A life in words

  • Медесифра!

    This post is in honor of finally getting my blog to support Unicode characters, including Cyrillic and nearly every other writing system in existence. It used to just replace non-Western-European characters with question marks, but no longer! This is a big deal for someone as fond of writing systems as me. This has caused problems…

  • Forests Real and Imagined

    Forests. Lots of plants, big and small, living together on land. Animals dwell there. Hunters hunt there. Recluses and far-away grandmas live in cabins there. How many fairytales take place in a forest? How many books you’ve read? Is the forest good, evil, or both or neither? When was the last time you sat on…

  • Susan

    I keep postponing this post, but the postponed, post-pondering, shall now be posted! By the way, thanks to everyone who reads this blog and comments on it. I’m not so sure I would read this stuff if one of my friends was putting it out; you all are very good to me. Okay, here goes….…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty