You've got it backwards; a theory is such because it is falsifiable, that is, it can be disproven. If the possibility exists that the theory can be disproven, as with evolution, then we can create experiments to test the theory and see if it fails. If the theory doesn't fail, then our "faith" in the theory becomes stronger.
Evolution is a scientific theory not because it can be proven (you can never do that), but because it can be tested by experiments (even if the results of the experiments are historical and recorded in the geology of the earth or in the molecules of our cells).
Creationism, on the other hand, cannot be ever be disproven and therefore lacks any value as a testable scientific theory. Without falsifiability, how could you test which deity(ies) created life? Jehovah, Zeus, Brahman, Marduk or Xenu? By which methods? Speaking a word or dreaming a dream?
I could say that life was created by the sneeze of an extraterrestial entity and you would have no way of judging and distinguishing the validity of that assertion from say, Jehovah, in the absence of falsifiability.
You're in luck if you can get CBC (the Canadian equivalent of the BBC). From the article, it seems that the leak may have originated from a "supplier" to the CBC.
In addition to Eolas, I can recall a few other patent suits against Microsoft as well:
Autoplay sues Microsoft, regarding a patent on automatically executing installation programs on CD-ROMs and other devices.
Timeline Inc. successfully sues Microsoft over breach of licence for three patents concerning SQL Server. Timeline actually threatened to sue third party developers and customers using Microsoft's product. Fortunately, they never followed through on those threats.
You're right about Zundel; he was prosecuted under a different section of the Criminal Code, which was ultimately unsuccessful. Note, however, that recently he was denied entry into Canada and deported under the Immigration Act (ie. non-criminal).
As for the cases, judging from the quality of your posts, I think that you are more than capable of understanding them! Supreme Court of Canada cases have summaries at the beginning, that are quite accessible.
End of the day, hope someone sees this:
Right To Privacy Campaign, a website with links and documents related to the risk to privacy posed to Canadians by the U.S. PATRIOT Act.
Dr. Zong, thank you for your thoughtful posts. However, you are incorrect in assuming that anti-hate laws "trump" the Charter. Anti-hate laws are based on section 15 of the Charter (equality rights), and play against section 2 (freedom of expression).
The Charter itself is a balancing act between different rights. As you correctly noted, one is free to express one's religion as long as it doesn't impinge on someone else's freedom.
If you're really interested, the leading Supreme Court of Canada case is R. v. Keegstra. As a counter-point, see R. v. Zundel, where the accused was acquitted of spreading falsehoods about the Holocaust because the relevant portions of the Criminal Code were found to be unconstitutional.
Watch the entire mini-series. The president's cancer is integral to the overall plot, and Adama is far from perfect. In fact, both Roslin and Adama do things that are morally questionable and actually chilling.
Wow, a Windows user telling me to "RTFM"... classic. But you're absolutely right; Windows is too difficult and requires too much googling for a dummy like me to use, so I'll stick with Knoppix and the opensource Matrox drivers.
That is exactly how I got started with Linux. My Duron / Abit-KT7 / Matrox G450 box was chugging along fine from 1999 to 2002 under Windows 98se. Then one day in the summer of 2002, it "black screened" ie. "your registry is corrupt, press any key to restart system". Thereafter, it refused to load Windows except in Safe mode, and it crashed everytime I tried to increase the video mode beyond 640x480x16.
I swapped out all the cards, and isolated the problem to the Matrox G450. However, when I booted with a Knoppix CD, everything was fine at 1024x768, so I knew that the videocard was functional.
After spending the weekend downloading, installing and reinstalling the Windows drivers for both the VIA chipset and the Matrox videocard to no avail, my wife got pissed off at me. She asked me, "What's wrong with it?" and I said, "Well, the card works because Knoppix runs fine, but Windows seems to have a problem with it." So she told me, "Then get rid of Windows, and put Linux on it!" (bless her!). So since that day, we've been Linux only...
In case anyone is interested, this last summer, I installed Windows 2000 briefly for a specific application. Still encountered the same problem with the videocard. However, this time after much, much googling and experimenting, I came across a suggestion to lower the AGP Aperture to 4MB, and it worked. Apparently, the problem is the combination of the Matrox videocard and the Abit motherboard. Sorry, don't have the URL of the solution handy. But at this point, we're pretty used to Linux, and we're never going back (I removed the Windows 2k install after I was done with it).
