Sometimes I hear voices

I had a very curious experience recently. I discovered that I know what it’s like to be insane. No, save the obvious jokes; this is interesting. This came about because I read a magazine article somewhere which I cannot now identify – recent, online, a relatively prestigious publication with a tradition of think pieces –… Continue reading Sometimes I hear voices

Questioning transsexuality

In Bradley Manning Is Not a Woman, Kevin Willamson makes a case that feeling like a transsexual – that is, that one is either a man in the body of a woman or vice-versa – should be regarded as a mental illness to be treated by therapy rather than with sex-reassignment surgery. The article surprised… Continue reading Questioning transsexuality

Preventing visceral racism

I’ve been writing about race and politics a lot recently. Now I’m going to reveal the reason: in the relatively recent past I had a very disturbing, novel, and unwelcome educational experience. For the first time in the fifty-five years of my life I found out what it was like to feel racist, from the… Continue reading Preventing visceral racism

Charisma: a how-to

A couple of weeks ago a friend asked me how he could become more charismatic. Because the term “charismatic” has unhelpful religious connotations, let’s begin by being clear what he was actually asking. A person is “charismatic” when he or she has the ability to communicate a vision to others in a way that makes… Continue reading Charisma: a how-to

Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?

There I was, within earshot of the smoker’s bench outside the front entrance of the hotel hosting the World Boardgaming Championships, when I overheard the word “Android” from the three college students sitting on and around it, who I mentally tagged the Guy, the Gamer-Girl, and the Hottie. I moved a bit closer, to polite… Continue reading Android development pulls hot chicks. Who knew?

Facing your inner alpha

There’s been some discussion in response to my post on A natural contemplates game on the meaning of the term “alpha male” as it applies to humans. In comments, I had this to say as a definition: As I use “alpha”, it simply means someone who is equipped for leadership roles by psychology and temperament.… Continue reading Facing your inner alpha

Heavy weather and bad juju

Many primitive societies believe that maleficient spirits cause all sorts of human misfortune that in the modern West we have learned to attribute to natural causes – cattle dying, crops failing, disease, drought, that sort of thing. A few societies have developed a more peculiar form of supernaturalism, in which evil spirits recede into the… Continue reading Heavy weather and bad juju

Kill the Buddha

There’s a Zen maxim that commands this: “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” There are several closely related interpretations of this maxim in Buddhist tradition. The most obvious one is that worship of the Buddha interferes with comprehending what he actually said – that religious fetishization is the enemy of enlightenment.… Continue reading Kill the Buddha

Being an oracle is weird

In some areas of computer science, “oracle” is used as a term for a magic box that delivers solutions to undecidable problems. Or, sometimes more generally for any machine that generates answers by a process you don’t understand. One of the roles I play with respect to the Battle For Wesnoth fantasy game is as… Continue reading Being an oracle is weird