Review: Fundamentals - Ten Keys to Reality
Fundamentals is written by a Physics Nobel prize winner (Frank Wilczek), and is an elegantly written paean to science as well as philosophy, which I thoroughly enjoyed. For one thing, he starts with…
Self-Appointed Pedagogues
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), "The Universal Exhibition of 1855: the Fine Arts," Selected Writings on Art and Literature , tr. P.E. Charvet (1972; rpt. London: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 115-139 (at…
A 2,400-Year-Old Pyramid Tomb Long Mistaken for a Shrine Opens to Visitors in Marmaris
A 2,400-year-old Pyramid Tomb in Marmaris, long known by local people as a shrine, has opened to visitors after the completion of conservation and landscaping work. The monument, located in Turgut…
Stranger Things
A sequel to TestamentTestament.On an ordinary person’s extraordinary journey I became a Christian when I was nine years old. I don’t remember the moment. My mother tells me we were at…
The Dictum of Kenilworth, Part 1
The end of the Second Barons' War required closure and reconciliation, and it came in the Dictum of Kenilworth, named for the castle in which the last rebels held out against royalist assault until…
Our Moral Obsession
Humans are moral obsessives. Anywhere you go, you’ll find people speaking in moral terms: “He didn’t treat me right,” “She’s arrogant,” “That’s a man you can respect,” and so on. All of these are…
New History Books for May 2026
Our pick of new history books for May. From the Vikings to the Weimar Republic, the Georgian Dining Room to Winston Churchill.
When Barth and Schleiermacher Kiss: Part 2, Welcome to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral
I have a diverse reading audience, from academics to my mom. (Hi, Mom!) I, myself, am not a formally trained theologian. But I do delight in popularizing and making accessible the theology I have…
Wartime Letters Going to a New Home, Part 2
I'm nearly finished curating my family history materials and finding safe new homes for artifacts that don't have a close, direct connection to my family. This is Part 2 of the saga of letters and…
Hiker finds 6th c. gold sword fitting
A hiker enjoying his morning constitutional in Sandnes, Norway, discovered a rare 6th century gold sword scabbard fitting. One of only 18 similar examples found in Northern Europe, the intricately…
Separation of Powers in the Indian Civilization
There are three main engines: Businesses for Wealth Creation. Politicians for Tax Collection. Monks for Allocation of Collected Taxes. But the power dynamics are in reverse. Monks sit on top of…
Collections: The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part V: Ladders are Chaos
Even orcs have lungs. “To be clear, the plan here is to run a 200m dash, then lift a heavy ladder, then rapidly climb that ladder and then be ready to immediately fight multiple Elven…
The Earth Is Full of Your Creatures
The Earth Is Full of Your Creatures Scripture: Psalm 104:1-4, 24-31 Rev. Nathan Hill I was listening to a presentation from a theologian and researcher from South Africa who introduced two proverbs…
“Traces of a Prehistoric Race of Supermen”: The Real Story of the Soyopa “Giants”
Archaeologists racing to excavate the bones of a lost race of giants in a remote wilderness. Hints of a lost civilization. An attack by hostile Natives, and sensational dispatches from a reporter on…
Apology - Plato
The Apology is Plato's account of Socrates' defense at his trial where he faced charges of impiety and corrupting the youth. The most important thing to understand going into reading this is the…
1894: The Astor Kitten Who Caused a Stir at 320 Fifth Avenue
When a little black and white kitten fell from a ledge on Fifth Avenue, everyone who witnessed the event placed the blame on the ASPCA and the fire department. We’ll never know who was at…
Physis vs Nomos
I listened to the most recent 'The Students' episode with an interesting discussion on physis vs nomos.I wanted to write my take on it. I dont think I'm breaking new ground here necessarily but maybe…
Why Did Thomas Harriot Invent Binary?
Strickland, L. Why Did Thomas Harriot Invent Binary? Math Intelligencer 46, 57–62 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-023-10271-9 PDF
George Orwell on Propaganda and Art
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to…
Religion, Utility, and Power
“Your religion is built on a vast collection of useful lies; but, useful to whom?” operates on at least three levels simultaneously, and the semicolon pivot from declaration to question…
For Londoners, a Roman Bridge Still Determines Your Commute
London's shape was decided by a Roman bridge at the narrowest practical crossing of the Thames around 50 CE. Two thousand years later, every commute, every property value, every neighborhood boundary…
Mizar: the first usable proof assistant for mathematics
In two recent blogposts I have outlined the history of our field, one on the history of proof assistants and another specifically about earlier work on the formalisation of mathematics by machine.…
A Life in Rebellion
Preface to the Japanese translation of Ben Morea's "Full Circle: A Life in Rebellion"
Gymkhana.
