Nightmares

Jeremiah\u27s puzzle Nightmare , which was exchanged at the 2013 Washington, DC International Puzzle Party. 100 puzzle designers create 100 copies of their puzzle and pass it out at the party and exchange them. This puzzle was a special puzzle gift that was given to IPP32 exchangers by its designer, Jerry Farrell, in memory of longtime IPP member, Tom Rodgers, Jr

80 Years of Gardner Magic

The magician and historiam Max Maven poignantly eulogized Martin Gardner in his article In Memoriam in the July 2010 issue of GENII magazine. Commenting on the diverse interests of Gardner in non-fiction, puzzles, recreational mathematics, philosophy, games, skepticism, word play and magic, Maven noted: So far as is known, the final Gardner publication during his lifetime was a magic trick that he contributed to the May 2010 issue of Word Ways, a quarterly journal with a small but fervent readership. I will mention, without humility, that the trick was based on one of mine -- which in turn was based on one of Martin\u27s

The Farrell-Hsiang method revisited

We present a sufficient condition for groups to satisfy the Farrell-Jones Conjecture in algebraic K-theory and L-theory. The condition is formulated in terms of finite quotients of the group in question and is motivated by work of Farrell-Hsiang.Comment: This version is different from the published version. A number of typos and an incorrect formula for the transfer before Lemma 6.3 pointed out by Holger Reich have been correcte

Two Games Displayed by Butler’s 2017 Celebration of Mind

Jeremiah\u27s two games displayed by Butler\u27s 2017 Celebration of Mind

Singing in a new world: Scotland - hopeless schizophrenic or cosmopolitan post nation?

Rival views of Scotland at the beginning of the twenty-first century see the nation as either, hopelessly schizophrenic, mired in its own bedevilled tartanry and forever salvaging the present through historic erasure or as a cosmopolitan postnation at ease with its contradictory legacies and able to tap its inherent multiplicities for a contemporary self image. These contentions are being interrogated in public debates and political contexts as well as in literature in Scotland. The process of re-imagining or re-visioning Scotland began much earlier than 1999 when the Scottish Parliament, last adjourned in 1707, was reconvened. Contemporary authors have long been reconsidering issues of identity and how this could and should be represented in their writing. This paper will examine how the underlying forces of insistent Scottish identity-making now seem to be moving in the direction of synthesis rather than fragmentation within literature, permitting multiple perspectives and a plurality of approaches through different genres, recognising other people’s rights to perceive or imagine Scotland differently. Anne Forbes’ novels Dragonfire,(2006) The Wings of Ruksh (2007) and The Underground City (2008), fully post-modern fantasy novels, will be used as examples of ‘fusion’ texts introducing an optimistic new notion of ‘belonging’ transcending the cultural fatalism of the so-called ‘clash of civilisations’ hypothesis and building positively on the politics of difference. They represent a form of literary cosmopolitanism entirely consonant with the way Scottish society currently aspires to progress, offering the right set of circumstances for developing new forms of syncretistic myth-making and storytelling across and between communities

Wide temperature range electronic device with lead attachment

A electronic device including lead attachment structure which permits operation of the devices over a wide temperature range is reported. The device comprises a core conductor having a thin coating of metal thereon whereby only a limited amount of coating material is available to form an alloy which bonds the core conductor to the device electrode, the electrode composition thus being affected only in the region adjacent to the lead

The Poet\u27s Hymn

Reviews the book The Doctor\u27s House: An Autobiography, by James Liddy

Ambitions and Text

Reviews the book Well Dreams: Essays on John Montague, edited by Thomas Dillon Redshaw

‘What it is Like’ Talk is not Technical Talk

‘What it is like’ talk (‘WIL-talk’) — the use of phrases such as ‘what it is like’ — is ubiquitous in discussions of phenomenal consciousness. It is used to define, make claims about, and to offer arguments concerning consciousness. But what this talk means is unclear, as is how it means what it does: how, by putting these words in this order, we communicate something about consciousness. Without a good account of WIL-talk, we cannot be sure this talk sheds light, rather than casts shadows, on our investigations of consciousness. The popular technical account of WIL-talk (see e.g. Lewis, 1995, and Kim, 1998) holds that WIL-talk involves technical terms — terms which look like everyday words but have a distinct meaning — introduced by philosophers. I argue that this account is incorrect by showing that the alleged technical terms were not introduced by philosophers, and that these terms do not have a technical meaning

Higher-order theories of consciousness and what-it-is-like-ness

Ambitious higher-order theories of consciousness aim to account for conscious states when these are understood in terms of what-it-is-like-ness. This paper considers two arguments concerning this aim, and concludes that ambitious theories fail. The misrepresentation argument against HO theories aims to show that the possibility of radical misrepresentation—there being a HO state about a state the subject is not in—leads to a contradiction. In contrast, the awareness argument aims to bolster HO theories by showing that subjects are aware of all their conscious states. Both arguments hinge on how we understand two related notions which are ubiquitous in discussions of consciousness: those of what-it-is-like-ness and there being something it is like for a subject to be in a mental state. This paper examines how HO theorists must understand the two crucial notions if they are to reject the misrepresentation argument but assert the awareness argument. It shows that HO theorists can and do adopt an understanding—the HO reading—which seems to give them what they want. But adopting the HO reading changes the two arguments. On this reading, the awareness argument tells us nothing about those states there is something it is like to be in, and so offers no support to ambitious HO theories. And to respond to the misrepresentation understood according to the HO reading is to simply ignore the argument presented, and so to give no response at all. As things stand, we should deny that HO theories can account for what-it-is-like-ness