Mission Statement

The center wherein lines of intelligence meet from foreign countries, times, and disciplines. Also, a place for the author to expound more about himself and share unbelievable stories.

The Rules

All posts are public. The schedule is irregular but averages to more than once a week. You don’t need to subscribe to read or to comment. In the future, the “Bonus” section at the bottom of some posts might be paywalled.

In comments, don’t be a jerk, don’t be shy about disagreeing or nitpicking.

Places to Start

If you like, start anywhere that grabs you. Articles that reference earlier articles link back to them. If that’s annoying, here are the starts of some threads.

Joseph Johnson’s Radicals: Joseph Johnson was a radical English publisher who liked to introduce his authors to each other at parties. It’s how Mary Shelley’s parents met. It’s how the American poet Joel Barlow was converted to pluralism, resulting in the founders of the United States voting to declare that it was not in any sense founded on Christianity. It’s how Mary Wollstonecraft kickstarted second-wave feminism before we’d had the first one.

Meet William Godwin, the 18th-century philosopher who was right about everything. (Except how to parent daughters, and whether stars are real.)

Diasporic Nationalism: Exploring what Jewishness is, and can be, without Zionism. Or, to scavenge a rejected title for The No-State Solution, “What is the Jews?”

Legends of Korah (Who doesn’t love a rebel?)

Against Standardized Education: We shouldn’t have a curriculum after around 3rd grade in the U.S. Free daycare and access to resources are essential for child welfare. But education, the way we’re doing it now, is hurting more than it’s helping.

They Have Different DNA (An idiosyncratic review of John Holt’s How Children Fail. Originally published on Astral Codex Ten.)

Why Carrots Are Orange: Carrots used to be all different colors. Why did we standardize so thoroughly? A ridiculously long chain of absurd historical accidents, that’s why.

Why Carrots and Princes Are Orange

Midrash: These mostly don’t relate to each other, but if you’re wondering what midrash means (or what I mean by it), start here:

A House Divided: Good, Actually (unless you’re the devil.)

About the Author:

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. I’m the search results for “Aaron Zinger” that aren’t about a Canadian bookkeeper, and I’m most of the people who’ve written under the name HonoreDB. (Not quite all of them. Also sometimes it’s a typo.)