thoughts on philosophy and science

I have been shopping online for many years now and I was thinking about the things I buy online and the things I buy in the store. Sometimes I buy things in the store because I sought advice and other times I buy online because the price was just too good. But with services like Zappos, Amazon Fresh and Google Shopping Express I am beginning to wonder if there is a future left for brick and mortar retailers. This way of shopping is going to usher in a shift in the way we shop and buy goods. How can retailers compete?

I had a funny thought yesterday on the way home from work. I was thinking about a quote that went something like "politicians follow the money, not the idea". And I thought no, there is always an idea behind the money. It's just that wealthy groups get their way, get their ideology into law because they have the money. In other words they are represented but the vast majority of Americans are not. I do agree it is unfair that the distribution of representation in government matches the wealth distribution and not the population distribution. So if that is the case, how do you fix it?

I haven't posted much lately, mostly because I've been busy but also because I've been reading existentialist text and it has completely flipped my understanding of the world on its head. It's as if all of creation was obsessed with the person from the Universe's point of view until Kierkegaard came along and asked what the world was from the Person's point of view. Nevertheless I decided to write down a few thoughts that have been rolling around in my head for some months.

I have always found the shipping options at the USPS confusing, so I did some research and made this chart to help.

How good is a person's philosophy? Of all the famous philosophers, which had the best work? And how good is my philosophy?

That is the central thesis of my thought lately. If I were to measure each philosopher's work how would I do it? How can I develop a philosophy which is better than the one I have now and how could I prove that it is?

I was unemployed from the period of December 2009 to July 2010 (or as I like to call it my summer vacation). I've been working or studying my entire life. It wasn't until the layoff that I had any real freedom to pursue my own interests and desires. Not wanting to waste this time I decided to keep busy. Sometimes it was work. Very hard, disciplined work. Sometimes it was challenging. But mostly it was fun. And always it was rewarding. I wanted to make this a time to be remembered and create a template for life when I landed a new job.

Generally speaking, I find discussion of religion dull and boring. It has to be one of the most unproductive topics when it comes to debate, as a conversion from one belief system to another is rare.

Most books on electronics theory treat the subject of passives in the following way:

This is an update of an article I wrote almost two years ago. There are a few things I've wanted to change and so I'm taking the time now to expand the original. I hope this will be of some use to budding engineers and college students who are trying to wrap their head around the big picture. This is how I understand what an engineer does, but not necessarily how other engineers see things.

According to various sources across the internet, Americans consume approximately 3.7 billion barrels of oil per year. With a little math we see that's around 10.1 million everyday. If oil were at $40 per barrel, this comes out to $148 billion oil consumed every year. Obama's new regulations were designed to, 'save 2 million barrels of oil per day'. This works out to 8.1 million barrels per day, or about 3.0 billion barrels consumed per year. If oil is at $40 per barrel this is about $120 billion per year.