The Greene Street Project: A Long History of a Short Block-An interactive site that follows, longitudinally, one small section of New York City.

Test your musical ability at Tonometric, and your color vision here.

The Afterlife keeps coming up as one of the worst website designs ever. A MIDI version of Bryan Adams “Heaven” will guide you towards salvation.

All via David Thompson: The Most Exclusive Website In The World

Zombo.com.  Anything is possible.

Distance to Mars. It’s pretty far. Maybe 8 months if we launch at the right time?

Distance to the nearest stars, and to Proxima Centauri, and a possible Earth-like planet orbiting named Promixa B?:

Edward Feser on the problem of Hume’s problem of induction

Chinese characters are beautiful.  Full post here.

This is starting to remind me of Jeff Koons’ kitsch and marketing, high and low, fleshed out in pieces like Michael Jackson And Bubbles, Winter Bears and ‘St John The Baptist’.

A Reaction To Jeff Koons-For Commerce Or Contemplation?

My little soapbox:

From Quartz:

“Organic” has essentially become another way of saying “luxury.”

As to addressing the shame many people feel associated with wanting and buying nice things:  Well, obviously that’s not all you should do with your life, but I’m not entirely sure what you should do with your life, either.

I think it helps to realize that socialism (today’s radical chic is tomorrow’s social democracy) offers a one-stop shop for all the problems of the world.  For some people, the logic therein provides the stake upon which hopes, dreams and beliefs grow.  Make a modern doctrine deep enough, wait long enough, and true believers will set-up shop upon your street corners and within your politics and universities.

There’s always plenty of injustice and misery in the world to draw upon, and no shortage of resentments out there.

Such people, in turn, will help to drive many radical and reactionary politico-moral movements seeking to upend established orders (believing progress and change are goods in themselves, that they are right and good, and can remake the world into something better), but at deep and perhaps catastrophic costs to everyone else.

I’m guessing many incorporated entities trafficking in radical and ‘social responsibility’ signalling will eventually have to pay the piper (you’re dealing with true-belief, here).

It’s a start, anyways: An introduction to Adam Smith’s ‘Theory Of Moral Sentiments’

‘The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.’

-Smith, Adam. “Part VI-Of The Character Of Virtue“. The Theory Of Moral Sentiments. 

Thomas Sowell continually asks:  ‘What CAN be done?’

…rather than ‘here’s what we should do to make a better world because we have all the truth and knowlege we need‘ and ‘what you should do for me’ or ‘what we’d do if only THEY weren’t harming us.’