4. Yes. I read something once (probably part of the literature which Kieran cites) which criticized the standard parental refrain of "I don't care what you do, as long as you're happy" on the grounds that following said advice was less likely to lead to happiness than having intermediate goals. I found it persuasive.
3. The lawyer owes $5, plus some percentage of that amount, depending on the mores of the particular city or country he is on tipping cab-drivers. The idea that the cab-drive could owe the lawyer something presupposes that they didn't enter into any kind of agreement in virtue of the lawyer getting in the car. The particular figure presupposes that he would otherwise have used that time for something he could bill to a client
2. Who gains/loses more what? He appears to think you have some stock of ethical resources which you can deplete.
1. Yes, I would suggest something like a veil of ignorance model as justification.
4: What if the route the larger tipper would have asked the cabbie to take would have, unbeknownst to either of them, led them into the path of Godzilla, who was at that moment rampaging through the city. Does the cabbie then owe the lawyer who actually got in and prevented him from picking up the bigger tipper the amount he values not being killed by Godzilla, minus the increased tip?
I'm not sure how well you know this guy from high school, but this is the subtext that leaps to mind for me, FWIW:
a firm has a smart business model which brings it from nothing to near monopoly.
"You know, like that business I've totally been planning to start that would do just as well as Microsoft... if I could just get The State off my back."
in a transaction of prostitution, who gains/loses more?
"'I'd like to think the prostitute gains more. After all, she's getting a good time, my money and a piece of my dignity. It's practically philanthropy!
"Oops, did I just say 'my'? Only a philosopher could know for sure."
a lawyer who makes $1000 an hour enters a taxi.
"After all, I could have been a successful lawyer for all that little bastard knew. And did he even try to act grateful for my business? Fuck no! Wouldn't even turn left when I told him to!"
does the pursuit of achievement lead to greater happiness than the pursuit of happiness?
"... because I've been pursuing achievement for ages now, but I still have this weird, empty feeling. Even spending all my spare money on hookers doesn't help. But that'll change, right?"
I'm not sure how well you know this guy from high school
Not very well (his sister better), but last I knew he was very opposed to the white man, which makes some of his questions seem especially odd, as I associate them with pretty pro–white man politics.
"ARI has just entered a pilot program in which the undergraduate's first year Intro to Philosophy course has been accredited! This provides students with the opportunity to receive college credits for an OAC course, which could therefore lighten a student's courseload at his or her university. If this program is successful, we hope to make even more courses accredited in the future."
Also from their FAQ:
Does the OAC offer scholarships or financial aid to students?
Yes, we offer generous support to most full-time students
1. Moral?
2. I axe you, in a transaction of hamburgers who gains/loses more? the customer's money is universally valued, whereas the hamburgers are of an unguaranteed quality and are not in universal demand.
3. lawyers who make $1000 an hour use taxis?
4. Fuckstick.
1. yes. what's more open to debate is when that would be efficient - regulation has it's own costs.
2. thank god i'm not a philosopher. the only cocktail party questions i get are about the stock market (about which I know vanishingly little).
3. did this guy read his own questions? if he admits uncertain value in the premise of the 2nd question, why can't the lawyer face some uncertainty in the quality of the ride she gets? that said, when I drove a cab and I fucked up a route, I just knocked some off the meter price.
4. it depends
1. Morally? I'm not sure this counts as a moral question as it seems to depend entirely on whether you value a free libertarian paradise and a pony more than you value the government's ability to regulate trade. I could find justifications either way, but I don't think it's a moral question, just a practical one.
2. At the current rate of exchange of $25 per ounce of virtue, and given a roughly 2-oz Virtue Penalty (-2d6) per prostitute encounted, the customer should be compensated $50. The prostitute's virtue, however, costs only $5 an ounce, and this artificial system overvalues her sex work. Seriously. She should be paying you to fuck you.
Oh please.
3. No. Implicit contract upon entering the taxi that the ride length can vary, depending on traffic and route taken. Six minutes is well within an acceptable tolerance for a ride. And if your taxi is work-related, travel time is already billable (if not to the client, then in the little timesheet box that says 'travel'). If it's not, then you don't have any opportunity cost for your six minutes in traffic. Either way, if you're griping about $5 when you make $1000 an hour, you're a tool.
