ribuck

Bugs are relatively complex creatures. They need to be able to fly, evade predators, etc. Worms are much simpler. There's a type of roundworm with fewer than 1000 cells in its body (including just 95 muscle cells), and only 302 neurons in its brain. The OpenWorm project is a worldwide collaborative project to try to simulate this worm in software. You can read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm and you can join in if you want to be a part of some exciting emerging science.

"Thick As A Brick" is indeed an epic, which I've been getting more and more from for the past 40 years. It seems that Jethro Tull didn't intend it to be deep. When critics panned their earlier album as being "just another concept album", Ian Anderson decided to show them what a concept album could really be like. It's truly brilliant. Great instrumentals and vocals. For those not familiar with this album, the LP came with a whimsical and ironic LP-sized "magazine" which was quite entertaining in the context of its time. The CD comes with the same magazine, but shrunk down so much that it's rather pointless. However, something which has always bugged me: what on earth is it referring to with the line about "your sperm's in the gutter, your love's in the sink". Is it a line about masturbation, or about something completely different?

I love this music (although I don't enjoy atonal music in general). Jpahmad nailed it though. This music does have rules (constraints) and can have wrong notes.

Easy! Every person gets 15 minutes at a time to have the window in their ideal position. I have used this strategy in a carload of six people, where each person wanted different music playing or wanted silence. Every time, long before it gets to the last person's turn, people have forgotten about the dispute because they're focused on something else.

I think "Correctly spell Stefan's last name" would keep the spambots out.

(LOL, anyone notice the performative contradiction of GuzzyBone posting a photo of a house number on FDR while complaining about FDR posting photos of house numbers?) Everything that is free has a price. In this case, the price to use ReCatpcha is much less than the price for FDR staff to block spam registrations some other way. Google uses the data to fine-tune their character recogniation algorithms, but also presumably to directly enhance their mapping database. That way, if you use the "free" Google Maps navigation service to go to 1234 Smith Street, there is a high probability that you will end up in the correct place. This is not a bad thing. The photos are of private houses, but they're taken from the street so I don't see a problem here. House-owners deliberately put a number on their building to help people identify it, so they've implicitly given consent. If they don't want to do this, they can remove their number and give descriptive directions to their house instead of a street address (e.g. "turn right at the fire station and it's the third house on the left; the one without a number"). Any branch of the USG that wants house numbers has them already (USPS, public utilities, police, planning departments, etc). ReCaptcha is no use to the government at all. Now let me tell you why I don't use ReCaptcha on my own websites (Instead, I generate random-word captchas on my server). ReCaptcha also acts as a tracking beacon. Google can get the same type of information that they would get from, say, a website with a Google Analytics link (website, referrer, browser signature, operating system, etc). I don't know whether Google uses this information. It would not be unethical for them to do so, but it would be discourteous and anti-social.

All knowledge becomes public eventually, either by leaking or by being independently discovered. If you hold back an invention, the bad guys will likely find a way to get hold of it before the good guys do.

Blondes are not yet protected!

The debt should probably be repaid by those who voted and thereby endorsed the system that incurred the debt. But absolutely not by our children, and their as-yet unborn children, who are innocent. Or the government could just default and we could reboot the system.

With the Free State Project almost ready to move into a higher gear (when it meets its threshold of signers), I wonder whether there is a worthwhile opportunity for good cops to move to New Hampshire.

You could invent a new word to meet your need! For example, "xenialness" or "xeniability". Or, we could edit Wiktionary and other user-maintained dictionaries to add the non-alien meaning of Xeniality.

If flags are your thing, why not the Earth Flag?

