Various and Sundry

The Root of Many a Conspiracy Theory via Ramsey Theory

I still remember reading Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep with the idea of the “net of a million lies,” which we may well have already reached without the bonus of having an interstellar civilization. Instead, we have an absurd amount of people around the globe thinking they’re on a flat Earth. I stumbled across this video that has a succinct explanation for a lot of conspiracy theories.. One of the concepts mentioned in…

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Various and Sundry

Pushing Your Buttons… or Just Taking Them Away

Okay, so I implied on Wednesday that I try and help people work smarter, not harder… because working on projects that go nowhere doesn’t help anyone. So imagine my umbrage when I read an article by Jacopo Prisco about all the “placebo buttons” that are out there designed to give people the illusion of control. Do you people not know conspiracy theorists will run with this?!? Of course, I have to wonder which is worse: being…

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Writing

Recommended Reading: Arms and the Bard

This piece from by Robert McCrum in The Guardian about some Shakespearean research this past weekend is a welcome read. Not only does it detail intriguing additional evidence that the plays of William Shakespeare were written by (dramatic pause) William Shakespeare, but it shows how ardent and assiduous the scholars of Washington DC’s own Folger Shakespeare Library are. It is fair to say that I first came to know Shakespeare through many, many performances at the…

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