Nonmathematical people sometimes ask me, “You know math, huh? Tell me something I’ve always wondered, What is infinity divided by infinity?” I can only reply, “The words you just uttered do not make sense. That was not a mathematical sentence. You spoke of ‘infinity’ as if it were a number. It’s not. You may as well ask, 'What is truth divided by beauty?’ I have no clue. I only know how to divide numbers. ‘Infinity,’ ‘truth,’ ‘beauty’—those are not numbers.
I preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable an… - John Derbyshire
I preach that odd defiant melancholy that sees the dreadful loneliness of the human soul and the pitiful disaster of human life as ever redeemable an…
- John Derbyshire
Razib Khan Hired And Fired By The New York Times, Both On The Same Day! - John Derbyshire
Razib Khan Hired And Fired By The New York Times, Both On The Same Day!
He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would ven… - John Derbyshire
He [Mencken] was an autodidact, with all the misplaced confidence and all the astonishing gaps that characterize that breed. Not many of us would ven…
The more depressed and maladjusted you are, the more likely it is that you are seeing things right, with minimal bias - John Derbyshire
The more depressed and maladjusted you are, the more likely it is that you are seeing things right, with minimal bias
Practically anything you read or hear about racism, sexism, and homophobia is cant. - John Derbyshire
Practically anything you read or hear about racism, sexism, and homophobia is cant.
Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as wa… - John Derbyshire
Ultimately, however, as the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter pointed out, a powerful bureaucratic class is in the same relation to commerce as wa…
Politics, as any observer of the modern world knows, is the enemy of economics, everywhere and always. - John Derbyshire
Politics, as any observer of the modern world knows, is the enemy of economics, everywhere and always.
Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, r… - John Derbyshire
Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, r…
I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal p… - John Derbyshire
I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal p…
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