I was blessed — or cursed, I suppose, depending on your point of view — to have my first “real” programming job in the medical field. I wrote software which managed the processing of human tissue (knees, fascia lata, femurs, etc.) for implantation into human patients. I was very young and very stupid at the [...]
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philosophy,
Programming,
rants,
Software,
Starbucks,
work
Saturday November 8, 2008
“You can’t tell people about your problems. Ninety percent don’t care; and the other ten percent are glad you got ‘em.” –Lou Holtz
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philosophy,
problems,
quotations
Does John Searle, in his book Minds, Brains, and Science, succeed in explaining how mental phenomena can be nothing over and above neural phenomena and yet be caused by neural activity?
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brain,
consciousness,
essays,
minds,
philosophy,
science,
Searle
I forgot that the reason you get “paid” to do “jobs” is because it’s not something you’d leap up out of bed in the morning raring to do, without the carrot of filthy lucre leading you on … “Real work” for me is something you just do as a consequence of being who you are [...]
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motivation,
philosophy,
work
But if the mere fact that I can produce from my thought the image of something entails that everything which I clearly and distinctly perceive to belong to that thing really does belong to it, is not this a possible basis for another argument to prove the existence of God?
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Descartes,
essays,
God,
philosophy,
writing
Logical behaviorism tries to solve the problem of other minds by showing that behavior is the effect of mind states. By examining behavior closely enough, says the logical behaviorist, it is possible to know mental states of others … In his article “Brains and Behavior” Hilary Putnam attacks the school of thought known as logical [...]
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brain,
consciousness,
essays,
minds,
philosophy
Tuesday February 26, 2002
A few nights ago I finally finished reading Just Six Numbers : The Deep Forces That Shape the Universe by Martin J. Rees. I liked it. It was a good read. The author explains pretty much everything you need to know to understand the science of cosmology as it exists today. It was full of [...]
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books,
galaxy,
infinity,
philosophy,
science,
universe
Thursday January 24, 2002
10 things Google has found to be true Focus on the user and all else will follow. It’s best to do one thing really, really well. Fast is better than slow. Democracy on the web works. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer. You can make money without doing evil. [...]
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Google,
internet,
lists,
philosophy
“The important thing is to never stop questioning.” That quote is often attributed to Einstein. I cannot confirm that he ever actually said this. But I doubt I would hear many arguments if I suggested he was one of the greatest thinkers in history. Is “questioning” really all that important? I guess it depends on [...]
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9-11,
happiness,
love,
philosophy
You really should read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by the late, great Douglas Adams. There’s a bit in there about Schrödinger’s cat that started me tumbling down a long road (many, many years ago) of trying to learn everything I could about physics, metaphysics, philosophy, blah blah blah. (Try to find a copy of [...]
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animals,
cats,
comedy,
logic,
philosophy,
physics,
science