Ursula K. Le Guin is my favourite science fiction / fantasy author, so please excuse the gushing...
Several other posts have mentioned Le Guin's other great works, beside the Earthsea series -- the Dispossessed, the Left Hand of Darkness, the Lathe of Heaven -- but the story that most clearly defines her literary motivation is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Le Guin is fascinated by the concept of Utopia. In the Dispossessed, she conjectures "If anarchism / communism could work, what would it look like?". The Lathe of Heaven explicitly deals with the theme of Utopia, and how one person's utopia is another's hell.
Omelas is more than a story: it's a thought experiment. What is most disturbing and haunting about it is how the utopian society of Omelas only becomes real and believable once Le Guin reveals the dark, horrible bargain that the denizens of Omelas made to have their perfect world. To paraphrase Mr. Smith in the Matrix, it's as if humans need suffering and evil in order to believe in existence.
On topic, Earthsea is fascinating because she attempts to weave a mythology as different from the Tolkien motif as she could get. Tehanu, written 25 years after the original trilogy, is Le Guin's revisiting of Earthsea, after she embraced feminism.
Le Guin is also notable in that she views science fiction with an anthropologist's eye, not a technologist. She is interested in the sociological impact of science and technology. Nevertheless, her stories are well grounded in scientific principles.
No faster-than-light warp drives or hyperspace; her characters have to make do with near lightspeed. And because of relativity, even though it takes a spacefarer one night to go to another star system, 100 years pass by on her homeworld. In the 1960's, Le Guin also invented the concept of the ansible, which was inspired by the principle of quantum entanglement (she called it the "Principle of Simultaneity" because the term "quantum entanglement" hadn't been coined yet).
I only skimmed the list, and I didn't see anything about RFID tags. Over the past year, there have been a number of stories regarding the use of RFID tags to track humans. I think that we're going to see an explosion of these devices in all aspects of our daily lives as RFID tags will be used to track our movements at work, at school, and while we travel.
I know of many workers who are required to use these tags as part of their employer's worksite access policy, and although the employer is not supposed to use RFIDs for work performance purposes, the attendance of the workers is being tracked down to the second.
These devices are being implemented so gradually that I don't think the implications have been fully thought through by the public.
Intellectual property, e.g. copyright, is a legal fiction along the same lines as "corporate personhood". The mistake it appears the courts and the legislature are making is to imbue intellectual property with the same sanctity as actual physical property.
Your statement is quite true. Both corporations and "intellectual property" (ie. copyrights, trademarks and patents) are more than legal fictions, however; they exist as sanctions from the State.
You have to apply to the government for incorporation, and follow the regulations. Similarly, the government decides whether you are entitled to a trademark or patent. Copyrights are controlled by statute.
As others have noted many times before, the various forms of intellectual property are government-sanctioned monopolies over some market sector, intended to improve the overall public good.
As a Libertarian, you probably instinctively abhor these constructs as they represent the ultimate government intervention in the free market.
The problem with corporations and intellectual property now is that the parameters for considering their defects have becomed so limited that it is impossible for the public to successfully challenge these institutions. The courts can't go beyond what is enshrined in law, so in order to change the system, the public must change the legislation.
Well, the difference is that the proposed Tech Source card would be open source, and therefore would (hopefully) evolve, slowly but surely, in the same manner of other open source projects like Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, etc.
While I love my Matrox G450, the fact is, Matrox will never release another card like it, nor will they improve on it. If the Tech Source project works, then one day, it will release a card that is superior to the G450.
Remember, Tech Source is a boutique graphics card company, and the guy proposing this (Timothy Miller?) is a graphics card engineer.
If you read the mailing list archive, you'll see that what they are proposing is a card with simple, OpenGL compatible 3D. The interface will be PCI at first. My impression is that they have mini-ITX boards in mind. The last paragraph of your post is correct: they will probably target commodity Linux (and significantly, BSD) boxes.
I think that this is a great idea. Right now, if you want open source 3D, the only good hardware available is the Matrox G400/450/550 line, and that's over 5 years old. I bought my G450 in 1999 and am still using it quite happily, but I would certainly buy an open hardware card from Tech Source if this project comes to fruition.
