the Evil Line

Today I'm going to offer you a window into my blogging mind, all the difficult decisions I make in my daily effort to bring you the very best.

I often have to decide between an important boring article and a trivial fun article. For example, this takes a look at East Timor, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and talks about the difficulty of nation-building, which is an important and relevant topic; the article is terribly boring. This "underpants manifesto", on the other hand, discusses the somewhat less important question of what kind of underwear men should wear; it is funny and easy to read.

I like math. I would like to link to good popular articles on math. I usually link to Keith Devlin's monthly column. The problem is, June's column about the beauty of calculus and the definition of the derivative is pretty bad. He's trying. He's trying really, really hard. And that may be the problem.

I have linked to several reviews of Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, probably too many. Today there is a really excellent and thoughtful review by Freeman Dyson, which pulls in topics like kamikaze pilots that you wouldn't think are relevant but turn out to fit. But for some reason I have been reluctant to link this other response (pdf) to Dennett despite the fact - maybe because of the fact - that it's written by one of my heroes, Alister McGrath. At some point I should read the book myself; I've found the discussion about it fascinating.