I pulled up alongside a police van – registration CT56 PTF, if I remember correctly – just now, to talk to the officers inside. The reason? There were several drivers breaking the law right next to them. The policemen had noticed this; they just weren’t sure it was worth doing anything about. (more…)
Cognitive Conga: a blog
Dancing the conceptual kerfuffle shuffle
Ratiocination, n. An instance of [reasoning]. Also: a conclusion arrived at by reasoning. Doubt the applicability of this at your peril leisure.
Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category
Persuading policemen
Friday, August 27th, 2010Lifting open water swimming bans in the UK
Sunday, July 11th, 2010Gun safety adage debunk #1
Thursday, May 13th, 2010Guns kill people the same way spoons make you fat.
Let’s dissect that assertion, shall we? It’s designed to transfer responsibility away from the metal and on to the user. But is it fair? Are guns really no more dangerous than spoons? (more…)
Commercially copying the fab lab
Monday, April 19th, 2010Many urban Americans will be familiar with Kinko’s, a retail chain specialising in the photocopying, faxing, scanning and printing of documents. The branches I’ve seen offer a choice of self-service or full service for at least some tasks – photocopying, for instance – and many branches also offer graphic design, internet access, and other services. In short, each branch of Kinko’s works like a fab lab for 2D information on screen or on paper. You can copy this information, move it from electronic storage to paper storage or vice versa, manipulate it, and send or receive it.
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What’s wrong with the voter power index?
Friday, April 9th, 2010voterpower.org.uk suggests I have a choice of exercising 0.067 of a vote or 0.123 of a vote depending on where I decide to cast my ballot. Try it out. Ask your friends to try it too. Isn’t it interesting how many of us appear, according to that website, to have significantly less voter power than average
? I smell a rat…
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Harrison Bergeron
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010A libertarian might well conclude, from reading or watching Harrison Bergeron, that the solution to the problem of a government that acts to level down
its more able citizens’ abilities in order to create an egalitarian society (with government officials excepted) is to reduce entirely, or almost entirely, all power held by governments.
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Environmentally friendly disposal of compact fluorescent light bulbs – a pragmatic approach
Sunday, January 24th, 2010Compact fluorescent light bulbs (a.k.a. compact fluorescent lamps, or CFLs) are becoming de rigeur in the UK now, because incandescent bulbs are being phased out but solid-state lighting (which would otherwise be preferable) is still expensive. As a result, increasingly many people in this country find themselves in the position of having to dispose of compact fluorescent light bulbs when those bulbs stop working. Doing this in an environmentally-friendly way isn’t, however, entirely straightforward, because on the one hand the bulbs contain the toxic element mercury and should therefore not be thrown away with general waste, and on the other hand, recycling points which accept CFLs are still few and far between.
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Shepherding public opinion?
Sunday, January 10th, 2010I first heard of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society many years ago at a London gig by Ignite. I was reminded of them when I bought a Propagandhi single about a year ago, and since then, I've taken a peripheral interest in their activities.
(more...)Gifting or giving?
Thursday, December 24th, 2009In this article, Margaret Visser says, Our culture divides the world into the public and the private. The public is for business, impersonality, contracts, cold reason, politics, officialdom, money and legal obligation. The private is everything the public is not — warm emotional involvement with family and friends, love, the unofficial, the uncalculating.
Dear Mr Brodman
Sunday, June 7th, 2009I sent an email just now to the CTO of T-Mobile USA, Cole Brodman (whose email address is, I have inferred from a few bits of publicly available information, probably cole.brodman@t-mobile.com). If you're interested in open mobile communications, you might want to send him an email too. Feel free to use mine as a basis for your own.
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