Temporarily Torontonian
From Daniel Yergin’s The Quest: To demonstrate environmental sensitivity [at the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol], the Japanese organizers turned down the heating in the conference center. But this created a new problem as Kyoto in December was cold. To compensate, the Japanese decided to distribute blankets to the delegates. But they did not have [...]
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Back in 2010, I described what I called the ‘first rule of the internet‘: Against a sophisticated attacker, nothing connected to the internet is secure. To this, I feel like I should add a second item: Everything is internet now. While there were once large numbers of electronic systems entirely disconnected from the internet, nowadays [...]
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XKCD is right, this is worth a look today: List of common misconceptions From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Note: Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned. The ancient Greeks knew that the Earth was spherical, and how large it was. Napoleon was not short. He was slightly taller than the average Frenchman. The Emancipation Proclamation didn’t [...]
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One classic mistake made by cartoon supervillains concerns the complicated piece of machinery that is inevitably at the heart of their secret plan. It might be a time travel device of some sort, or a machine that strips the opposing superhero of their power, or a key part of a world domination scheme. As a [...]
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The combination of grossly insufficient sleep and mild snowfall has produced a morning of havoc. My normally-hour-and-a-half commute became two and a half hours, with people crammed cheek-by-jowl in a streetcar with totally fogged windows, lurching among confused drivers. Then, I forgot my (quite durable and expensive) umbrella somewhere on the subway or in a [...]
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Henry Shue has written convincingly about the moral importance of the rich giving up luxuries for the sake of fighting climate change, before the poor are asked to give up necessities. As he explains it, even in an emergency you sell the jewelry before you sell the blankets. The ultimate example of luxury emissions is [...]
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Since the 2008 credit crunch, the governments of the world have been obsessed with economic conditions: trying to find ways to increase growth, improve the stability of the financial system, and cut unemployment. All other societal projects have taken a back seat. Given reasonable concerns about the economic future of the world, it seems like [...]
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The sterling reputation of Sherlock Holmes as a detective is legitimately based upon a combination of a keen ability to reason from observation coupled with a high level of personal energy. Holmes is not above waiting for hours in the dark to catch his culprit, disguising himself for long spans of time in uncomfortable ways, [...]
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Depressingly, it looks like this new crime legislation will become law in Canada – bringing with it the certainty of substantial new prison costs and little in the way of likely benefits. One aspect that seems especially objectionable is mandatory minimum sentences. I think it makes a lot of sense for a judge who knows [...]
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The GRE is in four days, and I am pretty nervous. I don’t think it should be the most important consideration, when people are applying to graduate school. It is a very artificial test, largely based on some really narrow conceptions of how language should be used. I bet a lot of authors who have [...]
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Keep carbon underground. Help stop the Northern Gateway oil sands pipeline.
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Content copyright Milan Ilnyckyj (2003-2012). May be used non-commercially with attribution. For more details see this page.