4. Depends on how well your achievement leads to happiness.
I am suddenly perceiving a great demand for takeoffs on the Clairol slogan, but with "a philosopher" replacing "her stylist". Will comment later on if that demand finds a supply.
If I may take the Marxist materialism approach to #2, the prostitute loses, because she only has a commodity to sell for money, with which she buys other commodities; she is without capital: C-M-C, rather than the capitalist ideal M-C-M'. I'm not sure how the customer gets M' (i.e., investment plus returns) out of this particular deal, but I'm sure the patriarchy can figure out a way for him to manage it.
I'm not sure how the customer gets M' (i.e., investment plus returns) out of this particular deal, but I'm sure the patriarchy can figure out a way for him to manage it.
Easy! He gets investment (the fuck) plus returns (a pleasing sense of naughtiness and power; an ongoing sense that sex is always available, at the right price; and an inflated sense of his power in the world, as a consequence).
Easy! He gets investment (the fuck) plus returns (a pleasing sense of naughtiness and power; an ongoing sense that sex is always available, at the right price; and an inflated sense of his power in the world, as a consequence).
But but, you're not accounting for his loss of precious bodily fluids, of life essence.
If you go blind, you get all kinds of tax breaks from the government. This brings it back to something related to question 1- should the government be subsidizing masturbation?
Incidentally, who wans bug reports these days? I have the following messages at the bottom of my comments window (maybe this is old news):
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in list assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Subroutine _hdlr_pings redefined at lib/MT/Template/ContextHandlers.pm line 2731.
Thanks, SP. I did some investigating into those errors this weekend but wasn't able to eliminate them yet. They'll probably be around until I get back from vacation. They don't look like they're breaking anything but I'd like to get rid of them in case they're contributing to the internal server errors.
If y'all see any new errors, please definitely let me know. I tend to read the comments more through the RSS feeds than the comment window so I don't notice them right away.
I'm (eventually) creating a page showing all of the RSS feeds and other ways you can read the site. There's also a lite version for handhelds, etc.: http://www.unfogged.com/mobile.html
1. Probably. This is a practical question and depends on the value of a given level of incentive for people to come up with smart business practices vs. the value of competition to consumers. It will likely also be relevant whether the smart business practices are themselves immoral; success via fraud or extortion should obviously be disincentivized.
2. Depends on the prostitute's rates, and the respective dignities of the two individuals. As long as they both have a net gain, though, it hardly matters who gains more; it's still a good thing for the transaction to happen. If they both lose, or one loses and the other gains, things get trickier, but I a ssume if that happened with any frequency, a lot fewer of these transactions would go on. Yes, I am a philosopher.
3. I'm inclined to think penalties for fraud should not be indexed to their specific impact on the individual affected, so how much the lawyer earns is irrelevant. Whether the lawyer owes his cab fare depends on local policies concerning fraud; whether what the taxi driver did qualifies, and what the officially sanctioned consequences of that are if it does qualify.
4. It is impossible for pursuing achievement to give more happiness than pursuing happiness, as if achievement is the best source of happiness, then those pursuing happiness will be ipso facto pursuing achievement, and so tied with the achievement pursuers.
1. Probably. This is a practical question and depends on the value of a given level of incentive for people to come up with smart business practices vs. the value of competition to consumers. It will likely also be relevant whether the smart business practices are themselves immoral; success via fraud or extortion should obviously be disincentivized.
2. Depends on the prostitute's rates, and the respective dignities of the two individuals. As long as they both have a net gain, though, it hardly matters who gains more; it's still a good thing for the transaction to happen. If they both lose, or one loses and the other gains, things get trickier, but I a ssume if that happened with any frequency, a lot fewer of these transactions would go on. Yes, I am a philosopher.
3. I'm inclined to think penalties for fraud should not be indexed to their specific impact on the individual affected, so how much the lawyer earns is irrelevant. Whether the lawyer owes his cab fare depends on local policies concerning fraud; whether what the taxi driver did qualifies, and what the officially sanctioned consequences of that are if it does qualify.
4. It is impossible for pursuing achievement to give more happiness than pursuing happiness, as if achievement is the best source of happiness, then those pursuing happiness will be ipso facto pursuing achievement, and so tied with the achievement pursuers.
Apologies for the double post; I got an error message when I tried to post it the first time, so I assumed it hadn't gotten posted. Stupid misleading error messages.