As someone on OSNews posted, this project could be profitable for a small company even if it would be considered a flop by ATI or Nvidia.
Moore actually has quite a history with the Star Trek franchise. He wrote some of the best TNG episodes, including "Yesterday's Enterprise" (3rd season, Enterprise C time paradox), and was responsible for many DS9 stories (DS9 is the best Star Trek spin-off).
My wife and I are completely hooked on Battlestar Galactica. I remember the series when I was a kid, and I thought that it was unwatchable back then. This new series, in contrast, is completely brilliant.
As far as Groklaw goes, as a lawyer I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and unique that website is. Sure, Pamela Jones has a distinct bias, but at least you know up front where she stands so you can evaluate her opinions accordingly. The real value of that site is the sheer comprehensiveness of the public statements and filings organized in its database. A resource like that would cost someone tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars to compile privately, and yet here it is offered to the public for free. It's like open source litigation, and I hope that Groklaw or sites like it continue in the future for other legal/political/social issues (software patents anyone?).
I think that these stories on SCO are so one-sided because after more than a year on this story, it has been thoroughly exposed to the point of ridicule. It's sort of the way that the public responds to other types of lawsuits that seem frivolous at first glance; it's possible that a seemingly frivolous lawsuit may have have merit, but that doesn't stop the public from being highly sceptical.
SCO's problem is that they decided (highly unwisely from a litigation viewpoint) to spin their action in the press. This is completely contrary to standard practice when it comes to lawsuits ("No comment, the matter is before the courts"). All of their ill-informed, contradictory and bombastic press quotes are coming back to haunt them, as you can be sure that IBM will use any prior inconsistent statement to cross-examine and impeach their evidence now.
I think that your definition of propaganda is the most insightful one I've seen on this site. However (and this will seem far-left nutty to most slashdotters), I think Moore's film serves as propaganda in a subversive way to actually reinforce certain memes that are peculiar to the U.S. and generally serve the elite class.
As with Al Franken's Lying Liars book, F9/11 does not question the moral validity of attacking Afghanistan following 9/11. In fact, just like Franken, Moore criticizes Bush Jr. for not doing enough on Afghanistan. Leaving aside the merits of this military intervention, what Moore (and Franken) essentially do is limit the debate so that the Afghan invasion is taken for granted as being justified.
Also, Moore and Franken are not inherently against the invasion of Iraq; they criticize Bush Jr. for doing it unilaterally and with a false pretext. However, neither really debate whether an invasion could ever be justified, even if the invasion had U.N. backing or if biological/chemical weapons had been found.
Noam Chomsky has said that political debate in the U.S. is confined to polarized expressions contained within a narrow spectrum of ideas. For example, on the bellweather issue of same-sex marriage, it's kind of funny that both the Bush and Kerry tickets are against it; Kerry-Edward's position that they would support civil unions is basically the same position taken by the Conservatives here in Canada, a position that the electorate found too right-wing.
I actually found Franken's book to be surprisingly right-wing, even though it was funny and entertaining. Similarly, Moore's film, while entertaining, misguidedly blamed the Iraq fiasco entirely on Bush Jr's incompetence, even while it was reinforcing U.S. notions of patriotism and duty to the military. Missing from Moore's film was any context on how Bush Jr's invasion was a continuation of questionable U.S. foreign policy in Iraq during the 1990's under both Bush Sr. and Clinton. And missing from this entire debate is whether Kerry will do anything differently, or merely continue American imperialism albeit under a kinder, gentler guise (note that even Chomsky is saying vote Kerry, just to get Bush Jr. out).
Actually, I just watched Aliens again last weekend, and it's amazing how well it (and the original Alien) stand up over 20 years later. The dialogue in Aliens is simply brilliant, which is obvious when you compare it to other films.
Witness the immortal lines, often quoted on./, such as "Let's nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure", "Fucking A!", "Game over man, game over!", "I don't know which species is worse; at least you don't see them fucking each other over for a percentage", etc.
Aliens is really the first theatrical adaptation of Starship Troopers, and is much better than the eventual Starship Troopers itself.
