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S. Abbas Raza

S. Abbas Raza

Originally from Karachi, Pakistan, Abbas has an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering & computer science from Johns Hopkins University, and a graduate degree in philosophy from Columbia University. He lives with his wife, Margit Oberrauch, and their feline friend, Frederica Krueger, in the small, very beautiful city of Brixen in the Italian Alps. Email: s.abbas.raza.1 [at] gmail.com

Talking Pints: 1896, 1932, 1980 and 2008–What Kenny Rogers Can Teach the Democrats

Posted on Monday, Jun 5, 2006 12:03AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

by Mark Blyth “You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run.” Kenny Rogers may seem an unlikely choice for the post of Democratic party strategist, but the advice of ‘the Gambler’ may in fact be the single best strategy that…

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Monday Musing: Frederica Krueger, Killing Machine

Posted on Monday, May 29, 2006 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

It is a warm, languorous, late-spring day here in New York, and I don’t feel like thinking about anything complicated. So, I’m just going to tell you a cat story today. A couple of months ago, my wife Margit’s friend Bailey asked us to look after her cat (really just a kitten) while she was…

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Monday Musing: The Palm Pilot and the Human Brain, Part III

Posted on Monday, May 8, 2006 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Part III: How Brains Might Work, Continued… In Part I of this twice-extended column, I tried to explain how it is that very complex machines such as computers (like the Palm Pilot) are designed and built by using a hierarchy of concepts and vocabularies. I then used this idea to segue into how attempts to…

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Monday Musing: The Palm Pilot and the Human Brain, Part II

Posted on Monday, Apr 17, 2006 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Part II: How Brains Might Work Two weeks ago I wrote the first part of this column in which I made an attempt to explain how it is that we are able to design very complex machines like computers: we do it by employing a hierarchy of concepts, each layer of which builds upon the…

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Monday Musing: The Palm Pilot and the Human Brain

Posted on Monday, Apr 3, 2006 3:23PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Today I would like to explain something scientists know well: how computers work, and then use some of the conceptual insights from that discussion to present an interesting recent model of something relatively unknown: how human brains might work. (This model is due to Jeff Hawkins, the inventor of the Palm Pilot–a type of computer,…

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Monday Musing: On Shaving and Peacocks

Posted on Monday, Mar 6, 2006 10:32PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

My father, whom I called Bhayya, grew up in the early part of the last century in the city of Lucknow in northern India. This intersection of period and place was perhaps the acme of Urdu-speaking culture, known ever since all over the subcontinent not only for its sublime literary achievements and the refinement of…

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Monday Musing: Good Reason, in Good Faith

Posted on Monday, Feb 13, 2006 11:26PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

A review of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett. Isaiah Berlin resurrected the line “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” from the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, and famously used it to divide thinkers into two camps: The first kind of intellectual and artistic…

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Mohammed Cartoon Madness and Understanding

Posted on Monday, Feb 13, 2006 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Imagine this: a small group of white supremacists collects in Strauss Park near where I live in New York City, and then marches up Broadway, past 125th Street, into the heart of Harlem, all the while chanting anti-African-American slogans of the vilest kind. They have a permit from the city for their march. They use…

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Monday Musing: A Moral Degeneracy

Posted on Monday, Jan 23, 2006 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

One of the few vices I have always had an extreme aversion and almost allergic reaction to is gambling in all its multifarious incarnations. So much so, that I have never even learned to play a single card game, because they are all somehow indissolubly (and probably unfairly) associated with gambling in my mind since…

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Monday Musing: In the Peace Corps’ Shadow

Posted on Monday, Jan 2, 2006 11:37PMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

A couple of weeks ago the travel writer and memoirist Paul Theroux published an opinion piece entitled “The Rock Star’s Burden” in the New York Times. It is an article full of bitterness and bile where, in a display of almost unbelievable hubris, Theroux basically expresses a thinly disguised disappointment that the country of Malawi,…

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Happy Newton’s Day!

