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Myths have Daimonic Power

The daimonic force of great myths and legends From The Notion Club Papers by JRR Tolkien – in Sauron Defeated, Volume IX of the History of Middle Earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Page 228, Ramer speaking: “I don’t think you realize, I don’t think any of us realize, the

Word for the Day

Word for the Day: Noosphage, n. (Gk: Noos mind + phagein eat. (Adj. noosphagus.) Any active entity, process or device that focuses individual attention on its own operation and away from the physical environment. "Each passenger on the subway car was in rapport with a noosphage."

I thought I was hard on economists

Why I turned against economics Throughout the 2000s, until some weeks after the 'credit crunch' crisis around September 2007, I was *extremely* interested in economics. In fact, for several years I was reading a lot of economics blogs every day without fail (about ten of them?), plus their

Applied Topology and Dante

Robert Ghrist sounds like my kinda guy. His area of expertise is almost completely over my head [applied topology], but he likes all things medieval, and is a fan of G. K. Chesterton. His passion in life is to apply unused mathematical discoveries to practical problems, including the coverage sensor

Dennis Hopper recites If by Rudyard Kipling

Bruce Charlton is Back!

Bruce Charlton is blogging again after being fired from his job as editor of the journal Medical Hypotheses. Charlton is responsible for introducing me to the existing literature on conscientiousness and other quantifiable personality traits, so I feel indebted to him. I also admire his willingness to stand on principle

Classic Dalrymple: Self-esteem vs Self-respect

I met a funny English doctor in Vienna, but this isn't him. Theodore Dalrymple remains one of my favorite commentators on the human condition. For your perusal, a classic Dalrymple piece on self-esteem. Self-esteem is, of course, a term in the modern lexicon of psychobabble, and psychobabble is