What follows is a mostly reprint of an essay I published in April 2005. It is only a bit curtailed, and has had some typos corrected. However, I will add up front a distinction between these two words that only struck me since publication because it was not fully recognized back then. Wisdom and antiwisdom …
Category: wisdom
Jun 23 2024
Mothers’ Warning, Dimmed
From the beginnings of our race, mothers would warn children of hidden dangers. Sure, they were concerned about the obvious ones. But nature provided us with instincts that propelled us away from the lion’s roar or the steep cliff. It was the disguised dangers, such as the hidden slime pit or the attractive but poisonous …
Dec 31 2022
Refunds
Long, long ago, though in this galaxy, I had as a friend a bright and enterprising fellow who enjoyed science fiction as much as did (and do) I. We parted company upon graduating high school and went our separate ways: I into the hard sciences, he into other sorts of studies and undertakings. Time …
Nov 14 2011
The Three Systems of Man
Some years ago, a DEC software engineer by the name of Mike Gancarz wrote an intriguing little book called “The UNIX Philosophy.” In it, he propounded his conception of the Three Systems of Man. The First system occurs when some genius with time and CPU cycles on his hands thinks up a nifty new idea: …
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