I should explain, maybe, that "dude from high school" means "dude I knew when we were both in high school". This seems to have been unclear. He's my age (27).
(1) Determining the sex of a given representative of Gromphadorhina portentosa is relatively easy: Males sport two pronounced protrusions that resemble the horns on a rhino and come in handy for jousting each other. Live-bearers instead of egg layers, hissers reproduce rapidly in toasty temperatures and high humidity, something owners might want to modulate before they find themselves amid a population explosion.
(2) A firm's WACC is the overall required return on the firm as a whole and, as such, it is often used internally by company directors to determine the economic feasibility of expansionary opportunities and mergers. It is the appropriate discount rate to use for cash flows with risk that is similar to that of the overall firm.
(3) At the technical level Gothic architecture is characterized by the ribbed vault (a vault in which stone ribs carry the vaulted surface), the pointed arch, and the flying buttress (normally a half arch carrying the thrust of a roof or vault across an aisle to an outer pier or buttress). These features were all present in a number of earlier, Romanesque buildings, and one of the major 12th- and early 13th-century achievements was to use this engineering expertise to create major buildings that became, in succession, broader and taller.
(4) In this game, it may well be that White is lost no matter which move he makes. For example after 37. Qc2 Qe3 38. Be2 Nh3 39. Kg2 Qh6 40. Kf1 Nf4 41. Ke1 Qh1+ 42. Kd2 Qg1 43. Qxa4 Qd4+ 44. Ke1 Qxb2. So it may well be that White will have to find an improvement well before move 37 in order to salvage a draw or winning chances in this game.
1. a firm has a smart business model which brings it from nothing to near monopoly. is it moral for the state to limit it (e.g. microsoft)?
The error here is in the phrase "from nothing."
2 ...
You are right that these are tendentious.
only a philosopher can answer this.
Oh please.
3.
This question is not well-posed.
does the pursuit of achievement lead to greater happiness than the pursuit of happiness?
See, e.g., Jon Elster Sour Grapes (Cambridge) on states which are essentially byproducts. There's a big literature on this.
Posted by kieran | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:46 PM
1. Yes.
2. Don't be stupid.
3. Pay the goddamn cab fare, cheapskate.
4. No.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 10:54 PM
4. Yes. I read something once (probably part of the literature which Kieran cites) which criticized the standard parental refrain of "I don't care what you do, as long as you're happy" on the grounds that following said advice was less likely to lead to happiness than having intermediate goals. I found it persuasive.
3. The lawyer owes $5, plus some percentage of that amount, depending on the mores of the particular city or country he is on tipping cab-drivers. The idea that the cab-drive could owe the lawyer something presupposes that they didn't enter into any kind of agreement in virtue of the lawyer getting in the car. The particular figure presupposes that he would otherwise have used that time for something he could bill to a client
2. Who gains/loses more what? He appears to think you have some stock of ethical resources which you can deplete.
1. Yes, I would suggest something like a veil of ignorance model as justification.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:13 PM
But w/d, what if the cab-driver could have picked up someone who would have been a bigger tipper; does the lawyer then owe the cab driver more?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:17 PM
Dude.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:42 PM
I know!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:45 PM
4: What if the route the larger tipper would have asked the cabbie to take would have, unbeknownst to either of them, led them into the path of Godzilla, who was at that moment rampaging through the city. Does the cabbie then owe the lawyer who actually got in and prevented him from picking up the bigger tipper the amount he values not being killed by Godzilla, minus the increased tip?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-23-06 11:48 PM
I'm not sure how well you know this guy from high school, but this is the subtext that leaps to mind for me, FWIW:
a firm has a smart business model which brings it from nothing to near monopoly.
"You know, like that business I've totally been planning to start that would do just as well as Microsoft... if I could just get The State off my back."
in a transaction of prostitution, who gains/loses more?
"'I'd like to think the prostitute gains more. After all, she's getting a good time, my money and a piece of my dignity. It's practically philanthropy!
"Oops, did I just say 'my'? Only a philosopher could know for sure."
a lawyer who makes $1000 an hour enters a taxi.
"After all, I could have been a successful lawyer for all that little bastard knew. And did he even try to act grateful for my business? Fuck no! Wouldn't even turn left when I told him to!"
does the pursuit of achievement lead to greater happiness than the pursuit of happiness?
