There are a number of movies that I consider much more suitable for television than theatre: Alien Versus Predator; Doom; Snakes on a Plane; The Cave; The Colony. The stories of these movies play out in environmentally-limited sometimes enclosed settings. In the theatre, I considered Alien Versus Predator the worst movie I ever had to sit through in my entire life, second perhaps only to the original Tron. But at home on a 36-inch display, it has become one of my all-time favourites. On the…

I recall the first time I encountered the idea of "asset allocation" many years ago. As the argument goes, the perfect allocation of assets should lead to the greatest return possible in light of one's risk tolerance. Perhaps thousands of years ago, although I haven't studied this in any detail, somebody had the idea that dancing in just the right way might satisfy the spirits enough to cause it to rain. There is the similar notion of delivering the perfect incantation to invoke supernatural…

Phenomenalism is sometimes described as a type of reductionism. Information about a complex object might be reduced to simple sensory details. For example, ignoring the many interesting features of the ice cream…