[Upton] Sinclair wrote The Jungle [1906] to ignite a socialist movement on behalf of America’s workers. He did not even pretend to have actually witnessed or verified the horrendous conditions he ascribed to Chicago packing houses. Instead, he relied heavily on both his own imagination and hearsay. Indeed, a congressional investigation at the time found little substance in Sinclair’s allegations.
Ernest C. Pasour: We Can Do Better than Government Inspection of Meat (The Freeman, May 1998)
Independent Institute: History of Federal [drug] Regulation (cited by Sunni Maravillosa)
My One True Ex hears from her mother a rumor of an effort to “put the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress and the British Library on line”, and commands me to ask my Vast Network of Contacts what substance there is to it.
Mike Linksvayer promptly responds:
. . . you probably heard indirectly of [press release] which includes the NYPL and several universities, but not the LoC or British Library AFAIK. The Internet Archive also has several scanning projects involving various universities and grants from the LoC and British National Archives among others, see [press release]. Perhaps a news story mentioned both archive.org and Google.
Mail through yahoo.com.ar yesterday carried the tag Ahora podés usar Yahoo! Messenger en tu Unifón . . . . Shouldn’t podés be puedes?
Acton:
Many men have compressed their entire wisdom into portable aphorisms. Others have had it done for them.
Epigraph to — what else? — a collection of excerpts from the writings of Lord Acton.
I became curious as to when Acton was enlorded. Having no luck in two of the dead-tree books within reach, I turn to Wikipedia (thanks to Mike for leading me by example to acquire that habit), which mentions that our Acton’s maternal grandmother was created duc de Dalberg. Hm, I thought, what was Dalberg’s coat of arms? I open Rietstap’s Armorial and my eye soon falls on
Dalberg-Acton baron Acton — Shropshire (Baronet, 17 janv. 1643/44; baron, 11 déc. 1869.) . . . .
Now I need not finish reading the Wikipedia piece, ha ha. Acton’s arms, by the way, are given thus (my free translation):
Quarterly: I and IV Acton: gules semy of crosses crosslet fitchy or, two lions passant in pale argent; II and III subquarterly: 1 and 4 Kämmerer von Worms: azure, six fleurs-de-lis argent and a chief indented or; 2 and 3 Dalberg: or, a cross ancry sable; and over the subquarters an inescutcheon, azure, a tower argent. Crest: within a torse argent and gules, a human leg in armor, couped at the thigh and dripping blood. Supporters: two lions gardant proper, each collared of a chain or, and hanging therefrom a cross ancry gules.
No motto given here.
Robin Hanson: Is Fairness About Clear Fitness Signals?
Ryan Sager: The Killing of Peter McWilliams
Linda Schrock Taylor: Great Ideas of Homeschooling
. . By the way, I recently tried to post a comment on an old entry, and ran into a bug. If you yearn to express yourself and are similarly frustrated, there’s always mail.
What would political campaigns be like if approval voting — in which a vote for X cannot cause Y to lose to Z — were the rule?
Candidates other than the frontrunners might do more “positive” than “negative” campaigning, in the hope of mutual coat-tailing.
The major parties, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket, might (at least when not backing an incumbent) put up several candidates.