Viewing profile — benpbenp

I just finished the sublime Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy by Sigrid Undset, in the Tiina Nunnally translation. If you have any interest in the medieval period or specifically medie…

Your global figure includes both donations and value of time donated ([2], pg.8) Your US figure ([1]) doesn't say anything about value of time donated so I'd assume it is not inclu…

I'm not sure that ruling really has the impact you say it does here. That ruling held that of the 8,000 plaintiffs in the class action suit, only 1,853 had standing because their i…

It is a joke based on Aquinas' style of answering questions. He begins with a handful of "objections" that take the opposite position to the one he eventually lands on. To take a r…

> Very well summerized. Actually, in Sumer, they used an intercalary month every three years or so, much like the leap year in the Gregorian Calendar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

That quote is from the Bluetooth standardisation group’s response. They are clearly trying to downplay the seriousness with their choice of language here. “All within a narrow time…

Well, by my Maths, 10^18 would require close to 7,000 trees for every square meter of dry land on the planet Earth. Even if we allow the use of Bonsai, that would be a stretch :)

There are distance-bounding protocols[0], but I don't think anyone has implemented them in something as small as a car key yet. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distance-boundin…

Except for the "realism in the depiction of human figures" bit.

> and also unambiguous to future-me. Ex: "Your worst encounter with bees occurred in what place?" Optimistically assuming your worst-bee-encountering days are behind you, of course…

First thing, you have to teach them the phrase, "Explain it like I'm five."

> But the potential of the end goal might be enough to keep people working on it perpetually. Working on it perpetually, you say? If only we could somehow harness that energy...

The tendency to use "fancier" vocabulary has actually been noted as a tendency of the non-Upper class. Cf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Not sure if you are aware of this or not but Form 8938 is different from FBAR. FBAR is filed with the department of the treasury and the threshold is only $10,000.

Ugh, regarding the lack of such a twentieth century visionary, look up Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin for an idea of what such a thing might have looked like!

Ha! I got my own name when I first landed on the site. For a second there I thought the real story was that they'd somehow exploited a third party cookie but it appears to be a coi…

Well, and I don't think this is a nitpick, a recession is not the same as a depression. It would be good to get the original source for both of these facts to compare. Perhaps duri…

Honest question, what problems do you think this would solve? Is it that you don't want people to have children until they are financially capable of supporting them? It is indeed …

For this kind of transfer I recently discovered and have saved tons of money using TransferWise. Their model is to charge a moderate upfront fee (0.5% for £200 and up), but then af…

On the contrary, as Ambrose says (De Offic. iii, 10): "In all contracts the defects of the salable commodity must be stated; and unless the seller make them known, although the buy…

This is very very good. Thank you for taking the time to make that comment. I have often struggled to make this same point but find that many people today are so deeply committed t…

What if you wore a band around your back and sides, that would vibrate at a certain location to communicate angle, and intensity to communicate distance?