Joel Kotarski › Comments

This literally made me laugh out loud-waking the baby I just spent 15 minutes carefully consoling to sleep. - Joel Kotarski from Android

Wonders never cease - Joel Kotarski

Thanks for sharing this. Was happy to hear about the included audio edition too. - Joel Kotarski from Android

The paradox of value (also known as the diamond-water paradox) is the apparent contradiction that, although water is on the whole more useful, in terms of survival, than diamonds, diamonds command a higher price in the market. The philosopher Adam Smith is often considered to be the classic presenter of this paradox. Nicolaus Copernicus[1], John Locke, John Law[2] and others had previously tried to explain the disparity. - Joel Kotarski

In a passage of Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, he discusses the concepts of value in use and value in exchange, and notices how they tend to differ: What are the rules which men naturally observe in exchanging them [goods] for money or for one another, I shall now proceed to examine. These rules determine what may be called the relative or... more... - Joel Kotarski

Furthermore, he explained the value in exchange as being determined by labor: The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.[4] Hence, Smith denied a necessary relationship between price and utility. Price on this view was related to a factor of production (namely, labor) and not to the point of... more... - Joel Kotarski

ASCII art can redeem anything, even twitter. - Joel Kotarski from Android

Neuroscience of free will refers to recent neuroscientific investigations that have been interpreted as shedding light on the question of free will, which is a philosophical and scientific question as to whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions, decisions, or choices. As it has become possible to study the living brain, researchers can now watch the brain's decision-making process at work. One significant finding of these studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. Early studies found delays of about half a second, but with contemporary brain scanning technology scientists in 2008 were able to predict whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made the choice.[1] One proposed explanation, a forward model of motor control, is mentioned. In this model, our conscious selves are updated of... more... - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

Excellent use of javascript bookmarklet technique - especially like the hyperlink as footnote idea (which occurred as an idea in a conversation last week - great to see it actually). - Joel Kotarski from Android

That second observation was hilarious. It really is amazing how quickly that one spread. - Joel Kotarski from Android

I don't mind being asked that at my local bbq dump. At a french restaurant is another matter... - Christopher Galtenberg

"In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry; and to be a poet is to apprehend the true and the beautiful, in a word, the good which exists in the relation, subsisting, first between existence and perception, and secondly between perception and expression. - Joel Kotarski

"Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can foretell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition, which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. A poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions, time and place and number are not." - Joel Kotarski

I did it all for the nook-e-reader, the nook-e-reader, so you can take that cookie and shove it.... - Joel Kotarski from Android

Falling in love comes at the cost of losing two close friends, a study says. We probably all know that a passionate new relationship can leave you little time for others, but now science has put some numbers on the observation. Oxford University researchers asked people about their inner core of friendships and how this number changed when romance entered the equation. They found the core, which numbers about five people, dropped by two as a new lover came to dominate daily life. - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

Experience says: True - Christopher Galtenberg

(This is a bit of recursive joking) - Joel Kotarski from Android

From a long chain ago - Christopher Galtenberg

It worked!!!!! - Joel Kotarski from Android

"The resting brain is anything but idle — that simple proposition would be clear if you could peer into Mike Mrazek's noggin as he putters around his kitchen preparing his daily morning feast of scrambled eggs, oatmeal and fresh fruit. As he plods through his quotidian ritual of gathering ingredients, cutting, chopping, bringing the pan to the correct temperature and boiling water for tea, Mrazek's thoughts, too, are something of a scrambled feast, as he later recounts. Childhood memories jostle against thoughts of his girlfriend's progress on a cross-country journey. flections on the tomatoes in his garden give way to a rehearsal of a meeting he's having later on at the university. A flashback to his sister teasing him about his breakfast routine turns into an observation he could make while leading a meditation session in the evening. Until recently, scientists would have found little of interest in the purposeless, mind-wandering spaces between Mrazek's conscious breakfast-making... more... - RAPatton from Bookmarklet

See the book by Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture - "Pieper shows that Greeks understood and valued leisure, as did the medieval Europeans..Leisure has been, and always will be, the first foundation of any culture. He maintains that our bourgeois world of total labor has vanquished leisure, and issues a startling warning: Unless we regain the art of silence and insight, the... more... - Joel Kotarski from Android

This is news from July 2009 but eerily reminds me of Java and Oracle with Google lawsuit. Will Microsoft follow suit? It seems the open source community has raised its concerns for years since Novell started the Mono project. - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

Customers check out books, pay for use and wear. - Christopher Galtenberg

I've always liked the idea of a book club disconnected from time. Shared thoughts, maybe the commenter is still around, maybe not. I wonder if that's how Kindle's shared annotations will go... - Christopher Galtenberg