My home LAN specs are almost identical to yours. A Celeron 366 is my firewall/file server, a Pentium III 500 MHz (generously donated gratis from a friend ) is a dedicated DVD ripper, a Duron 1.2GHz home office/entertainment workstation and K6-2 300MHz notebook with Netgear MA401 pcmcia wifi card (discarded from my dad; the LCD is wonky and needs to be held together by a bungee cord, but otherwise it works great; I'm posting this from it now)
I like your idea. I've generally avoided watching films that I think that I will dislike, eg. Battlefield Earth, Gigli, etc.
This would also rule out films that I've watched for free; I remember downloading Queen of the Damned, and not being able to get through the first 10 minutes. Also, I had a pass to the original Stargate, and boy am I glad I didn't pay for that.
For films that I've paid for, there was one that I remember as "Vampires from Outer Space" with Steve Railsbeck ah yes, Lifeforce. That was unwatchable.
The Corporation has been a relative success here in Canada.
I took a (Canadian) Constitutional Law course with Joel Bakan, the author of the Corporation, at the University of British Columbia. He is one of most interesting professors that I ever had.
Slashdot Mirror
Evolution is a scientific theory not because it can be proven (you can never do that), but because it can be tested by experiments (even if the results of the experiments are historical and recorded in the geology of the earth or in the molecules of our cells).
Creationism, on the other hand, cannot be ever be disproven and therefore lacks any value as a testable scientific theory. Without falsifiability, how could you test which deity(ies) created life? Jehovah, Zeus, Brahman, Marduk or Xenu? By which methods? Speaking a word or dreaming a dream?
I could say that life was created by the sneeze of an extraterrestial entity and you would have no way of judging and distinguishing the validity of that assertion from say, Jehovah, in the absence of falsifiability.
You're in luck if you can get CBC (the Canadian equivalent of the BBC). From the article, it seems that the leak may have originated from a "supplier" to the CBC.
Autoplay sues Microsoft, regarding a patent on automatically executing installation programs on CD-ROMs and other devices.
Timeline Inc. successfully sues Microsoft over breach of licence for three patents concerning SQL Server. Timeline actually threatened to sue third party developers and customers using Microsoft's product. Fortunately, they never followed through on those threats.
Microsoft settles with Intertrust, after losing a preliminary ruling to Intertrust. The lawsuit was based on Intertrust's DRM patent portfolio.
Not Reiser4, but there are some tools to access Reiser3 from Windows: RFSTool, and YAReG, a graphical frontend for RFSTool.
As for the cases, judging from the quality of your posts, I think that you are more than capable of understanding them! Supreme Court of Canada cases have summaries at the beginning, that are quite accessible.
End of the day, hope someone sees this: Right To Privacy Campaign, a website with links and documents related to the risk to privacy posed to Canadians by the U.S. PATRIOT Act.
The Charter itself is a balancing act between different rights. As you correctly noted, one is free to express one's religion as long as it doesn't impinge on someone else's freedom.
If you're really interested, the leading Supreme Court of Canada case is R. v. Keegstra. As a counter-point, see R. v. Zundel, where the accused was acquitted of spreading falsehoods about the Holocaust because the relevant portions of the Criminal Code were found to be unconstitutional.
Watch the entire mini-series. The president's cancer is integral to the overall plot, and Adama is far from perfect. In fact, both Roslin and Adama do things that are morally questionable and actually chilling.
Wow, a Windows user telling me to "RTFM"... classic. But you're absolutely right; Windows is too difficult and requires too much googling for a dummy like me to use, so I'll stick with Knoppix and the opensource Matrox drivers.
I swapped out all the cards, and isolated the problem to the Matrox G450. However, when I booted with a Knoppix CD, everything was fine at 1024x768, so I knew that the videocard was functional.
After spending the weekend downloading, installing and reinstalling the Windows drivers for both the VIA chipset and the Matrox videocard to no avail, my wife got pissed off at me. She asked me, "What's wrong with it?" and I said, "Well, the card works because Knoppix runs fine, but Windows seems to have a problem with it." So she told me, "Then get rid of Windows, and put Linux on it!" (bless her!). So since that day, we've been Linux only...
In case anyone is interested, this last summer, I installed Windows 2000 briefly for a specific application. Still encountered the same problem with the videocard. However, this time after much, much googling and experimenting, I came across a suggestion to lower the AGP Aperture to 4MB, and it worked. Apparently, the problem is the combination of the Matrox videocard and the Abit motherboard. Sorry, don't have the URL of the solution handy. But at this point, we're pretty used to Linux, and we're never going back (I removed the Windows 2k install after I was done with it).
