Nothing is off the record except what you don’t say.
Oct 052023
Oct 042023
An irreducible minimum of undesirables is always with us, and the sole policy question, in many guises, is how to herd them.
Oct 032023
That there is no difference, in practice, between stupid and evil is only an instance of the more general principle that there is none between can’t and won’t.
Oct 022023
We imagine that we have absorbed Einstein when we have yet to come to grips with Maxwell.
Sep 292023
There is news today, and still you are the same.
Sep 282023
A name can confirm understanding, or confound it, but never confer it.
Sep 272023
The enduring lessons of the First World War are how not to fight a war and why not to fight one.
Sep 262023
Accurate measurement created much of the modern world, not least its tendency to take variation for apocalypse.
Sep 252023
We credit vaccines with what we owe to sanitation, and the rest of medicine with what we owe to vaccines.
Sep 222023
Pretentious nonsense is written in a certain unmistakable cadence, a low hum calculated to lull you into acquiescence through inattention. You’re not supposed to try too hard to piece the meaning together, and you are always sorry if you do.