Edited by author 03-02-2005 06:32 PM
"This is a directory of 2160 online papers on consciousness and related topics."

Curse you. Philosophy of consciousness is one of my recent interests. I've finished Dennett's Consciousness Explained and am about halfway through Searle's Mind. Now I need to take a year off of work so I can read through all these online papers.

My understanding is that a trademark is for, well, a "mark," most often some kind of identifying logo, while a design patent typically covers an entire object. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, and yeah, it does seem like a rather arbitrary distinction.

Which is of newing year. Which is of exploring. Which is not here.

Yeah, in general I think the artistic potential of the HTTP 403 status code has been underexplored.

Inspired by "sexygrrl404," an idea for one of those customized 403 pages. (I originally thought of this for a 404 page but realized it worked better for a 403 error.)

A 403 error page which plays a snippet of En Vogue's "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)."

I are Chuck. I are not yrrah. I are not there. I are not of the boatswains?

Who are chuck? Who are harry? Who are not here. Who are not of the smelling.

Small web! I've contributed quite a bit of content to the TV Tropes Wiki you cited. Including the original B5 entry. (Of course, it being a Wiki, I can't take credit for the entire entry as it stands now.)

Recommended kids' book: Coraline, by Neil Gaiman. I recently read this (and by "read," I mean here "listened to the audiobook") and enjoyed it very much. Very creepy, and very good. In addition to it being a good book on its own, there's two other benefits you may be interested in: it qualifies for your "Vasty Houses" list (at relevance level 2, or possibly 3), and it ends up with a very positive view of Coraline's ordinary, rather humdrum real parents.

Knowing of your interest in the strange response of some humans to some words, I thought I'd draw your attention to this AskMe thread.

Perhaps the woman was simply aware that Manhattan's streets and avenues are not orthogonal to the cardinal directions, and that "uptown" is actually closer to north by northeast than it is to north. (cf. http://tinyurl.com/37bbt).

     A NEW TWIST ON AN OLD JOKE
  The Guru had collected the Inner Circle of his disciples for an urgent revelation. When he had seated himself in his Great Chair and the Disciples had placed themselves in due order at his feet (the Youngest Disciple having duly locked the door) he spoke.
  "My sons, I have obtained a revelation which, I fear, the world is not ready to receive.
  "I was snatched up in the spirit to behold the very face of God.
  "My sons, She is Black."
  All the Disciples fainted dead away at the new, except for the Youngest Disciple, who said:
  "Whew! I always thought He was Jewish!"

Edited by author 02-20-2004 02:48 PM
On the publicknowledge.org petition against H.R. 3261: "Public Knowledge" indeed. Sheesh. If they were really about public knowledge, you'd think they'd actually include the text of H.R. 3261. But no, it's just "Bad law! We must oppose it! Write your congressperson, because we tell you to! The law is bad! Just believe it is, because we said so!"

Go to Thomas, type in "H.R. 3261" in the Bill Number box, and read the text for yourself.

I frankly don't see that it's anything like Public Knowledge or Lessig would have us believe. You can't copy entire databases, or major portions of databases, without the permission of whoever created the database. It's not going to prevent anyone from taking a single item or two out of a database. In fact, it specifically exempts "for the primary purpose of news reporting, including news and sports gathering, dissemination, and comment..."

My one qualm is that "quantitatively substantial part" is left undefined, and might be open for abuse. Other than that, it looks like a reasonable law to me.

Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for Lessig, and I agree with him probably 90+% of the time. But I think he's wrong here.

On the page you cited (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-stpetersburg/) I find Martin's objections to "An Upper Bound on Utility" somewhat naive.

Specifically, he presumes that if there is an upper bound on utility, then that upper bound must be reached at some finite number of dollars, and any additional dollars beyond that amount give no additional utility.

"Perhaps you find it reasonable to think that, once one had (say) $16,000,000 in the bank, you'd be able to buy anything you could possibly want; but this is not to say that that sum of money provides the maximum permissible utility. We can readily imagine someone with that amount of money - or any amount of money - still short of utility, due to lack of certain goods that money can't buy. What the idea of an upper limit on utility means is that there is some amount of utility which is so high that no additional utility is possible - that nothing additional adds any value at all."

But there is another possibility for a bounded utility which Martin does not address. The upper bound on utility might not be reached at any finite number of dollars; utility might asymptotically approach its upper bound as one's wealth increases. In this model, any additional money--no matter how little additional money, and no matter how much money one already has--provides some increase in utility, and thus addresses Martin's stated objections against a bounded utility. Yet, utility still has a finite upper limit, which allows one to rationally set a finite maximum price one is willing to pay to play the St. Petersburg game.

On the St. Petersburg Paradox, and related topics, I would submit to you that even an infinite amount of money has a finite utility.