"... because I've been pursuing achievement for ages now, but I still have this weird, empty feeling. Even spending all my spare money on hookers doesn't help. But that'll change, right?"
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:05 AM
I'm not sure how well you know this guy from high school
Not very well (his sister better), but last I knew he was very opposed to the white man, which makes some of his questions seem especially odd, as I associate them with pretty pro–white man politics.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:12 AM
but last I knew he was very opposed to the white man
David Horowitz Syndrome, maybe? One extreme to another?
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:19 AM
Yup, the answer to the meta-question underlying all four of these is:
"No, the Ayn Rand Institute is not an accredited institution and cannot issue diplomas"
Update: Fuck on toast I'm wrong
"ARI has just entered a pilot program in which the undergraduate's first year Intro to Philosophy course has been accredited! This provides students with the opportunity to receive college credits for an OAC course, which could therefore lighten a student's courseload at his or her university. If this program is successful, we hope to make even more courses accredited in the future."
Also from their FAQ:
Does the OAC offer scholarships or financial aid to students?
Yes, we offer generous support to most full-time students
dearie me, Objectivism ain't what it used to be.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:43 AM
1. Moral?
2. I axe you, in a transaction of hamburgers who gains/loses more? the customer's money is universally valued, whereas the hamburgers are of an unguaranteed quality and are not in universal demand.
3. lawyers who make $1000 an hour use taxis?
4. Fuckstick.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:44 AM
1. yes. what's more open to debate is when that would be efficient - regulation has it's own costs.
2. thank god i'm not a philosopher. the only cocktail party questions i get are about the stock market (about which I know vanishingly little).
3. did this guy read his own questions? if he admits uncertain value in the premise of the 2nd question, why can't the lawyer face some uncertainty in the quality of the ride she gets? that said, when I drove a cab and I fucked up a route, I just knocked some off the meter price.
4. it depends
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:10 AM
Ben, would you have thought those were worthwhile questions for a philosopher when you were in high school?
Posted by i don't pay | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:41 AM
1. Morally? I'm not sure this counts as a moral question as it seems to depend entirely on whether you value a free libertarian paradise and a pony more than you value the government's ability to regulate trade. I could find justifications either way, but I don't think it's a moral question, just a practical one.
2. At the current rate of exchange of $25 per ounce of virtue, and given a roughly 2-oz Virtue Penalty (-2d6) per prostitute encounted, the customer should be compensated $50. The prostitute's virtue, however, costs only $5 an ounce, and this artificial system overvalues her sex work. Seriously. She should be paying you to fuck you.
Oh please.
3. No. Implicit contract upon entering the taxi that the ride length can vary, depending on traffic and route taken. Six minutes is well within an acceptable tolerance for a ride. And if your taxi is work-related, travel time is already billable (if not to the client, then in the little timesheet box that says 'travel'). If it's not, then you don't have any opportunity cost for your six minutes in traffic. Either way, if you're griping about $5 when you make $1000 an hour, you're a tool.
4. Depends on how well your achievement leads to happiness.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:43 AM
I am suddenly perceiving a great demand for takeoffs on the Clairol slogan, but with "a philosopher" replacing "her stylist". Will comment later on if that demand finds a supply.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 5:44 AM
ut last I knew he was very opposed to the white man
David Horowitz Syndrome, maybe? One extreme to another?
My hypothesis: he is, himself, white, and his primary motivation for whatever ideology he clings to is the certainty of his moral superiority.
Which I realize is exactly what Dr. Slack said, and less funny, but I couldn't help myself and I haven't had my coffee yet.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:26 AM
Notice that Wolfson has not answered the all-important Godzilla question. Ponder what it is that Ben is hiding about his relatonship with Godzilla.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 7:36 AM
If I may take the Marxist materialism approach to #2, the prostitute loses, because she only has a commodity to sell for money, with which she buys other commodities; she is without capital: C-M-C, rather than the capitalist ideal M-C-M'. I'm not sure how the customer gets M' (i.e., investment plus returns) out of this particular deal, but I'm sure the patriarchy can figure out a way for him to manage it.
Posted by sw | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:11 AM
Sorry if I made a hash out of Capital there. Memory hazy; try again later.
As for #4, aren't "achievement" and "happiness" pretty much equivalent, at least in terms of human life efforts?
