2007.07.21
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Rachel Clarke has a nice comparison of Harry Potter 7 vs. the iPhone. Both inspire crazy people to stay up all-night to buy them. Personally, I only stay up all night to fix weird bugs in Python scripts, piece together supposedly forgotten technologies (RDF, Z39.50, outliners, Gopher) and obsessively document my utterly dull life (and send out not-very-subtle propaganda attempts at friends) on Twitter. But queuing up to buy things? Freaks! 2007-07-21T15:47:03Z
Michael David Murphy has a brilliantly illustrated post on the Jena Six controversy, which seems like an astoundingly clear case of racism. If it had not been for race, the charges brought against these students would not be nearly as high. 2007-07-21T13:59:35Z
Kurt Cagle has a great post on the future of XML. 2007-07-21T13:52:15Z
Andrew Sullivan has an amusing picture from the Harry Potter launch in London. And, in related news, this Digg story is theologising, and I agree. Why would a loving God subject the poor souls he has created to the existence of Victoria Beckham? Perhaps it's one of them 'challenges' he sets to prove that we are good people. 2007-07-21T13:50:13Z
You know Dave Winer had a motto once - "It's worse than it appears". That's what went through my mind immediately when I read this article. The bit about the Windows ME server which "was completely overrun with spyware, viruses, and several instances of BonziBUDDY" being... the credit-card server. I want to tear my eyeballs out, that is so scary. 2007-07-21T13:32:58Z
I love these endless DVB standards. Does anyone still pay any attention to these? Or are we all just using XviD files and putting them on big hard drives and SD cards. TV on mobile seems as relevant as MMS. DVB-H relies on spectrum allocation too. Why bother? Use that spectrum for TCP/IP, and use the money wasted on this pointless standard on making TCP/IP rates cheaper across Europe. That will do the job far better than writing pointless standards. 2007-07-21T13:23:42Z
Everybody's favourite epistemic anti-foolishness campaigner, Ophelia Benson is interviewed this week on Point of Inquiry. Go Ophelia! 2007-07-21T12:19:56Z
A superb analysis of the difference between the moderates and the extremists (via, via). 2007-07-21T01:47:07Z
The latest Jesus and Mo is fantastic. You couldn't sum up the vapidity of 'sophisticated' theology in a more concise manner than this. 2007-07-21T01:41:24Z
Tom Morris tom@tommorris.org
I am a vegetarian, an atheist, like to code in Ruby and Scala (and Java, but let’s not talk about that), and noodle about with microformats and the Semantic Web.
I have an MA in philosophy from Heythrop College, University of London. My philosophical interests are in analytic metaphysics, ontology, modality, the work of Armstrong, Lewis, Kripke, Russell and Plato. I have a strange, unfulfilled interest in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. I’ve been influenced by Gadamer, by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rawls and Nozick.
Musically, I like jazz fusion, soul and P-Funk. My musical nirvana would be a mixture of Beethoven, Miles Davis and George Clinton topped with a side-serving of Erykah, Jill and Angie.
I also write for the Citizendium, an online encyclopedia project. If you know about stuff, you should join in. I occasionally produce audio recordings for The Pod Delusion.