This site compresses the great works of philosophy (and science) into a relatively short version which can be read in about 10-20mins or less, this is Socrates The Republic in a paragraph:
Socrates: What is Justice?
Polemarchus: It's giving everyone the good or evil they deserve, helping friends and harming enemies.
Thrasymachus: It's following the law, doing what the people in power say.
Socrates: Rulers aren't always right, and they're never happy. Let's try to design a perfectly just society. It'll have people sticking to the skill they're best at, supplying each other's needs. It'll have three classes, golden ruler-guardians, silver auxiliaries and iron and bronze artisans. We'll have no families, but bring up the best people, women as well as men, to be rulers. They'll avoid poetry, do physical training and study philosophy. We'll have justice because everyone sticks to their own job. We'll have the three classes in harmony, just like the mind has three parts: desire, reason and spirit.
Glaucon: So what's philosophy, then?
Socrates: It's pursuing wisdom. Trying to find the immutable, the perfect, the true form of reality. It's not like foolish sailors squabbling over who's to take the helm. It's not like taming a wild beast. Imagine a cave where prisoners have been held since birth, they'd believe that the shadows they see are reality. The true philosopher is like someone who escapes from that cave and sees real things, when he gets back, no-one believes him. We'll get this by careful education up to the age of fifty.
Glaucon: What about the perfect State?
Socrates: It isn't a timarchy built on ambition, nor money-based oligarchy, nor squabbling democracy or gangster-ish tyranny. Our perfect society of philosopher-kings may never exist on earth, but we can hope.
I guess this could be useful if you needed to do some really quick mugging up for an exam, or just wanted to get the jist of the texts without spending hours translating the blurb. Ok, describing the great works of human civilisation as blurb was a little harsh, but you get what i mean right…?
Squashed Philosophers Here
This is an entertaining look at McDonalds, entitled Ten Reasons to eat at mcdonalds…it actually makes some pretty good points, one interesting one is that happy meals are apparently sold at a loss…
While the Big Breakfast is a sumptuous delight ? the bacon sandwiches more than adequate ? it is the pancakes and sausage that are truly exceptional.
Drowned in butter with lashings of maple syrup, this is one of the only opportunities foreigners have to sample the high-fat American breakfast treat. Diabetes, obesity, a chronic heart condition? Bring it on. Which leaves only one question: why is the sausage flat?
mmm…i am hungry already, although possibly for real food rather than mcd's.
Ten Reasons Here
Ever wondered how tall those people on TV actually are? Well, I hadn't really till I found this site, now I know that I am the same height as David Bowie and just slightly taller than Cameron Diaz.
cool…
Tall or Not Here
This is a interesting thought about the future aims of the mac mini. The writer puts all of the evidence together to suggest that apple may launch something akin to the iTunes music store for movies. Then have the movies stream into a Mac Mini, carefully placed at the side of an HDTV…
Seems like a good idea to me! music, movies and tv on-demand is the future, whatever the current distributors say.
Reading Between The Lines Here
The Thought Project is a cool 'art' website where the designer asked 150 people (only 55 on the site) what they were thinking at the exact moment he met them. He then takes their picture and puts it online with a transcript of their reply.
Absolutely fascinating to link what these random people look like to what they are thinking, or at least what they said they were thinking. For example, the cute woman with sunglasses who was thinking about how to escape a robbery by posing as a blind person…great!
Actually, I would love to see this in a blog format, each day a new person and a new set of thoughts…hmm
The Thought Project Here
![]()
eXeem, the distributed bittorrent replacement for suprnova was released today. It looks pretty good, good selection of stuff coupled with bittorrent speeds. Brings back those old suprnova memories, as well as making web-based torrent sites look like old-hat.
The middlemen really aren't gonna like this one bit, I would be very surprised if they didn’t try to nip it in the bud by firing lawsuits here, there and everywhere before the end of the month.
There has also been quite a lot of comment and speculation about the adware/spyware modules in eXeem, their website say it doesn’t contain spyware but a lot of people say it does. It also is rumoured to contain advertising, although I couldn’t see any on mine (perhaps a firewall/router/adaware save).
Following in great kazaa tradition, as soon as there is a release by the main company some nice guy removes the spyware modules and releases a lite edition…ahh, gotta love the system…
eXeem Here
Article Here
eXeem Lite Here
Article Here
There ought to be a law which makes it illegal to put fantastic desktop images online at a resolution less than 1600×1200…
Until that happens we will have to make do with these tiny but very well taken images from Michael Wolf's Architecture of Density exhibition.
Gallery Here
According to the BBC and Cardiff University next Monday (24th) is the worst day of the year.
The formula for the day of misery reads 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.
Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day - and T is the time since Christmas.
Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.
obviously not discounting the fact that it is also a Monday…eugh!
Article Here
Another cool collection of street based art…I particularly like the first page of the outdoor gallery including the wonderful comparison of art at the tate modern (2500 visits per day) with art on a wall near the m4 (2500 visits per hour).
Banksy Here
This can only be described as a non-linea story, this guy chose to write about his life from the perspective of someone seeing every important choice he made and what would have happened if he had made if differently.
Confused?…you will understand when you see the page 
What If Here
It is pretty rare that this happens, so i thought it worth noting that Ken Kutaragi (president of sony computer entertainment) has blamed DRM-based restrictions on their mp3 electronics (enforced by the music arm of sony) for their loss of the walkman market to smaller players (such as creative, apple, diamond etc.)
Interesting…perhaps some internal issues need looking at in sony
Article Here
An entertaining incarnation of the classic pc game 'lemmings', I played this to death when I was younger and this version is pretty accurate to the experience…
DHTML Lemmings
Reasonably interesting article making p2p predictions for 2005, most notibly that the artists will rise up against the music-middlemen and actually find a way to make money with a new business model.
One of the more interesting ideas it raises is the music sharing license…imagine, everyone pays an extra ?5-10 on their monthly internet bill for the license to share music (i would also say movies, tv, games, apps…but one step at a time eh…) without the fear of recieving a lawsuit from the middle-men or a knock at the door from the feds.
I would be up for it, now take that view multiply by how many internet users in the world, suddenly artists (and unfortionatly their middle-men) have a decent monthly income.
Article Here
Some cool images of graffiti in SF
Gallery Here
This is a gallery of funky 70's design, lots of colours and curves…well worth a look if you are in need of some retro-inspiration.
Gallery Here