The Wellspring of Belief I recently met someone who told me that the United States has 52 states. The nature of our conversation precluded me from making this the problem I was going to focus on, but it did introduce a number of questions. What were the two extra states called? Where were they? When … Read more
Modernity is defined by the computer. Over the course of my lifetime, they have moved out of the shadows of government, education, and business to become completely implanted into our lives. Software shapes our experience in ways undreamt of by even the most prescient science fiction writers of the past, and the hardware that it … Read more
Power is a funny thing. History teaches that it’s best when it is unexercised, even while it’s impossible to hold in silence (money as speech). And maybe this why the evolution of human societies has been such an agonizingly slow one. For the most part, little changes, and whatever counts as sudden movement has typically been spurred … Read more