Several other posts have mentioned Le Guin's other great works, beside the Earthsea series -- the Dispossessed, the Left Hand of Darkness, the Lathe of Heaven -- but the story that most clearly defines her literary motivation is The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.
Le Guin is fascinated by the concept of Utopia. In the Dispossessed, she conjectures "If anarchism / communism could work, what would it look like?". The Lathe of Heaven explicitly deals with the theme of Utopia, and how one person's utopia is another's hell.
Omelas is more than a story: it's a thought experiment. What is most disturbing and haunting about it is how the utopian society of Omelas only becomes real and believable once Le Guin reveals the dark, horrible bargain that the denizens of Omelas made to have their perfect world. To paraphrase Mr. Smith in the Matrix, it's as if humans need suffering and evil in order to believe in existence.
On topic, Earthsea is fascinating because she attempts to weave a mythology as different from the Tolkien motif as she could get. Tehanu, written 25 years after the original trilogy, is Le Guin's revisiting of Earthsea, after she embraced feminism.
Le Guin is also notable in that she views science fiction with an anthropologist's eye, not a technologist. She is interested in the sociological impact of science and technology. Nevertheless, her stories are well grounded in scientific principles.
No faster-than-light warp drives or hyperspace; her characters have to make do with near lightspeed. And because of relativity, even though it takes a spacefarer one night to go to another star system, 100 years pass by on her homeworld. In the 1960's, Le Guin also invented the concept of the ansible, which was inspired by the principle of quantum entanglement (she called it the "Principle of Simultaneity" because the term "quantum entanglement" hadn't been coined yet).
I know of many workers who are required to use these tags as part of their employer's worksite access policy, and although the employer is not supposed to use RFIDs for work performance purposes, the attendance of the workers is being tracked down to the second.
These devices are being implemented so gradually that I don't think the implications have been fully thought through by the public.
BTW, I was going to link a bunch of previous /. stories on the subject, but I don't know how the code works here; doesn't seem to work when I preview the submission and shows the text of the entire link. Anyway, just search this site for "RFID" for the most recent headlines.
Your statement is quite true. Both corporations and "intellectual property" (ie. copyrights, trademarks and patents) are more than legal fictions, however; they exist as sanctions from the State.
You have to apply to the government for incorporation, and follow the regulations. Similarly, the government decides whether you are entitled to a trademark or patent. Copyrights are controlled by statute.
As others have noted many times before, the various forms of intellectual property are government-sanctioned monopolies over some market sector, intended to improve the overall public good.
As a Libertarian, you probably instinctively abhor these constructs as they represent the ultimate government intervention in the free market.
The problem with corporations and intellectual property now is that the parameters for considering their defects have becomed so limited that it is impossible for the public to successfully challenge these institutions. The courts can't go beyond what is enshrined in law, so in order to change the system, the public must change the legislation.
When the subject is asked questions about the story, the subject will honestly answer with what s/he believes to be the truth.
"Yes, sir, there were definitely Iraqis among the 9-11 terrorists!"
While I love my Matrox G450, the fact is, Matrox will never release another card like it, nor will they improve on it. If the Tech Source project works, then one day, it will release a card that is superior to the G450.
If you read the mailing list archive, you'll see that what they are proposing is a card with simple, OpenGL compatible 3D. The interface will be PCI at first. My impression is that they have mini-ITX boards in mind. The last paragraph of your post is correct: they will probably target commodity Linux (and significantly, BSD) boxes.
I think that this is a great idea. Right now, if you want open source 3D, the only good hardware available is the Matrox G400/450/550 line, and that's over 5 years old. I bought my G450 in 1999 and am still using it quite happily, but I would certainly buy an open hardware card from Tech Source if this project comes to fruition.
As someone on OSNews posted, this project could be profitable for a small company even if it would be considered a flop by ATI or Nvidia.
My wife and I are completely hooked on Battlestar Galactica. I remember the series when I was a kid, and I thought that it was unwatchable back then. This new series, in contrast, is completely brilliant.
I was just driving home, and the CBC Radio (am) show "As It Happens" just featured a segment on the Firefox 1.0 release. It's finally mainstream!
