Category: Blather

Esther Dyson and David Weinberger discuss the goodness of ambiguity in social contexts. The emphasis are mine this time:

ED: Ethics! Yes, it’s the most interesting question left [after technology, strategy, policy]. Without ambiguity, there is no free will.

DW: Explicitness is an act of violence. You think it’s archeological: You take something and dust it off, but in fact explicitness reduces things; it destroys. ….That’s why groups stay away from constitution writing.

ED: But they don’t stay away from constitution-writing. It’s more like moths to a flame. They can’t stop it. But they can’t handle the explicitness. It’s like pre-nuptial agreements.

As an M.Sc. drop-out, I can appreciate the dire warnings in Dorothea Salo’s Straight Talk about Graduate School. Yeah, I went in with no idea what on earth I was doing, and lost enthusiasm pretty quickly (the really long University strike, which gave me a chance to complete my B.Sc., got me out of the habit of attending classes). Calling it quits came after months of denial, and a semester studying teaching, and other silliness, and I still feel the ache in the stump of the paw I chewed off to get out of that trap. Whenever I hear something cool about Biology (Molecular, Behavioral, whatever), I think Yeah, cool, Biology. I gave that up.

The Countess read The Invisibles, The Countess visits the Doctor.

Insulting people on your web-site is an infamous way of attracting readers: there are plenty of blogs I’d never see if they hadn’t pissed off Dave Winer, for example.

Well, I’ve done it again. I am become a Troll with my own URL. Troll with a blog, would that be a Trog?

Someone who trolls someone else’s blog isn’t a trog, he’s a wiener boy (as in a person who badmouths Dave Winer on his own blog’s discussion forums).