John Derbyshire has posted an interesting problem/puzzle, discussed in some detail here. Briefly, the problem is this:
A man says: “I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys?”
The answer (according to Derb) seems to be 13/27. This is very odd. I explore it a bit below, in my own way, with a little Python.
We should ban car radios. They:
There is simply no excuse for allowing these dangerous devices to be used on our public roads. They have been forced upon us by the automobile industry, which must be compelled to do the right thing with appropriate legislation. Some may argue that they have the “right” to listen to whatever they want in their own cars, but there simply is no “right” to endanger others on the public highways. Ban car radios now!
It was with some relief that, after a cursory search of the web, I found no serious advocacy of this position. It can’t be far off, though.
I was watching David Mamet’s “House of Games
Last year, I wrote a small disassembler for the 8086 instruction set in Python. I was recently flattered to learn that Transistorski thought it was worth building upon. He has adopted the project, cleaned it up, and put it on Google Code.
He seems to have interesting ambitions, so you might want to stop by his blog.
From Calvin Coolidge’s 1926 4th of July address:
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. The importance of political speculation is not to be underestimated, as I shall presently disclose. Until the idea is developed and the plan made there can be no action.
It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.
The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.
I’ve rebalanced my Taipan! browser port to mimic Ronald J. Berg’s Apple ][ version of the game. The changes make the game quite a bit tougher; bad things happen more frequently, and the scoring is harsher. But, hey: authentic!
Winston Churchill was a man of many great quotes. On his defeat in the 1945 elections, in response to the suggestion that perhaps this was a blessing in disguise, he remarked that: “If this is a blessing, it is certainly very well disguised.”
Which, sometimes, I suppose they are.
As I’ve been (vaguely) following the Kagan hearings, I’ve come to a somewhat surprising conclusion: I think the sort of person for whom “intelligence” is a matter of being cute with language and/or logic is not just unhelpful, but actively destructive.
