September 19, 2009 – 8:19 pm
Chapter 2: What Utilitarianism Is
The Principle of Utility states, “Pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends” (Chapter 2, para. 2). John Stuart Mills defines utilitarianism throughout the second chapter, and addresses a number of dissenting opinions, all of which boil down–in his view–to a failure to understand the meaning of [...]
Here is the scene: I’m at the bus stop. My computer bag is slung over my shoulder, and my book bag is in my hand. All of a sudden I realize there’s water trickling out of my book bag, due to an unruly water bottle. So I take everything out, and put most of the [...]
new word: ubifarm. it will do, lacking anything better, to describe a loose set of ideas. the notion that a share of vegetables from a farm’s CSA (community supported agriculture) program could have its own blog. That gardens, farms and markets might have their own RSS feeds. My phone ought to tell me when arugula [...]
In a whole blog full of beautiful posts, Blogwarrior Phillipe has just cast light on the Don Imus thing from a Bahá’à perspective on strength, nobility, and the station of African Americans:
What I concluded is that the excessive focus on how upsetting these kinds of statements are to African Americans is a way of saying [...]
April 13, 2007 – 12:43 pm
Malcolm had a project consultation with us yesterday. I showed him the scenarios I’ve been working on, which are written from the perspective of an artificially intelligent lighting fixture in a distributed network. He enjoyed it, and pointed out that one of the reasons the anthropomorphism works is that we know lighting fixtures aren’t sentient. [...]
August 8, 2006 – 11:20 am
Dinosaur comics has officially become my new favorite tool for social commentary. If T-Rex says it in that opening panel, I get the feeling anyone will listen. He doesn’t sound holier-than-thou, or patronizing; it’s just the voice of T-Rex, telling you to stop using the b-word. What could be simpler?
At the Oberlin Hip Hop [...]
Did anyone else just take this for granted? Apparently ‘gaiden’ is a descriptor word in Japanese, referring to an ‘outside story,’ or a story that happens outside the main continuity. Check the Wikipedia definition of “gaiden.” I always assumed “Ninja Gaiden” was just the name of the old video game. Or possibly the name [...]
October 9, 2005 – 12:54 am
I don’t know when I fell in love with words. I think Becca had something to do with it. I looked up to that woman. Her poetry was so class, and she refused to write very much of it. …As though she dared not accumulate. Anyway, it was two years later, at the tender age [...]