Posted by sw | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:16 AM
Back when I drove a cab, I used to deduct the amount I could have been making driving from the fee for the time I spent talking to my lawyer.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:21 AM
I subtract the perceived value of masturbating from what I pay my prostitutes. And from what I pay my lawyer.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:41 AM
I'm not sure how the customer gets M' (i.e., investment plus returns) out of this particular deal, but I'm sure the patriarchy can figure out a way for him to manage it.
Easy! He gets investment (the fuck) plus returns (a pleasing sense of naughtiness and power; an ongoing sense that sex is always available, at the right price; and an inflated sense of his power in the world, as a consequence).
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:46 AM
I subtract the perceived value of masturbating from what I pay my prostitutes. And from what I pay my lawyer.
I subtract that from what I pay my internet service provider.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:55 AM
I add it to my paycheck, which is the only way I can afford shoes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:03 AM
But wait, shouldn't you be adding the value of masturbating to what you pay your ISP?
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:03 AM
Easy! He gets investment (the fuck) plus returns (a pleasing sense of naughtiness and power; an ongoing sense that sex is always available, at the right price; and an inflated sense of his power in the world, as a consequence).
But but, you're not accounting for his loss of precious bodily fluids, of life essence.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:07 AM
But wait, shouldn't you be adding the value of masturbating to what you pay your ISP?
Obviously, Tia, you're doing it wrong.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:08 AM
26 gets it exactly right. 27, semen is not fungible.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:09 AM
Obviously, Tia, you're doing it wrong.
It's true that a I don't use conventional aides.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:19 AM
Listen, if my ISP is gonna make me go blind, I'm damn sure not going to pay them for it. They owe me!
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:25 AM
31 -- Now you're talkin'. I've been looking for someone to hold responsible for my problems lo these many years. I'm making up an invoice as we speak.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:31 AM
If you go blind, you get all kinds of tax breaks from the government. This brings it back to something related to question 1- should the government be subsidizing masturbation?
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:35 AM
Incidentally, who wans bug reports these days? I have the following messages at the bottom of my comments window (maybe this is old news):
Odd number of elements in hash assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Use of uninitialized value in list assignment at lib/MT/App/Comments.pm line 68.
Subroutine _hdlr_pings redefined at lib/MT/Template/ContextHandlers.pm line 2731.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:38 AM
Thanks, SP. I did some investigating into those errors this weekend but wasn't able to eliminate them yet. They'll probably be around until I get back from vacation. They don't look like they're breaking anything but I'd like to get rid of them in case they're contributing to the internal server errors.
If y'all see any new errors, please definitely let me know. I tend to read the comments more through the RSS feeds than the comment window so I don't notice them right away.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:50 AM
Where can I find the RSS feeds for the comments? I read the posts through RSS, but getting the comments too would be nice...
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:54 AM
Posts and comments:
http://www.unfogged.com/comments.xml
Comments only:
http://www.unfogged.com/bridgeplate.rdf
I'm (eventually) creating a page showing all of the RSS feeds and other ways you can read the site. There's also a lite version for handhelds, etc.:
http://www.unfogged.com/mobile.html
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:05 AM
Wolfson: are you going to send the URL for this discussion back to the dude from high school who posed these questions? Cause he might find it useful.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:09 AM
Becks! You are officially teh awsome!!! That light version for handhelds may COMPLETELY revolutionize my world...
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:09 AM
Ogged created it so he's the one who is teh awesome. I just provide the links.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:17 AM
It's kind of like when Teh Cocaine got put in a solid, easily smokable form.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:32 AM
1. Probably. This is a practical question and depends on the value of a given level of incentive for people to come up with smart business practices vs. the value of competition to consumers. It will likely also be relevant whether the smart business practices are themselves immoral; success via fraud or extortion should obviously be disincentivized.
2. Depends on the prostitute's rates, and the respective dignities of the two individuals. As long as they both have a net gain, though, it hardly matters who gains more; it's still a good thing for the transaction to happen. If they both lose, or one loses and the other gains, things get trickier, but I a ssume if that happened with any frequency, a lot fewer of these transactions would go on. Yes, I am a philosopher.
3. I'm inclined to think penalties for fraud should not be indexed to their specific impact on the individual affected, so how much the lawyer earns is irrelevant. Whether the lawyer owes his cab fare depends on local policies concerning fraud; whether what the taxi driver did qualifies, and what the officially sanctioned consequences of that are if it does qualify.
