Chinese:#

Jing4 ye4 si1

chuang2 qian2 ming2 yue4 guang1
yi2 shi4 di4 shang4 shuang1
ju3 tou2 wang4 ming2 yue4
di1 tou2 si1 gu4 xiang1

English: (Translated by someone else)#

A Thought on a Still Night

Before my bed, the bright moonlight
Looks like frost upon the ground.
I raise my head to watch the moon,
Then lower my head and think of home.

Spanish:#

Un pensamiento en una noche quieta

Antes de mi cama, la luz de la luna brillante
parece escarcha en la tierra.
Yo levanto la cabeza para mirar la luna,
después bajo la cabeza y pienso en mi casa.

Italian:#

Un pensiero a una notte tranquilla

In fronte al mio letto, il chiaro di luna brillante
sembra rugiada sulla terra.
Mi alzo la testa per osservare la luna,
allora abbasso la testa e penso alla casa mia.

Arabic: (Just the title)#

fikr il-layl il-haadee

G. J. Chaitin uses LISP to explain irreducible mathematical knowledge and the limit of mathematics.#

Nasty#

Exploit the Worker links to the Onion on International Economics.#

Michael Williams adds some comments on constitutions and a reader quotes Herbert Spencer: "Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results."#

Robin Hanson writes a genetic perspective on fairness.#

"Fairness" is often described in terms of equality of outcomes. But in a game, the "fairest" rules are often those that make the ablest players mostly likely to win, instead of those that distribute wins most evenly among players.

Even outside of games, a wide range of otherwise puzzling common intuitions about fairness can be understood if the fundamental "game" of life is seen as wooing, i.e., attracting mates by showing that you have fit genes. The fairest social institutions are then those in which success correlates as much as possible with genetic fitness.

For example, it can seem fair that the most attractive witty athletic folks get more mates and money, but seem unfair that the rich can buy better education for their children. Makeup can seem fair, while breast implants seem unfair.

Andrew Moroz posts Theology and Falsification, by Antony Flew.#

Let us begin with a parable. It is a parable developed from a tale told by John Wisdom in his haunting and revelatory article 'Gods'.[1] Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they, set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not he seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Sceptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"