Welcome to
Erasmus adage for the month of January:
Mitior columba
As gentle as a dove
Yep, from ancient times, the dove was a symbol of meekness and gentleness.
Recent additions:
January 22nd: a new page, The Greatest Books, presenting the books that have most affected me.
January 21st: a new Person From History: Mucius Scaevola, the man who saved Rome by screwing up.
January 20th: an addition to the People Through History section, this on David Atchison. You don’t know who David Atchison was? Then read this!
January 19th: another new feature: a section of the library entitled “People Through History”, presenting tales of interesting people you’ve never heard of.
January 18th: a Skunky to the entire computer industry for spawning a freshet of languages for programming, scripting, and applications.
January 17th: two new Skunkys, the first to Network Solutions for their internal FTP software, and the second for a lousy DVD player program.
January 16th: book review: The Great Divergence, by Kenneth Pomeranz, explaining how the West outran Asian civilizations
January 15th: a design diary about the necessity of simplifying Balance of the Planet.
January 15th: We are all Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, an assault on one of the fundamentals of libertarianism
January 6th: a new feature: Skunkies, design reviews of really badly designed software. First up is Heavy Weather, from Lacrosse Technology
January 5th: musings aroused by John Lennon’s song Imagine
January 2nd: my adventures with Windows 7
January 1st: book review: The Oregon Trail, presenting the adventures of Francis Parkman in the Great Plains in 1846.
December 31st: on human mental data structures, mnemonics, and memory: Oh be a fine girl, kiss me now
December 30th: book review: Travelling Heroes, by Robin Lane Fox, a massive, erudite, and pointless book about the origins of Greek mythology.
December 28th: I’m a genius for having figured this out, and an idiot for not figuring it out sooner.
December 26th: I’m such an idiot!
December 25th: you don’t think I take Christmas off, do you? I’ve got work to do on Balance of the Planet!
December 19th: comparing the Business as Usual Scenario in Balance of the Planet with the Environmental Fanatic Scenario.
December 14th: an error in the handling of education and high technology in Balance of the Planet
December 5th: a new design diary for Balance of the Planet: should I reduce the game to a single turn?
December 4th: a review of Death in the Pot, an unsatisfying book on food poisoning through history.
December 3rd: The Phylogeny of Play, a video of a lecture I gave in Cologne in May of 2011
My change log, showing what has been added since when.