When we are willing to disrupt the status quo, we create space for something new.
Leviticus Review
The rulebook-like nature of Leviticus is probably why you don’t see it referenced or quoted more often, or maybe it’s because people struggle to quote Biblical passages about wave-breasts and heave-thighs with a straight face.
Complexity and Entropy – Two Sides of a Coin?
In the functional information hypothesis, high complexity is not the opposite of high entropy, but more of a different way of looking at the probability or phase space of a system to describe its entropic states.
On Benefits Review
“Benefits” seems to be the most common and literal translation, but you will also see it translated at times as “Charity,” “Generosity,” or “Giving.” One annotated version I came across titled it An Ancient Guide to Giving. Though perhaps less accurate than On Benefits, I think this last might be the most appropriate.
Lengths and Forms
Working within those forms is part of managing reader expectations, which is a key component of making a story appeal to a given reader, but the expectations we have around form and length of stories are not derived from some optimization method synchronized with humanity’s ability to interact with literature.
Life of Marcus Cato the Elder Review
It paints a rather different picture of the famous Roman statesman than is perhaps suggested from simply reading On Agriculture. Quiet descriptions of the infinite utility of cabbage somehow don’t lead one to think of a man who would conclude every public speech with the line “and Carthage must be destroyed.”
Reading Series
I wonder if perhaps this whole debate is somewhat missing the real point, which is obfuscated by the forms in which we happen to package stories.
On Agriculture Review
It is also interesting to note that Cato, like many of his Roman contemporaries, successors, predecessors, and others in different places and times well into the modern day, lauded the agrarian lifestyle as the pinnacle of human thriving.
Speeches as Poetry
A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a short speech at a large event. Maybe it could have been more distinctive if I’d had this thought before the speech, instead of about two hours later: I should have treated the speech like poetry.
Winter’s Heart Review
Nine books into Wheel of Time, a series famous for its length and detail, I found myself thinking the series could really be longer.
