Category: Philosophy

I think there are some general guidelines that the U.S. as a society could follow to avoid terrorism. Unfortunately these will be rather to difficult to do in practice. * Invest heavily in intelligence to find out what people are doing. Spies and double agents seem to be the best sort of intelligence. Unfortunately they…

Several science fiction authors have been writing about an idea called the singularity. The theory is that technology is being developed at an accelerating pace, one which will lead humanity to a point which will be incomprehensible to people living today. And, since the pace of technological development accelerates exponentially, this will happen much sooner…

I started a new job in January, and it has clearly had a significant effect on the frequency of my blog postings. I’ll see how it goes over time. Seeing Charles Taylor in the news has made me think about names. Taylor is a fairly common name, and Charles Taylor, who is the descendant, on…

I’m not sure I have anything new to say on the topic of abortion, but I’ll take a stab at clarifying my thoughts. I’ve been working on this little essay for about a month, off and on; it’s a complicated issue. Abortion is an interesting point of contention in the U.S. because both sides generally…

The Edge has an interesting, and long, collection of mini-essays on the topic What is your dangerous idea? At that link you can find the answer to that question as written by a hundred or so different people. The answers range from false and insipid to truly interesting. I’m not sure that any of them…