QUEEN GERTRUDEGood Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off,And let thine eye look like a friend on Denmark.Do not for ever with thy vailed lidsSeek for… Read More »That Within Which Passeth Show (on Isomorphic Mimicry)
Make it better. Make it more specific. We often discuss art this way: the artist had something he wanted to express, and then he just,… Read More »Intuition plus Iteration: George Saunders on Writing as Editing
… and so it seems to me that in this most twenty-first of centuries we live our lives in a state of unending distraction. The… Read More »Monkeyminds; or, Fiddlesticks
The quadrivium followed the preparatory work of the trivium, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. In turn, the quadrivium was considered the foundation for the… Read More »Number in Time
Here’s Eisenstein again. There’s a lot at work: The combinatorial innovation that was the printing press created further opportunities for cross-pollination by breaking down old… Read More »Technology (23): Elizabeth Eisenstein on how the printing press created new networks and sparked further innovation
Traditional notions of hell paled in comparison with the inventions of 20th-century totalitarian regimes: Hitler’s and Stalin’s concentration camps. And compared to technological miracles and… Read More »Tomáš Halík on Modernity, Optimism and Naked Hope
The Ezra Klein Show: Timothy Snyder on Ukraine Good on history and the context for what’s going on in Ukraine. Great on language and the… Read More »Recommendation: Two Conversations
The way of the thing “Tao” refers to the inner nature or natural tendency of things. For example, water tends to flow downhill: that is… Read More »Boardroom: Lessons from Surfing (4) – Tao, Timing, Vectors
I’m working my way through Elizabeth Eisenstein’s excellent The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, an abridged version of her two-volume The Printing Press as… Read More »Writing and Reading as Technology (12): Elizabeth Eisenstein on How the Printing Press Changed Books
Less then five minutes long. Entertaining and true. (His Slaughtehouse-Five is the only successful anti-war novel I’ve read).