the two or more cultures

Bob’s Cartoons “I later discovered that, of all the disciplines at CMU, material science is the only one with no cartoons at all in their hallway.”

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kick him again!

It’s a guilty pleasure to watch James Lileks devote his awesome talent to shooting fish in a barrel.

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“a disgrace to american science”

Philip Stott on l’affaire Lomborg.
(Link from Andy Kashdan, from John Cole.)

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QotD

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

Necessity is a dangerous plea for the privilege of power; especially when the sole judge of it is the power pretending it.

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QotD

Samuel Johnson 1768 (by way of the Future of Freedom Foundation)

They make a rout about universal liberty without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty. Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.

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the craft of letters

Typecaster seeks apprentice. (From GirlHacker, who picked Rebecca’s pocket.)

I have a friend who used to cast his own bullets; dunno whether he still does. Sometimes he used wheel-balancing weights discarded (why??) by car mechanics, and sometimes he used an alloy called “Linotype metal”. Since he also runs a press (offset) for his organization’s leaflets and newsletters, I imagine he took delight in the symbolic junction of two key freedoms.

Oh by the way, a tip for leadfounders: it stinks up the room a lot less if you put a layer of cat-litter on top of the metal.

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it’s magnetism, darling

Couples go to the Magnetic Pole to conceive. (Bottom of the story.) It’s a funny old world.

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