Posted on Sunday, Dec 25, 2005 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Despite the fact that December 25th happens to be the birthday of a number of important historical figures (for example, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, which is where I am from), last year we at 3 Quarks Daily thought we would celebrate Newton’s birthday on this date. Unbeknownst to us, Richard Dawkins had…

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Monday Musing: Richard Dawkins, Relativism and Truth

Posted on Monday, Dec 12, 2005 12:30AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

[Please see NOTE at end of this post.*] Richard Dawkins has been an intellectual hero of mine since college, where I first read The Selfish Gene. Though I thought I understood the theory of evolution before I read that book, reading it was such a revelation (not to mention sheer enjoyment) that afterward I marveled…

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Monday Musing: Reexamining Religion

Posted on Monday, Nov 21, 2005 12:55AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Pervez Hoodbhoy is a well-known physicist who teaches at the Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. He is also well-known for his frequent and intelligent interventions in politics. In an article entitled Miracles, Wars, and Politics he writes: On the morning of the first Gulf War (1991), having just heard the news of the US attack…

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Monday Musing: Posthumously Arrested for Assaulting Myself

Posted on Monday, Oct 31, 2005 1:01AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Those of you who have never taken 20-24 hour flights can probably scarcely imagine the vertigo-inducing fatigue involved. I have taken one of these flights fairly regularly for decades now, from Karachi to New York, and find it hard to understand how my elderly parents ever survived them. In addition to the sheer length of…

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Monday Musing: Be the New Kinsey

Posted on Monday, Oct 10, 2005 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Last week my wife and I saw the biopic Kinsey in which Liam Neeson plays the entomologist turned pioneering sex researcher, Dr. Alfred Charles Kinsey. It’s a pretty good movie. Rent the DVD. Kinsey spent the early part of his career as a zoologist studying gall wasps, on which he became the world’s foremost expert.…

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Planks from the Lumberyard

Posted on Monday, Sep 26, 2005 9:44PMMonday, January 7, 2019 by S. Abbas Raza

Spider Holes & Spider Goats: Tuning in the (White) Noises from the Margins As if anyone needed further reason to become even more paranoid (or is it “perceptive”?), a marine involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein tells us that the “spider-hole” scenario was a carefully contrived spectacle directed by a “military production” unit; apparently…

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Monday Musing: General Relativity, Very Plainly

Posted on Monday, Sep 19, 2005 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

[NOTE: Since I wrote and published this essay last night, I have received a private email from Sean Carroll, who is the author of an excellent book on general relativity, as well as a comment on this post from Daryl McCullough, both pointing out the same error I made: I had said, as do many…

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Planks from the Lumberyard: Bathroom Pastoralism, or, The Anecdote of the Can

Posted on Monday, Sep 12, 2005 11:43AMMonday, January 7, 2019 by S. Abbas Raza

First, a note to the reader about wood. “Lumber,” a word that we now associate with the Home Depot and deforestation, once denoted the contents or printed products of the mind, which, in turn, was sometimes known as the “lumber-room” (see, for instance, page 54 of Tristram Shandy ). The title of my column, then,…

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Monday Musing: Regarding Regret

Posted on Monday, Sep 5, 2005 3:54AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

[Abbas Raza is filling in for Morgan Meis, who is indisposed.] Recently someone asked me one of those highly meaningful questions, the answers to which, if shared, are supposed to tell both persons very important things about each other. The question was: “Is there anything you really regret in your life?” I didn’t know how…

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Monday Musing: Three Dreams, Three Athletes

Posted on Monday, Aug 29, 2005 12:00AMFriday, December 8, 2017 by S. Abbas Raza

Sports figures have always held great fascination for me, and over the years I have regarded various athletes with an almost worshipful awe. When I was a child, there was the legendary cricket batsman, Hanif Mohammed, who still holds the world record for most runs in an innings in first class cricket: an unbelievable 499.…

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Recent Comments on 3QD

  • Ken_Pidcock I'm afraid that I'm inclined to laugh about claims regarding the benefits of microdosing given my experience thereof. Many years ago, I ate one of a...

    Microdosing LSD in the name of self-improvement ·  Saturday, December 14, 2019

  • Bill Murray Bill, Abbas, Michael, at first, when I bought an expensive camera I felt duty bound to keep my head down in the manual, to get my money’s worth. I...

    Monday Photo ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • brianwhit I wonder what % of the Conservative party is anti semitic? If a blurb that I read, that 00.6% of the Labor party is anti-semitic, it axiomatically...