4. It is impossible for pursuing achievement to give more happiness than pursuing happiness, as if achievement is the best source of happiness, then those pursuing happiness will be ipso facto pursuing achievement, and so tied with the achievement pursuers.
Posted by Protagoras | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:53 AM
1. Probably. This is a practical question and depends on the value of a given level of incentive for people to come up with smart business practices vs. the value of competition to consumers. It will likely also be relevant whether the smart business practices are themselves immoral; success via fraud or extortion should obviously be disincentivized.
2. Depends on the prostitute's rates, and the respective dignities of the two individuals. As long as they both have a net gain, though, it hardly matters who gains more; it's still a good thing for the transaction to happen. If they both lose, or one loses and the other gains, things get trickier, but I a ssume if that happened with any frequency, a lot fewer of these transactions would go on. Yes, I am a philosopher.
3. I'm inclined to think penalties for fraud should not be indexed to their specific impact on the individual affected, so how much the lawyer earns is irrelevant. Whether the lawyer owes his cab fare depends on local policies concerning fraud; whether what the taxi driver did qualifies, and what the officially sanctioned consequences of that are if it does qualify.
4. It is impossible for pursuing achievement to give more happiness than pursuing happiness, as if achievement is the best source of happiness, then those pursuing happiness will be ipso facto pursuing achievement, and so tied with the achievement pursuers.
Posted by Protagoras | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:54 AM
Apologies for the double post; I got an error message when I tried to post it the first time, so I assumed it hadn't gotten posted. Stupid misleading error messages.
Posted by Protagoras | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 10:55 AM
5 gets it exactly right.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:03 AM
I should explain, maybe, that "dude from high school" means "dude I knew when we were both in high school". This seems to have been unclear. He's my age (27).
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 12:38 PM
You're not 27, Ben.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 1:05 PM
I'm Ben's age. I'm 27. Ben is 27.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 4:12 PM
OK, are you all messing with me again? If Ben's older sister is 26, Ben cannot be 27.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 4:31 PM
I think Ben is lying about having a sister.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:50 PM
A new wrinkle!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 8:57 PM
A new wrinkle!
Huh. I didn't start getting wrinkles until I was at least 28 or 29.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:24 PM
Wow, M/tch, I'm 10 years older than that and not a wrinkle on me.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:42 PM
Ben's 23, or 24.
B is apparently unwrinkleable, like my mom, who at 48 could pass for 32.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 9:46 PM
(1) Determining the sex of a given representative of Gromphadorhina portentosa is relatively easy: Males sport two pronounced protrusions that resemble the horns on a rhino and come in handy for jousting each other. Live-bearers instead of egg layers, hissers reproduce rapidly in toasty temperatures and high humidity, something owners might want to modulate before they find themselves amid a population explosion.
(2) A firm's WACC is the overall required return on the firm as a whole and, as such, it is often used internally by company directors to determine the economic feasibility of expansionary opportunities and mergers. It is the appropriate discount rate to use for cash flows with risk that is similar to that of the overall firm.
(3) At the technical level Gothic architecture is characterized by the ribbed vault (a vault in which stone ribs carry the vaulted surface), the pointed arch, and the flying buttress (normally a half arch carrying the thrust of a roof or vault across an aisle to an outer pier or buttress). These features were all present in a number of earlier, Romanesque buildings, and one of the major 12th- and early 13th-century achievements was to use this engineering expertise to create major buildings that became, in succession, broader and taller.
(4) In this game, it may well be that White is lost no matter which move he makes. For example after 37. Qc2 Qe3 38. Be2 Nh3 39. Kg2 Qh6 40. Kf1 Nf4 41. Ke1 Qh1+ 42. Kd2 Qg1 43. Qxa4 Qd4+ 44. Ke1 Qxb2. So it may well be that White will have to find an improvement well before move 37 in order to salvage a draw or winning chances in this game.
Posted by Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 04-24-06 11:54 PM
53 -- So weird -- I had got the impression you were about 5 years younger than I; but if you are telling the truth here you are about 5 years older.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 6:07 AM
Wow, M/tch, I'm 10 years older than that and not a wrinkle on me.
Oh damn, I see now that I left out part of my sentence.
s/b: I didn't start getting wrinkles until I was at least 28 or 29 minutes in the water.
Posted by M/tch M/lls | Link to this comment | 04-25-06 8:11 AM