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Recently, Jason Kottke wrote about how Facebook is “a step sideways or even backwards (towards an AOL-style service) for the web”. Essentially, he argues that because nearly all data on Facebook is in their “walled garden”, inaccessible by Google and other non-members on the open web, the service is ultimately doomed. [...]

What follows is the briefest of summaries about my feelings on parenthood. Most people suck. My parents were (separately) very good at teaching me relevant things for life and now I’m a pretty good person for it. Kids are expensive and time-consuming, but I feel a little guilty not imparting good sense and knowledge on [...]

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties!Henry David Thoreau

There is a dreadful anxiety surrounding nudity in some modern countries, most notably the United States. [...]

You’re up late in Widener Library on the Harvard campus, studying for your MCAT to get into Johns Hopkins Medical School. There’s a familiar face at one of the tables next to you — it’s that kid who never shows up for lecture and is constantly struggling through the same material that you and your [...]

I’ve been reading a lot about design lately; specifically information architecture, interface design and industrial design. It seems that design comes in at a specific point in a given production process. In software, a developer is able to create a program, script or application that solves some specific problem; namely that of accomplishing some set [...]

There are unique conditions in Western culture and the United States specifically that highlight vast differences from other cultures and past times with respect to consumption and production. It should be obvious that technology has given Western culture a large lever with which to accelerate its levels of both consumption and production. Still though, there [...]

I had a computer science instructor at UCSD who imparted some simple advice on those who cared to listen: Don’t do just one thing in life; do as much as you can. Teaching the fundamentals of computer organization and systems programming was this instructor’s fifth major career and he claimed to have no regrets about [...]

Wikipedia notes a definition of qualia: …qualia are properties of sensory experiences by virtue of which there is something it is like to have them. Much of the debate over the existence of qualia lies in the definition of the term, so I’ll give my conception and subsequently refute it. Qualia are the things like [...]

There are two factors concerned with the morality of sex and sexual behavior: consent and maturity. Archaic definitions of sexual morality are unnecessarily restrictive, following the “fear the unknown” mantra, and fail to logically address the issue with anything more than circular arguments. There have been several court cases in the recent past involving two [...]

“Well, it works.” The pathetic proverb of contemporary capitalist dogma. Getting something done with minimal cost and maximal return is what it’s about. Cut corners. Get away with everything you can. Lie. Cheat. Deceive. Embezzle. So long as you’re making money doing it, you’re doing it the right way. American capitalism, like all other relatively [...]