Introduction A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1981 , and is the funniest book I have ever read. While I look forward to a book that can dethrone it, it is hard to imagine that such a book could exist. It also has a tragic back story; the book was never published during the life of the writer, John Kennedy Toole , which ended in suicide. His mother eventually managed to…
For some of us the hardest thing in the world is to be a good friend to ourselves. Many of us harbour misgivings as to our worth; it is difficult in the world as it is today to find a direction that does not lead to unflattering comparison. Be cognisant that there are market forces driving and benefiting from such things, and that we live in an age where these market forces have their tentacles in…
I have retained since childhood an essentially atheistic outlook on life. That is to say, I do not believe in the supernatural, have identified gods as belonging to that category, so do not believe in them. This is fairly uncomplicated; we live in a scientific age after all (at least in theory, and despite large segments of the world population either being scientifically illiterate or explicitly…
Why write? In this age of algorithmically curated feeds and LLM generated slop, the question is more vital than ever, but vital answers are in short supply. There are doubtless some who will argue that due to the pure volume of writing (or at least “writing”) that is currently being churned out, the actual value of another piece is close to zero; perhaps they would say that the marginal utility…
Some technical updates Migrating off Google Analytics After my recent post , detailing my various frustrations with web development, I can report with some amusement that I broke Google Analytics on my site. I have hence been unable to get any site visitor info via GA since April-ish. This led to some introspection, and since I don’t particularly approve of Google’s dominance in the ad space (or,…
As a prelude to what is to follow, I must say that while I am not a professional mathematician (I have a masters degree in theoretical physics and work in the software world), I do enjoy reading the occasional textbook or review paper, and wandering through its pages in a type of reverie, like walking through a glade looking at flowers. My wife has opinions about this - I suppose most of us who…
My webdev-fu is weak because I do not always find the technology very interesting, and I have tried to avoid jobs where that is the main focus, so there are a lot of skills, and knowledge, I’ve never picked up. On the other hand, I am somewhat obsessive, and have this website. I have been very irritated by various things that are arguably OCD related - let’s be charitable and call it…
Many traditions contain the notion of an interior voice of the human heart that corresponds in some way to our conscience. The ancient Egyptians had the weighing of the heart , Socrates arguably had his Daimonion , and Christians have Romans 2:15 . To the extent that I believe myself to have a moral compass distinct from the behaviours and beliefs explicitly inculcated in me by society, it too is…
Introduction I recently attended a ten day silent retreat near Worcester, South Africa . I thought it would be interesting to relate my experiences here, and discuss some of the ideas that were presented. The term vipassanā is often translated as ‘insight/wisdom meditation’, and resides firmly in the Buddhist tradition. Depending on which Buddhist text you refer to, it could mean either a specific…
Taoism I recently became interested in Taoism (also rendered as Daoism). I started by reading the Zhuangzhi , which took me several months, and more recently finished the Tao Te Ching , which didn’t take nearly as long. I don’t recommend reading them in that order, although it was certainly interesting - these two are typically considered to be the foundational texts of Taoism, but the Tao Te…