David Schneider-Joseph

Arafat Peace Prize

Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize was stolen. Oh well, it's the thought that counts.

Religious fundamentalism and kindred spirits

A brief observation about Mike Huckabee's comments at the GOP debates. He says:

We are a culture of life. We celebrate, we elevate life. And let me just say, when hikers on Mt. Hood get lost, we move heaven and Earth to go find them. When coal miners in West Virginia are trapped in a mine, we go after them because we celebrate life. This life issue is not insignificant. It's not small. It separates us from the Islamic fascists who would strap a bomb to the belly of...

Intrade committing fraud?

UPDATE 12/22/2006: Now that the matter was brought to the higher-ups at Intrade, they are handling it very responsibly and I am confident that the matter is going to get resolved. I'm convinced that Intrade is not committing fraud. Their customer service was extremely unresponsive with me so they left me wondering what was going on, but now that I brought the issue to their attention in this way, they are handling it as it should be handled. I'll keep you all posted...

The Beauty of Lisp

Programming languages are about turning your ideas into a form a computer can understand.
- The ideas must be mathematically defined, but beyond that they can be arbitrary (Turing equivalence).
Most good ideas need to be reused.
Programming involves defining ideas and reducing them to "words", and then referencing those words whenever the idea needs to...

Nominatibility and Electability

Jason Briggeman over at Productivity Shock observed that the frontrunners for the Democratic and Republican 2008 presidential nominations, Hillary and McCain, seem to have lower electability (as implied by TradeSports/Intrade) than some of the other contenders, such as Gore and Rudy. He measures this electability by dividing their...

Buffett's Charity No Surprise

Why is everyone shocked at the news that Buffett is giving most of his wealth to charity? He wrote in his 2005 letter to shareholders:

Every share of Berkshire that I own is destined to go to philanthropies

Favorite Feeds Updated

I'm renaming my "Favorite Blogs" to "Favorite Feeds", since it has some non-blog sources of content as well. I'm removing:

As the Apple Turns — Haven't read it in ages. Doesn't really offer much that you can't get by osmosis from the various other decent sources of tech and Mac news. Was mostly a novelty.
Tim Russert Doesn't Understand Basic Economics
Here's a clip from this Sunday's "special edition" of Meet the Press on high gas prices. Simply astonishing:

Big things
It's interesting how the Pyramids are considered a monument to Egyptian civilization but the Ryugyong Hotel is considered an embarrassment to North Korea.

The true price of software?
Robert Lefkowitz has written an interesting analysis of the true value of computer products, by breaking down those products into their components, much as an economist breaks down financial instruments into their components, or a theoretical physicist breaks down particles into their elementary primitives. He identifies several services: repairs, maintenance, and the option to upgrade to future versions, that in his...