The Pear Tree Code
Dec 31The following letter appeared in the December 29th Opelika-Auburn News: To the Editor: I’m sorry to see Mary Belk’s column repeating the long-refuted myth that the song “Twelve Days of Christmas” originated as a coded way of imparting Catholic doctrine in Protestant England when Catholics were persecuted. A quick internet search will bring up multiple [...]
Alexandria – Birthplace of the Wheel!
Dec 31[cross-posted at Liberty & Power] Just got back from Baltimore: great Molinari Society session, great visit to the National Aquarium, great seafood (don’t worry, not at the Aquarium). On my return I find in my email inbox an ad for this book on the history of Alexandria. Now while I haven’t read the book, I [...]
Goblins at the Printing Press
Dec 26One downside of the lower cost of publishing that computer technology has made possible is the proliferation of sloppy publishing houses. Now don’t get me wrong – the benefits definitely outweigh the costs. But the costs are real, and I’m entitled to gripe about them. Kessinger Reprints comes to mind – their productions range from [...]
Penguins in the Basement
Dec 26My dissertation advisor Terry Irwin used to say that Cambridge changes are so named because that’s the only way things ever change at Cambridge. Evidently so, since two blackboards have just surfaced in a Cambridge basement with century-old, never-erased chalk sketches of penguins by polar explorers Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton. (Story here; conical hat [...]
The Spooner the Better
Dec 26[cross-posted at Liberty & Power] Reminder: the Molinari Society will be holding its fourth annual Symposium this week in Baltimore, in conjunction with the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (Dec. 27-30). Here’s the schedule, with links to the papers (which, as you’ll see, are both Spooner-intensive): GVIII-4. Saturday, 29 December 2007, 11:15 a.m.-1:15 [...]
Three Anarchistic Tales
Dec 26[cross-posted at Liberty & Power] For he, like a man or a star, lives in a universe shut in by walls of the things he knows. – RWL A late Christmas gift for you: three hauntingly beautiful and politically subversive early 20th-century tales – all searing indictments of the brutality of the state – have [...]
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