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Old Fogeys
It’s proverbial in our society that you get more conservative as you get older. I mean more conservative in the traditional sense of wanting things to stay the same: this should not be confused with some platforms of the Republican party, which seeks radical changes in various areas (government reduction, government support for religious institutions,…
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Israel and Palestine and Annapolis
It’s nice to see the Bush administration doing another quick flyby of Israel and Palestine. Getting them to agree to end the conflict, and getting the rest of the Middle East to feel that the Palestinians were treated fairly, would make us far safer than even the best possible invasion of Iraq could ever have…
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Across the Universe
I really liked the film Across the Universe. It’s both amusingly clever and an interesting look back at the 60s. Plus it’s a musical. I particularly liked the combination of “nothing’s going to change our world” with “helter skelter”–simple but effective. I tend to like movies which take a more formal approach, like musicals. By…
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Floating Currency
We’ve gotten used to floating currency, but what does it really mean? The dollar has fallen with respect to the euro. If I want to buy something from Europe, I now have to pay more dollars than I did before, and/or the seller has to receive fewer euros. In a free market, prices should always…
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Universal Ethics
I argued earlier that we can base a universal ethics on human nature, or biology. Is there anything we could use? Many universal ethical systems are based on some form of the golden rule or the categorical imperative. That itself tends to be taken as an axiom. Utilitarianism is based on a utility function, which…