John

John, John, bad King John
Shamed the throne that he sat on;
Not a scruple, not a straw,
Cared this monarch for the law;
Promises he daily broke;
None could trust a word he spoke;
So the Barons brought a Deed;
Down to rushy Runnymede,
Magna Carta was it hight,
Charter of the People’s Right,
Framed and fashioned to correct
Kings who act with disrespect –
And with stern and solemn air,
Pointing to the parchment there,
“Sign! Sign! Sign!” they said
“Sign, King John, or resign instead!”

John, John, turning pale,
Ground his teeth and bit his nail;
Chewed his long moustache; and then
Ground and bit and chewed again.
“Plague upon the People!” he
Muttered, “What are they to me?
Plague upon the Barons, too!”
(Here he had another chew,)
But the Barons, standing by,
Eyed him with a baleful eye;
Not a finger did they lift;
Not an eyelash did they shift;
But with one tremendous roar,
Even louder than before,
“Sign! Sign! Sign!” they said,
“SIGN, KING JOHN, OR RESIGN INSTEAD!”

(and King John signed)

Farjeon, Eleanor, and Herbert Farjeon. 1933. Kings and queens. New York: Dutton.

14th Century Tents in the Tower of London

1 screen (claustrum) of woolen cloth (carde) blue on the outside, white on the inside,

18 round houses (domus rotundi), 8 of woolen cloth blue on the outside, green inside,

2 chapels, (cappelle), one of linen cloth (tella linea) with vertical gables, one with four posts,

4 houses of green for hunting,

3 stables, one white in three pieces with four posts 20 feet long,

1 chamber (camera) decorated with crowns,

1 palace of blue cloth, probably the hall 'Westminster' in 15 pieces powdered with roses,

1 'alee',

1 house for the king’s ship the George,

1 hall “Berwick” in three pieces with two doors,

4 round houses with the arms of England,

1 house of the same arms with three posts,

1 house with two posts with two 'aleez' in a set,

1 house of cotton with 20 foot posts,

1 great palatial hall with 6 posts called the hall ”Bermondsey” with two doors and one alee in a set,

2 leather bags,

3 pieces of a tent.

These appear in records of 1346 and 1348. The claustrum and aleez seem to be early examples of the fabric walls and breezeways seen in later sources.

The medieval inventories of the Tower armouries 1320-1410  Roland Thomas Richardson

Using only construction paper and Scotch tape, the T. Rex lured in the Pachycephalosaurus with a masterful Stegosaurus disguise.

Let's just say the pterosaur loves scrapbooking and owes a few favors.

Don't Be Misled by Satire Quotes

The Internet makes it easy to encounter quotes from satire sites divorced from their original context. Pay attention to the source! The Onion is well known as a satire site, but there are others: The Daily Currant, The Borowitz Report, and of course the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Best Speech by a Central Banker

Ben Bernanke gave an excellent speech at Princeton yesterday:

Think about it. A meritocracy is a system in which the people who are the luckiest in their health and genetic endowment; luckiest in terms of family support, encouragement, and, probably, income; luckiest in their educational and career opportunities; and luckiest in so many other ways difficult to enumerate--these are the folks who reap the largest rewards. The only way for even a putative meritocracy to hope to pass ethical muster, to be considered fair, is if those who are the luckiest in all of those respects also have the greatest responsibility to work hard, to contribute to the betterment of the world, and to share their luck with others. As the Gospel of Luke says (and I am sure my rabbi will forgive me for quoting the New Testament in a good cause): "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded" (Luke 12:48, New Revised Standard Version Bible). Kind of grading on the curve, you might say.

Poe's Law

If it appears that a member of a group that you disagree with has written something of staggering idiocy, like this, please consider that it may well be a parody. There is, in fact nothing in Deuteronomy or Ephesians about LOTR being an abomination. That's Leviticus, and only with respect to the Bakshi version: "Thou shalt not draw ents as giant mutant radishes, for that is an abomination unto the LORD"

"Far-Right Extremists Chased Through London by Women Dressed as Badgers"

Why there will always be an England.

Autonomous Killer Robots

The Economist presents two experts discussing the pros and cons.

As some commenters point out, this is not exactly a new issue. Most land and naval mines are autonomous once armed, and more recently, close-in weapons systems.

Why I'm Not a Libertarian

I'm going to outsource this to Will Wilkinson. What he said.

Ideological labels are mutable, but at any given time they publicly connote a certain syndrome of convictions. What “libertarian” tends to mean to most people, including most people who self-identify as libertarian, is flatly at odds with some of what I believe. So I guess I’m just a liberal; the bleeding heart goes without saying.

Here are some not-standardly-libertarian things I believe: Non-coercion fails to capture all, maybe even most, of what it means to be free. Taxation is often necessary and legitimate. The modern nation-state has been, on the whole, good for humanity. (See Steven Pinker’s new book.) Democracy is about as good as it gets. The institutions of modern capitalism are contingent arrangements that cannot be justified by an appeal to the value of liberty construed as non-interference. The specification of the legal rights that structure real-world markets have profound distributive consequences, and those are far from irrelevant to the justification of those rights. I could go on.

More here, all worth reading.

Joss Whedon Delivers Commencement Address

..."you are all going to die."