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Kid Theater
My six-year old daughter doesn’t like to go to movies in theaters. She does like watching them at home when we let her. Since I like going to movies, this seems strange to me. What seems even stranger is her reason: she says that at home she can pause the movie whenever she wants to…
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Jumper
Jumper, by Steven Gould, is among my favorite SF books. It’s a simple story based on a simple premise: a teenager discovers that he has the power to teleport. The book is both a bildungsroman and a revenge story, as he uses his power to strike back at his enemies (thanks to the one outrageous…
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She’s So Popular
There is some interesting research by Duncan Watts which seems to show that popular songs are popular because they are popular. He ran some experiments which showed that when people rank songs, the dominant effect is other people’s rankings. Thus even a small recommendation for a song by a couple of people can translate into…
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Unions
I used to think that unions were bureaucratic organizations which mainly existed to get in people’s way. The closed shop seemed particularly dubious in that all employees were required to pay union dues, effectively imposing a tax on working. My thinking has changed to some degree. While unions are deeply imperfect, they do have a…
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Voting
I vaguely recall that in one of Terry Pratchett’s books there is a quote along the lines of “he liked the idea of democracy until he considered the other people who would be voting.” No doubt other people have said similar things. Democracy always has the chance of devolving into mobocracy. The U.S. has a…