Another word that keeps popping up in our reading of Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet (see this post) is gymkhana, and eventually I thought to investigate it, since I was fuzzy about both meaning and…
‘Artificiality’ and ‘Intelligence’ as interactional achievements
Annual Finnish Social Psychology Conference, Tampere, 8 May 2026 Abstract Public and scientific discourses about ‘AI’ treat ‘artificiality’ as an inherent property of machines, and ‘intelligence’ as…
This is from an article about Eliot Noyes, known for his work at IBM, which contains this anecdote:
dinosaurspen: This is from an article about Eliot Noyes, known for his work at IBM, which contains this anecdote:Serving in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, Noyes was assigned to the Pentagon…
Non-local real presence of Christ
Aquinas’s account of location for material substance is as follows. Ordinary material substances have a special accident—one more fundamental than all other matter-related accidents—he calls…
The Glorification of Fr. Seraphim Rose
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! As I’m sure most of us have been anticipating eagerly for some time, ROCOR is moving ahead with the canonization of Fr. Seraphim Rose and his formal…
The Mortification Equation
In John Owen's classic work The Mortification of Sin, he states that, "The choicest believers, who are assuredly free from the condemning power of sin, should also make it their business…
How Many Earths?
How Many Earths? Let’s start with a couple of thought experiments.[1] Suppose there is a certain planet that has been around for a billion years; call it Janet. Not much has changed in it during this…
Performative women (Irigaray)
what I've understood from my reading of Speculum of the other woman thus far: only men have access to identification, to recognizing sameness in the other and the laws that organize this sameness, to…
The Real Sumerian Problem – Climate Migrants, Remembered Civilization, and a Case of Mistaken Identity
We are delighted to welcome Dr Heather Lynn, author of Anunnaki Revelation: Hidden History, Altered States, and the Mystery of Humanity, as our featured author this month. Dr Heather Lynn is a…
M'aider
The great-grandson of the Magic 8-Ball, the Google Machine, tells me that “mayday…mayday…mayday”, the international distress signal used by aircraft and ships to indicate imminent danger to life,…
Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog #33: Who Invented the Corridor?
6 May 2026 I recently gave an online talk which looked at The Surprising Secrets of Ancient Corridors. What do you mean, you missed it!? That’s a pity as folk seem to really enjoy the more obscure…
From Saadi’s Bustan: The Hermit Theophilus and the Tyrant
A Weekly Poem from 13th Century Iran
A Rare Look Inside The Ancient London Home Of The Archbishop Of Canterbury
Lambeth Palace is a magnificent example of living history. For over 800 years it has been the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury in London and continues to serve that purpose today. Due to it being…
Catholic nerd pilgrimage: Saint James (two days late)
While I made it to St James on the feast day, for no good reason, I’m two days late writing it up. As I discovered back in July, I discovered that nobody really knows which of the Saints James their…
Releasing MANTO data into the wild
Last month, MANTO’s data was made available for public access. Ewan describes the release, how it can be accessed, and what we hope to achieve by releasing it into the world.
Pastors Claim Government Asked Them to Prepare for Fallen Angel UFO Revelation
A Tennessee pastor’s claims about UFO disclosure made headlines this week. In an April 27 YouTube video, Perry Stone, a televangelist, claimed that a friend had told him that a group of pastors…
How to really figure something out, poetry in translation
I was trying to figure out why two versions of a translated poem were different. And I did!
un poquito de español también 🇪🇸
dejar nada al debe → non lasciare nulla in sospeso bitácora bajapasti → término urbano, utilizado principalmente en Buenos Aires, que describe a una persona que arruina un momento feliz, un plan o un…
Reading Rawls in 2026
When I graduated fifteen years ago on the work of John Rawls, it was widely regarded as dated. A Theory of Justice had been published in 1971, and the lessons of Rawls’s masterpiece had by then been…
Philadelphia Is Digitizing 20 Million Historical Records with Ancestry: What It Means for Your Research
Philadelphia signed a deal with Ancestry.com to digitize approximately 20 million vital records from the City Archives — birth, death, marriage, and property records dating from the late 1600s…
Federalist Society: When Should We Recognize Something as a Property Right?
Related: IP is Not “Not Property” It is impossible to own ideas Another way to explain the problem with IP: Resources v. Knowledge; Ownership v. Possession Libertarian and Lockean Creationism:…
arguing for and against
Naomi Kanakia has some things to say about The Hedgehog Review. She’s taking some issues apart in good faith, I think, and pondering a real question for many small magazines doing Big Idea…
Francis William Hankins - probably December 1897
TThis photograph of my grandfather, Francis William Hankins, was probably taken in December 1897. On the back it says aged 3 months. Since he was born on 8 September 1897 - three months later would…
Thoroughly Modal Hypersequents
Abstract: In this talk I will introduce a simple hypersequent calculus for the propositional modal logic S5, explaining how this representation encodes a natural form of reasoning about possibility…