""This excerpt sums up Dave Pell's article at NPR pretty well: 'Google's Eric Schmidt recently stated that every two days we create as much information as we did from the beginning of civilization through 2003. Perhaps the sheer bulk of data makes it easier to suppress that information which we find overly unpleasant. Who has got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these tweets coming in?' It's a valid point. If it's not tweets or Facebook posts, it's lengthy forum arguments or reading news articles from the time you walk in the door at work until you're ready for bed at night, and realizing you didn't actually accomplish anything else. Sometimes too much information can get in the way of living and can bury otherwise important things."" - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

"The Web isn't merely words -- it's information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly," Jack Menzel, Google's director of product management, wrote in a blog post. - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

By pairing the Freebase database with Google's sprawling and ever-growing index of the Web, the company hopes to endow its search engine with a more sophisticated understanding of what users mean when they type search queries. - Joel Kotarski

Google also confirmed that it will continue to maintain Metaweb's database as a free and open source endeavor, and encouraged other Web companies to contribute. Metaweb took the occasion of the acquisition to announce that it will begin issuing its downloadable database updates (full "data dumps" of all current facts and assertions in Freebase) on a weekly basis, upping the frequency from what has been a quarterly release cycle. - Joel Kotarski

The event has been organised by the Minhaj ul-Quran to promote a fatwa, or religious ruling, against terrorism by its leader Dr Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri. - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

The populist Pakistani cleric's 600-page theological study is billed by his followers as the most comprehensive and clear denunciation of the arguments deployed by jihadists to justify violence including suicide bombings and the targeting of civilians. - Joel Kotarski

Speaking ahead of the event's launch, the cleric said: "I have announced an intellectual and spiritual war against extremism and terrorism. I believe this is the time for moderate Islamic scholars who believe in peace to stand up." "I feel it is my duty to save the younger generation from radicalisation and wave of terroristic recruitment in the West." - Joel Kotarski

I once said that Twitter would be the justification the robot overlords would one day use as reason to destroy us, but I think this takes the prize. - Joel Kotarski

Ok, it is getting sad. It is still happening today, months later (see last page of comments). - Joel Kotarski

"I hate it when athletes thank God when they win...because it’s narcissistic and because it’s theologically infantile. - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

If you win a game and then thank God, and do not thank God when you lose, you are going on record as believing that God wanted you to win, and that a victory by your opponent would have represented a thwarting of God’s plan. - Joel Kotarski

But how do you know? Isn’t it possible that losing is what God has planned for you, and that it will do you good? Maybe losing will strengthen your character. Maybe your opponent needs the win (or the prize money) more than you do, and God somehow managed to figure that out in spite of being dazzled by your greatness. Maybe you should be thanking God for protecting you from the sin of pride by not letting you win a spiritually meaningless, entirely earthly contest." - Joel Kotarski

Google is reportedly working on a blockbuster social networking product, after a string of failed attempts to get in on that market. But after so many failures, you have to wonder if Google culturally able to do social networking? - Joel Kotarski from Bookmarklet

Facebook and other social media sites encourage the opposite of panda-like behavior. They're like lobster traps. They want you to visit the site ... and stay. - Joel Kotarski

Wow! Congrats J&R - Christopher Galtenberg

Birthdate/birth-weight match guarantees genius - Christopher Galtenberg

Thanks for the congrats and good hearing from you - give me a call sometime (or instant message is fine as well based on your most recent post :)). Would like to chat. - Joel Kotarski

Because it's impolite to read and eat. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

I always read and eat, but then I eat alone. - Jack&Cleo

Sounds like your dinner company is talking with their mouth full. Believe me, it's a much nicer experience without all of that - it becomes a nicer cadence: gnash, gnash, swallow, wipe, pause, sit back, enunciate stimulating conversation, relax, pause, gnash, gnash, wipe - Joel Kotarski

Many people say information wants to be free implying that if it was free it would be better put to work; however, I've seen that when people work hard to get data, information, knowledge, or wisdom then the same is put to better usage. - Joel Kotarski

This is not to say that ambient, freely information available -at just the right moment- (serendipitously) has not produced brilliant results; however, that is because someone was often already working hard on something and the right piece of information came by at the right time. - Joel Kotarski

http://lmgtfy.com/... - Joel Kotarski

What did you think? - Joel Kotarski from Android

Will share my opinion in time, don't want to impact anyone, but afterwards, the parking lot was filled with groups of kids just talking, probably late into the night. - Christopher Galtenberg from iPhone

Thanks - good list of gems. isbn://0691123896 was an especially good share I never heard of before. - Joel Kotarski

This had me lol'ing - I'm not sure if you're referring to code or your memories (don't spoil it by revealing). - Joel Kotarski

i really just wish Twitter would go away (or at least evolve far beyond its current form). at least this is adding some additional variables, but in my mind only highlights the tremendously high noise->signal ratio on the twitwork. - Joel Kotarski