Saturday I bought yet another historical atlas: Muir’s (1927/52). I learn to my surprise that southern British Columbia was once called New Caledonia, and northern Manitoba (before 1912) was New South Wales. Why isn’t there a New North Wales or, for that matter, a New just plain Wales? (William Penn proposed to name his colony New Wales; the King disapproved, and Sylvania was Penn’s second choice.)
(The site to which Bruce cites is dead, so I’ve no idea whether this is the whole song or not.)
can you say it with a straight face?
Forensic theology. (Cited by Travis.) (Link updated 2006.)
Atheism and Unalienable Rights by Robert E. Meyer (also cited today on RRND):
Skeptics want to deny that rights come from God, but if they are correct, then there is no sound philosophical footings undergirding their perpetual claim to any rights. They are walking on a tenuous tightrope of conceptual fiat. Obviously they have not thought this issue through very carefully. . . .
In other words, atheists who speak of rights are guilty of what Ayn Rand (an atheist) called “the fallacy of the stolen concept”. Obviously Meyer has not taken the time to find a libertarian atheist (how hard can it be?) and ask a few questions. It would be amusing – for a few minutes – to hear him and an Objectivist debate the roots of rights. ( . . more . . )
Vishnu Integrating Analog Computer?
Mars has a crater named Vishniac. If you’re anything like me, you’re curious about the etymology of such a name: it doesn’t fit the spelling and morphology of any language that comes to mind.
Ephraim Vishniac tells all.
if the shoe were on the other foot, it would be a glove
Worth a giggle: What if Scientists Behaved Like Fundamentlists?
Why Nerds are Unpopular — an essay by Paul Graham blaming the neuroses of adolescence on the pointlessness of schooling. I’m surprised to find I haven’t blogged it already; so here it is so I’ll be able to find it again.
As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they’re made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere.
. . .
This is the sort of society that gets created in American secondary schools. And it happens because these schools have no real purpose beyond keeping the kids all in one place for a certain number of hours each day. What I didn’t realize at the time, and in fact didn’t realize till very recently, is that the twin horrors of school life, the cruelty and the boredom, both have the same cause.