Who Were the Sea Peoples?

"Osserviamo tutte le nazioni così barbare come umane, quantunque, per imensi spazi di luoghi e tempi tra loro lontane; divisamente fondate, custodire questi tre umani costumi: che tutte hanno qualche religione; tutte contraggono matrimonio solenni, tutte seppelliscono i loro morti; nè tra nazioni, quantunque selvagge e crude, si celebrano azioni umane con più ricercate cerimonie a più consagrate solennità che religioni, matrimoni e seppolture." -- Vico, La Scienza nuova

I just accidentally ate Miracle Whip! I blame the Québécois!

That entirely new species of slugs are crawling cross my door.

Read all about it . And weep. Oh, and this sentence: "All religions are unique, but Protestantism is more unique than all the others." A totally fine use of unique . We all know exactly what he means.

Without, I'd be contextless, a mere abstraction! I'm all down with ecological concern. I compost. I keep live worms in my basement. I don't even kill bugs unless they try to eat bits of me. But I had to laugh the other day when I heard a Mom in a cafe badgering her 10-year-old daughter about how much water she used in the shower. The northeast has received almost a year's worth of rain in the last two months. Milford, PA has now passed 32 inches for August and September combined, and it is still raining. Every possible place the water might hang around is filled and over-filled. So if this girl takes a long shower, the water will go down the drain and out to the ocean. And if she takes no showers at all, the water will flow down a river and out to the ocean. Let the poor kid enjoy her showers!

"there aren't very many examples of modern property rights emerging spontaneously and peacefully out of a bargaining process. The way customary property rights yielded to modern ones was much more violent, and power and deceit played a large role." -- Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order

J.B.S. Haldane famously quipped that "I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins." If this simple mathematical relationship really captures the essence of altruism, then we should find that people are just as willing, on average, to lay down their life for their sibling as for their child. Of course, that is obviously false. What we are left with is studies showing that foraging robots obey the relationship ! So, what is true about evolutionary psychology (in this regard) has been known for a long time: "Blood is thicker than water" and so on. What is novel about it is falsified with about a minute's thought.