blog.kennypearce.net

The Great MP3 Caper

I just found this awesome short film on the EFF web-site. Check it out.
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The Problem of Freedom: The Answer Was in Schopenhauer All Along

So I have been plagued the last couple of days by the sudden realization that a problem I thought I had easily solved had actually not been solved at all. You see there is this inherent problem in the whole idea of free will. Now, personally, I think the "libertarian" (NB: the use of this word in metaphysics is mostly unrelated to its use in politics as in my last couple of posts) sense of free will, which is to say the doctrine that we are free with regard to an action if and only if we can do otherwise,...
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A Decent Presidential Candidate?

Ever hear me talk about politics? I generally answer questions about my political leanings one of two ways, both of which are rather vague and obscure. The first is "I hate the Republican Party slightly less than I hate the Democratic Party." The second is "I am a right-leaning minarchist." The meaning of the first statement is obvious, it just doesn't say anything about what I like, only what I hate less, which is a very different thing. The second term is confusing, because these terms are not often used in this way. To explain this, I understand the right-left...
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RIAA vs. Penn Students

Have you seen this morning's Daily Pennsylvanian? On the heels of my decision to blog (for the first time, I think) about this RIAA crap, it seems, coincidentally, that the RIAA has decided to sue some Penn students! Check out the EFF's Let the Music Play campaign to sign petitions and stuff to stop the madness.
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EFF Proposes Solution for Online Music Downloading

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization which focuses on technological issues, has proposed a very sensible solution to some of the problems related to peer-to-peer filesharing, in hopes of stopping the Recording Industry Association of America from suing more users. Check it out here.
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Ontological Argument for the Existence of ... Objective Truth?

I have just returned from Spring Break, during which time I made a strange realization. I'm sure someone must have discovered this before, but did you know that by using the same logic employed in the modal version of the ontological argument for the existence of God, one can pull a reductio ad absurdum on the thesis of relativism (which is to say, reduce it to a contradiction). The reasoning isn't much different than when a person is told that there is no such thing as absolute truth and responds with the question, "Is that absolutely true?" but this version sounds much more... well... impressive. Check it out:
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undergroundshakespeare.com

So the Underground Shakespeare Company's "Merchant of Venice" which I performed in this past weekend was decidedly successful and a lot of fun. Somewhere along the way I found myself becoming the company's webmaster. I can't take credit for the site, as most of it was already in place when I got it, but I am now working on some updates, upgrades, and revisions. Check it out at undergroundshakespeare.com.
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