And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no o...| blog.rongarret.info
You would think that after the disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq that Republicans would have learned that starting a war in that part of the world is a Really Bad Idea (tm). But no. After utterly failing to bring about regime change in both its eastern and western neighbors, the Trump administration is winding up to try yet again again in Iran. Maybe the third time will be the| Rondam Ramblings
It has been nearly five months now since I published my open letter to Democratic candidates and organizations . Since then I have, unsurpr...| blog.rongarret.info
Nearly two months ago now I wrote:It's getting harder and harder to find a reason to keep doing this. My opportunity costs are high, and writing a blog entry takes a non-trivial amount of time. I wrote this because I needed to blow off some steam, and I wanted to get my position on the election results on the record while they were still fresh in my mind. Whether I keep| Rondam Ramblings
I want to debunk once and for all this idea that "science is just another religion". It isn't, for one simple reason: all religions are based on some kind of metaphysical assumptions. Those assumptions are generally something like the authority of some source of revealed knowledge, typically a holy text. But it doesn't have to be that. It can be as simple as assuming that| Rondam Ramblings
I'm writing this at 9AM Pacific standard time on November 6, the morning after the election. Not all the dust has quite settled yet, but two things are clear: Donald Trump has won, and the Republicans have taken control of the Senate. The House is still a toss-up, and it's still unclear whether Trump will win the popular vote, but the last time I looked at the numbers he had a pretty| Rondam Ramblings
As long as I'm getting things on the record (while I still can without too much fear of reprisal) I want to endorse a video by Legal Eagle that lays out the case against voting for Donald Trump in 18 minutes of some of the best video commentary I've ever seen. It's well worth watching, and encouraging others to watch, but just in case you don't want to invest the time and would rather read,| Rondam Ramblings
I'm too depressed to elaborate much on this, but I just wanted to go on the record with this prediction before the election. Why do I think Trump is going to win? Because DJT stock is up and has been rising steadily since it hit an all-time low in late September. It didn't even go down today after yesterday's disastrous MSG rally. The polls have been static since| Rondam Ramblings
Yesterday we were treated to the sight of a major party nominee at what was supposed to be a town hall meeting suddenly stop taking questions and just dancing (badly) for the better part of an hour. A mere 20 years ago, well within living memory, less than five seconds of screaming were enough to end Howard Dean's political career. My, how times change.But the truly astonishing thing| Rondam Ramblings
IntroductionThis post is ostensibly about an obscure technical issue in distributed systems, but it's really about human communications, and how disagreements that on the surface appear to be about technical issues can sometimes turn out to actually be disagreements about the meanings of words. I'm taking the time to write a fairly extensive post about this for two reasons. First, I'm| Rondam Ramblings
(This is part 10 in a series on the scientific method.)In 1966, well within living memory as I write this in 2024, Digital Equipment Corporation released the PDP-10, later rebranded as the DECsystem-10 or, more colloquially, the DEC-10. The base model cost over $100,000 in 1966 dollars, well over a million dollars today. For that price you got 8,192 words of memory, each being 36 bits| Rondam Ramblings
This is part of my series on the scientific method, but it's a bit of a tangent, an interlude if you will, so I'm not giving it a number. As you will see, that will turn out to be metaphorically significant. I'm writing this because my muse Publius raised the problem of infinity in comments on earlier installments in this series, and so I thought it would be worth discussing why these| Rondam Ramblings
(Part 9 in a series on the scientific method)In the last installment of this series I addressed a philosophical question: what does it mean for a mathematical statement to be true? I tackled this in the context of a general definition of scientific truth, namely, that a statement is true if it corresponds on some way to the actual state of affairs in objective reality.(Note that this| Rondam Ramblings
It has been nearly two months since I last posted anything here. This is far from my longest period of radio silence, but in this case it was right in the middle of a series I had been writing on the scientific method, and I really didn't intend to stop and lose momentum. But two things happened. First, I decided to write a chapter about mathematics and that turned out to be a| Rondam Ramblings
My (not) Twitter (I refuse to refer to it by a single letter) account got hacked and so I got to see first-hand how utterly inadequate (not) Twitter's security measures are. The hacker immediately changed both my password and email address so I can no longer access the account and I can't do a password reset. Which is such an incredibly stupid design because of course anyone who| Rondam Ramblings
The question of whether or not Republicans will nominate a convicted felon to be their candidate for President of the United States is no longer a hypothetical. Unless they can somehow persuade him to withdraw from the race (and good luck with that) they will have no choice. The primaries are over. The convention will just be a rubber stamp. And Trump's conviction will not| Rondam Ramblings
(Part 8 in a series on the scientific method)In the last installment I advanced a hypothesis about what truth is, which is to say, I suggested a way to explain the broad consensus that appears to exist about truth. That explanation was: there is an objective reality "out there", and true statements are those that in some sense correspond to the actual state of affairs in that objective| Rondam Ramblings
(This is part 7 of a series about the scientific method.)The over-arching theme of this series is that science can serve as a complete worldview, that it can answer deep philosophical and existential questions normally associated with philosophy or religion. I gave a small example of that in the last installment where I showed how the scientific method can be deployed to answer a fun| Rondam Ramblings
This is the sixth installment in a series about the scientific method. My central thesis is that science is not just for scientists, it can be used by anyone in just about any situation.In part 2 of this series I gave a few examples of how the scientific method can be applied in everyday situations. In this chapter I want to show how it can be used to tackle what is considered to be a| Rondam Ramblings
(This is the fifth in a series on the scientific method. )Daniel Dennett died last week. He was a shining light of rationality and clarity in a world that is often a dark and murky place. He was also the author of, among many other works, Consciousness Explained, which I think is one of the most important books ever written because it gives a plausible answer to what seems like an| Rondam Ramblings
This is the fourth in a series about the scientific method and how it can be applied to everyday life. In this installment I'm going to suggest a way to approach all the science-y stuff without getting overwhelmed.There is an old joke that goes, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." That answer might be good for a laugh, but it wouldn't actually work, either for a| Rondam Ramblings
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry over this : Federal judges have issued President Donald Trump stinging legal rebukes in the early cla...| blog.rongarret.info
The ink is barely dry on the (drama-free) certification of the election results and I'm already getting calls from organizations and candidates seeking donations. (Apparently my name is on a lot of lists.) In order to save everyone a lot of time, I thought I'd write up my current thinking so I don't have to have the same conversation dozens of times.First and foremost: I really do| Rondam Ramblings
A while back I wrote : I've had many, many failures in my life. (Hm, maybe I should write a blog post about that.) This is that post. I'm ...| blog.rongarret.info
Don Geddis left a comment on my last post . My reply grew far longer than would reasonably fit into a comment reply so I decided to post i...| blog.rongarret.info
Nearly two months ago now I wrote: It's getting harder and harder to find a reason to keep doing this. My opportunity costs are high, and ...| blog.rongarret.info
About three years ago I wrote a blog post calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. I hope ...| blog.rongarret.info
Introduction This post is ostensibly about an obscure technical issue in distributed systems, but it's really about human communications, an...| blog.rongarret.info