Three more blasts from the past (all a bit more recent than my blast from Oscarville): First, two papers I wrote for a science course in college: “The Temptation of Ludwig Boltzmann” (a short sf story exploring the implications of Boltzmannian probability theory – though Amazon thinks it’s something else) and “Evolution: Chance or Teleology?” [...]
Historians Locate King Arthur’s Round Table, blares the headline. (CHT LRC.) And despite the fact that the very existence of Arthur has yet to be established, a so-called “Camelot historian” confidently opines that the discovery of some old Roman amphitheatre “means” that “Chester was the site of Arthur’s court and his legendary Round Table.” This [...]
A solar-powered plane has just completed a 26-hour flight, the nighttime portion of the flight being powered by the daytime portion – with power to spare. With an average speed of 25 mph, solar-powered flight isn’t quite ready to render jet fuel obsolete; but it’s nice to see some progress on the power-sources-that-aren’t-depleted-by-use-and-don’t-cause-so-much-collateral-damage front.
New studies suggest that the human fetus is incapable of feeling pain during the first six months. (CHT Der Leiter.)
It looks like something from a science-fiction movie, but it isn’t. (CHT Lew Rockwell.)
Ever wonder what the difference is between “isolated” and “scattered” thunderstorms in a weather forecast? Well, it depends who you ask. The most popular answer, purportedly endorsed by the National Weather Service, is that it’s a matter of the probability of the thunderstorms’ occurrence. (See here and here.) But the WGN Weather Center says instead [...]
The next time someone tells you that the BP oil spill shows the dangers of a free market and/or the necessity of government intervention, send them to: Darian Worden here, Sheldon Richman here, Gary Chartier here, Alex Knight here, and Kevin Carson here, here, and here. Please let me know in the comments section about [...]
I never actually knew what itching was for, so I looked it up. According to this article, it’s thought to be an evolutionary mechanism that is sending the signal something is happening on your skin that’s like a bug crawling on your skin, so go flick that bug off before it bites you. (Of course, [...]
“I don’t try to make you believe something you don’t believe, but to make you do something you won’t do.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein “Over and over, you’re falling, and then catching yourself from falling. And this is how you can be walking and falling at the same time.” — Laurie Anderson I’ve written before about [...]
The following letter appeared in today’s Opelika-Auburn News: To the editor: Today’s article on Homo floresiensis was given a very misleading headline, saying that the find “challenges the theory of evolution.” Such a claim is quite false, and is not supported by anything in the body of the article. The article does say that the [...]
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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