Monday, October 29, 2012

Links and Notes

Still on the busy side of things. In the meantime...

* David Biespel links to Pound, Yeats, and Dylan reading their poetry.

* Rob Knopp has a lovely post on the Higgs mechanism -- what it means, why it's important -- quite readable. He also had a good post this summer on common misconceptions about special relativity.

* Roderick Long discusses Ayn Rand's Anthem

* John Mikhail, Moral Grammar and Human Rights (PDF)

* Hadley Arkes, Is Religious Freedom a "Natural Right"?

* Michael Dominic O'Connor, OP, discusses Augustine's theory of preaching.

* Michael Flynn on truth, fact, and faith.

* Lillian Gilbreth and the invention of the modern kitchen (ht)

* Martha Nussbaum on the difficulties of social protest narratives.

* Derek Muller reviews a book defending the Electoral College. I'll definitely have to read it; apparently the author, Tara Ross, notes the voter eligibility issues with NPV that I've mentioned here, but also makes an argument on ballot eligibility, which is an interesting one of which I hadn't thought. Likewise, she notes a weakness in NPV that is commonly overlooked -- interstate activity is subject to regulation by Congress and interstate compacts often require Congressional consent; it is not, in other words, simply a matter of state legislatures choosing to opt in, as it is often treated, since it's an open Constitutional question whether states can, in fact, engage in this kind of legislation without Congressional authorization.