In Praise Of The Obvious, Pt 2

Scott Aaronson explains the usefulness of the Church-Turing thesis in a way that makes intuitive sense to me, a newbie to TCS. Awesome! That kind of post is why I love subscribing to his blog. The commenter Keith apparently disagrees, saying,

It occurs to me that if you’re taking positions in arguments that I, a layman, could easily take, then you’re either wasting your time or indulging a hobby.

His attitude exemplifies why it's so important to relentlessly praise those who understand the minutia in a field yet take the time and status hit to point out the obvious. If the pressure to complicate is manifest in an academic's blog posts, just imagine what one would feel while writing an illustrious journal article. 

The Valiant Never Taste Death But Once

After reading this interesting excerpted article from Dick Teresi's book The Undead, which discusses the difficulties in defining death by a single, consistent set of criteria and the social qualms that stirs, I decided to check out the Amazon reviews. The associated ratings were (and still are) quite shockingly bad! They follow the classic "so bad it's good" distribution, with 5 5-star ratings, 1 3-star rating, and 33 1-star ratings. So, given that I am always up for a good controversy, I decided to read and review it myself. Ultimately I mostly side with the critics, giving it two stars. If you are interested in the subject matter, I'd suggest instead Kenneth Iserson's Death to Dust, which is a bit older but much more level-headed and thorough treatment of similar issues.