Linkfest 2021-11-19: Common Good
The Post-Liberal Order: Big Mac
Alasdair MacIntyre is a favored philosopher here at With Both Hands. I really enjoyed this account of MacIntyre’s talk “Human Dignity: A Puzzling and Possibly Dangerous Idea?“ I had always found dignity a bit vacuous of a concept, but I hadn’t realized just to what degree that had been intentional.
First Things: False Notions of the Common Good
Chad Pecknold expands on the historical reasons behind how the concept of human dignity was advanced after World War 2.
West Hunter: Threading the Needle
Greg Cochran looks at the practical difficulties behind having a small enough population present to leave behind the traces we see in the Americas before the ancestors of today’s Native Americans arrived.
Here at With Both Hands, I’m frequently down on economists, but this is an example of where they did relatively well.
Hackaday: Those Bullet Effects in Terminator 2 Weren’t CGI
I’m absolutely astounded by this. I definitely assumed they were CGI. Practical special effects astonish me.
I remember a web game that challenged you to determine whether two random countries were bigger or smaller in actual area, something that can be difficult due to the Mercator projection being the most common.
Tentaclii: With the Night Mail
Tentaclii: As Easy as A.B.C.
Thanks to the incomparable Sensor Sweep, here are two posts from the H. P. Lovecraft News and scholarship blog Tentaclii. Tentaclii found audiobook versions of With the Night Mail by Kipling.
A lot of house rules cripple game experience because they are solving things that aren’t problems. Weak and useless 1st level magic users may be more interesting than you think.
Astral Codex Ten: Ivermectin: Much More Than You Wanted To Know
The no longer pseudonymous Scott Alexander does what he does best: go into detail at absurd length about a really interesting topic.
The Long View: The Unconquerable World
At first blush, the argument in Schell's book seems plausible. After all, we all know that insurgencies are unbeatable, just look at Vietnam. Unfortunately, this is only plausible if you are well educated while at the same time not knowing much of anything. While it could perhaps be said that the VC was part of what broke American will to fight, the actual battle that conquered South Vietnam was fought with infantry, tanks, and artillery.
With Both Hands: The Sacred Radiance Book Review
Daniel Humphrey’s Paxton Locke series made me realize I don’t hate urban fantasy per se. Everyone is just bad at it. Book five, The Dragon and His Wrath, just came out, so why not take a look at the previous entries in the series?
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