So build she did, around the clock for 38 years until her death on Sept. 5, 1922. The house now has 160 rooms, 47 fireplaces, 10,000 window panes, 17 chimneys, 950 doors, and 40 staircases. It is famous for its nonsensical architecture, with hidden rooms, staircases leading to nowhere, cupboard doors open to solid brick [...]
it’s often suggested that Quine must have been wrong because conceptual analysis is what analytic philosophers do, and there must be something that they’re doing when they do it. That put a brave face on it, but there were guilty consciences wherever you looked.Jerry Fodor
In 2003 the total size of the world economy was $49,000,000,000,000. The total size of the derivatives being traded was $85,000,000,000,000. In other words, derivatives today are worth far, far more than the total economic activity of the planet. More than $1,000,000,000,000 of derivatives are bought and sold every day. Cityphilia (A completely unfair comparison, [...]
In Salon, Gary Kamiya writes in praise of editors: The art of editing is running against the cultural tide. We are in an age of volume; editing is about refinement. It’s about getting deeper into a piece, its ideas, its structure, its language. It’s a handmade art, a craft. You don’t learn it overnight. Editing [...]
John Battelle wants you to think of advertising as a conversation. That thought has made quite a lot of money for him and Federated Media. Except last week they got slapped about by readers for inviting their authors to become part of a “conversation” with Microsoft. (His defensive apologetic explains more.) In short, Microsoft would [...]