In Media Res · The Blog
Notes from the dig.
Shorter pieces on culture, education, and the world as it comes.
Recent notes
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On the Tail of the Great White Whale
I think it was Goethe who said something like “old men speak less because they’ve already heard and said it all.” Don’t look for a footnote here because old men have also…
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A State That Keeps Surprising Itself
Every so often someone rediscovers that Kansas doesn’t behave the way the map says it should, and writes something about it. William Allen White did it in 1896, mocking the Populists in…
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Soul or Skill
The Mesopotamian scribes who kept the Edubba — the “tablet house” — running four thousand years ago already knew the argument we are still having. The teacher, one student remembered, “guided my…
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Dangerous Ideas
Mein Kampf is a book that many would be embarrassed to be seen with. In it, Hitler details his hatred of the Jews, his plan to expand the domain of the Germanic…