Category Archives: humanities

who owns the alphabet?

Results of searching for each of 26 letters. (Found at Aaron Swartz’s Googlog)

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fun in the courtroom

Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato. No, sir. I mean to swat him [in] the head with it. Pursuant to Rule 32, I may use the deposition “for any purpose” and that is the purpose for which I … Continue reading

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and then there’s the Rule of Five

Just found again, by chance, something that crossed my mind the other day. The author of The Bible Code responded thus in 1997 to the obvious criticism that you can find anything if you massage random data enough: “When my … Continue reading

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hwæt!

Hrodulf the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An Original Old English Poem Hwæt, Hrodulf readnosa hrandeor– Næfde þæt nieten unsciende næsðyrlas! Glitenode and gladode godlice nosgrisele. . . . . This came to me by mail some weeks ago, with the funny letters mangled beyond my … Continue reading

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1892

John J. Miller alerts us at The Corner that John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born eleventy-one years ago today. Which reminds me of yet another of my oddball notions. I don’t like the word eleventy-first (or even twenty-first), because the … Continue reading

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teeming, with orcs

Straight Dope Message Board – If LotR Had Been Written By Someone Else!? (ten pages so far; I’ve only looked at the first and last, but those are quite good on the whole) Update: The entries have been more neatly … Continue reading

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Learned Hand

Could that guy turn a phrase or what? Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs … Continue reading

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