The Birds by Aristophanes
A bit dated lol, written in 414 bc. I suppose aristophanes had no idea just how unsuitable a material clouds are for building his "cloud cuckoo land" city upon.
Why do smart people get oneshotted by animal welfare?
The Slaughtered Ox, Rembrandt (1655) More than once, an otherwise smart person has attempted to untie the Gordian knot that is the way we treat animals, and themselves come undone in the process.…
What Color Are My Eyes
Devotion rendered as theology: a short story about a man's total surrender to a woman who occupies the god-position — traps, silence, and all.
Dacia Maraini: A Voice for Silenced Women
I first came across the work of Dacia Maraini during the year of #WaferThinBooks, when I read Isolina, her reconstruction of the murder of a poor pregnant young woman in Verona. I was drawn to ...…
What is loneliness?
Many articles and podcasts have seized upon the topic of loneliness, aloneness, and solitude since the 2023 Cambridge University Press publication of The Power of Solitude: The Science and Power of…
Do We Have to Like Historical Figures?
August 2026 Imperfect UnionHi friends and welcome new faces! I’m so glad you are here. One quick note: If you will be at the National Book Festival next Saturday, I hope you will come see me. I’ll be…
A Review of Jonathan M. Katz’s The Big Truck That Went By
It’s extraordinarily pleasing to read field reporting from deeply embedded foreign correspondents, a vocation that is shamefully underfunded today given the myriad of crises engulfing the…
On resistance to change in computer science
Irving Ziller, one of the original members of the FORTRAN team, describing the resistance of early programmers to the introduction of a compiler: “And in the background was the scepticism, the…
The List of Grievances, 250 years ago and now
.     This morning, on August 14, 2026, I attended a special event in the Alford Town Hall: Dr. Douglas Cooper, retired litigation lawyer and long-time Thomas Paine scholar, gave a lecture,…
My Glorious Friends: A Christopher Nolan-free Article on the Significance of Homer in 2026
Cinematic Adaptation and the Question of ThemeThis essay will not be saying anything about Christopher Nolan’s recent adaptation of The Odyssey except to commend him in creating such a controversial…
On Family History and AI
Earlier this year, I wrote a post about using AI in your study of the Gospel. The feedback has been great. It's clear that many of us are trying to find the best way to use these new…
52 Ancestors: Week 33, John S. and Nancy (Wilson) McFarland
Orginal post: 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks John S. McFarland , son of Robert and Elizabeth (Sinclair) McFarland, was born in Delaware County, New York 10 April 1804 1 and died in New York City 1 April…
Filtered for some poetry in modern English
1. My favourite translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Wikipedia) - 1,000 year old Persian poetry - is by Robert Graves from 1967. Graves, it turns out, unknowingly based his translations on…
Be the Awareness
Everything you experience appears in awareness and then dissolves. You are not what comes and goes.
Eschatology
This is the YouVersion Verse of The Day: Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently…
Linkage
A permutation generation algorithm in the work of 13th-century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia (\(\mathbb{M}\), via). The resulting permutation sequence is the one you get by reversing suffixes whose…
The condition nobody quotes
Ambedkar called civil disobedience the Grammar of Anarchy. He also said exactly when that judgement applies, and almost nobody quotes that part.
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