bensozia

Sunday, July 6, 2025

The Stolen Lily

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Last fall I explored an old house site in the Virginia woods, probably abandoned around the time of the Civil War. Growing near the stone ho...

Is there a Fantasy World You Would Like to Live in?

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Robin Hanson asked his Twitter/X followers, "Is there any 'fantasy' world where you'd prefer to live there as a regular pe...
1 comment:
Saturday, July 5, 2025

What I took from the World Bank Protests Back in 2002

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Back in 2002, I worked in downtown Washington, DC, a pleasant area which was disturbed twice a year by protesters marching against the annua...
Friday, July 4, 2025

Links 4 July 2025

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The good news about America. 500-year-old compass found buried near Copernicus' tomb, might have belonged to him. The top television ne...
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Thursday, July 3, 2025

A Russian General's Death and a Shift in the Narrative

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Multiple Russian news sources have confirmed that Major General Mikhail Gudkov was killed in a Himars strike on a headquarters where he was...
1 comment:
Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Quotations from Camus' "Sisyphus"

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Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confro...

Christian Fitness

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I've been wondering a lot lately how wacky holistic medicine became a right-wing thing. In the NY Times , Jessica Grose writes that some...
3 comments:
Tuesday, July 1, 2025

To Walk with Angels

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I've just self-published another book, which I'm calling a metaphysical thriller. Here's the blurb, written to send to agents an...

The Rise and Coming Fall of the Humanities Industry

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I've been reading a book, Best of the Achaeans by Gregory Nagy (1979). It's a relentlessly intense dive into the weeds of scholarsh...
Monday, June 30, 2025

Mongolian Shamanism

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I've been reading about Mongolian shamanism. A few observations: There isn't much emphasis on the shaman journeying to other lands; ...
Friday, June 27, 2025

Men and Women as Readers

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Interesting that fantasy is close to the middle. Via Robin Hanson on Twitter/X .
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The Lough Kinale Book Shrine

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This amazing artifact was found in an Irish lake back in 1986, and was conserved very carefully over the next 39 years. It is now on display...
1 comment:

Links 27 June 2025

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The Bamberg Casket, Viking art from the 10th century The first Vancouver street given a new, unpronounceable Native name . More name changes...
4 comments:
Thursday, June 26, 2025

Have We Lost the Future?

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From Ross Douthat's interesting interview ( NY Times ) with Peter Thiel: Well, I think there are deep reasons the stagnation happened. ....
1 comment:

The Ayatollah's Strategy

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Interesting piece in the NY Times by Vali Nasr: If this history is anything to go by, Ayatollah Khamenei will not retreat, let alone surren...
1 comment:
Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Stationary Bandits in the DRC

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There is a theory of state formation, associated with people like Mancur Olson and James Scott, in which which early states are modeled as p...
4 comments:
Tuesday, June 24, 2025

It Keeps Getting Weirder

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So Trump and the Emir of Qatar have arranged a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. Which both sides promptly violated, which led Trump to pu...
Monday, June 23, 2025

Aftermath

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Some negative reactions: Jeffrey Lewis (aka Arms Control Wonk ): Why am I so unimpressed by these strikes? Israel and the US have failed to...
2 comments:
Sunday, June 22, 2025

Solstice Flowers

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The flowers don't care about the news. They care about older, more basic things: the sun, the rain, the wind. On a sunny day after a rai...

What Now?

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First satellite image of the Fordow nuclear complex after the US attack Well, Trump did it.  I've been expecting it ever since he said t...
2 comments:
Saturday, June 21, 2025

Pondering Deirdre McCloskey's Defense of Capitalism

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Just got around to reading Deirdre McCloskey's  somewhat famous review  of Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, which is both a m...
11 comments:
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About Me

John
John Bedell is an archaeologist, historian, and father of five living in Maryland. He has self-published three novels and is writing a fourth.
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