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lightcastleSome links from the beginning of the month that I never got around to putting up.
First, with Law & Order officially ending, Stanley Fish looks at all the people it didn't like. Hint - it is just about everyone.
The only way to be O.K. in Dick Wolf’s world is to have a job that is steady but doesn’t pay very much, to drive a five year old car you’re still paying off, to live in a small house with a large mortgage, to have an education that helps you get by but doesn’t give you any fancy ideas, to attend a house of worship that is the center of your social life, and to have almost no leisure time. Unless you fit that profile, “Law & Order” probably doesn’t like you.
Charles Stross asks,
What is the minimum number of people you need in order to maintain (not necessarily to extend) our current level of technological civilization?
There are huge political ramifications hiding behind this question. Let me unpack them for you.
The unpacking is quite interesting, and gets into the fallacy of some of the libertarian utopias that get proposed, as well as the tech level of space colonies and indirectly the whole question of what would actually keep working after an apocalypse.
Henry at Crooked Timber adds in The Tasmania Effect, arguing that because teaching is lossy transfer of information, it takes even more people than you think.
On a mostly unrelated note: Anyone know anything about this OpenDNS thing and if it is useful?
First, with Law & Order officially ending, Stanley Fish looks at all the people it didn't like. Hint - it is just about everyone.
The only way to be O.K. in Dick Wolf’s world is to have a job that is steady but doesn’t pay very much, to drive a five year old car you’re still paying off, to live in a small house with a large mortgage, to have an education that helps you get by but doesn’t give you any fancy ideas, to attend a house of worship that is the center of your social life, and to have almost no leisure time. Unless you fit that profile, “Law & Order” probably doesn’t like you.
Charles Stross asks,
What is the minimum number of people you need in order to maintain (not necessarily to extend) our current level of technological civilization?
There are huge political ramifications hiding behind this question. Let me unpack them for you.
The unpacking is quite interesting, and gets into the fallacy of some of the libertarian utopias that get proposed, as well as the tech level of space colonies and indirectly the whole question of what would actually keep working after an apocalypse.
Henry at Crooked Timber adds in The Tasmania Effect, arguing that because teaching is lossy transfer of information, it takes even more people than you think.
On a mostly unrelated note: Anyone know anything about this OpenDNS thing and if it is useful?
