Tag Archives: *

Goodreads rating 3.81. For someone living in two dimensions and becoming aware of three, it might be easier to think of four than for someone living in three dimensions. The cherished feeling of oneness might be misleading … That Point is a Being like ourselves, but confined to the non-dimensional Gulf. He is himself his own World, his own Universe; of any other than himself he can form no conception; he knows not Length, nor Breadth, nor Height, for he has had no experience of them;...

Goodreads rating 4.04. Seine Wunde blühte, sein Leid strahlte, sein Ich war in die Einheit geflossen. … Weisheit ist nicht mitteilbar. Weisheit, welche ein Weiser mitzuteilen versucht, klingt immer wie Narrheit. … Mir aber liegt einzig daran, die Welt lieben zu können, sie nicht zu verachten, sie und mich nicht zu hassen …

The Federal Department of Finance and the SNB have agreed on a new scheme for the distribution of SNB profits. Agreement for the period 2020-2025, Explanations. Some comments in German (also available as PDF): Profitieren Bund und Kantone finanziell von den höheren SNB-Ausschüttungen? Höhere Gewinnausschüttungen in der Gegenwart bedingen tiefere in der Zukunft. In erster Näherung bleibt das Nettovermögen von Bund und Kantonen unverändert, denn es berücksichtigt auch den Wert der...

Goodreads rating 4.55. Surprising, sympathetic.

Some modest new year’s resolutions inspired by the commencement speech of US Navy Admiral William H. McRave.

Goodreads rating 4.11. Tranquility.

Goodreads rating 4.17. Stronger on relativity than on quantum mechanics and thermodynamics.

Quality, not subject or object, as the elementary fabric. ἀρετή. A rehabilitation of the sophists. Some quotes: If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of...

An intriguing description of America’s intelligence community and the industry surrounding it; the slippery slopes; and Snowden’s motivation for following his conscience rather than the money. From the book, how we got here: [After 9/11] [n]early a hundred thousand spies returned to work at the agencies with the knowledge that they’d failed at their primary job, which was protecting America. … In retrospect, my country … could have used this rare moment of solidarity to reinforce...

280 pages of frantic search for an end. New York, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, Mexico City, and the miles in between. Music, drugs, talk, sex. Wikipedia: Inspired by a 10000-word rambling letter from his friend Neal Cassady, Kerouac in 1950 outlined the “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” and decided to tell the story of his years on the road with Cassady as if writing a letter to a friend in a form that reflected the improvisational fluidity of jazz.In a letter to a student in 1961,...