Something in My Teeth
Pocket Aces. The flop is Jack, Queen, King suited. Just need the 10 spade to hit. In my entire poker career I’ve only hit one other time, and I didn’t even know I’d hit it. That was back when I was 13 playing for money to eat. 10 spades. Now I’m 56. People around this […]
The Bright Triad: Neither Necessary nor Sufficient
Recently I saw some “advice” on social media that got me thinking about the troubles of vague and sophistic advice. The speaker in the video claimed that you should search for [business] partners who have high intelligence, high energy, and strong integrity and that those characteristics are a three-part checklist of non-negotiable items. Here I […]
On Rousseau’s View of Education
“The noblest work of education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.” – J.-J. Rousseau, excerpt from […]
On Torture
“Death: Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless… (here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail.) Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 a.m. of the fateful day, but—preferring death to failure— won’t disclose where […]
Jacques the Fatalist Review
At this current moment, I’m quite vexed about how little Denis Diderot is talked about in our current time. Every time I go to my local bookstores and ask about Diderot, I’m met with a facial expression closely related to the one we all use when we smell something awful. After spelling the name and […]