A life in words

  • Katinka Kristina Kristiansen, et alii

    So, on my account at werelate.org I’ve uploaded my family history information, namely the GEDCOM data that my dad gave me a few years ago. WeRelate is a cool site. It’s basically Wikipedia for genealogy. In fact, it’s built on the same underlying MediaWiki software that Wikipedia uses. The idea of WeRelate, as with any…

  • Come to the Shakespeare Reading!

    I’m hereby invoking the massive online presence that is joshhansen.net to spread the word about tomorrow’s MLK Day Shakespeare Reading for our Curiously Poetic Altoids poetry club. Here’s the announcement: Hi Altoid friends! Tomorrow is the blessed holiday of Martin Luther King, Jr. day, and in honor of its awesomeness we are going to have…

  • Ideologue-y

    Do you ever feel that the previous generation just sees you as another potential acolyte to be indoctrinated and enlisted to fight the next big ideological war? In several situations I have felt like that. These were in linguistics, in economics, and—of course—in politics. In linguistics the philosophical divide basically shakes out as the rationalist,…

The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves… to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection [and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption….George Washington, Farewell Address