Bad Philosophy

Imagine having an army of workers ready to do your bidding, no matter how menial and trivial, as long as you pay them some semblance of a decent wage. That’s Amazon Mechanical Turk in a nutshell, with which people are doing strange and wonderful things. To discuss this and other randomness, we had the pleasure [...]

Ep077 The Untimely Death of Stephen [ 1:02:59 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Amazon, CastingWords, Clear Channel, conferences, crowdsourcing, Dinosaur Comics, Facebook, Foursquare, GetGlue, GI Joe, Glenn Beck, Gowalla, Kevin, LEGOs, location, Machine of Death, Mechanical Turk, Paul Newman, questions, radio, Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, Randall Monroe, SDCC, Simon, social media, Stephen, SXSW, Texas Tech University, Venn Diagrams

In a world, divided by history, separate but equal, teetering on the brink of the cosmos, one podcast dares to defy the axioms and go where no podcast has gone bef… well you get the idea. This week we’re talking Anathem! Neal Stephenson’s latest work of spec-fic awesomery is ripe with headiness, so we decided to bring on couple of powerhouses in the brain department. Former-KTXT and current Llano Idea DJ Benjamin Brown returns to duke it out in a literary smackdown for the ages with veteran Bad Philosopher and aspiring YouTube reviewer Kevin Saunders. If this were a book, it’d be a genuine page-turner. But you read with your ears, right? Of course you do. So have a listen…

Ep040 Meta-Mathic Smackdown [ 55:09 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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aging, Alan Turing, Amazon, Anathem, anime, apocalypse, Aquinas, Aristotle, Audible, Ben Brown, books, Canticle for Liebowitz, Christian Science, communication, Cory Doctorow, Cryptonomicon, cyberpunk, DRM, Dune, economics, Galileo, history, Isaac Asimov, J. R. R. Tolkien, Kevin, Kindle, KTXT, mathematics, Mendeleev, meta, Neal Stephenson, Occam's Razor, physics, piracy, pirates, Plato, publishing, Pythagorean Theorem, quantum physics, religion, Richard Feynman, Rifftrax, Robert Heinlein, sci-fi, science, scientology, Skype, Snow Crash, Special Relativity, sports, Starship Troopers, Stephen, technology, The Baroque Cycle, The Day After Tomorrow, The Llano Idea, The Long Now Foundation, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The World Without Us, TV, Twilight, Variable Star, WWII, XKCD

One may be the loneliest number that you’ll ever do, but two is certainly NOT as bad as one when it’s Bad Philosophy. Kevin and I convened over Skype this week in leu of any other panelists. We actually got the audio working half-decently (can you believe it?!) and had a great back-and-forth about a wide variety of topics. So sit back, kindle your excitement, strap on your golden parachute, and shove those old VHS bootlegs of Oh, Killmas Tree under your desk – it’s time for some BF!

Ep16 Ecominkindle [ 1:00:53 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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2008 bailout, Amazon, Apple, Associated Press, Audible, audiobooks, Austin, Austrian economics, auto bailout, Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, bigotry, books, bureaucracy, Cali Lewis, Christmas, college, comics, communism, Cory Doctorow, debt, dignity, DRM, DVDs, eBay, eBooks, economics, education, ePaper, Europe, Facebook, free market, fund raising, gold standard, government, graphic novels, Great Depression, Green Bay, home schooling, housing bubble, Houston Chronicle, Hugh Hefner, human progress, inflation, iPod, Iraq War, Ironman, iTunes, John McCain, Josh Justice, kept woman, Kevin, Kindle, Korean War, KTXT, Leo Laporte, libertarianism, Logitech, Lubbock, mainstream media, Marshall Plan, Monopoly, music, NASA, New Deal, New York Times, newspapers, Oh Killmas Tree, Oprah, Preacher, public school, radio, Ron Paul, San Francisco, Savings and Loan Crisis, Scandinavia, Scott McCloud, scrapbooking, SD, Skype, socialism, Sony, Sprint, stepford wife, Stephen, stock market, Student Media, Susan Peterson, Texas, Texas Tech University, The Dark Knight, The Internet, TWiT, Twitter, US Constitution, value, Vietnam War, virtual reality, Watchmen, Xbox