teeming, with orcs

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

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 collected elsewhere.

Posted in fandom, prose | Leave a comment

Learned Hand

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

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 no constitution, no law, no court to save it. . . .

What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right . . . .

Posted in history, politics | Leave a comment

cunning

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

ScrappleFace: Sen. Frist Unveils GOP Racial Segregation Plan

Posted in race | Leave a comment

where was the battle of Waterloo?

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

A recent effort to measure the ignorance of college seniors included the question, “In what country was the Battle of Waterloo fought?” The ‘correct’ answer is Belgium, a state created 16 years later.

Waterloo is in Brabant, which at the time was (? or recently had been) part of the French Empire; before Boney’s conquests it was in the Austrian (and before that Spanish, and before that Burgundian) Netherlands.

Another question in the survey is “Do you have a favorite author?” I guess you’re illiterate if you can’t pick out just one. Among those listed was Christopher Stashass; I wonder whether it was the student or a clerk who misspelled Stasheff.

Posted in history | 1 Comment

bleak

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

Yet another tale of petty banal evil.

There are plenty of stories like this these days. I don’t know how many I’ve read where the writer describes some breach of civil liberties by employees of the state, then wraps it all up with a dire warning about what we as a nation are becoming, and how if we don’t put an end to it now, then we’re in for heaps of trouble. Well you know what? Nothing’s going to stop the inevitable. There’s no policy change that’s going to save us. There’s no election that’s going to put a halt to the onslaught of tyranny. It’s here already — this country has changed for the worse and will continue to change for the worse. There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state.

And that’s the first thing that child of ours is going to learn.

This, incidentally, is one of the many reasons I’m not about to have children; though I recognize enough hypocrisy in myself that I might change my mind if I should ever have the opportunity.

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment

how many bits are enough?

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

I wonder whether Hollywood digital visual effects use standard 24-bit color or something fancier.

Posted in neep-neep | Leave a comment

Uni High

Posted on Thursday, 2002 December 26 by Anton

My hi-skool’s alumnal newsletter came this week. I am pleased to learn that my fellow escapees include someone more eminent than that guy who writes about baseball for Newsweek, namely the late economist James Tobin, whose autobiography names two previous Nobelists from the same school.
In other news, the new Miss America transferred out of there because of a bully.

Posted in economics, me!me!me! | 1 Comment