Author Archives: Semantic Overload

Born in India, now working for a doctoral degree in Computer Science at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. A free thinking liberal, strong advocate for human rights, socially active with extensive volunteering within the local community.
You can follow me on twitter @chrosyn

Philosophical Forays into Justice with Michael Sandel

Prof. Michael Sandel from Harvard University offered a 12-lecture course on “Justice: A Journey in Moral Reasoning” last year. Prof. Sandel makes a wonderful argument for studying philosophy as a means for understanding the answers that we already know, and he goes on to warn the audience that understanding political and social philosophy is, ironically, going to make you worse citizens, not better! You couldn’t ask for a more provocative set up to the lectures!

Here is the first video of the 12 [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY]

January 14, 2010 – 7:35 pm | By Semantic Overload | Posted in discussion, education, philosophy, video | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off

Sex Riding the Tech Wave (NSFW)

Its not surprise that technology has been influenced heavily by people wanting to have sex or see other people have sex. Historically, when printing press came out, we had porn books follow soon; in the VHS vs. BetaMax war, VHS won primarily because porn videos were released in VHS and not in BetaMax (because BetaMax tapes, at least initially, were only 60 min. long); similarly when cameras came out, we had porn photographs. Why when Poloroids came out, you had home made porn hitting the cultural market in no time! So where is technology driving sex/porn now (or is it the other way around)?

January 12, 2010 – 5:43 pm | By Semantic Overload | Posted in technology | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)

US Death Penalty Sans An Intellectual Argument

On October 23rd, 2009, the American Law Institute(ALI)  resolved to withdraw Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code (MPC). The official copy of the resolution (proposed on April 15, 2009) is available here (in PDF). Why is this important? Simply because peeling back the obfuscating legalese reveals that this resolution has effectively demolished the intellectual …

January 8, 2010 – 11:54 pm | By Semantic Overload | Posted in debate, discussion, legal, US | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off

TSA is like a Chihuahua

Indeed, TSA is much like the Chihuahua that Jeff Dunham talks about in the opening act of his “Spark of Insanity” tour. The sketch goes something like this [source]: “I figured out size does matter in the canine brain. Bill – golden retriever – very smart animal. When he was a puppy and I had …

January 5, 2010 – 12:43 am | By Semantic Overload | Posted in humor, US | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off