    How Jews Have Made an Impact on the Modern World ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Jim Strickland Thanks to Jim for sharing the inspiring words. Always worthwhile reading Lao Tzu. There are many fake Lao Tzu and fake Buddha quotes on the internet....

    Friday Poem ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Jim Strickland Well said. There have been politicians on both sides of politics in the UK who have made stupid comments that could be construed as antisemitic, but...

    How Jews Have Made an Impact on the Modern World ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Tove K https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/freeman-dyson-global-warming-esp-and-the-fun-of-being-bunkrapt/

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Niko Kitsakis Where has Freeman Dyson “gone off with the fairies”?

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • brianwhit It must be said that anti semitic Jeremy Corbin, and his anti semitic labor party,( here is Jeremy Corbin's own statement on the matter:Mr Corbyn's...

    How Jews Have Made an Impact on the Modern World ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Dan Damerville Very thoughtful.

    Climate Change Sickness ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Mr Acastos 1. Sloppy proofreading. 2. Credit the translator.

    Friday Poem ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Mike Bendzela Fourth.

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Tove K I'll third that.

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Tove K Denis Noble is yet another example of a very smart eminent scientist who has gone off with the fairies in his old age (Freeman Dyson also springs to...

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Dave Maier I'm reading Augustus now, and liking it (haven't read the others).

    I just let him have his beer ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • Ken_Pidcock Bring in Jim Watson. That'll seal the case.

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Friday, December 13, 2019

  • S Herb Dawkins is not addressing theologians and subtle concepts; he is talking to people who have been brought up with religion as promoted to and by the...

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • brianwhit Wonderful article. Eschatology, anyone? This reminds me a lot of the realities of hospice patients and their families. We all have existential...

    Climate Change Sickness ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • redsocs I don't see an inconsistency in using teleological models to understand some phenomenon and being a reductionist in the sense of Watkin's quote. The...

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • S Herb Meh too.

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • Don Strong Meh.

    An Argument Against Richard Dawkins ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • Ken_Pidcock I read Stoner after reading a previous review of Shields's book. Honestly, I don't know what the perfect novel would be like, but I found that one...

    I just let him have his beer ·  Thursday, December 12, 2019

  • Bill Benzon My grandfather had a Leica, and his own darkroom equipment. They took a Hasselblad to the moon, didn't they?

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • Michael Liss Bill and Abbas, now I'm getting flashbacks.....a couple of photography or audiophiles talking shop. Waiting for the Hasselblad and Leica references...

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • Bill Benzon Photoshop is as insane as MS Word. As you know, the sensor for any modern digital camera captures a wider dynamic range than any printer can print and...

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • jimculleny "Coetzee emphasises the fact that religious thought comes into being when the order of the world is broken." With that in mind religious thought may...

    The Death of Jesus ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • S. Abbas Raza Bill, for a casual photographer to try and know everything that modern cameras can do and all their features would be like a writer thinking they...

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • S. Abbas Raza As I said, too much focus (!) on that stuff actually prevented me from taking better pictures, but to each his/her own! :-)

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • Michael Liss To your and Bill's points, I always thought that one of the things that drew both my father and father-in-law to photography was the ritual of...

    Monday Photo ·  Wednesday, December 11, 2019

  • David Tiffany And don't forget His resurrection. https://downtownministries77.blogspot.com/2019/04/gospel-of-grace.html?m=1

    The Death of Jesus ·  Tuesday, December 10, 2019

  • Bill Benzon "...that experience and developing an eye for what might make a nice image was a lot more important than fancy equipment..." Yes, it's photographers...

    Monday Photo ·  Tuesday, December 10, 2019

3QD Design History and Credits

The original site was designed by S. Abbas Raza in 2004 but soon completely redesigned by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis in 2006. The next major revision was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde in 2013. And this current version 5.0 has been designed and deployed by Dumky de Wilde in collaboration with S. Abbas Raza.

3 Quarks Daily

3 Quarks Daily started in 2004 with the idea of creating a curated retreat for everything intellectual on the web. No clickbait, no fake news, not just entertainment, but depth and breadth —something increasingly hard to find on the internet today. If you like what we do, please consider making a donation.