By justinkahn

Justin Kahn puts stuff on his blog, conceptofirony.blogspot.com

HOW I GOT OUT OF WRITING AN ESSAY ON H.G. WELLS’ THE TIME MACHINE.

– FROM THE ARCHIVE – January 17, 2005 I received the syllabus for my Humanities course. A humanities course should not be required for my B.Sc. degree in Physics. To add insult to injury, we are supposed to do an analysis of Well’s The Time Machine. We are to focus on the historical context when the topic is time travel? Who reads a book on a time machine for social insights? I would do anything to get out of this essay. At dinner, my friends complained about this assignment. I tell them a way out: I will build a time…

HOW I GOT OUT OF WRITING AN ESSAY ON H.G. WELLS’ THE TIME MACHINE.

– FROM THE ARCHIVE – January 17, 2005 I received the syllabus for my Humanities course. A humanities course should not be required for my B.Sc. degree in Physics. To add insult to injury, we are supposed to do an analysis of Well’s The Time Machine. We are to focus on the historical context when the topic is time travel? Who reads a book on a time machine for social insights? I would do anything to get out of this essay. At dinner, my friends complained about this assignment. I tell them a way out: I will build a time…

HOW I GOT OUT OF WRITING AN ESSAY ON H.G. WELL’S THE TIME MACHINE.

(Last week was reading week at UBC, but we were so freaking busy that we didn’t even get a chance to rest. Therefore, this week we get to catch up on our sleep by reprinting some of our finest. Enjoy.) – FROM THE ARCHIVE – January 17, 2005 I received the syllabus for my Humanities course. A humanities course should not be required for my B.Sc degree in Physics. To add insult to injury, we are supposed to do an analysis of Well’s The Time Machine. We are to focus on the historical context when the topic is time travel?…

HOW I GOT OUT OF WRITING AN ESSAY ON H.G. WELL’S THE TIME MACHINE.

(Last week was reading week at UBC, but we were so freaking busy that we didn’t even get a chance to rest. Therefore, this week we get to catch up on our sleep by reprinting some of our finest. Enjoy.) – FROM THE ARCHIVE – January 17, 2005 I received the syllabus for my Humanities course. A humanities course should not be required for my B.Sc degree in Physics. To add insult to injury, we are supposed to do an analysis of Well’s The Time Machine. We are to focus on the historical context when the topic is time travel?…

AN INTRODUCTION TO OCKHAM’S RAZOR

“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” Ockham’s razor, states that the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. While the definition is straightforward, application of Ockham’s Razor requires some development. In this paper we are going to investigate the question, “How is simplicity to be determined?” Some philosophers and scientists have suggested that simplicity is determined by a certain kind of elegance or in other cases a level of coherence combined with explanatory power. We suggest that such models are nonsense. We will start off by taking examples from the fields of Psychology and Linguistics before drawing some general…

FREQUENTER LIST 2006: JUSTIN KAHN

– PART I: A HAIKU – The Grand Unification Theory on an Index Card The Universe That Simple is Easier than Writing good Haiku – PART II: TEN LINKS – While one of the great science web pages is The Big Jewel, they also publish less serious stuff. That second article is by Justin Warner who people frequently confuse with me. I guess they do that because we both have the same first name. Anyway, the danger of all of this comedy fun is that it can obscure scientific work like figuring out the Hutchison effect. I live on the…

A DIALOG ON NUCLEAR WARFARE: CHARLES SHAW, HERMAN KAHN AND ME

The Participants Charles Shaw: A brand of wine, widely known as “two buck chucks” for its affordability (although in Ohio, one can’t seem to find it for no less than $3.33). An acquaintance of both participants in this dialog. Herman Kahn—Arguably the most celebrated and controversial nuclear strategist of his time. Often said what was on everyone’s mind, was Director of the Hudson “think tank” and wrote “On Thermonuclear War.” Also a rather large man. Me– Pacifist. Has the last name Kahn, but is probably unrelated to Herman Kahn and related to Justin Kahn only in his own imagination. Definitely…

THE SCIENCE CREATIVE QUARTERLY: A ONE YEAR RETROSPECTIVE SURVEY THROUGHOUT THE MULTIVERSE

Science Creative Quarterly has now been in existence for one year. For those of you, who like me, are not scientifically minded, that is 365 days! An impressive number indeed. The ancients believed 365 was a perfect number. But the ancients weren’t real bright, so we aren’t going to dwell on such superstitions. After all, what strikes me is not so much the length of time which SCQ has been in existence, but how its existence has altered the fabric of the many different universes in which it exists. The discovery of multiple universes, or simply verses, [1] have challenged…

DEATH: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ATTEMPT AT A DEFINITION

(1: Holding the Tail) The mouse is shaking his head and tail as if he is saying no, no, no. Honest, he is. Yesterday, I couldn’t do the mouse in, but that was yesterday. I’ve learned to do other things that I didn’t enjoy. Annihilating a mouse is a yet another one of those unpleasantaries, that I must own up to. Killing mice is a part of life and accepting life is a part of growing up, so it follows that making this mouse give up his ghost is a part of my maturing process. Besides, death is happening everywhere,…