Category Archives: humanities

me and my chainsaw

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 … Continue reading

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truncated icosahedra

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

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anarcho history

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.

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do they didn’t done it or don’t they?

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 … Continue reading

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collect them all!

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 … Continue reading

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after this I’ll try to leave the TwoPercenters alone

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 … Continue reading

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classifying legislation

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 … Continue reading

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