today20201014

> the ratio of the volume to surface area decreases the larger you make a container

Did you mean to write the reverse? i.e the ratio of the surface area to volume decreases the larger you make a container.

> California made it illegal to charge the real risk adjusted price for insurance

I'd like to know more about this. Do you have a reference?

You raise a good point. The consistency of California's weather reminds me a bit of the movie Groundhog Day. Seasonal changes are so subtle that it is easy to forget that years have gone by...

It depends where you are in California. In parts of SoCal 100F is pretty typical. And the air quality is bad.

Harvey Mudd is an undergraduate-only college. All the others are R1 institutions.

> The basic principle is that your negative rights are a prohibition of what others can do to you.

Agreed - rights that are guaranteed by prohibiting certain actions, i.e. you have a right to $FOO, meaning that $BAR is prohibited.

Compare with:

> They conceptualize rights "negatively", as things the state shouldn't take away from you.

The formulation seems a little different: you have a right to $FOO, meaning that $BAR is allowed ("the state shouldn't take [$BAR] away from you").

> Many Texans conceptualize government and state uses of force (ie prosecution that can lead to imprisonment) as restrictions on their rights. This "negative rights" conceptualization is pretty common in the US, but especially common in Texas

So, the government/state has guaranteed a negative right to life, i.e. citizens are prohibited from actions that deprive someone's right to life, and in order to enforce this prohibition, citizens are deprived of their right to arbitrarily commit violence to each other, while the government/state has a monopoly.

Where does our right to arbitrarily commit violence come from? Is it just a "natural right"?

I am hesitant to agree that it's a moral victory - maybe it's more of a victory about metaphysics? (also, what is a metaphysical victory? :))

I have a similar story; undergrad at a public state school and grad at a private Ivy. My experience at the Ivy was eye-openi. The loudest [1] Ivy undergrads came from private elementary/high schools and had a very dismissive view of the students who matriculated from public elementary/high schools. Academic breaks were used for luxury travel.

[1] "loudest" in the sense that they made sure that other students knew where they came from.

In my experience summer in Minneapolis is fine.

Comparing it to where I have lived I think for heat and humidity, it is milder than central Texas / comparable to Rhode Island

Just comparing heat, it is milder than summer in the Central Valley/SoCal. SoCal heatwaves are oppressive.

Air quality in Minneapolis goes down when there are fires in the West, but it is obviously worse for us folks in the West.

Perhaps people experience cognitive dissonance when reconciling the things that you mentioned with beliefs about reincarnation?

I am relying on a rather common and uninformed understanding of Buddhism here, so I may be way off base.

EDIT: I had to look it up, but I guess European culture has contained some sort of belief in reincarnation (Plato's Republic, Book X / Myth of Er). I don't suppose this belief has much traction anymore, despite the strong influence of Plato (or Greek philosophy in general) on Christianity.

I'm an American; I don't like this, too.

My experience mirrors what is described in the article, but only with people from Europe. Non-native English speakers from Europe look down on Americans, in a sort of "gate-keeping" manner where Europeans "own" the language. They have a better grasp of the "precise and elaborate formal English" and do not hesitate to correct Americans and tell them they don't understand grammar and are uneducated. (I'm inclined to agree with them.)

My experience speaking with non-native speakers from Asia, India, and Central & South America has been different. Maybe we are more willing to accept that there is a language barrier, but no one "owns" it.

And, like the article says, trying to use a culturally relevant idiom is a futile task.

> That doesn't mean we're literally ascribing the power of levitation to them.

Exactly, it's figurative language. My point is that when we read in scripture that

> Moses asked God what his name was, God replies something like "I am who am".

the notion of Moses asking God may also be figurative.

God is a being in Genesis. He walks through the Garden.