In real life, most disengagements from agreements aren't fraudulent in nature; instead they are simply due to conditions being different from when the agreement was drafted, or due to disagreements over interpretation. Adjudication, whether legal or moral, is almost impossible due to the subjectivity of the situation. In my opinion, life would be better for everyone if every agreement for a future undertaking was treated not as a Contract but as a Memorandum of Understanding. These Memoranda are sometimes used in business to provide a framework for a productive future co-operative activity, without binding the participants to the risk of damages if things don't turn out as anticipated. In my business experience, Memoranda of Understanding have generally had a more positive outcome than Contracts. Harry Browne, in his book "How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World", explores a related idea. He suggests that one should always structure agreements so that either party is free to walk away at any time. A good agreement necessarily provides a win-win for both parties, so no-one walks away from a good agreement. And if an agreement goes bad, and one party is gaining at the expense of the suffering of the other, there is no good outcome for anyone. No retailer, for example, gains by putting their supplier out of business. And in any adversarial dispute, both players lose and only the lawyers and the court system win. As Phuein pointed out, reputation and trustworthiness is what makes this non-binding association work in the real world. Furthermore, you can gain the same benefits as a contract by leveraging additional participants. To take Blackout's example of the job which requires 6 months preliminary training ... If the employer is genuinely concerned, the employer can include some additional people in the agreement. Suppose the agreement was along the lines of "If you don't work for at least six months after completing the training, you repay the cost of training". The employer can ask the trainee to agree with this, and also get the trainee's parents to each agree to repay the cost of training if the trainee fails to do so. Whatever the level of risk, you can always protect against it by getting enough people to co-sign the agreement, so that you can find at least one of them who won't let their reputation go down the drain by failing to pay. But that's all theoretical. What would be more likely to happen, in a world where future commitments where non-binding, is that things would be done differently. The employer would train the person part-time while also employing them part-time. That way, the trainee is continuously "paying back" the training. And anyway, training usually works better if it's being put into practise as it's being learned.

As a child, I'm sure you had faith that your mother wasn't going to poison your breakfast each morning. And faith that the bus driver was going to go take you where the destination sign said. So I don't think faith is necessarily associated with religion. It's just that faith is not particularly useful beyond childhood, except for religion. Consider the following illustration from the book "Anti-Fragile": Every day the butcher comes to feed the Thanksgiving turkey. The turkey develops a faith that the butcher will always come to care for him. And with every passing day that faith is rewarded and strengthened. The turkey develops an unshakeable faith that the butcher will never do him harm. Until Thanksgiving approaches... Anyway, "Flexibility" is fine for F's virtue. I would probably have chosen "Friendship".

Xenial is good, except that it's an adjective rather than an abstract noun. Xeniality would do though. But really, there's no central authority forcing an author to include every letter of the English alphabet.

Thanks, Matt. For your next edition you could consider changing the spelling of "T" to the more standard "temperance". I realise that, Robin. But you don't automatically get a copyright notice on anything you create, and you are always free to write "Copy Freely" on a work instead.

Nice poster, Matthew. How come you copyrighted it? Is virtue too precious to be copied?

Susana, consumables start around $20 per kilogram, but some types of printer need more expensive consumables.

The main cost isn't in the printer, but in the consumables.

Jeffrey Tucker's liberty.me

While you're waiting, here are two interesting pieces which you may like to read: Libertarian Loneliness: Why Libertarians Have Problems Hooking Up https://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2015/3/18/libertarian-loneliness-why-libertarians-have-problems-hookin.html 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person http://cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

Two carefully-written resources: Libertarian Loneliness: Why Libertarians Have Problems Hooking Up http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2015/3/18/libertarian-loneliness-why-libertarians-have-problems-hookin.html 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/

I'm not sure what figures you're looking for, but this page might help: https://www.cmqcc.org/maternal_mortality/california_maternal_mortality/california_maternal_mortality_by_age It shows that (in California) the risk of maternal mortality is low up to age 35, then rises slightly for the age group 35-40, then rises greatly after that (four times as high for over 40s than in the range 20-35). It's also high under age 20, though that's not shown on this chart. The risk to the fetus does not vary quite so much, but is shown on one of the charts here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db16.htm The risk is low from age 15 to 40, and roughly doubles outside that range.

It depends on your meaning of socialist, but I would say all of them. They all have high taxes, and a redistributive welfare system.

Have you been to those countries? I've been to some of them, and the average citizen doesn't look very happy to me. I think there's more happiness in Italy, Greece, Botswana, Canary Islands, Mexico, etc.