Monthly Archives: November 2015

If anything is sillier than demanding “original receipts” for purchases on behalf of an organization it must be the idea of doing likewise for “gifts in kind” – especially since many such gifts are of items purchased so long ago … Continue reading →

I am a member of an organization whose Finance Committee has been advised to require “original receipts” for all reimbursement requests (and also for “gifts in kind”! But I’ll get to that second bit of nonsense later). Now it should … Continue reading →

This is cool because it has several components. That the iron content of spinach is a myth is itself a myth is just the starting point of a fascinating investigation of a number of related myths about how the confusion … Continue reading →

  In a review of Vaclav Smil’s books on global energy use, Tim Maly at The Atlantic, after explaining the virtual impossibility of transitioning to low energy density primary power sources in time to avert potentially catastrophic global warming, tells us that: We … Continue reading →

A recent article in The Atlantic piqued my interest but left me very much unsatisfied as to what, if anything, underlies the “pantone” system. So I decided to Google for more info. The second reference I found was a lot … Continue reading →

According to conventional wisdom (as expressed in ‘Seriously,Science?’ at discovermagazine.com): We all know that plastic is generally terrible for the environment because it doesn’t biodegrade, and just sits in landfills. But why is having carbon locked up in relatively small … Continue reading →

I think I would define consciousness in purely computational terms and I don’t think I’d make it dependent on the specific structure in which the computation takes place. eg, perhaps: “An entity is said to be ‘conscious’ if its state changes … Continue reading →