Category Archives: Miscellany

Elon Musk’s Babylon Bee Interview

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 26th December 2021

Elon Musk gave a long interview with The Babylon Bee that has received a lot of attention. If you missed it, it’s linked below. The Babylon Bee describes itself as a Christian, conservative, satire online magazine. They were as amazed as was everyone else that the busy industrialist and the world’s richest man (if not,…


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Three Army Recruitment Ads

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th December 2021

The video below displays three recruitment ads. One for the Chinese Army, the Russian Army, and finally one for the US Army. We seem to be willing to bring a cookie cutter to an artillery fight. We are in big trouble if our ad accurately reflects the warrior ethos of the US Army. One viewer…


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Smaller Brains

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st October 2021

The human brain is the most complex structure known. As human-like species evolved over several million years into homo sapiens, hominid brain size tripled. Today the average human brain weighs about three pounds. Our nearest primate relative, the chimpanzee, has a brain that weighs less than a pound. Our brains constitute about 2% of body…


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Rationality – Review

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th October 2021

Rationality is Steven Pinker’s latest book. It’s also one that will leave the reader nonplussed or just thinking “is this all there is”? It contains a relatively brief but accurate introduction to elementary logic and statistics. Bayesian analysis is explained successfully; but I suspect that explanation will be fully grasped only by those who already…


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On Good and Bad Service

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 23rd September 2021

The complexity of 21st century life has made bad service the rule and good the exception. In general, the larger the enterprise the worse the service. There is one screaming exception to this rule – Amazon. I’ll come back to them below. Good service is always the same. It is prompt, courteous, exceeds expectations, and…


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Dog Dreams

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 5th September 2021

If a lion could talk you couldn’t understand him. Ludwig Wittgenstein Do dogs dream? When observing a sleeping dog you’ve let lie you’ll likely notice that it makes involuntary movements and emits sounds. While all this activity may simply be reflex, I’ll allow that it is the expression of a canine dream. I’m aware that…


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Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st August 2021

The Vatican Museum has a virtual tour of the interior of the Sistine Chapel. With your mouse you can see everything Michelangelo painted. Not as good as being there, but you’ll never visit the place without anyone else there. The pinnacle of western art. Sistine Chapel Virtual Tour


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California Bans High End Computers

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th July 2021

California is not only our most populous state, it’s also our goofiest. As a consequence of an energy bill passed in 2017, the state has banned the sale of high end gaming computers. Not to be outdone Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington have issued the same ukase. “The state had recently published a paper looking into…


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Of Dogs and Socrates

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 21st March 2021

Socrates stated that the unexamined life was not worth living when on trial for his life. Of course, he lost both. Let’s put the old Greek on hold for a while and consider the dog. Canis familiaris indisputably lives up to his reputation as man’s best friend. He seems effortlessly to possess all the qualities…


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Chrome Paranoia

Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th February 2021

If you regularly use the Chrome browser, you recently may have noticed that clicking on certain news links yields a site not found or similar message. Clicking the link one or two times more gets you to the site. This, at least in my experience and that of some other users, is a new phenomenon….


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