 2001
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Most offensive thing I have ever heard in a commercial for a car dealer: "But like President Bush says, the most important thing we can do right now is keep our workers working and the economy rolling along."
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11:39:18 AM,
Thursday 25 October 2001
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The meaning of the U.S. constitution is not infinitely malleable--we cannot just ignore what it says, nor read things into it that were never there--but the proper interpretation of it is not based on the intention of the framers of the constitution alone. While they were the ones who originally composed the language of the constitution, it was the American people that ratified it, and what they ratified was the law as it was written, not the intention.
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(3)
06:21:47 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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Obviously anyone who disagrees with my politics is just a complete idiot who never gives any real thought to the issues they blather on about. After all, what other explanation could there be?
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(2)
05:48:47 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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I recognize funny sooner than I recognize appropriate.
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05:32:56 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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Reading this, it suddenly became totally clear to me what the Right Thing is in this case--the ports list should not be static html, it should be a cgi script that will return information about whatever range of ports a user is interested in. This would allow you to use your bandwidth as efficiently as possible, and, at the same time, would make it easier for people to find the precise piece of information they are interested in.
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(7)
05:03:46 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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Los Pantalones del Diablo
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02:16:53 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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10 out of 15, and the bonus question.
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02:05:14 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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Another example of why I like MetaFilter so much: here's a discussion of the idea of "government being run as a business" in which there's a fair range of views being represented, but the dicussion hasn't become polarized, even though the opening question was phrased as a simple for-or-against. Everyone seems interested in hearing what others have to say, and in recognizing the subtleties of the issue under discussion. This makes me happy.
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12:34:51 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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From the I'm-twenty-four-years-old-and-I'll-blog-whatever-I-bloody-well-please department:
"If You See Her, Say Hello", by Bob Dylan
If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.
We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.
If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for doin' what she did and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way.
Though the bitter taste still lingers on,
from that night I tried to make her stay.
I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.
Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.
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12:16:25 PM,
Wednesday 24 October 2001
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I'm not too proud of this technological terror I've created.
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(6)
10:45:06 PM,
Tuesday 23 October 2001
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<Gaza> "Dressing room?"
<Fred> "CHEESE SANDWICH!"
<GM> HOLD!
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(1)
09:58:37 PM,
Tuesday 23 October 2001
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