Mormon Metaphysics » Uncategorized

How I Deal With Phone Spam

Clark — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:23:15 +0000

How I deal with Phone Spam. Give the phone to one of my kids and let them have an interesting conversation.

I used to also answer polls by giving ridiculous answers as a kind of civil disobedience. I kind of think polls are pretty damaging to society since they lead to superficial views of problems rather than actually engaging with the public. They also are pretty misleading since they don’t typically give an indication about how strongly a person feels about their answer nor how informed they are in holding the answer.

But the worst are always the sales people. Ugh. Let them talk to my 4 year old.

Annoyances

Clark — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:51:02 +0000

OK, something not tied to technical philosophy. This is my grumpy old man rant. (Even though I’m far from an old man yet, despite a few grey hairs are starting to make their appearance near my ears)

1. Blogger Comments: The software, not the hobby. Google’s blogger won’t allow blockquote tags so you can’t indent quotations. It involves way too many steps to just post your comment. It’s annoying as all get out.

2. White Text on Dark Backgrounds: Man I hate this. Guys – there’s a reason books aren’t published like this. It wouldn’t be quite as bad if the brightness and contrast were down a bit but typically it isn’t. It can be done well. (Witness Daring Fireball) Unfortunately very, very few are able to pull it off in a readable format. Fortunately this is why Apple came up with their Reader functionality in the new Safari. For everyone else put Readability into a bookmark. Trust me. It makes reading far too many blogs much easier.

3. Spam: I’m so fed up with this. Since I have to handle sales issues I have to have my email online. And it gets harvested by every spammer around. So I have to use spam filters. And inevitably some important email gets treated as spam. Given how big a problem this is I’m really surprised no one has solved it. This goes back to the problem that email protocols were written in the more trusting times back in the 80′s. There really has to be a new protocol but given the nature of the industry no one will agree to do it.

The Island

Clark — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:54:37 +0000

I haven’t had time to post much the last week. But I came upon a quote here I really wanted to pass along.

“The larger the island of knowledge, the longer of the shoreline of the wonder.” -Ralph W. Sockman.”

Win a Box of Amano Chocolate

Clark — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:55:22 +0000

I figured since this is my blog I can be a little self-serving here. As many know one of my businesses is making gourmet chocolate. (My other is programming) Indeed that’s partially why I’ve not had time to do a lot of heavy philosophy posts this last year or so. Running two businesses is busy.

Right now though we are doing a giveaway of a box of our chocolate. An $84 value. All you have to do is Tweet a message on Twitter. See this explanation of the contest for more information. So if you’ve never tried my chocolate and would like to, entering the contest is a great way to get to try it for free.

Apologies for the crass commercialism. Now back to your regular more philosophical discussions.

The Only Books Worth Buying are Ones You’ve Already Read

Clark — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 02:43:03 +0000

Maverick Philosopher has up an intriguing and short post. He asserts you should never buy a book you haven’t read. That is only have in your library books you’ll read again.It’s an intriguing proposition. I’m not sure I’d go so far to say one should never buy. But perhaps one shouldn’t bother keeping books you don’t intend to read again. Certainly I’ve picked up books simply because I didn’t want to wait. (Even a few hardback fictions that perhaps weren’t worth it in hindsight)

Since I’ve reached the point where I no longer have sufficient shelf space for my books I ought heed the point and go through my library to see what I’ll not read again. But it’s sometimes hard. For instance it’s been over a decade since I went through a phase studying Renaissance philosophers, the Kabbalah, and early modernism. Will I return to those books? With a few exceptions it’s been quite a long time since I last cracked any of the volumes. But can I really justify getting rid of all the volumes – which probably is well above $1000. (Ah, the days when I was single and could justify buying books…)

What about all my volumes on Popper, Kuhn, and various other writers on philosophy of science? Once again, with a few notable exceptions, I’ve not really studied the subject much the past decade. Will I ever read Popper again? Probably not. But I’m somehow loath to get rid of him.

More interesting are the volumes so well read that I probably ought buy some replacement volumes. My edition of The Essential Peirce volume 2 in particular is looking pretty bad. My favorite book of Mathematical Physics is likewise in disparate need of replacing, even though I’d been quite some time since I last had time to enjoy calculating residues in order to solve some integral.

What I am thinking about doing is throwing out all my CDs once I ensure I’ve actually burnt them. And perhaps, if I find the time, going through my iTunes collection and pruning stuff I’m very embarrassed to have. (Limp Bizkit I’m looking at you for deletion – and I can’t even justify them the way I did some of my music choices when I was 14!)

Recurring Nightmare

Clark — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:31:19 +0000

OK this xkcd comic struck too close to home. I’ve been out of school for years and I still have this nightmare…

Of course mine is that it’s halfway through the semester, I’m about to graduate and I found out I’d signed up for a class by computer and didn’t realize I had signed up. I’d not been to class yet and I need it to graduate. Ugh. I hate that nightmare. But I’ve had the above one too.

Education in Utah and America

Clark — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:07:15 +0000

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has a new “report card” on education. Not enough Americans are going to college. Even in Utah, where you’d expect very high rates, the rates for whites is only 45% and the rate for Hispanics is an abysmal 16%. They scored Utah as an F for affordable education as well. Which seems surprising since colleges here seem pretty cheap compared to other states. For LDS at BYU the cost for a year of college is about $15,000 while non-Mormons pay $19,000. That’s including books, personal expenses and transportation. Tuition is just $3840 for a year which really isn’t much above what paid 20 years ago. (Has it really been that long?) It is pretty affordable IMO. BYU also makes tons of jobs available which is almost a subsidy for those not getting scholarships. (And there are plenty of scholarships as well)

At the University of Utah tuition is slightly higher at $4,472 with a full year being less than BYU. (Which I suspect has more to do with how they calculate expenses – SLC is probably more expensive to live in.)

Utah Valley University also here in the Provo area doesn’t do a full expense estimate but tuition is only $3752.

I didn’t look at the other state universities but I’d assume they are all between $3700 and $4400 per year as well. That just doesn’t seem high to me – let alone deserving of an F.

The big question is why so few still go to college. I suspect much of that 45% is related to gender issues. i.e. a perception that women don’t “need” to go to college – which is in this day and age false. Early marriage and pregnancy probably contributes. As to the hispanic figure I just don’t know. That’s scary low. I suspect cultural differences have a lot to do with that. But all immigration issues aside we need to do better there. There’s absolutely no excusable reason that should be so low.

Misc

Clark — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:06:12 +0000

Well the plan was to spend my evenings in San Francisco doing a little writing so I’d get ahead on posts. Then when I’m busy I could just pull out and revise slightly an already written post. Unfortunately I was run ragged in San Francisco and didn’t have even a moment of rest let alone time to read and write. So I’ll be a bit behind and posting may be erratic for the next week or two, depending upon what I’m doing. On the other hand I did eat and many of the top restaurants in the Bay area. So that’s nothing to sneeze at.