You haven’t seen it reported elsewhere, but on the Iowa Electronic Markets”, Kerry overtook Bush a couple of days ago. I don’t know if this is a “convention pop”; needless to say it would be pretty bad news for market efficiency if it were. In related news, the Kerry vote-share contract I bought a while ago is now back into profit, and I am still long. If/when I can be bothered reproducing the files, I will update my system’s equity curve – to be honest it doesn’t look that great, although one might argue that the system did the right thing in keeping me long.
The (London) Times “is running a series on Muslims in the UK”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1192019,00.html . Not profound stuff, but a useful antidote to the demonization that prevails in parts of the blogosphere. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that young Muslims have views about sex and alcohol (among other things) that resemble in important respects the views that many young Catholics have about contraception.[1]
fn1. The article is freely accessible from within the UK, but may require registration from elsewhere. My information about whether those attempting to access from elsewhere need to subscribe varies.
Ever since I learned to read, there’s been nothing better than to find a new author with a shelf full of books that I haven’t read[1]. Inevitably, though the day arrives when she (or he) becomes an old favourite with a shelf full of books I have read. The first I can remember was Rosemary Sutcliff; the most recent has been Patrick O’Brian. I’ve just reached the end of the Aubrey-Maturin series, though there are still a couple I’ve missed. I’ve always found finishing a series an ambiguous experience, and the following exchange from my blog has finally clarified the mixture of feelings.
It’s been a great pleasure having Ross Silverman of The Bloviator as a guest poster this week. Ross is a genuine expert, and The Bloviator is an excellent addition to anyone’s blog diet. Many thanks to Ross.
This is sort of a follow up to “Brian Leiter’s post”:http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/bleiter/archives/001665.html on philosophy blogs in Newsweek. And equally belated.
Last week the Sydney Morning Herald ran an article by Paul Davies about “the possibility that our universe is a simulation”:http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/21/1090089219062.html. What was interesting, to me at least, was that the article cited Nick Bostrom’s argument to this effect in _The Philosophical Quarterly_. (An online version of Bostrom’s paper is “here”:http://www.simulation-argument.com/.) It isn’t every day you see a philosophy journal cited in the morning newspaper. Sadly Davies didn’t cite, or even talk about, my “refutation of Bostrom’s argument”:http://brian.weatherson.net/sims.pdf also in _The Philosophical Quarterly_. So I thought I may as well take the chance to revisit that debate and say what I thought was most important about it. Anyone who wants to write to the SMH making either of the points below is much more than welcome!
(Blog history note: I first found out about Bostrom’s paper through a chain of links starting with “Instapundit”:http://www.instapundit.com/archives/003465.php, which probably makes my paper the first philosophy paper to be the result of a blog entry.)