StumbleUpon | pcalnon's blog posts

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/27589174/

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:22:29 -0800

i am so fucking tired of hearing the asinine ravings of kool-aid drinkers too ignorant or bigoted to know they've been p0wnd by corporate elites. wake up from your shared, lemming-esque delusion! the pro-business moderates who run "your" republican party will never give you the theocracy you think you want. you have--for decades now--been used, manipulated, and exploited. i wish that each of you could somehow find it in your authoritarian-following little heart to stand up, to be a man, to be a woman, to be an american, to be a human-fucking-being, to--for one brief moment in your life--own your own mind!

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/15975485/

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 04:21:36 -0800

linville gorge, pisgah national forest, north carolina.

linville river

the prow

mummy buttress

shortoff

happy birthday, dave.

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/15553360/

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 01:45:53 -0800

latest codemonkey update:

up to my elbows in steaming heaps of code that tastes "not quite entirely unlike" a decentralized, mobile, p2p reputation system based on strongly-authenticated, anonymous identities.

but at least it looks like the pieces of my (still mostly hypothetical) google phone app are all here:

google's android library

java crypto library

the jena semantic web library

jxta-jxme binding of jxta to j2me

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/15481340/

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:39:24 -0800

some thoughts about a possible solution to this semantic web catch-22 on my other blog.

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/13325019/

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:07:42 -0700

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/13324862/

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:56:02 -0700

any questions?

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/13324574/

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:33:11 -0700

607(h4 f|4m3 w4r r16h7 h3r3. fcukn 1337!

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/9126436/

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:59:39 -0700

i've been thinking quite a bit about economics recently, and it seems that the more i dig into the theory, the more troubled i become.

the first (and perhaps the most fundamental) question that i have is whether economics is or should be considered a social science or a branch of philosophy. if economic theories are in fact merely philosophical, then what justification have we seen for the choices our society has made? the briefest observation of our society will reveal that suffering, exploitation, and extreme inequality are rampant. social justice is pipe dream. where is the compelling philosophical justification for an embrace of the philosophy of free-market economics? what values are we maximizing at the expense of the diminution of the values of personal dignity, self determination, social justice, and even life?

if on the other hand, we take the approach that economics should be considered a social science, then the landscape of economics theory looks even more bleak and troubling. unlike philosophical concepts and the social values they give birth to, scientific theories, whether in the social sciences or the physical sciences, are "constrained by reality". the validity of any scientific theory is based entirely on the extent to which the theory explains the existing data and observations, the extent to which the theory provides a useful model of the relevant aspects of the physical world, and the extent to which the theory makes interesting, non-obvious, and testable predictions about future observations. when a scientific theory is found to contain internal contradictions or fails to account for entire classes of observations, a concerted effort is made to develop a more robust and complete theory that incorporates the strengths of the existing theory without its weaknesses and limitations.

the theoretical underpinnings of free market economics appear to be deeply flawed and horribly incomplete. the very concept of "economic externalities" seems to me to be prima-facia evidence of the fundamental incompleteness of economic theory. it seems readily apparent that these "economic externalities" represent gaps in the theory--observed economic behavior that does not fit into the theory's model of reality and that is inexplicable within the framework of the theory.

additionally, current economic theory is limited in its applicability to those "goods and services" that are governed by the principle of scarcity. the increasingly central role in our society played by digital data, by ideas (commonly mislabeled as intellectual property), and more abstractly by information itself--none of which are inherently scare in the traditional sense of the concept--further calls into question the validity of economic theory. by arbitrarily limiting the scope of economic theory based on the principle of scarcity, the theory is rendered increasingly irrelevant as our society continues to evolve and ultimately, the current theory is enforcing its eventual obsolescence.

clearly, the many philosophical objections and the severe scientific limitations present in the current theories indicate profound and systemic problems with free-market economic theory as it exists today.

so, what now? what would the broadest outlines of a new economic theory look like? what would be or should be the essential elements of "economics 2.0"?

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/8886626/

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 14:25:20 -0700

define necessity

http://pcalnon.stumbleupon.com/review/7769901/

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:24:34 -0800

former thought of the moment: if you want actual knowledge, go to the library. they still have those, don't they? i guess i should google that to be sure.