Further, SCO has not helped itself by issuing numerous public statements that contradict their representations in court.
As far as Groklaw goes, as a lawyer I cannot emphasize enough how innovative and unique that website is. Sure, Pamela Jones has a distinct bias, but at least you know up front where she stands so you can evaluate her opinions accordingly. The real value of that site is the sheer comprehensiveness of the public statements and filings organized in its database. A resource like that would cost someone tens (or possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars to compile privately, and yet here it is offered to the public for free. It's like open source litigation, and I hope that Groklaw or sites like it continue in the future for other legal/political/social issues (software patents anyone?).
I think that these stories on SCO are so one-sided because after more than a year on this story, it has been thoroughly exposed to the point of ridicule. It's sort of the way that the public responds to other types of lawsuits that seem frivolous at first glance; it's possible that a seemingly frivolous lawsuit may have have merit, but that doesn't stop the public from being highly sceptical.
SCO's problem is that they decided (highly unwisely from a litigation viewpoint) to spin their action in the press. This is completely contrary to standard practice when it comes to lawsuits ("No comment, the matter is before the courts"). All of their ill-informed, contradictory and bombastic press quotes are coming back to haunt them, as you can be sure that IBM will use any prior inconsistent statement to cross-examine and impeach their evidence now.
As with Al Franken's Lying Liars book, F9/11 does not question the moral validity of attacking Afghanistan following 9/11. In fact, just like Franken, Moore criticizes Bush Jr. for not doing enough on Afghanistan. Leaving aside the merits of this military intervention, what Moore (and Franken) essentially do is limit the debate so that the Afghan invasion is taken for granted as being justified.
Also, Moore and Franken are not inherently against the invasion of Iraq; they criticize Bush Jr. for doing it unilaterally and with a false pretext. However, neither really debate whether an invasion could ever be justified, even if the invasion had U.N. backing or if biological/chemical weapons had been found.
Noam Chomsky has said that political debate in the U.S. is confined to polarized expressions contained within a narrow spectrum of ideas. For example, on the bellweather issue of same-sex marriage, it's kind of funny that both the Bush and Kerry tickets are against it; Kerry-Edward's position that they would support civil unions is basically the same position taken by the Conservatives here in Canada, a position that the electorate found too right-wing.
I actually found Franken's book to be surprisingly right-wing, even though it was funny and entertaining. Similarly, Moore's film, while entertaining, misguidedly blamed the Iraq fiasco entirely on Bush Jr's incompetence, even while it was reinforcing U.S. notions of patriotism and duty to the military. Missing from Moore's film was any context on how Bush Jr's invasion was a continuation of questionable U.S. foreign policy in Iraq during the 1990's under both Bush Sr. and Clinton. And missing from this entire debate is whether Kerry will do anything differently, or merely continue American imperialism albeit under a kinder, gentler guise (note that even Chomsky is saying vote Kerry, just to get Bush Jr. out).
Witness the immortal lines, often quoted on ./, such as "Let's nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure", "Fucking A!", "Game over man, game over!", "I don't know which species is worse; at least you don't see them fucking each other over for a percentage", etc.
Aliens is really the first theatrical adaptation of Starship Troopers, and is much better than the eventual Starship Troopers itself.
My home LAN specs are almost identical to yours. A Celeron 366 is my firewall/file server, a Pentium III 500 MHz (generously donated gratis from a friend ) is a dedicated DVD ripper, a Duron 1.2GHz home office/entertainment workstation and K6-2 300MHz notebook with Netgear MA401 pcmcia wifi card (discarded from my dad; the LCD is wonky and needs to be held together by a bungee cord, but otherwise it works great; I'm posting this from it now)
This would also rule out films that I've watched for free; I remember downloading Queen of the Damned, and not being able to get through the first 10 minutes. Also, I had a pass to the original Stargate, and boy am I glad I didn't pay for that.
For films that I've paid for, there was one that I remember as "Vampires from Outer Space" with Steve Railsbeck ah yes, Lifeforce. That was unwatchable.
The Corporation has been a relative success here in Canada.
I took a (Canadian) Constitutional Law course with Joel Bakan, the author of the Corporation, at the University of British Columbia. He is one of most interesting professors that I ever had.
One problem with Dostoevsky, though; he died in 1881.