Category Archives: Law & Society

Where does chocolate come from?

Posted on 2014-08-23 by

In our chocolate tastings, one of the matters we’ve discussed at some length is where chocolate comes from. Cacao is a tropical tree, native to Central and South America, but that region now produces only a small fraction of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Food, Law & Society | Tagged , ,

A weird but coincidental connection

Posted on 2014-06-22 by

So @roboticwrestler tweeted this NPR story: I responded that I was only surprised by Arizona, Delaware, and Minnesota. (Arizona and Delaware because I thought that there would be more Jewish people than Hindus living there, and Minnesota because I had … Continue reading →

Posted in Broadcasting & Media, Law & Society, Transportation | Tagged , , , , ,

Human-What? Interaction

Posted on 2014-05-06 by

Somewhere near the intersection of cognitive science, psychology, and computer science lies the subfield of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) — sometimes called Computer-Human Interaction. It’s not a subject I’ve studied at all (and if you saw the user interfaces I’ve developed … Continue reading →

Posted in Computing, Language, Law & Society | Tagged , ,

Consent, real and imagined, in the technology industry

Posted on 2014-04-29 by

Everyone must read this article from ModelViewCulture: Betsy Haibel (2014-04-28), “The Fantasy and Abuse of the Manipulable User” A few representative quotations: Another mechanism behind rape culture is the belief that sexual consent and non-consent exist on a different plane … Continue reading →

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That’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work (quote)

Posted on 2014-03-01 by

From Diane St. Clair’s The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from a Small Vermont Dairy (Andrews McMeel, 2013): We also eat meat, and we raise all of the meat that we eat on the farm. There is no … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day

Posted on 2014-02-27 by

From Greg Shill, guest-blogging at The Conglomerate, of all places. He’s talking about a recent Kansas decision that found a sperm donor to be the legal father of a lesbian (ex-)couple’s child, despite all the parties having signed a contract … Continue reading →

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Some surprising words of wisdom from Ron Unz

Posted on 2014-02-15 by

Conservative activist Ron Unz would not exactly be my go-to person for economic analysis, but Mike Konczal draws attention to a 2012 article of Unz’s making the conservative case for increasing the minimum wage. Some choice quotations (footnotes omitted): On … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day

Posted on 2014-01-18 by

From Christian Weisgerber: All that the recent pardon of Alan Turing triggered was self-righteousness about what good people we are now and how wicked British society was sixty years ago. The real message should have been: Which of todays punishments … Continue reading →

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How many non-heterosexual people are there?

Posted on 2014-01-13 by

Attention conservation notice: 1400 words about a topic which, if you were really seriously interested in it, you would already have read the research I’m summarizing. Nearly since the modern conception of sexual orientation was invented, there have been serious … Continue reading →

Posted in Law & Society | Tagged , ,

The economy of ideas

Posted on 2013-12-27 by

Even the best of us have only a few ideas. Bill Gates, our era’s wealthiest entrepreneur, arguably had only one big idea. Giving wealthy people like him tax breaks will not suddenly encourage them to have more ideas. It is … Continue reading →

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