Archive for August, 2006

Preferences, re: ponderings

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

A comment was posted earlier that has a certain resonance. While there is no greater online sin than blogging about blogging, I will trespass for a moment - always with the aim of pleasing you better, dear spectators. The comment:
You know, if you took the amount of time you spend on a week’s worth of [...]

Hypothetical moral reality

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

While cycling today, I was thinking about moral orders. Specifically, if one was given the chance to take any moral formulation that human beings have dreamt up and ascribed divine status to and make it real (give it ontological status), which would you choose and why?

Sulfate injection to stop global warming?

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Apparently, Paul Crutzen, an environmental scientist who shared a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the role of CFCs in ozone layer depletion, thinks we should correct for global warming by injecting two million tonnes per year of sulphate particles into the upper atmosphere. According to Wikipedia: “sulfates occur as microscopic particles (aerosols) [...]

A Scanner Darkly

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

Antonia invited me to see the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s book this evening and, despite having watched the first twenty minutes as a free online trailer, I found it well worth paying for. Based on our discussion afterwards, I have tentatively concluded that it is a film unusually subject to people taking away [...]

A quick request of friends at other schools

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

To those with access to e-Journals different from those at Oxford:

One more Oxford week

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006

In less than a week, I will be in Vancouver. This astonishing thought has partially provoked the cascade of attempted task completion that my life should turn into between now and then. I have even been wandering around inside the insane labyrinth that is the OUSSG website. Frankly, I am scared of it. I have [...]