Drunk with power, last night I did some severe pruning in Wikipedia’s main Heraldry article, taking out a lot of arcana that do not belong in an overview (barrulets? erminites?) and adding a few paragraphs on design principles, symbolism (or lack thereof) and styles. I’m eager to see what someone will do to it next.

I’ve also been poking at a lot of Buffy-related pages, mostly adding links and reshaping awkward or prolix sentences to my taste.

I learn to my surprise that the iconic soccer ball is younger than I am.

Before I lose the link again: An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West (PDF), by Terry Anderson and P J Hill, Journal of Libertarian Studies vol.3 no.1.

There’s an old joke that “there are no guilty men in prison,” i.e. that practically all inmates claim to have been unjustly accused. I’ve also heard that in fact most convicts cheerfully admit to the charges. The latter seems more likely given that reporters find it worth mentioning that so-and-so (e.g. the late Tookie) “has always maintained his innocence”.

I recently found (but did not save the address of) a website listing the last words of convicts put to death in Texas. I read the most recent dozen or so. Almost half expressed remorse, and just one expressed a hope that the real criminal would someday be found.

In a review of a biography of Lillian Hellman, The Economist used the phrase “at the height of the first cold war in 1952.”

I’m always the last to know. Is this usage widespread? When was the height of the second cold war?

In an otherwise generally sound call for separation of church and state, 2%Co had this to say about democracy in Dixie (1789-1865):

. . . These slaves didn’t always like their lot in life, but according to your logic, Mrs Gong, they should have just shut up and slaved away. Hey, rule by the majority, right? They even had a nifty way of making sure that the white folks stayed in the majority — they made black folk equal to only 3/5 of a person. What a great deal! . . .

I put my quixotic toe in:

I’m surprised to see this [common] misconception propagated by such enlightened people. . . . If the slavers had their way at the Convention of 1787, slaves would have been counted fully, not 3/5. It was the Northerners who wanted slaves counted for zero. . . .

After going around a couple of times, 2%Co apparently agree with this point (though to avoid conceding that I said something accurate they present it as their own), but insist that it supports their original statement — and threaten to delete any further posts from me. It appears that they have done so, so I’ll repeat my conclusion here (as best I can recall it):

Now I admit I’m not clever enough to see how these statements can both be accurate, viz that it was in the interest of the same faction to reduce the representation of slaves in the census and to increase it; or why, given that slaves had no vote, any nifty trick was needed to ensure they remained a minority. If you can resolve this seeming contradiction, I’ll be delighted at learning something new; if you can say “oops” and move on, I’ll be impressed with your integrity. Since you refuse to do either, I guess I’m left with the hope that another reader – if you have any – will help me out.

I find that I wrote in private mail a few years ago:

I’d divide legislation into three broad classes: that concerned with the structure and management of the state itself; codifications and harmonisations of existing custom (basic criminal law, the Uniform Commercial Code); and economic interventions, what Hayek and I disapprove of.

Funny that I haven’t thought of that taxonomy since. Can you improve on it?