Wednesday, January 11, 2017

To Carve Out a Refuge

"Why the awe for the Second Law? The Second Law defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order. An underappreciation of the inherent tendency toward disorder, and a failure to appreciate the precious niches of order we carve out, are a major source of human folly."
~Steven Pinker on the Second Law of Thermodynamics:
https://www.edge.org/response-detail/27023

Monday, January 9, 2017

I've flipped

I love printed books, their tactile heft, their beauty, but over the years I've developed a preference for ebook reading. Instant word-touch dictionary access, text highlighting, easy word or name search, no need to turn on a lamp at night and wake your sleeping spouse--it just offers so many advantages. And now the biggest remaining deficiency has largely been overcome: page flipping.